Why are pyramids not mentioned in the Bible?

The civilization of ancient Egypt is regarded as one of the greatest in history. Of the seven man-made wonders of the ancient world that sparked the imagination of our ancestors, only one has survived to this day: the Great Pyramid of Giza, also known as the Pyramid of Cheops.

A picture of the Great Pyramid of Giza

This is the only pyramid referred to as 'Great,' serving as a striking example of technological knowledge that has amazed people across cultures and historical periods. Yet, you won’t find any mention of it in the Bible. Why is that?

Why were the pyramids built?

Based on hieroglyphs found in the inner chamber referencing a group of workers and the Fourth Dynasty Egyptian pharaoh Cheops, Egyptologists believe the pyramid was constructed as a tomb over a span of 20 years. Although the pyramids are thought to be products of Bronze Age culture—when tools were primarily made of stone or copper—the Great Pyramid stands as an extraordinary example of advanced engineering, showcasing a level of expertise comparable to 21st-century technologies.

The secrets of the Great Pyramid have been shrouded in mystery for millennia, obscured not only by the passage of time but also by deliberate misinformation regarding its true purpose. The dominant theory of the pyramid as a tomb fails to account for many of its unique features.

Its intricate structure seems more suited to a sophisticated device made of stone, built for purposes we still cannot fully comprehend. Some Egyptologists attempt to reconcile its technologically advanced design with the prevailing tomb theory. For instance, Toby Wilkinson describes the earliest known pyramid—the Step Pyramid of Djoser—as a 'resurrection machine' intended to elevate its divine master, Horus, to the heavens among the immortal stars.

Saqqara, Pyramid of Djoser and nearby tombs, Pictures

A fascinating legend from the Westcar Papyrus, written thousands of years after Cheops, recounts how the pharaoh sought information from a sorcerer about the secret chambers of the Toto sanctuary to replicate them in his tomb. However, the magician could not reveal anything significant. One intriguing hypothesis suggests that the Toto sanctuary, whose secrets astounded Cheops and his contemporaries, maybe none other than the Great Pyramid itself.

Who were the ancient gods?

The Egyptian god Thoth was regarded as a brilliant scientist and inventor among the pantheon of gods. He was believed to possess secret technical knowledge that set him apart from other deities. In ancient Egyptian iconography, Thoth is commonly depicted with the head of an ibis, but this representation is relatively modern. In the earliest depictions of Egyptian gods, they appear strikingly human. This has led some historians to believe that the ancient gods were not abstract spirits, as described in the Bible, but rather historical figures.

Ramses III. in front of god Thoth in tomb of Khaemwaset

Euhemerus, the Greek mythographer, argued that the gods were once real people whose stories were later distorted and exaggerated. Kurt Sethe, a renowned German Egyptologist, supported this view, suggesting that the legend of the Egyptian god Osiris is actually a chronicle of real events—the history of a legendary ruler of ancient Egypt.

However, a major issue arises that challenges the notion of these stories being mere exaggerations. This issue involves strange machine tool marks found on the granite blocks of the Great Pyramid—marks that could not have been made with the tools available during the officially accepted historical period.

Who Built the Pyramids?

Initially, the question that has long intrigued many is whether the ancient Egyptians could have built the Pyramids of Giza in the middle of the third millennium BC. The debates on this topic are diverse, with some focusing on the number of workers needed for the construction, while others estimate the weight of the blocks and the feasibility of transporting them.

Flinders Petrie, a respected Egyptologist with an engineer's mindset, was the first to notice, in the 19th century, that the Great Pyramid showed signs of unknown machine tools. He analyzed several granite cores from the remaining tubular drills, some of which featured double helical grooves. This suggests that the tool used to cut the hard granite was far more efficient than modern power tools. The technology employed did not simply rotate the tubular drill continuously, but rather turned it out, feeding the drill into the material like foam plastic under immense pressure, achieving an efficiency of 2 millimeters per revolution. This level of precision surpasses even modern capabilities.

Outside Giza rock tomb in 1880 where Flinders Petrie lived during the Pyramid Survey

Several researchers have attempted to explain the effectiveness of the technology used by combining ultrasonic vibrations with the Rehbinder Effect. The Rehbinder Effect, in physics, refers to a decrease in hardness and an increase in ductility of a material due to the presence of a surface-active molecular film. In the case of granite, this active molecular film is simply water. Theoretically, a skilled craftsman could have introduced highly heated steam under high pressure into a tubular ultrasonic drill. This would not only reduce waste but also significantly lessen the load on the drill, thereby reducing its wear.

Ultrasonic drills only appeared at the end of the 20th century, and the Rehbinder Effect on granite remains an untested theory. Could this technology be the answer? Perhaps!

The accuracy of the Great Pyramid presents an unresolved challenge for both the tomb theory and the idea that it was built with Bronze Age tools. Such precision cannot be the result of mere chance—it is the product of deliberate application of tools and techniques far more advanced than those typically attributed to the ancient Egyptians. To achieve such high accuracy, the focus must have been on precision as the primary objective. 

There is still no clear explanation as to why the pyramid builders needed to achieve such incredible precision—such as maintaining the 200-meter base of the Great Pyramid with an accuracy of just 3 arc minutes, or ensuring that the giant megalithic blocks inside the inclined corridors were aligned to within five millimeters. A deviation of even five centimeters on such a large scale would likely go unnoticed. Constructing a megalithic structure with such precision, without any clear practical benefit for a tomb, increases the complexity of the project to an extraordinary level. Moreover, it remains unexplained how they possessed the tools required for such work, as these tools are not found in the archaeological record.

Civilization of the Gods

The Great Pyramid continues to raise serious questions about whether we are truly the first technologically advanced civilization to have ever existed on Earth. There is evidence that highly developed civilizations left traces in ancient times. But what kind of civilization could this have been? To find an answer, we should explore the connection between the unique technologies used in the construction of the Great Pyramid and references in ancient Egyptian texts to a civilization outside of Egypt. 

While scientists are familiar with instances of sudden advancements in knowledge and skills throughout history, there is no evidence of such a technological development in the case of the pyramid builders. No archaeological findings support the existence of the necessary machine tools. Therefore, it is difficult to dismiss the possibility that the Egyptians acquired this advanced knowledge through contact with a more technologically advanced civilization.

Ancient Egyptian Deities

Any advanced technology in ancient times would have been perceived as divine or magical. It is only in recent decades that we have reached a technological level where, in the eyes of our predecessors, we too would appear as a 'Civilization of the Gods.' In the minds of the ancients, the Great Pyramid was always linked to powerful magicians or gods who brought civilization to the Nile Valley.

So why aren’t pyramids mentioned in the Bible? Likely because they serve as physical evidence of the existence of other ancient gods, aside from the biblical one. If these pyramids were built by gods other than the God of the Bible, they would stand as tangible proof of the presence of other deities on Earth in very ancient times.

Another important point is that it allows us to view biblical stories from a slightly different perspective. The evidence of advanced technology in the stonework of the Great Pyramid, along with its connection to the civilization of the ancient gods, invites us to reconsider monotheistic religions and their core belief in one singular God. Ancient legends and alternative biblical sources suggest that the God of the Bible may not have been the abstract, disembodied spirit portrayed in the text. Instead, he was likely a representative of a highly developed civilization.