Angkor Wat

The sprawling complex of Angkor was first founded by King Jayavarman II, who proclaimed himself the “universal monarch” during his reign from 802 to 850 CE. It was this powerful ruler who consolidated his kingdom and initiated large building projects for his new capital. Although few of his original build­ings survive, it was Jayavarman II who put the unique stamp on Khmer religion and renamed the country “Kambuja,” an early version of “Kampuchea,” or “Cambodia.”

The Magnificent Angkor Wat in Northwestern Cambodia

Built over a 30-year period with sandstone and laterite (a dense, porous, ironbearing soil that can be quarried like stone), the rectangular structure (2,800 by 3,800 feet) faces west, in Hindu belief the direction taken by the dead when going to their next life. In what is regarded as the world’s largest temple complex, successive kings added their own monuments in and around Angkor.

Covering more than 135 square miles (220 sq. km), Angkor is a patchwork of sandstone temples, chapels, causeways, terraces and reservoirs. Adorning the temple walls are thousands of carvings depicting battles between gods, sensual dancing women, royal proces­sions with kings riding elephants, and many scenes from classical Hindu mythol­ogy. Basically, each complex was built for and commemorates the god-king who commissioned its construction. Each temple complex of Angkor acted as the king’s capital during his lifetime — then his tomb upon death.

At the center of the complex stands a temple with five lotus-shaped towers, a larger central tower, and four smaller surrounding towers. They represent the five peaks of Mount Meru, the mountain where a pantheon of Hindu gods reside and from which, according to Hindu belief, all creation comes. Three square terraces surrounds the central tower. The entire complex is surrounded by a moat more than three miles long and rimmed by a causeway that leads to four gateways into the temple complex. Decorating the causeway are carvings that depict divine serpents, known as nagas.

Angkor Wat was taken by the Cham army from northern Cambodia in 1177, after which the complex began to fall into ruin. It was reclaimed, but not inhabited, in 1181. Pillaged by Thai invaders in the fifteenth century, the ruins were somewhat refurbished and expanded by later rulers of Cambodia. Angkor Wat was intermittently inhabited by Buddhist monks, and the former Hindu temple subsequently became a destination for Buddhist pilgrims from all over the world.

Sources :
The Gale Encyclopedia of the Unusual and Unexplained Vol.2; Sacred Places Around The World : 108 Destinations by Brad Olsen

Pic Source : Sacred Places Around The World : 108 Destinations by Brad Olsen page 107

Ba'albek

In times of antiquity, large numbers of pilgrims came from Mesopotamia and the Nile Valley to visit the legendary Ba’al–Astarte complex and its oracle. The Bible mentions Ba’albek in the Book of Kings. Underneath the temple complex is a vast network of underground tunnels, which were likely intended to provide shelter for the multitudes of pilgrims. Ancient Arab writings tell that the Temples of Ba’al–Astarte were constructed a short time after the Great Flood. According to legend, the structures were built at the order of the renowned King Nimrod and a “tribe of giants.”

Panoramic View of Baalbek Temple Complex

The acropolis of Ba’albek, with its massive temples and imposing ruins, is one of the most enigmatic sites in the world. UNESCO reported in making Baalbek a World Heritage Site in 1984. When the Committee inscribed the site, it expressed the wish that the protected area include the entire town within the Arab walls, as well as the south-western extramural quarter between Bastan-al-Khan, the Roman site and the Mameluk mosque of Ras-al-Ain. Lebanon's representative gave assurances that the Committee's wish would be honored.

The Roman Ruins dominated Baalbek

The Roman sanctuaries were located upon earlier Greek temples, and those were built upon much older Semitic ruins. While the Roman and Greek architectural wonders do not pose archaeo­logical problems, the earlier Semitic ruins certainly do. Most confounding is the enclosure wall called the Trilithon, composed of three hewn blocks of stone each weighing more than 750 tons (680,000 kg)!

Roger Hopkins and Vince Lee have both theorized about how the megalithic stones were moved. They were both consulted about various megalithic moves around the world. Roger Hopkins is a stone mason and sculptor who was consulted to do experiments in the movement of megaliths in Egypt (with Mark Lehrner) and other locations. He has suggested that the trilithon stones and 300 ton blocks were all moved with wooden rollers, demonstrating how this could be done by using steel rollers and levers to move a five to six thousand pound stone on a concrete platform by himself. He also participated in other experiments with larger stones, including some that may have been over 10 tons. These experiments required many more people. For 2 ton stones he was able to tow them with as few as 10 people at times and for faster results up to 20 people. Most experiments which have been done by Roger Hopkins and others to move stones 10 tons or more required well over 100 people.

Vince Lee is an architect, explorer and author. He has suggested that these stones were moved by flipping them with levers. According to this hypothesis a row of people would use 20 levers to pry up the trilithon blocks a little at a time. Each time they pried it up someone would put additional shims under the megalithic stones. After this was repeated enough times the stone would flip over on the next side. There would be a log on the other side that the stone would fall onto so that one side would already be lifted off the ground each time making it easier for the next flip. This would require over 300 flips for each of the trilithon stones and even more for the smaller 300 ton stones to cover the 1 mile distance from the quarry.

Roger Hopkins and Mark Lehner also experimented with this technique on a smaller scale in Egypt during a NOVA pyramid building experiment. They found that they could flip stones up to about 3/4 of a ton with only 4 or 5 men, and they successfully flipped stones at least 2 and a 1/2 tons with more men; however, they found this was too slow to explain how the pyramids were built in so short a time.

Sources : Sacred Places Around The World by Brad Olsen; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baalbek

Pic Source : http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e8/Pano_Baalbek_1.jpg/800px-Pano_Baalbek_1.jp; Sacred Places Around The World by Brad Olsen page 52

The Great Pyramids of Egypt

These monumental structures, the only surviving ancient Wonder, of masonry, located at Giza on the bank of the Nile River above Cairo, were built from c. 2700 to 2500 BC as royal tombs. Three — Khufu (Cheaps), Khafra (Chephren), and Menkaura (Mycerimus) — were often grouped as the first Wonder of the World. The largest, the Great Pyramid of Khufu covers 13 acres. It is estimated to contain 2.3 million blocks of stone, the stones themselves averaging 2½ tons and some weighing 30 tons.


There are 138 pyramids discovered in Egypt as of 2008. Most were built as tombs for the country's Pharaohs and their consorts during the Old and Middle Kingdom periods. The earliest known Egyptian pyramid is the Pyramid of Djoser (constructed 2630 BCE–2611 BCE) which was built during the third dynasty. This pyramid and its surrounding complex were designed by the architect Imhotep, and are generally considered to be the world's oldest monumental structures constructed of dressed masonry. The best known Egyptian pyramids are those found at Giza, on the outskirts of Cairo. Several of the Giza pyramids are counted among the largest structures ever built. The Pyramid of Khufu at Giza is the largest Egyptian pyramid. It is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still in existence.

During the fifth century B.C.E. the Greek historian Herodotus (c. 484–between 430 and 420 B.C.E.) reported the Great Pyramid of Khufu (Cheops, in Greek), his inquiry was impeded because the door leading into the pyramid was concealed. That door has since been found, but the results of passing through it and exploring the pyramid have opened up as many mysteries as those that have been explained. Among the questions swirling about the pyramids include the location of the sites from which the immense amount of rock forming them (11 million cubic yards of stone for the Great Pyramid alone) was quarried, and how it was moved and then erected into an astonishingly precise structure.

Other mysteries abound: the pyramids are situated at cardinal points on the compass, and numerous astronomical uses show knowledge of mathematics in advance of other civilizations. In addition, the body of the Pharaoh Khufu (Cheops) (twenty-sixth century B.C.E.) for whom the tomb was built, and precious objects that usually surround the bodies of royalty in Egyptian tombs, have never been found. In fact, all three of the pyramids at Giza were erected as tombs, yet not a single body has been found in any of them.

A baffling series of chambers, tunnels, and shafts, blocked passageways, corridors leading to empty spaces, and false leads confront pyramid explorers. The bodies of the pharaohs and their queens might still be buried somewhere in the pyramids—or, perhaps their remains fell victim to tomb robbing, a crime so old it is mentioned in Egyptian texts and on papyrus dating back centuries before Herodotus reported on the pyramids. The Pyramid of Khufu, largest of ancient Egypt’s 70 pyramids, stands 481 feet high, measures roughly 756 feet on each side, and covers 13 acres of land. If the blocks that form the pyramid were reduced to foot-sized square cubes and lined up, the cubes would stretch for 16,600 miles.

It is generally agreed that all three pyramids at Giza, including those of the Pharaohs Khafre (Chephren, in Greek) and Menaure (Mycernius, in Greek) were built during the Fourth Dynasty of Egypt, which spanned from 2613 to 2494 B.C.E. It was a custom then that as soon as a new pharaoh ascended to the throne he began building a pyramid as a final resting place. The pyramid of Khufu is the grandest of them all and is the sole survivor among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Having been built within seven hundred years after Egyptian civilization became stabilized, the vast structure has inspired many theories.

Egyptian records, in the form of hieroglyphics, provided some information about the pyramids (for whom they were built, for example), but much information was lost during subsequent periods of decline. So much was forgotten that Egyptians themselves were speculating about some of the purposes of the pyramids by the time Greek civilization began thriving, some fifteen hundred years after the period in which the Great Pyramid is believed to have been erected. Speculation then and now casts the pyramid as a gigantic sundial and astronomical observatory, as a symbolic stairway to heaven, its shape simulating the way rays of sun spread from a cloud. Other scholars see the pyramid as a secret temple where rituals were performed that transformed new leaders into god-kings.

The perfect pyramidal shape has been cited as the purpose of the Great Pyramid in that it embodies and represents a universal system of measurement in material form. One such set of calculations suggests the Egyptians were aware of the constant pi, the figure used to determine the circumference of a circle, some two thousand years before it was formulated by the Greek mathematician Pythagoras (c. 580–c. 500 B.C.E.).

Englishman John Taylor (1808–1887), a well educated editor who had read voraciously about Egyptian culture and the measurements of the pyramids, discovered a formula whereby dividing the length of the perimeter of a pyramid by twice its height produces 3.14159+, the numerical equivalent of pi (a constant figure used to determine the circumference of a circle: pi times a circle’s diameter produces its circumference). Taylor believed that the Egyptians not only knew the formula for pi thousands of years before the Greeks, but he contended further that they knew the circumference of Earth and derived standard units of measure from Earth’s circumference. The ratio of the pyramid’s height to its perimeter, argued Taylor, is the same as the polar radius to Earth’s circumference, 2ð. He viewed that equation, embodied in the pyramid, as an expression of the wisdom of ancients. It was the biblical God, concluded Taylor, who had instructed the pyramid builders, just as God had instructed Noah to build the ark.

Many centuries ago, ancient Roman and Arabian historians noted the interest of Egyptians in studying the heavens and the possible uses of the pyramids as astronomical tools. Egyptian hieroglyphics make numerous references to the stars. A constellation called Sahu (corresponding to Orion) was called the home for the dead, and two pharaohs who built pyramids outside of Giza have stellar associations in hieroglyphics (Nebka is “a star,” and Djedefra is “a Sehetu star,” or a star of Sahu).

During the ninth century, a caliph named Abdullah Al Mamun became convinced the Great Pyramid held astronomical charts, maps, and mathematical tables, as well as treasures. In 820, he gained entrance into the pyramid by breaking through the outer stone. After heating limestone bricks, workers doused them with cold vinegar, creating cracks in the pyramid that allowed the caliph’s men to break through a wall and discover a passageway that led upward to the original entrance of the pyramid. Turning around, they descended until they located rooms identified as the King’s chamber and another as the Queen’s chamber.

In the King’s chamber they found an elaborate sarcophagus, but nothing was inside, as if it had never been used. The tombs had been looted, or they served as a purposeful deception, with the bodies and treasures located somewhere else in the pyramid. The mystery of the missing bodies and treasures continues to perplex to this day.

Sources :
The Gale Encyclopedia of the Unusual and Unexplained Vol.2;
Seven Wonder of the Ancient Wolrd by World Almanac Education Group, Inc;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_pyramids

Pic source :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:All_Gizah_Pyramids.jpg