Very much a personal polemic and just my opinion but rather than pepper the following with "in my opinion" (I refuse to use IMO) I'll just say it once here at the beginning.

The vast majority of the plans and reconstructions that appear on this Message Board of Giza take as their source the survey done by Petrie in the 1890s. It's understandable as Petrie's work is unlikely to be bettered as an overall survey although individual measurements might be revised. It also has the merit of being available on the web thanks to the original work of Graham Oaten for which everyone should be grateful.

The more of the so-called "solutions" that I see the more I'm convinced that what is being presented is more a result of Petrie's methods than a plan of any relevance to the Ancient Egyptians and how they laid out the Plateau.

Petrie's work is subjective which isn't a criticism it's inevitable. He measured what he thought was important and made thousands of decisions as he worked over which points to include. These decisions are built into any drawing that you produce from his results. If Petrie didn't measure it then it doesn't get included. It's resulted in the "Flat Plateau" approach (I'm tempted to call it Phlateauism). This approach ignores features on the plateau that must have had a huge effect on the placing of the pyramids. For instance the natural rocky peak that forms the core of Khufu's Pyramid or the natural ridge that was used in the construction of Khafre's Causeway or the fact that the each Pyramids couldn't move far without dropping down off the higher rocky core of the Plateau. It also ignores the time scale and interruptions to the building of the pyramids at Giza by Djedefre for example.

You don't get that information from looking at Petrie's figures so it gets ignored. It's one reason I find all of the recent plans to be so pointless. And then there was the ultimate absurdity when I posted some details of a feature on the Plateau that Petrie didn't measure and it was promptly incorporated by more than one person into their plans. With no accurate measurements and no idea if it dated anywhere from the Pre Dynastic to Medieval times. It's geographical height was also ignored, it was "Phlateauism" at it's daftest.

Another example:
I'd be prepared to bet that if Petrie had included the "real" distances between the Pyramids then these would form the core of all sorts of theories proving Phi and Pi and stellar alignments etc etc. So what do I mean by the "real" distances? It's the distance measured along the diagonal that takes into account the difference in ground height between the pyramids. Petrie's figures correct for this difference in height to produce a horizontal distance for his survey which is what you'd expect i.e. I'm not criticising him. I've calculated these real distances as approximately:

Centre of First to centre of Second Pyramid: North 13937.28 and East 13171.81 Direct 19172.53
Centre of First to centre of Third Pyramid: North 29106.88 and East 22621.5 Direct 36861.08
Centre of Second to centre of Third: North 15170.74 and East 9450.74 Direct 1790.05

I've deliberately presented them in the same way as Petrie did for his figures. I'm not aware that they've appeared anywhere before and I'm not claiming that they are even relevant but I'm convinced that if they had been in Petrie's survey they would have been treated as important and used in the sort of theories I mentioned. Marshall McLuan said "The Medium is the message" in this case it's "The survey is the message".

Yet another example:
The Queen's chamber is another popular target for complicated drawings with inscribed circles and diagonals etc. It's nothing new as Davidson was doing it in his "The Great Pyramid - It's Divine Message" in 1925. This is a simple example of the sort of thing I mean.



In this case the horizontal joints are treated as important in the placing of the circle. But no one has ever published any drawings, as far as I know, that treat the vertical joints with similar importance. Why? Because Petrie doesn't give the measurements (Nor do Maragioglio & Rinaldi).

Add the verticals and you've got a whole new set of points to work with and the scope for new circles must be increased exponentially. (I found some nice "co-incidences" in only a few minutes with some concentric circles but I won't post and add to the nonsense already around as last time I did something like that some people took me seriously).



As with my previous example I've no doubt that if Petrie had included these vertical joints they would feature in all manner of theories. But Petrie didn't so they are unimportant to the modern theorists indeed they've become invisible. But if they are to argue that what they've already presented is relevant then they have to explain why the data they don't use isn't.

Petrie's data is vital to a study of Giza but what he left out is just as important and without it the results are partial at best and irrelevant at worst. We are doing him a injustice in the way his work is being used.

(The drawing of the Queen's chamber is my own with measurements taken from Dormion for the lower part and the niche and from my own photographs for the upper as he didn't draw the top detail for some reason. My additions are shown in red.)

Jon

www.egyptarchive.co.uk