In the Time of the Pyramid-Builders

Sound Bite

"In the Time of the Pyramid-Builders" examines the great epoch of pyramid-building in Egypt, from the Fourth to the Sixth Dynasties, from an entirely new perspective. These dynasties are currently held to have flourished in the third millennium BC, whereas Sweeney demonstrates, in a great variety of ways, that they rightly belong in the early first millennium BC - almost two thousand years closer to our own time.

About the Book

The pyramids of Giza, amongst the most iconic structures in the world, are said by historians to have been constructed in the 26th century BC. But how do they know that? Are their calculations based on rigorous scholarship and hard science? The answer, according to Emmet Sweeney, is an emphatic No! Sweeney points to the fact that the chronology espoused by modern Egyptologists is not too different from that of Napoleon, who dated the pyramids to the 23rd century BC. Yet that was 20 years before Champollion had cracked the hieroglyphic code and founded the discipline of Egyptology.In The Time of the Pyramid-Builders Emmet Sweeney expands on his previous work and demonstrates how the Great Pyramid could not have been built before the 10th century BC, as well as showing how the last of the pyramid-building dynasties, the 6th, was actually of Asiatic (Hyksos) origin, and reigned immediately before the rise of Egypt's glorious 18th (or Theban) Dynasty.In this work, Sweeney looks at the evidence — routinely overlooked in mainstream academic publications — for placing the Pyramid Age of Egypt in a period much closer to our own time. Once we realize that the pyramid-builders actually flourished sometime between 1000 and 740 BC, then their accomplishments — whilst still astounding — are at least now comprehensible. For the pyramid-builders used iron and probably even steel tools, and the architects of the epoch employed an advanced geometry which seems to have included a knowledge of the value of pi.This was not the third millennium BC; it was the first. The pyramid-building pharaohs traded with, and imported timber from, the great cities of the Phoenician coast; cities such as Tyre and Byblos. And the Phoenician sailors provided the Egyptians with tin from the far west of Europe, an indispensable ingredient in the making of bronze.