History Main / PyramidPower

* ''Super Snail'' from [=QCPlay=] Limited, actually has pyramids as a power! When you first enter the kingdom/country of Kemet, you have no country-specific power. So your friend Chan-Hee builds you pyramids that will help out: First is the Modern Pyramid which gives you a stat boost in duels and in pyramid battles it's a steel fortress with lots of artillery and a machine gunner, get enough research then next is the Past Pyramid which is a magical but primitive pyramid that curses enemies for duels and zaps foes with supernatural lightning. Finally after enough research in the Past Pyramid, you can get the Future Pyramid, this is a {{Magitek}} construct made of nanotech materials and powered by fusion reactor. In duels and the pyramid battles, the Future Pyramid will burn enemies with its [[WaveMotionGun Super Beam]].

* ''Super Snail'' from [=QCPlay=] Limited, actually has pyramids as a power! When you first enter the kingdom/country of Kemet, you have no country-specific power. So your friend Chan-Hee builds you pyramids that will help out: First is the Modern Pyramid which gives you a stat boost and in pyramid battles it's a steel fortress with lots of artillery and a machine gunner, get enough research then next is the Past Pyramid which is a magical but primitive pyramid that curses enemies for duels and zaps foes with supernatural lightning. Finally after enough research in the Past Pyramid, you can get the Future Pyramid, this is a {{Magitek}} construct made of nanotech materials and powered by fusion reactor. In duels and the pyramid battles, the Future Pyramid will burn enemies with its [[WaveMotionGun Super Beam]].

* In ''ComicBook/TheCartoonHistoryOfTheUniverse'', the chapter on Ancient Egypt briefly mentions PyramidPower, with an alien saying "Why build a pyramid when you can sharpen a razor blade in five minutes on a wet rock?"
%%* In the Mexican series ComicBook/{{Chanoc}} a story featured the concept of Pyramid Powers (in a satirical way.)
* Subverted in Creator/AlanMoore 's ''[[ComicBook/DRAndQuinch D.R. & Quinch]]'': Two alien {{time|Travel}}-travellers indeed visited AncientEgypt, but they still cannot understand why the locals believed that the aliens wanted them to build pointy buildings.

* ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade'': The Tremere clan is obsessed with this trope, incorporating pyramid symbiology into the design of their rigid organizational structure in hopes of attaining greater mystical power. [[BlackMagic It]] [[{{Dystopia}} doesn't]] [[WhoWantsToLiveforever work]] [[ProperlyParanoid out]] [[ManipulativeBastard very well]].

** This does not appear to be solely a Watchtower Society aberration. Quite a few streams of thought in Christianity bought into pyramidiology, and the eschatological logic for the end of the world used by many millennial denominations appears to be an unholy mix of pyramidiology and a cobbled-together set of oddly-interpreted justifications drawn from prophetic books of Literature/TheBible such as ''Daniel'', ''Ezekiel'' and ''Literature/{{Revelation}}''.

* In Mary Gentle's masterwork ''Literature/{{Ash}}'', the pyramids are revealed to be sentient static golems who are manipulating the planet's timeline so as to take over Earth for their own ends. The sheer amount of energy needed to do this explains why Europe has fallen into a state of perpetual night wherever their armies have conquered.

** Pyramidiology, for the uninitiated, loosely covers all those, er, ''cultural misperceptions'', that have crept in over the years concerning the purpose and role of the Pyramids in Ancient Egyptian society. The sort that have professional Egyptologists grinding their teeth in fury (an alternative theory suggests the idea was circulated by the in-house dentistry departments serving universities with Egyptology schools). Strictly speaking, it covers the idea that the measurements and dimensions of the Great Pyramid were done with such fiendish exactitude that it is absolutely self-evident the builders were programming in arcane occult knowledge, only to be decoded by those with they eyes to see and the insight to realize. In this world view, the whole future timetable for the world was laid out in stone by God (naturally: Moses and the Hebrews coded it in when slaves of the Pharaoh - they of course built it). Therefore the internal and external dimensions, when decoded, predict ''everything''.

In the distant past, many civilizations built pyramids as monuments. The most famous are those of [[BuildLikeAnEgyptian Egypt]], followed by the Mayan pyramids in Mexico. They have also been found in Sudan, Iran, and China. The reason for the pyramid shape is practicality - 80% of a pyramid's mass is in the lower half, meaning that it is the ideal shape to support a large building. It's the form of stone building most likely to still be standing in a recognizable state when the archaeologists show up a thousand years later.

** Egyptian pyramids were essentially designed to look like sunlight (imagine the top as the sun, and go down from there), and originally had incredibly bright, reflective surfaces. They are rather poetically described as "resurrection machines" in Wiki/TheOtherWiki.

* A prominent feature of ''Pinball/TheTwilightZone'' pinball game is The Power, a one-eyed pyramid with a deep voice. It mocks you during the game, but defeating it yields a decent score bonus and a Door panel.

In the distant past, many civilizations built pyramids as monuments. The most famous are those of [[BuildLikeAnEgyptian Egypt]], followed by the Mayan pyramids in Mexico. They have also been found in Sudan, Iran, and China. The reason for the pyramid shape is quite simple and practical - 80% of a pyramid's mass is in the lower half, meaning that it is the most practical shape to support a large building. It's the form of stone building most likely to still be standing in a recognizable shape when the archaeologists show up a thousand years later.

* In the ''Illuminati'' card games, the [[TheIlluminati Bavarian Illuminati's]] Eye-In-The-Pyramid logo is used as SigilSpam in all of the card illustrations. [[spoiler:If you can't see the pyramid in some of them, you're not Illuminated enough.]]
* The Arabian Nights expansion of the ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'' card game features Pyramids as an artifact in which mana can be channeled through to protect lands. The egyptian-inspired Amonkhet set naturally also has plenty of these, rather metallic-looking and often with floating components.
* In ''TabletopGame/{{Rifts}}'', PyramidPower is a major feature of the Atlantis sourcebook. They're like LeyLine dams, basically, and they were/are used both by the ancient Atlanteans and the [[EldritchAbomination Splugorth]] for things like dimensional travel.
* In ''TabletopGame/ThroughTheAges'', the Pyramids grant you one extra civil action per turn. Arbitrary, but probably no less arbitrary than the powers the ''VideoGame/{{Civilization}}'' games gave them.
* The Tremere clan from ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade'' is obsessed with this trope, incorporating pyramid symbiology into the design of their rigid organizational structure in hopes of attaining greater mystical power. [[BlackMagic It]] [[{{Dystopia}} doesn't]] [[WhoWantsToLiveforever work]] [[ProperlyParanoid out]] [[ManipulativeBastard very well]].

There is also the incorrect belief that the Egyptian Pyramids were built by slaves. [[DatedHistory In actuality]] they were most likely built by volunteers who believed that, by participating in the creation of the Pyramids, they can get a share of the Pharaoh's luxurious afterlife, sometimes working along with native Egyptian peasants who had no work to do during the Nile's flood season; they may have been press-ganged into it, but it's just as likely that they were enticed with offers of food (grain, veggies, and beef) and beer in exchange for their labor (the invention of currency was still 2,000 years in the future, so that was the equivalent of paying wages). They also could have been conscripted peasants, like the ''corvée'' of pre-Revolutionary France or the Czech ''Robot.''[[note]]Read: peasants without animals don't really have much to do a good part of the year, so the government/nobles would use them for (unpaid) labor; this is how most pre-modern civil public works were built (though some societies, like the Romans, often used soldiers instead, especially if the works had military uses). Some do consider it a "lesser form" of slavery, but it was rarely seen that way at the time, and it is perhaps more useful to think of it as a form of in-kind taxation (particularly in societies like Ancient Egypt that hadn't invented money, or at least didn't use it for much other than foreign trade). Yes, the word 'robot' does come from the Czech ''Robot.''[[/note]] It was still quite a feat of engineering, organization, and patience, but not necessarily the result of blood-soaked tyranny HollywoodHistory would present. Not related to the other kind of [[FingerTenting pyramid of power]], or the [[Series/{{Pyramid}} pyramid that offers cash]], or the [[{{Ponzi}} other kind of pyramid]] that offers money.

** Mentioned in ''Literature/TheLightFantastic'', the scholarly tome ''Iyt Gryet Teymple hyte Tsort, Y Hiystory Myistical'' describes the Great Pyramid of Tsort. A copy was located in the Unseen University Library.The book described the effort that went into building the Great Pyramid; it was comprised of 1,003,010 blocks of limestone, built over 60 years and cost the lives of thousands of slaves. It was apparently done as a way of sharpening razor blades (as opposed to burying Kings). People got very excited about the significant mathematical fact that its height plus its length divided by half its width almost precisely equalled 1.67563, or precisely 1,237.98712567 times the difference between the distance to the sun and the weight of a small orange. It was held that something like this could not ''possibly'' have come about by chance.

* A well-known Japanese manga artist had one built as a study in his home in the hope of increasing his creativity, but admitted he spent most of the time under it drinking sake and looking at the stars.

There is also the incorrect belief that the Egyptian Pyramids were built by slaves. [[DatedHistory In actuality]] they were most likely built by volunteers who believed that, by participating in the creation of the Pyramids, they can get a share of the Pharaoh's luxurious afterlife, sometimes working along with native Egyptian peasants who had no work to do during the Nile's flood season; they may have been press-ganged into it, but it's just as likely that they were enticed with offers of food (grain, veggies, and beef) and beer in exchange for their labor (the invention of currency was still 2,000 years in the future, so that was the equivalent of paying wages). They also could have been conscripted peasants, like the ''corvée'' of pre-Revolutionary France or the Czech ''Robot.''[[note]]Read: peasants without animals don't really have much to do a good part of the year, so the government/nobles would use them for (unpaid) labor; this is how most pre-modern civil public works were built (though some societies, like the Romans, often used soldiers instead, especially if the works had military uses). Some do consider it a "lesser form" of slavery, but it was rarely seen that way at the time, and it is perhaps more useful to think of it as a form of in-kind taxation (particularly in societies like Ancient Egypt that hadn't invented money, or at least didn't use it for much other than foreign trade). Yes, the word 'robot' does come from the Czech ''Robot.''[[/note]] It was still quite a feat of engineering, organization, and patience, but not necessarily the result of blood-soaked tyranny HollywoodHistory would present. Not related to the other kind of [[FingerTenting pyramid of power]], or the [[Series/{{Pyramid}} pyramid that offers cash]].

* ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'' allows the player to build a pyramid of power themselves by using resource expensive materials like blocks of iron, gold, diamond, or emerald. By building a pyramid out of those blocks and placing a beacon block on the top, the entire structure glow brightly and shoots out a beam of light to the sky. If the player places an iron bar, gold bar, emerald, or a diamond into the block, they can make the pyramid generate powers like increased speed or strength to anyone that stays in its radius.

** This does not appear to be solely a Watchtower Society aberration. Quite a few streams of thought in Christianity bought into pyramidiology, and the eschatological logic for the end of the world used by many millennial denominations appears to be an unholy mix of pyramidiology and a cobbled-together set of oddly-interpreted justifications drawn from prophetic books of Literature/TheBible such as ''Daniel'', ''Ezekiel'' and ''Literature/Revelation''.