With what power, with what 'machines', with what technical resources was the rocky terrain levelled at all? How did the master-builders drive the tunnels downwards? And how did they illuminate them? Neither here nor in the rock-cut tombs in the Valley of Kings were torches or anything similar used. There are no blackened ceilings or walls or even the slightest evidence that traces of blackening have been removed. How and with what were the stone blocks cut out of the quarries? With sharp edges and smooth sides? How were they transported and joined together to the thousandth of an inch? Once again there is a wealth of explanations for anyone to choose from: inclined planes, and tracks along which the stones were pushed, scaffolding and ramps. And naturally the labour of many hundreds of thousands of Egyptian slaves: fellahin, builders and craftsmen.

None of these explanations stands up to a critical examination. The Great Pyramid is (and remains?) visible testimony of a technique that has never been understood. Today, in the twentieth century, no architect could build a copy of the Pyramid of Cheops, even if the technical resources of every continent were at his disposal.

2,600,000 gigantic blocks were cut out of the quarries, dressed and transported, and fitted together on the building site to the nearest thousandth of an inch. And deep down inside, in the galleries, the walls were painted in colours.

The site of the pyramid was a whim of the Pharaoh.

The unparalleled, 'classical' dimensions of the pyramid occurred to the master-builder by chance.

Several hundred thousand workers pushed and pulled blocks weighing 12 tons up a ramp with (non-existent) ropes on (non-existent) rollers.

This host of workers lived on (non-existent) grain.

They slept in (non-existent) huts which the Pharaoh had built outside his summer palace.

The workers were urged on by an encouraging 'Heave-ho' over a (non-existent) loudspeaker and so the 12-ton blocks were pushed skywards.

If the industrious workers had achieved the extraordinary daily piece rate of ten blocks piled on top of each other, they would have assembled the two and a half million stone blocks into the magnificent stone pyramid in about 250,000 days = 664 years. Yes, and don't forget that the whole thing came into being at the whim of an eccentric king who never lived to see the completion of the edifice he had inspired.

Of course one must not even suggest that this theory, so seriously advanced, is ridiculous. Yet who is so ingenuous as to believe that the pyramid was nothing but the tomb of a king. From now on who will consider the transmission of mathematical and astronomical signs as pure chance?

Today the Great Pyramid is undisputedly attributed to the Pharaoh Khufu as inspirer and builder. Why? Because all the inscriptions and tablets refer to Khufu. It seems obvious to me that the Pyramid cannot have been erected during a single lifetime. But what if Khufu forged the inscriptions and tablets that are supposed to proclaim his fame.? That was quite a popular procedure in antiquity, as many buildings bear witness. Whenever a dictatorial ruler wanted the fame for himself alone, he gave orders for this process to be carried out. If that was the case, then the pyramid existed long before Khufu left his visiting card.

In the Bodleian Library at Oxford there is a manuscript in which the Coptic author Mas-Udi asserts that the Egyptian King Surid had the Great Pyramid built. Oddly enough, this Surid ruled in Egypt before the Flood. And this wise King Surid ordered his priests to write down the sum total of their wisdom and conceal the writings inside the pyramid. So, according to Coptic tradition, the pyramid was built before the Flood.

Herodotus confirms such a supposition in Book 2 of his History. The priests of Thebes had shown him 341 colossal statues, each of which stood for a high-priestly generation over a period of 11,340 years. Now we know that every high priest had his statue made during his own lifetime; and Herodotus also tells us that during his stay in Thebes one priest after another showed him his statue as a proof that the son had always followed the father. And the priests assured Herodotus that their statements were very accurate, because they had written everything down for many generations and they explained that every one of these 341 statues represented a generation and that before these 341 generations the gods had lived among men and that since then no god had visited them again in human form.

The historical period of Egypt is usually estimated at about 6,500 years. Then why did the priests lie so shamelessly to the traveller Herodotus about the 11,340 years? And why did they so expressly emphasise that no gods had dwelt among them for 341 generations? These precise details would have been completely pointless if 'gods' had not really lived among men in the remote past!

We know next to nothing about the how, why and when of the building of the pyramid. An artificial mountain, some 490 ft high and weighing 31,200,000 tons, stands there as evidence of an incredible achievement and this monument is supposed to be nothing more than the burial place of an extravagant king! Anyone who can believe that explanation is welcome to it ....

Mummies, equally incomprehensible and not yet convincingly explained, stare at us from the remote past as if they held some magic secret. Various people knew the technique of embalming corpses, and archaeological finds favour the supposition that prehistoric beings believed in return to a second life, i.e. a corporeal return. That interpretation would be acceptable if there was even the remotest evidence of a belief in corporeal return in the religious philosophy of antiquity! If our primitive ancestors had believed only in a spiritual return, they would scarcely have gone to such trouble with the dead. But finds in Egyptian tombs provide example after example of the preparation of embalmed corpses for corporeal return.

What the evidence says, what visible proof says, cannot be so absurd! Drawings and sagas actually indicated that the 'gods' promised to return from the stars in order to awaken the well-preserved bodies to new life. That is why the provisioning of the embalmed corpses in the burial chambers took such a practical form and was intended for a life on this side of the grave. Otherwise what were they supposed to have done with money, jewellery and their favourite articles? And as they were even provided in the tomb with some of their servants, who were unquestionably buried alive, the point of all the preparations was obviously the continuation of the old life in a new life. The tombs were tremendously durable and solid, and almost atom-bomb-proof; they could survive the ravages of all the ages. The valuables left in them, namely gold and precious stones, were virtually indestructible. I am not concerned here with discussing the later abuses of mummification.

I am only concerned with the question: who put the idea of corporeal rebirth into the heads of the heathen? And whence came the first audacious idea that the cells of the body had to be preserved so that the corpse, preserved in a very secure place, could be awakened to new life after thousands of years?

So far this mysterious reawakening complex has only been considered from the religious point of view. But supposing the Pharaoh, who certainly knew more about the nature and customs of the 'gods' than his subjects, had these possibly quite crazy ideas? 'I must make a burial place for myself that cannot be destroyed for millennia and is visible far across the country. The gods promised to return and wake me up (or doctors in the distant future will discover a way to restore me to life again).'

What have we to say about that in the space age?

In his book The Prospect of Immortality, published in 1965, the physician and astronomer Robert C. W. Ettinger suggests a way in which we twentieth-century men can have ourselves frozen so that our cells can go on living from the medical and biological point of view, but slowed down a billionfold. For the present this idea may still sound Utopian, but in fact every big clinic today has a 'bone bank' which preserves human bones in a deep-frozen condition for years and makes them serviceable again when required. Fresh blood—this too is a universal practice—can be kept for an unlimited time at minus 196° C and living cells can be stored almost indefinitely at the temperature of liquid nitrogen. Did the Pharaoh have a fantastic idea which will soon be realised in practice?