robin cook Wrote:
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> So which design imperative carried most sway? I
> should say the 14/11 and 99/70 ratios.
I am, of course, partial to my own squaring the circle theory on the subject - which makes use of the 11/14 and 8/9 ratios in creating the central diagrammatic construction for each pyramid. I believe that other considerations were then addressed within this over-arching scheme - such as the actual cubit length to be used, and the various numeric ratios one finds - many of which I believe stem from a recognition of Pythagorean Triples - both true triples and nearly true triples. I have discussed this important point before - the fact that theirs was an empirically based approach - and hence the importance of the 70-70-99 near triple that you cite, or similarly, the 99-99-140, the 68-72-99, the 49-50-70, etc. near, or 'empirical', triples. Since they had no way in which to determine any difference between these two categories ('true' and 'empirical'), both would have been seen as equivalent to them - hence the 'empirical' triples need to very much be in the discussion.
> Nevertheless, it would seem that a fundamental
> geometrical design was intentionally refined.
I completely agree.
> The upper slopes
> (we may suppose intentionally) have been adjusted
> from this to give whole numbers of cubits along
> the slope. Consequently the horizontal length of
> the gallery becomes 78.9
Conan Doyle wrote (Scandal in Bohemia) that "Singularity is almost invariably a clue". I have repeatedly mentioned here that the curious design in and around the Great Step is precisely such a "singularity". It is my belief that the key to understanding the design basis of the pyramid as a whole lies in a contextual explanation of the very odd design choices that were made here at this extremely pivotal location.
> Incidentally, would 'many valued logic' explain
> why Khufu can be defined by both 'Pi' and 'Phi'?
I don't think that these ratios were intentionally incorporated into the design. They are merely resultant from the squaring of the circle geometrics. By "many valued logic" I am referring to the fact that they did not approach the design as 'either we use this modality, or we use that'. They apparently felt it important to incorporate and accommodate a number of diverse modalities into the design - and this in large part is what makes a reverse engineering of the design intent so difficult. It is also why the dictum of Occam's Razor is not really applicable in understanding what the AE were about. They were a practical lot, but as their mathematics show, they were not necessarily always interested in taking what we might consider as being the shortest or simplest path to their goal.