The Pyramid of Khufu

38 years ago I travelled in Egypt. In those days you could go alone inside the Pyramid of Khufu, the oldest and largest of the 3 main pyramids on the Giza Plateau.

I remember to this day entering through a small opening in the structure to be faced by a steep ramp-like structure with thin batons across to provide handholds as you hauled yourself up and to stop your feet slipping as you ascended into the heart of the pyramid. My guide had told me to stop at some point, turn around onto my back and look at what would then be in front of me...not an easy feat when ascending up such a steep passage. But I did as he suggested and I am so glad I did because there, literally right in front of my eyes, I could see just how these massive blocks of stone fitted together; they are rough and yet so precise are the cuts that you would struggle to fit a hair between the blocks. How? How on earth was this achieved 4000 years ago.

Eventually I made it into into Khufu's (also known as Cheops) burial chamber, deep in the heart of the pyramid. The 'walls' are bare unlike the tombs in the Valleys of the Kings & Queens in Luxor. To one side a red stone sarcophagus, the lid off, broken in two. I sat there, by myself, surrounded by an estimated 2.3 million limestone and granite blocks weighing approximately 6 million tonnes. These statistics were not in my mind at the time. In fact, it is only now, all these decades later, that I have researched these figures. No, such mundane things were nowhere in my consciousness as I sat there. Instead I was immersed in the energy of this extraordinary structure. To this day I cannot find the words to describe the feeling, other than to say that it was a truly mystical experience. As I scrambled down the ladder ramp to return to the searing heat outside I was, in some way, changed.

In my travels around the world I have had other similar experiences, ones you cannot explain and yet they are real, they are there. Time and again across the 6.5 decades of my life they have reminded me that not everything can be, nor needs to be, explained.