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... he claims that the Renaissance artist Lorenzo Ghiberti drew Khufu’s pyramid as the Ark in his Florentine Baptistery Gates of Paradise image of Noah’s Flood. The Ark is indeed shown as a pyramid, but not due to a conspiracy but because Origen, in Genesis Homily 2, which Creighton has not read and knows only from a brief secondhand reference, said that he thought the three-story Ark had to be smaller on each successive level, creating a truncated pyramid. This text is paralleled by Philo in Questions and Answers on Genesis 2.5 and also Clement in Stromata 6.11, both unknown to Creighton. The conceit is this: The ark is 300 X 50 cubits at the base, but according Genesis 6:16, the Ark was but one cubit at the top, above the window. Therefore, these authors concluded it must slope upward to get to that small size, rather than have a little protrusion at the top. Here’s Clement’s version: “And the length of the structure was three hundred cubits, and the breadth fifty, and the height thirty; and above, the ark ends in a cubit, narrowing to a cubit from the broad base like a pyramid, the symbol of those who are purified and tested by fire” (trans. William Wilson). It’s silly, but what happens when you apply logic to myth. Most of the ancient authors explained this in great detail, but because Creighton doesn’t know the originals, he can read into a secondhand summary of Origin a conspiracy dating back to Egypt: “Perhaps these early writers and artists had access to ancient texts, now long since lost, that described the early, giant Egyptian pyramids in precisely such terms—as arks.” [www.jasoncolavito.com]