Mark Heaton Wrote:
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> I was drawn to study the geometry of the Grand
> Gallery by one observation, not mine. There are
> grooves on the third pair of laps of the corbelled
> structure, counting upward from the side-walls.
> These grooves run the entire length of the
> gallery. Smyth noted that the grooves are so close
> to the bottom of the laps that the loading bearing
> potential was slight, and assumed the grooves had
> some symbolic meaning. Petrie noted that the
> bottom edges of the grooves are at the precise
> half height of the gallery. Edwards noted that the
> grooves had not been explained. The width of the
> gallery at the level of the grooves is 22 palms or
> 22/7 royal cubits, as the separation between the
> third pair of laps.


> You wrote 'but pi cannot be called 'elementary' :
> it is not an easy number to pin down.'


> It would have been easy to measure. A circle with
> a diameter of 1 royal cubit (7 palms) has a
> circumference of precisely 22 palms, accurate to a
> very small fraction of a palm. The difference is
> approximately one hundredth of a palm, probably
> beyond the resolution of ancient measurement, and
> so with no discernible difference from exactly 22
> palms. Petrie claimed that AE knew a more precise
> value of pi from his survey of the Great Pyramid.

> I suggest that pi was determined as 22/7 from the
> science of measurement, and that it was not worked
> out mathematically.

> I have, of course, searched for a representation
> of a circle in 'palms' in relation to the Bent
> Pyramid. It is the natural choice for a symbolic
> circle because of the division of the royal cubit
> into 7 palms. I wonder which of your readers will
> be the first to spot it.

You might find that this deals with several of the points that you mention.

Hermione
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