Unexplained Mystery #6: Pyramid Power

As unexplained mysteries go, the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt really are something special. We still don't really know how the Egyptians built the largest pyramid of all, known as the Great Pyramid of Cheops (or Khufu), some 5,000 years ago. Remember, this was even before the invention of the wheel.

The Pyramid of Cheops is the size of a 40-storey building and covers an area big enough to fit 10 football fields in it. More than 2 million stone blocks were used to make the pyramid, each weighing 2-5 tons and cut from a distant limestone quarry on the other side of the Nile. Experts reckon it took 400,000 men some 20 years to complete.

Engineering feats aside, I'd like to examine the unexplained mystery of Pyramid Power. In the 1940s, a French hardware dealer spotted some mummified animals exactly one-third up the height of the Pyramid of Cheops. The remarkable thing was they showed no signs of decomposition. He deduced that the pyramid shape was responsible for preserving them.

Later, a Czech radio engineer claimed to conduct an experiment in which he placed a brand new razor blade inside a 1:1,000 scale model of Cheops. He aligned his pyramid on a north-south axis exactly like the real thing. After getting 50 shaves from the razor, he was forced to conclude that it was only getting sharper from being inside the pyramid. It took him 10 years to obtain a patent for this device, which he claims still has no scientific explanation today.

But is it a genuine unexplained mystery - or an embellishment of the truth, an anecdotal claim that can't be replicated?

This is another way that stories become legends which, because they are so famous, people believe there simplymust be something to it. But how are people harnessing Pyramid Power today? Well, they aren't.

If Pyramid Power did create a real, observable effect, it would be certainly have been commercialized (but never was).