Engineering on a Cosmic Scale

The Great Pyramid of Khufu stands 146 meters tall and remained the world's tallest structure for nearly four thousand years. Its base is level to within 2.1 centimeters across 230 meters. The four sides align to true north with an accuracy of 3/60th of a degree.

Some researchers have argued that the Great Pyramid's narrow internal shafts were aimed at specific stars as they appeared around 2560 BCE — the southern King's Chamber shaft toward Orion's Belt (including Alnitak), and the northern shaft toward Thuban in Draco. First proposed by Alexander Badawy and Virginia Trimble in the 1960s, this remains a debated hypothesis. Even its originators concluded the shafts were not built as astronomical sightlines — they bend, end horizontally, and are blocked — suggesting instead a religious purpose tied to the king's soul, and many Egyptologists regard the stellar correlation as coincidental.