History Main / PyramidPower

** 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 ''Revelation''.

* ''WebVideo/TheMonumentMythos:'' Thanks to an excavation project ran by the USA, the world finds out the Pyramids aren't wholly pyramids... rather, they're the pointed tips of a bigger structure, like the Washington Monument. And just like the Washington Monument, they're housing [[BotanicalAbomination Special Trees]] within them. Their true size is unknown, the excavation never finished, because it was bricks ''all the way down'' until they wrote them off as infinite. [[spoiler:And at some point, they start rising from the sand and into the sky...]]

* In ''[[Literature/TheCatWhoSeries The Cat Who Blew the Whistle]]'', there is a character named Elizabeth Hart who is big on the idea of pyramid power. Unannounced, she and her boyfriend pop over to the protagonist's (Qwilleran's) place and set up a makeshift portable pyramid. After they leave, Qwilleran's intelligent Siamese cat, Koko, makes his way to the very center of the pyramid and there is a blackout across the entire town that doesn't stop until he exits the pyramid.

* ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1942'': Osira flits around in a pyramid shaped force field and claims that as an ancient powerful alien she was worshiped by the Egyptians as a god. There is some evidence that goes against her self-centered telling of history, given the Ancient Egyptians managed to seal her away when they couldn't kill her in a way that was obviously intended to be permanent.

* ''Series/ChourikiSentaiOhranger'' had one of these from an ancient Pangean civilization as the source of the Ohrangers' power. King Ranger also has a pyramid HumongousMecha named King Pyramider. Its adaptation ''Series/PowerRangersZeo'' keeps the mecha pyramid, this time called Pyramidas. Also in both shows, the Blue Ranger's sphinx mecha can equip the Ohranger Robo/Zeo Megazord with a pyramid-like helmet[[note]]Due to the theme of ancient civilizations' symbols, Blue's being Art/TheSphinx. Incidentally, the helmet also resembles the typical ''Nemes'' headcloth crown worn by pharaohs]][[/note]].

** In ''Discworld/{{Pyramids}}'', the pyramids act as "time dams", preserving the Old Kingdom unchanging for thousands of years. They don't sharpen razor blades, though ... they take them back in time to before they were blunt.
** Mentioned in ''Discworld/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.

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's 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]].

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 ''corvee'' 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 being the way nearly all pre-modern public works were built. Some do consider it a ''lesser form'' of slavery. 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]].

* ''Literature/Area51'': It turns out that the Pyramids were built to be beacons by an alien species called the Airlia.

However, due to a mixture of the distinctive geometrical shape and the immense labor required to build them, a lot of people have assumed there must be some special significance to the shape. Or that they were built by [[AncientAstronauts aliens]], because, people with Bronze Age tools could not have designed such accurately geometric monuments. Predictably, this also shows up in fiction. During the [[TheSeventies 70s]] there was an actual fad about the pyramids serving as a focus of cosmic energies ('pyramid power') and that resting in houses or boxes shaped like them could grant many physical and mental benefits. [[MundaneUtility And sharpen razor blades.]]

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 ''corvee'' 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 being the way nearly all pre-modern public works were built. Some do consider it a ''lesser form'' of slavery. 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]].

** 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 realise. 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*.
** This caused alarm when Victorian "scholars", guided by a tape measure and a selective reading of the Bible, divined the world was going to end in 1914. This became the USP of a then obscure Christian sect called the Jehovah's Witnesses, who worked it into their theology... they've back-tracked a little on this since, though. They don't wish to be reminded what else, apart from the Bible, they used to create God's ineffable timeline...
** This does not appear to be solely a Watchtower Society abberation. Quite a few streams of thought in Christianity bought into pyramidiology, and the eschatological logic for the end of the world used by many millenial 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 ''Revelation''.

*** The notion that human beings couldn't possibly have built them unaided and [[AncientAstronauts needed to call on extraterrestrial assistance]]. (Good old Erich von Däniken here.)

* Done in the Nineties revival of ''Series/TheTomorrowPeople''. The plot is that an immortal Egyptian pharoah is trying to recreate the circumstances required when the stars align to give him great power, which requires him to move a bunch of obelisks all over Europe (supposedly explaining why they were brought to London, Rome etc in the nineteenth century). The protagonists point out that this would mean he would have to have built a central focusing pyramid in the middle of them, in central London... they then look behind them and see the pyramidal top of the Canary Wharf Tower. Note this was years before it was used as the Torchwood Tower in ''Series/DoctorWho''.

*** The notion that human beings couldn't possibly have built them unaided and [[AncientAstronauts needed to call on extraterrestrial assistance]]. (Good old ErichVonDaniken here).

* In ''WesternAnimation/PhineasAndFerb'', Doofenshmirtz thought that the pyramids of Egypt was built by aliens, when the Egyptians used music to command the aliens.

** "That Darn Katz!" plays it straight: it turns

* In the Italian animated series ''WesternAnimation/{{Egyxos}}'', Egyptian-godlike aliens live on a planet that greatly resembles ancient Egypt. The leaders of both factions live in pyramid-like structures.

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

* ''Series/ChourikiSentaiOhranger'' had one of these from an ancient Pangean civilization as the source of the Ohrangers' power. King Ranger also has a pyramid HumongousMecha named King Pyramider. Its adaptation ''Series/PowerRangersZeo'' keeps the mecha pyramid, this time called Pyramidas. Also in both shows, the Blue Ranger's sphinx mecha can equip the Ohranger Robo/Zeo Megazord with a pyramid-like helmet[note]Due to the theme of ancient civilizations' symbols, Blue's being Art/TheSphinx. Incidentally, the helmet also resembles the typical ''Nemes'' headcloth crown worn by pharaohs]][note/].

* ''Series/ChourikiSentaiOhranger'' had one of these from an ancient Pangean civilization as the source of the Ohrangers' power. King Ranger also has a pyramid HumongousMecha named King Pyramider. Its adaptation ''Series/PowerRangersZeo'' keeps the mecha pyramid, this time called Pyramidas. Also in both shows, the Blue Ranger's sphinx mecha can equip the Ohranger Robo/Zeo Megazord with a pyramid-like helmet.

* In the ''Literature/{{Good Omens}}'' fanfic ''[[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5304252/6/I-shall-endure-to-the-end I shall endure...]]'', Azirapahile and Crowley deconstruct the concept of pyramids whilst providing additional background detail to several Bible stories, with a courtesy dash of Erich von Daniken thrown in for free.

%%** The original ''Film/{{Stargate}}'' film had an even straighter example.

** 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 TheOtherWiki.