title: Pyramid Quest: Secrets of the Great Pyramid and the Dawn of Civilization
author:  Robert M. Schoch 
description: Traditionally, scientists and other scholars have argued that Egyptians constructed the Great Pyramid in one remarkable burst of activity during the reign of Pharaoh Khufu (2551&mdash;2528 B.C.). Drawing on archeological and scientific scholarship in their third collaboration, geologist Schoch and writer McNally challenge this view and conclude that the foundation of the edifice can be traced to the earliest Egyptian empires, as far back as 7000&ndash;5000 B.C. Among their assertions are that the Great Pyramid may not have been a tomb (no mummy has ever been found inside), but served other cultic and mythological purposes, with both the external and internal areas serving different roles in different eras; between 1500 and 500 B.C., for instance, the pyramid was probably used for ritual training and initiation. Schoch devotes more than a third of the book to appendixes that provide details on such topics as the pyramid's external dimensions, its passages and chambers, and the dating of the structure. Although the book will be controversial for some, it contains such a wealth of information about ancient Egypt and the science of the construction of the pyramids that it may be the only guide to the Great Pyramid most readers will ever need. B&amp;w illus. <BR>Copyright &copy; Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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  ![image](images/Malk_9781591439790_epub_001_r1.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  
  It has been a pleasure working with two progressive and open-minded
  scientists:
  
  
  John Cadman and Thomas Malkowski. Their scientific insights
  
  
  have been an invaluable source.
  
  John Cadman, I believe, will someday go down in the history books for
  
  
  his experiments and modeling of the Great Pyramid’s subterranean chamber
  
  
  and passageways. To the best of my knowledge, he is the only person
  
  
  to experimentally demonstrate something, anything, about Giza’s Great
  
  
  Pyramid. In my opinion, his work is the discovery of the century.
  
  Thomas Malkowski, my son, has proven over the years to be a challenging
  
  
  antagonist. As a studying physicist, he has more than once steered me
  
  
  in the correct direction while I’ve been in the process of building a viable
  
  
  theory to explain ancient Egypt’s network of pyramids. He shares the credit
  
  
  with me for the pyramid theory put forth in this book.
  
  The quest to und