Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization

by Graham Hancock

As the guards continued their patrol in a westerly direction along the northern face of the Great Pyramid, we made our way around the north-eastern corner and along the base of the eastern face. I had long ago fallen into the habit of orienting myself according to the monument’s sides. The northern face was aligned, almost perfectly, to true north, the eastern face almost perfectly to true east, the southern to true south, and the western face to true west. The average error was only around three minutes of arc (down to less than two minutes on the southern face)1 – incredible accuracy for any building in any epoch, and an inexplicable, almost supernatural feat here in Egypt 4500 years ago when the Great Pyramid was supposed to have been built. An error of three arc minutes represents an infinitesimal deviation from true of less than 0.015 Per cent. In the opinion of structural engineers, with whom I had discussed the Great Pyramid, the need for such precision was impossible to understand. From their point of view as practical builders, the expense, difficulty and time spent achieving it would not have been justified by the apparent results: even if the base of the monument had been as much as two or three degrees out of true (an error of say 1 per cent) the difference to the naked eye would still have been too small to be noticeable. On the other hand the difference in the magnitude of the tasks required (to achieve accuracy within three minutes as opposed to three degree...