Category: Pyramids

On Ibn Wahshiyya and the Dating of the Legend of King Surid

3/7/2026

I wanted to share a bit of information about the medieval Arabic pyramid myth that I recently came across since it helps to correct a small but important problem I encountered in writing my Legends of the Pyramids five years ago. As you will recall, the myth’s most developed form holds that an antediluvian Egyptian king named Surid built the Great Pyramid to protect science and knowledge from the Great Flood, which was foretold in a vision. However, that version is attested a century after an earlier form, involving Hermes Trismegistus preserving science and knowledge in the temple of Akhmim (also called Ikhmim or Panopolis) after foreseeing the coming of the Flood.

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Some Interesting New Insights into Medieval Legends about Ancient Egypt

2/11/2026

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I wanted to call your attention to some new additions to my Library. As most of you know, I have spent more than a decade researching the medieval Arab-Islamic pyramid myth, which told of how either Hermes Trismegistus or Surid built the temples and pyramids of Egypt before Noah’s Flood to preserve scientific knowledge. I have finally completed some of the translation work I had long mean to do but hadn’t quite gotten around to, as a supplement to the many translations I had already posted, and the material contains some interesting insights into the growth and development of the myth, which I had previously discussed in my book The Legends of the Pyramids (2021).

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Review of Ancient Aliens S22E02 Egypt’s Lost Pyramids

1/23/2026

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As colorful and inventive as the medieval Arabic legends of ancient Egypt were—originating many of the tropes used in sci-fi stories about ancient cultures even today, such as impossibly advanced ancient technology, otherworldly magic, hidden scientific secrets, booby-trapped pyramids, etc.—there are times I wish that these legends had never arisen. The medieval stories of fallen angels and Hermetic alchemists building temples, pyramids, and vanished cities full of astounding technology fed directly into modern claims about extraterrestrial intervention. Indeed, the late Erich von Däniken made a half-understood account of the most prominent of these legends, the story of the construction of the Great Pyramid first given in the Akhbār al-zamān, but known to him from a later plagiarist, the foundation for his ET claims about the pyramids, repeated from Chariots of the Gods straight through to his death.

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The Temple of Akhmim and Ancient Egyptian Pyramids as Chemical Plants

1/2/2026

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On social media last week, there was a periodic burst of interest in Geoffrey Drumm’s allegation that the Egyptian pyramids were chemical factories after Drumm appeared on the Danny Jones Podcast to discuss a version of a claim he first made in a 2020 book. According to Drumm’s speculation, which he promotes under the name “Land of Chem,” the various pyramids were all designed to focus piezoelectric charges into their inner chambers to create chemicals, which each pyramid’s slope and chamber position “tuned” to produce a different chemical. Drumm suggests that the pyramids were built thousands of years earlier than conventional archaeology assumes—8500 BCE to 5300 BCE—during a wet period when thunderstorms could “power up” the pyramids by striking them with lightning.

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A Dark Carnival: 2025 in Review

12/27/2025

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When I started writing year in review columns in 2017, I intended those columns to be an amusing look back at the follies of the year. But somehow, they have grown into a chronicle of an incipient Dark Age, with each year’s rundown becoming a bit gloomier than that of the year before. This year was an especially depressing chronicle of the growing influence of irrational, paranormal, and conspiratorial thought at the highest levels of power, with Congress, the White House, and the billionaire class joining the major media in promoting—and apparently believing—insane notions ranging from space alien visitation to the imminent arrival of the Antichrist. By contrast, the traditional sources of occult and pseudohistorical claims—cable TV and book publishing—all but closed up shop, conceding the ground to Washington, D.C.

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Piers Morgan Asks If Debunking Bad Pyramid Ideas Is Racist Against “White Guys”

7/18/2025

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Earlier this week, Zahi Hawass appeared on Piers Morgan’s streaming show Uncensored to discuss his stumbling appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, and Morgan brought in social media gadflies Jimmy Corsetti and Dan Richards to question Hawass with him. Nearly a million people watched the bizarre exercise in contrarians chasing fantasies up their own asses, and things got off to a pretty bad start when Morgan revealed just how much of a hall of mirrors we had entered with his first question: “What was your reaction to the reaction you got when you appeared on the Joe Rogan podcast?” He started out at least three degrees of separation from the real archaeology of Giza to focus on the “reaction to the reaction.” Very social media of him.

(The show aired last weekend, but I was unfortunately otherwise occupied and have only just gotten to review it.)

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YouTube Megastar Mr. Beast Explores Giza, Asks about Ancient Astronauts

2/10/2025

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This weekend, Jimmy Donaldson, better known as Mr. Beast, posted a 21-minute YouTube video documenting the 100 hours he spent at the Giza pyramids with the permission of the Egyptian government, which closed the site for his video shoot. Donaldson toured the pyramids, the Sphinx, and the associated temples with the help of Ramy Romany from Ancient Aliens and Zahi Hawass and he repeatedly referenced the ancient astronaut theory and/or a lost civilization in discussing the pyramids.

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Review of Ancient Aliens S19E04 “The Power of the Obelisks”

2/3/2023

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After a week away, Ancient Aliens returns with another instant rerun episode, this time focusing on obelisks. If it seems familiar, it’s probably because they did more-or-less the same episode way back in season 5, under the title of “The Monoliths.” Back then, ten years ago, the show offered such stupid faux insights as the false claim that a group of monoliths is called a “megalith.” The show remade that episode last year as “Mystery of the Standing Stones.” Have they learned anything in translating the earlier episodes focused on standing stones into a new episode specifying only pointy standing stones? It’s Ancient Aliens. What do you think? At least since season 5, if not earlier, Ancient Aliens has falsely asserted that obelisks were piezoelectrically charged power generators feeding electricity to a wireless atmospheric power grid. Guess what they focus on in this episode.

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This Was the Year That Was: 2022 in Review

12/26/2022

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This year wasn’t quite as bad as 2021, so I can’t be too upset at a year that, if nothing else, did not get appreciably worse. On the other hand, nothing really improved either. Between inflation and further work cuts in my failing industry, it’s been hard. When a prominent astrologer said this year would be the best of my life, I wasn’t sure whether that was a promise or a threat. It’s a good thing astrology is bunk, or else I would be painfully depressed to think this was the best things will ever get.

In a more general sense, this was a year devoted mostly to UFOs, which dominated the paranoid paranormal discourse for the first ten months, until Atlantis made a late run for the crown.

Here, then, is the year that was, edited and condensed from my blog posts and newsletter.

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Review of "How Antigravity Built the Pyramids" by Nick Redfern

9/14/2022

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It’s telling that Nick Redfern starts his book purportedly covering supposed sonic levitation used to build the Egyptian pyramids not with the original medieval Arabic legend of self-moving stones but with ancient astronaut theorist Peter Kolosimo’s reference to it decades ago, in Timeless Earth (1964): “According to an Arab legend, the Egyptians used scrolls of papyrus with magic words written on them, on which blocks for the pyramids came flying through the air!” Redfern frames his story around Kolosimo’s speculative revision of Arab lore and Bruce Cathie’s strange ideas about levitation and antigravity (derived from his own UFO encounter and reluctance to believe lazy humans would drag big stones) rather than the actual primary sources that previous generations of kooks built upon, often secondhand, from still other summaries.

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<<Previous

On Ibn Wahshiyya and the Dating of the Legend of King Surid

Some Interesting New Insights into Medieval Legends about Ancient Egypt

Review of Ancient Aliens S22E02 Egypt’s Lost Pyramids

The Temple of Akhmim and Ancient Egyptian Pyramids as Chemical Plants

A Dark Carnival: 2025 in Review

Piers Morgan Asks If Debunking Bad Pyramid Ideas Is Racist Against “White Guys”

YouTube Megastar Mr. Beast Explores Giza, Asks about Ancient Astronauts

Review of Ancient Aliens S19E04 “The Power of the Obelisks”

This Was the Year That Was: 2022 in Review

Review of "How Antigravity Built the Pyramids" by Nick Redfern

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