Transcription
Welcome back, everybody! We're going to roll straight on with drums. Jerry is going to be talking about ancient Egyptian acoustics, so I'm going to hand straight over to him.
Both Rudy: Good morning, everyone, and welcome to all those people sitting at home in their warm, comfortable sofas or whatever. I'm sure we would all rather be sitting somewhere nice and warm right now, but we're not, so we have to deal with the cold. But British people know they're hardy, and they can deal with it.
I'd like to begin by thanking the organizers of this wonderful event because it's a fabulous opportunity to disseminate and acquire knowledge. So let's give them all a big round of applause, please!
Before I begin the actual presentation, I just want to say something about my workshop tomorrow because some of you may not really realize what it's about, and I thought I'd give you a little quick taste now.
There are two aspects to the workshop tomorrow. It's a workshop in the sense that it's interactive, and you can ask questions at any time. The two main subject areas will be recovering sounds from the past. Now, if that sounds like science fiction, it isn't. It's actually real, and there will be a day in the future where we can literally recover sounds from the past and hear voices from ancient times. So that's pretty exciting!
The other aspect of the workshop tomorrow is ancient Egyptian stone working technology. Now, this is a subject that's very dear to my heart because my grandfather and my father were so interested in this subject. They didn't get the opportunities that I've had to go to Egypt to study the actual techniques, to go into quarries with copper saws, copper tubular drills, and actually do the work.
So part of the talk tomorrow, part of the workshop, will be to talk about all of those studies that I've done over the years. Again, we'll look at the chisels: the copper chisels, the bronze chisels, the steel chisels, and the iron chisels, and see the differences in what these different chisels can do on really hard stones.
So any of you who are really interested in either recovering sounds from the past or the techniques the ancient Egyptians used, please come to the workshop. You'd be most welcome.
[Music]
Egyptian sonics. The Great Pyramid of Egypt is arguably the most enigmatic structure on the planet. Some people think it definitely is; other people will dispute that. But it's certainly one of the most enigmatic structures on the planet.
I have traveled in Egypt many times, and in one particular time with my father in 1996, I had the opportunity to lie in the sarcophagus in the King's Chamber. How many of you have actually been to the Great Pyramid? Quite a few of you!
So those of you who have been there will know how wonderfully resonant that chamber is. In fact, if you can get the McGaffey-er to turn the fluorescent lighting off, it's so quiet in there that you can hear a pin drop. You can hear the sound of your own breathing; you can even hear the sound of the blood rushing through your ears. It's so wonderfully reverberant.
Early in 1996, I had this opportunity to lie in a sarcophagus. I know it's a bit naughty, but anyway, I did. What happened for me was quite magical. As a sound and acoustics engineer, I naturally wanted to know about the resonance of this granite box.
You've probably heard many people who have struck the side of it with their fists, and it makes this wonderful deep resonant sound. While I lay in the sarcophagus, I made a glissando, starting at my lowest note and going up as high as I could go in my limited range, like this kind of smooth enunciation of a tone.
Why did I do that? Well, because when you create a sound like that, one particular frequency will leap back at you. This particular frequency is known as the prime resonant frequency of that particular space. Why? Just because, without going into all the technical details, the sound happens to fit within the given space that you're in.
You can do this in your own bathroom at home if you have a mind to. Maybe close the window so that your neighbors can't hear you and maybe think you're a little bit strange. But if you make that kind of glissando in your bathroom, close your eyes perhaps to focus on your hearing, you will hear one particular note that will come back to you louder than any other, and that will be the prime resonant frequency of your bathroom.
Now, how interesting is that? However, in this case, I was interested obviously in the resonance of the granite box in the King's Chamber. So I did the glissando, and what happened was quite extraordinary because at one particular frequency, my whole body was kind of washed by the sound.
Of course, remember, it's my sound; it's the sound of my voice that's causing this. Every cell in my body tingled, and I had this wonderful sensation washing up and down my body. In that moment, I realized that this was almost certainly not accidental, meaning that the ancient Egyptians had somehow contrived this effect for some specific reason.
That was just one of the kind of good instincts that I had in that moment. So I decided pretty much there and then, within certainly the next few hours after that, that wouldn't it be wonderful to go back to the Great Pyramid armed with all of my acoustics instrumentation and do a whole series of tests?
But before I get into all of that, I just want to mention, you probably some of you know about Napoleon. He spent a night in the Great Pyramid, and he came out as white as a sheet. He wouldn't tell anyone why he was so white and ghostly looking. Who knows?
We have a wonderful friend, Freddie Silver, who told us stories about spirits that are locked into the granite of the King's Chamber. Maybe it was that, or maybe Napoleon just experienced something like what I experienced. Who knows?
But I put this little slide in here just to show me lying in the sarcophagus. That is actually me there. One thing to notice about this before we move on is just to look at the pinkness. Can you see the pinkness of the granite? Well, that's very important in a later part of the talk, so just remember that.
We don't know whether Napoleon was scared of his own voice or scared of the spirits that Freddie Silver talked about, but certainly something happened. Something magical happened.
A gentleman said that someone meditated in the pyramid and could actually see what was happening outside the pyramid. Not a fairy story; it's very similar to that.
But the reason I put this particular slide in is because this was the time when we were several months later, in 1996, when I went back to the Great Pyramid with all this acoustics equipment. This was one of the very first shots that I took, and it's of one of the gaff ears carrying one of two very, very heavy suitcases, or actually pushing it up these guide rails.
Any of you who have been up through my moon's hole will know you've got these two wooden guide rails. Here he is pushing, and you know, I've never known what they wore underneath. It's a bit like, you know, what do the Scots wear under their kilts? Well, this is like, what did the gaff ears wear under that guard? Well, here you see it's a nice tweed jacket.
Anyway, I'm kind of getting ahead of myself a little bit because what I'd like to recount first of all as an important part of this talk is that several weeks before I was due to go out to Egypt to do this experimentation in the Great Pyramid, I injured my lower back. As a matter of fact, I've got back pain today; that's why I've got that seat here in case I might need it. But I hope I don't.
I could do with some sound today, I think, because what I'm going to recount for you, going right back to 1997 actually, was when this particular incident happened. It was a wonderful healing of my lower back that occurred in the Great Pyramid. We're going to get to that a little bit later, but I just thought I'd mention it at this point because you see the gaff ear is pushing these very heavy suitcases.
There are actually two heavy suitcases packed full of equipment that there's no way I could have lifted because my back was hurting so much. I was up to here with painkillers and so on. I'm painting a picture for you because I want you to know I was in severe pain at this moment of getting into the pyramid.
Those of you who have been in the pyramid will know it's not actually all that easy to get in there. You're kind of crunched right low, and so if you have a back problem, you know it's a little bit of a challenge to start with. Anyway, that's just to tell you about the pain that I was experiencing at that moment.
But of course, eventually, I did get in. This is not actually from 1997; this is from 1996 because I went twice. I went in '96 and then I went again in '97, so I'm mixing the two times. I hope you'll forgive me, but this is just to show that I really did go there. I really did have acoustic equipment and do these actual experiments.
Before we get into talking about what I actually did and why it's important, you know, when I said I lay in the sarcophagus and I made this toning sound and I found this amazing resonant frequency, which I can tell you what that is a little bit later in the talk, and it had this amazing effect on me. I thought this has to be designed; it just felt like design.
One of the first things I did when I got back to the UK was I looked for textual evidence. I had lots of books on Egyptology anyway because I was really interested in the subject, so I went looking for textual evidence.
This particular piece of evidence comes from a much later period, so the purist Egyptologists would say, "Oh, you can't count that because it's too late." You know, the pyramids were built around 2500 BCE, and here we are talking about 200 BC. Not the same period; can't count it.
Well, there is some truth in that, but equally, the other part of the truth is that the ancient Egyptians, once they adopted a custom or a tradition, did tend to stay with it for a long, long time, sometimes thousands of years.
So this is actually, in my view, quite relevant. Let me read it: "In Egypt, when priests sing hymns to the gods, they sing the seven vowels in succession, and the sound of these vowels has such euphony that men listen to it instead of the flute and the lyre."
Now, the importance of this is that they're talking here, Demetrius is talking about sound per se, not words, but sounds, which seems to infer, at least to me, that they were interested in sound as a vehicle or some kind of mode that they were using.
So they weren't specifically using words with intelligibility; they were using sounds, and I think that is important. Demetrius, by the way, nobody knows who that character is in history, but if you want to research this yourself, go get Aristotle's Poetics, and that's where this quote comes from.
However, I'm going to take you back a little bit further now to 500 BCE, and we have this quote from the Corpus Hermeticum. That's only a circuit, by the way; nobody really knows when the Corpus Hermeticum was written, but it's believed to be around that era.
In a letter from Asclepius to King Amasis, he says, "As for us, we do not use simple words but sounds all filled with power." Same thing again, isn't it? Now we've shifted back to 500 BCE, and there's this one from the actual pyramid age itself: "Nikolay, instructor of the singers of the Pyramid of King Unas."
Now, that's kind of indicative because those singers may well have been singing in the pyramid. We don't actually know that; we don't have any evidence to show whether they were singing inside the pyramid or outside the pyramid.
But what I can say is this: today, if you think about where people sing, people sang in reverberant spaces. If there's no reverberation, you add it electronically today, right? But you know, going back to say the Middle Ages in Britain, we would sing in cathedrals and churches.
Why? Because, well, not just because it was devotional singing to God, but also because the spaces reverberate. And that's not accidental; those spaces were deliberately designed to be reverberant.
So cathedrals have very long what's called reverberation times, very often six, seven, eight seconds, very similar to the King's Chamber, actually. So none of that is accidental; we sing in reverberant spaces.
So I think here we're talking about singers who were singing inside the pyramid in that case of Nikolay. Now, having had this thought about perhaps some kind of a sonic ritual that took place in the Great Pyramid, and no doubt in other pyramids too, but today we're focused on the Great Pyramid, a wonderful artist called Judith Paige did this prescriptive painting in oils.
So I told him how I thought it would be that you see the tonsured priests have their fingertips placed on the sarcophagus. You can't see the rest of the sarcophagus, but that white kind of rectangle shape is the opening of the top of the sarcophagus, and they have their fingertips there.
Why? To sense the vibrations coming through that sarcophagus. You really can feel them when you reach the resonant frequency of the sarcophagus and the chamber. When you get the right frequency, that sarcophagus actually does vibrate sufficiently for you to feel it through your fingertips.
In fact, you know, I don't believe that the ancient Egyptians had any kind of electronics, but what they did have definitely were fingertips, and they had sensitivity. If they were making sounds in that chamber, all you have to do is to do a glissando and get your fingertips on that edge, and when you've sensed the maximum vibrations, you've reached the prime resonant frequency of that chamber.
This is the sham priest, by the way, who's got a golden magical instrument called a Harika in his hand, and he's making a particular sound. I won't go into all the details of that, but it's a nice depiction, isn't it? It may well have looked something like that.
Now, before we get into other aspects of the acoustics, because I'm going to tell you some really quite amazing things that have never been published in any sense, you know, in a talk sense, so you're going to be hearing brand new information today, which I'm very excited about. I hope you are too!
Before we get to that, I just like to go through a model that I have of the Great Pyramid, or all of the apartments, as they call it in the Great Pyramid. This particular model is concerned with rebirth; it's concerned with resurrection.
It's nice to know that the mainstream Egyptological viewpoint about pyramids in general is that they were resurrection machines. That's a quote from Dr. Rene Friedman, who says that the Great Pyramid is the ultimate resurrection machine.
It's nice when people agree with some particular point of view or pet theory that you have yourself, and in this case, I really have always believed that the Great Pyramid and the other pyramids were all concerned with rebirth.
So it was nice to get that little bit of confirmation from mainstream Egyptology. So let's examine the evidence for rebirth symbolism in the Great Pyramid.
Now, this is really interesting, so don't think that this is going to be something that's dry and, you know, "Oh my God, symbolism in the Great Pyramid." This is actually really, really interesting.
For any of you who are kind of doubtful that the Egyptians would go to all the trouble that I'm just about to relate to you to imbue the monument with symbolism, just think about the solar boat. Those of you who've been to the Great Pyramid will know there are these giant pits outside that have been sculpted into the bedrock, which is pretty hard limestone.
These are massive; these things are like, you know, bigger than a house. But they contain what I like to think of as a B&Q kind of flat pack. You know, the solar boat, which would take the Pharaoh through the celestial realms.
Well, just think of the work involved in taking a flat slab of limestone bedrock and actually taking out of it, you know, enough material to fill a house, basically, and then in there to flat pack a solar boat.
Why? Well, it's symbolic. They don't think about things like the practicality of how the Pharaoh is going to put that boat together when he gets in this. They don't think that way; their mindset is different from our mindset today.
But it is symbolism, and it's very powerful symbolism, and they went to an awful lot of trouble. That's why I just want to make that point before I go on.
The symbolism starts with this instrument here. Some people call it a Pecha and Kev; other people call it a peshkov instrument. But essentially, most people believe that this instrument, which was found in the southern shaft of the Queen's Chamber, is a type of scissors, kind of our cake method of, in this case, cutting the umbilical cord of a newborn baby.
So what do you do? Well, if these blades are sharp, you offer this up to the umbilical of the newborn baby, and you circumflex the instrument around the umbilical, and that severs the umbilical.
So many people do believe that that instrument is meant for that purpose, and yet it was found in the southern shaft of the Queen's Chamber. We'll talk a little bit more about that later because the southern shaft of the Queen's Chamber was never cut through into the Queen's Chamber.
You know, they put this shaft all the way through the monument at great expense and great trouble. They went to do it, but when they got within literally a few inches of the Queen's Chamber, they cut it short.
What, did they run out of steam? Did they not like it? Did they not bring it through into the Queen's Chamber? Well, you're going to learn why I believe they didn't do it, and it is symbolic.
Now, here's an even more ancient example. This is probably pre-dynastic, almost certainly, but it's the same instrument, just in this case made of flint. Again, it has the same purpose; you offer it up to an umbilical. That was not found in the Great Pyramid, but the other instrument was.
I just thought I'd show you that because, you know, the principle of this circumflex in order to cut through an umbilical has been going on for many thousands of years.
Now, rebirth: the opening of the mouth ceremony is a very important, or was a very important, ritual in ancient Egypt. Here you see the instrument, okay?
Now, this instrument, the prescient care for the peshkov instrument, is out of scale here, of course. That's irrelevant to the ancient Egyptians; they don't care about things like scale. But nevertheless, the point is this: here is the dead Pharaoh, the mummified Pharaoh, and you notice he's being stood upright, and his head will have been bound with bandages.
The sham priest, who's wearing the leopard skin, is going to take this instrument and ceremonially strike across his mouth to open the mouth. That's what's called opening the mouth.
Why? Well, we believe that the opening of the mouth ceremony was concerned with rebirth. That's not to say that they're going to suddenly bring this dead Pharaoh back to life in any kind of real way, but symbolically, they're going to do it.
They're going to reanimate him; they're going to bring him back to life as the new Pharaoh, the new Horus king. So this is all part of the ritual.
Now, what does this mean, opening of the mouth? How is that connected with rebirth? This is it: when a baby is born, the first thing that the midwife does is to remove the mucus from the baby's mouth, making sure that the baby's airway is free so that the baby can breathe.
So that's what opening the mouth means in real midwifery terms, and that's why the ancient Egyptians were doing this thing of slitting across the bandaged mummy, the mummified Pharaoh, in order to symbolically reanimate the Pharaoh.
But this is all basically connecting with the pêche calf or the peshan calf instrument that was found in the southern shaft of the Queen's Chamber.
Now, here's a wonderful quote from Professor I.E.S. Edwards. He was probably the world authority on pyramids, no longer with us sadly, but he was a wonderful chap. He said this: "It is particularly indicative that Jude Ephraim Khufu's brother should have had an oval, not a rectangular, sarcophagus because it is really a representation of the womb of the sky goddess Nut."
So Jude Ephraim, the brother of Khufu, who didn't have his pyramid built at Giza, he had it built a little north at a place where, unfortunately, they never finished the pyramid.
Why? Well, because in those days, if the king died, the workers literally downed tools and walked away. You would think that the new Pharaoh coming in would say, "Well, let's finish his monument, guys." No, they didn't; they literally just walked away, which is very odd.
But what's really interesting about this is not just the fact that the sarcophagus was womb-shaped, but also the fact that the very first thing that they built was the sarcophagus in a pit in the ground, and then they started building the pyramid.
Don't forget, this is before the Pharaoh has died. The very first thing that they did was to create the sarcophagus, put a lid on it, and then start building the pyramid.
Now, that's another talk; we're not going to get into that, but it's an interesting point, and some of you I'm sure know what I'm alluding to here.
Anyway, getting back to the symbolism here, the sarcophagus is similar to a womb shape. Those of you who have traveled in Egypt widely will know that the sky goddess was very often depicted or sculpted, in this case, on the inside of the lid of the sarcophagus.
This lid would probably weigh, I don't know, a ton and a half, something like that, and this lid would then be turned and put on top of the sarcophagus so that the Pharaoh, if the Pharaoh was ever entombed in that sarcophagus, would be literally looking at Nut for eternity.
But I'm making a point here about the sky goddess, and you will see why in a moment because we're going to now talk about the sky goddess hypothesis.
There is a cutaway section of the Great Pyramid. For those of you who are not familiar, this is the main entrance here, well, the original entrance, I should say, that went all the way down into the underground sepulcher.
But when you got to this point, it changed direction, and you went up this narrow, very narrow passageway, which, by the way, is where that chap pushing that very heavy suitcase full of equipment was going up there. That's where he was, somewhere about that point there.
Then you enter this very strange upward sloping Grand Gallery with its wonderful corbelling all the way up. These are kind of serrations in the wall. Then you go through an area called the antechamber.
At this point here, the antechamber has what look like portcullises, but there are no portcullises there; they're archways that might have taken portcullises, right? But you're going to learn a little bit about that in a moment.
Then you come through into the King's Chamber itself, which is the King's Chamber here with the sarcophagus in it. Then you have these things here called relieving chambers, so-called relieving chambers.
Then you have this chamber below, which, those of you again who have been, will know that is the Queen's Chamber. Now, this is where it gets really interesting. We're getting a little bit sexy here, but not really.
This is to do with the reproductive system of the sky goddess. Now, lots of people will talk about the Great Pyramid; everyone has their own take on it, and I'm not saying this is right, but you can judge for yourself when you've seen all of the evidence.
As I said to begin with, the Egyptians were wonderful at symbolism; they loved symbolism. So let's look at the evidence and weigh the evidence.
You don't know; I can point. Yes, that's right. Everyone knows that the entrance to the birth canal is very narrow, and some of you may not know, but it's actually very true that the birth canal is angled in relation to the womb or the uterus. It's not in one line; it has an angle.
So making the comparison here, we have the narrow entrance to the Grand Gallery, and here we have the upward sloping Grand Gallery. A lot of people have wondered why the Grand Gallery sloped upwards in this strange telescoped way.
Well, there's a possibility; you know that the birth canal has this kind of ribbed look to it. The walls are ribbed in order that it can expand when necessary for birth, and look at the ribbing we have here on the walls of the Grand Gallery. The corbelling is, as they're called.
Now, if that was the only evidence that I had, you might all be going, "Oh yes, we've heard it all before; it's something like it before." Maybe, but anyway, it stacks up much, much more than that.
So when you get to this point here, not obvious on the drawing, but there are four what are called furnaces that surround the neck of the cervix that's pointing into the birth canal.
The furnaces are, if you read a book on midwifery, you'll find that these furnaces are called arch-like furnaces or arch-like protrusions. Okay? When you get to this point here, you are met with four arches—not three, not two, four. There are four around the cervix.
Okay, the cervix itself projects into the head of the birth canal, the giant step, so-called, here at the head of the Grand Gallery. Nobody has ever put forward that I've ever read an explanation for what is the giant step for. What purpose does it serve?
Again, with this model, it's actually representing symbolically in stone the cervix projecting into the birth canal. And then beyond the birth canal, as I've said, you've got the four arch-like furnaces, the portcullises.
So people would say, "But there are no portcullises there." Anyway, then you go through the narrow opening, the narrow opening into the King's Chamber, into the womb.
Now, what about these tubes, the fallopian tubes that are coming into the uterus or into the womb? Exiting the King's Chamber are two very narrow tubes. They're only about eight inches, and everybody's wondering what is the purpose.
Well, of course, initially, people thought they were ventilation, but that very quickly went out of the window because they didn't exit the monument, right? So it can't be ventilation, obviously.
Then when you look at the other shafts in the Queen's Chamber, they also didn't exit the monument. So clearly, they're not ventilation. Then you get a theory by Robert Bauval, who talks about them as star shafts.
Okay, you've probably all heard of that theory, but these star shafts, and that they're pointing at Orion Nebula and so on, well, it's all a little bit tenuous. Again, why? Well, because the angles changed significantly; that's been shown.
Straight as a die, this, but it's not in reality; it's going like this. It's going all over the place, so it's a little bit tenuous to think of them as pointing at some particular star in the sky.
But anyway, who knows? I'm not saying that that's wrong, but what I am saying is that a womb has to have two fallopian tubes, and here we have a chamber.
Going back to remembering what I.E.S. Edwards said, the sarcophagus is really representative of the womb of the sky goddess Nut. Okay? So think about that.
Here we have the King's Chamber with a sarcophagus in it. Now, I think I.E.S. Edwards just got it slightly wrong, actually. I think that the sarcophagus is not the womb; the sarcophagus is the seed planted in the wall of the womb.
Just as obviously, you have to have a seed for a baby to grow in a uterus or in a womb. Okay? So think of the King's Chamber now in terms of a womb. It has two fallopian tubes coming out of it.
By the way, look at the cross-section of the Grand Gallery. This is the cross-section of the Grand Gallery, and this is the cross-section of the birth canal. There's quite a similarity.
This is obviously when the birth canal is in its kind of collapsed form, known as expanded form. Now, here's a nice interesting list of comparisons that I thought I'd make for you just to show you exactly what I'm driving at here.
The entry to the Grand Gallery is narrow; the entry to the birth canal is narrow. The Grand Gallery walls are cobbled; the birth canal walls are corrugated. The Grand Gallery is angled upward; the birth canal is angled upward.
The giant step at the head of the Grand Gallery projects into the Grand Gallery; the cervix projects into the head of the birth canal. Four arches lead into the King's Chamber; four arches or furnaces lead into the womb.
The King's Chamber is made of pink granite; the womb is made of pink flesh. Two narrow shafts penetrate the King's Chamber; two fallopian tubes penetrate the womb.
So it's getting more interesting now, isn't it? Come on, admit it! But it doesn't end there. Reproductive organs in stone—actual reproductive organs.
Okay, the sarcophagus is attached to the floor of the King's Chamber; the seed in the womb is attached to the womb wall. The shafts were not cut through into the Queen's Chamber and the King's Chamber, and this is really interesting.
I'm going to tell you about this story. Before I get to this story, I just want you to know that some of you, your minds are now ticking away, and you're thinking, "Hang on a minute, if he's right and the King's Chamber is representing symbolically the womb of the sky goddess, what about the Queen's Chamber?"
And it's got two shafts as well, right? I was going to say to you, "Who can tell me what the Queen's Chamber is for?" Anybody got any ideas?
Well, I thought somebody would say, "Oh, it's her bladder!" Right? But no, it isn't, not in my book at any rate. What the Queen's Chamber is symbolizing versus the King's Chamber is as follows: the ceremony that took place, and this is just my model, don't forget, it's never been—this is the first time anybody's hearing this.
The King's Chamber is designed to symbolize the womb of the sky goddess. The sky goddess dwells in the sky; she's not an earthly creature, not an earthly god. She dwells in the sky, so therefore, naturally, they symbolize that by having an elevated chamber and having the fallopian tubes, as they are symbolically trying to represent, having those fallopian tubes exit the monument.
Why? Because the ovaries, the celestial ovaries, are in the sky, relating to the sky goddess's mind, my car. Okay? So that's why those fallopian tubes are called to exit the monument because they're actually linking with the celestial ovaries.
Now, what about the Queen's Chamber? Okay, that this part of the ritual that they performed in the pyramid was concerned with the earthly realm.
So they'd performed two rituals: one in the King's Chamber, one in the Queen's Chamber. The Queen's Chamber ritual was where the opening of the mouth ceremony occurred. Those of you who've been to the Queen's Chamber will know that there's a strange kind of niche in the east wall of the Queen's Chamber, a vertical niche.
It's just like as if a statue was going to stand there, yes, this vertical statue of the mummified Pharaoh at the point when he's going to have his mouth ceremonially opened for the opening of the mouth ceremony would have occurred in the Queen's Chamber.
And why do the two fallopian tubes in this case not exit the monument? Because we're dealing with the earthly realm here, not the celestial. And the earthly realm, therefore, the ovaries would be within the body of the monument.
I even think I know what lies behind the door where these two shafts on the screen, where the two shafts in the Queen's Chamber, where they terminate. I think I know what's behind the door. I'll tell you if you like!
[Laughter] Anyway, coming back to this. Okay, the Isthmus of the fallopian tube. Those of you who are very familiar with the Queen's Chamber will know this story about the fallopian tubes or whatever we want to call them.
They were not cut through into the chamber, clearly deliberately so. This chap called Wayman Dixon, who in the 19th century visited the pyramid, an Englishman, goes into the King's Chamber like all other tourists and sees these shafts going up.
Then he goes into the Queen's Chamber, and he sees that there are no shafts. Thanks! I wonder if there are shafts in the Queen's Chamber. So he goes around the walls with his knocking instrument, and he's tapping the walls, trying to establish whether there are any hollow spaces.
Yes, I hear hollowness here, and then on the other side of the Queen's Chamber, again he hears hollowness. So still the story goes, he gets his man to jump a hole, as it's called, and create the holes.
Right? Why are there holes? Why would they not cut through in the first place? Well, this is the reason. I was standing in a bookshop one day reading about the reproductive system so that I could kind of put this model together in my head, and I nearly jumped out of my skin when I read this: that the Isthmus of the fallopian tube remains closed until the day of ovulation.
Right? Now, how the Egyptians could have possibly known this, I have no idea. But the point is that is why it is possible, anyway, that they didn't cut through into the Queen's Chamber.
Yes! Wow! I didn't know I'd run out of time. Okay, I'm going to have to split through this. I'm going to come to what's really interesting here about this cymatics experiment that I conducted in the King's Chamber.
Cymatics is the science of visible sound, and I was interested in the resonances of the King's Chamber granite box. So I designed this experiment where I would make the resonances visible so I could study them visibly.
I stretched a membrane across the open top of the sarcophagus. You see here, here's me standing. This is when I was in severe back pain, like I was telling you earlier.
But what happened next amazed both me and the Antiquities inspector because a whole series of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs started to appear in this sandy surface, and I've got some of them to show you.
This one here, the so-called Jade pillar, was sneaking literally like a moving snake on the surface of the membrane, and the antiquities inspector said, "How do you do that?" And I said, "I don't know; it's just happening."
I just kept taking photographs and hoping that they would come out because it was normal film in those days, and a whole series of these hieroglyphs started appearing. There's the cymatics R loop; here's the cymatics sun-god.
What was happening there for me during this procedure was I suddenly noticed all the pain in my back was gone—totally gone. So my left brain is thinking, "Ah, this is endorphins. I'm so excited; I'm so happy that this is happening. Clearly, the pain's being masked, and when I eventually get out of here, it's going to come back with a vengeance."
It never came back! Okay? The pain never came back. There was a real healing that took place.
Better ask that question later because we're up against it, but thank you for the question. Here is the cymatic I, and so on—a whole series of these images appearing.
Now, I'm just going to give you a very quick reason for this. First of all, why the healing occurred. I mean, sound is not a wave; sound is spherical. If you make a sound, here's a young lady making a sound. It's coming partly out of her mouth, partly out of her nose, if you haven't got a cold, that is.
But the sound that's emerging is perfectly spherical. So this whole business of sound waves is complete nonsense. There's no such thing as a sound wave unless you want to call a bubble a wave. But what would you call a bubble? A bubble, and it's coming out of the mouth; it's oscillating, but it's a bubble.
Okay? What happens in your body when sound is made, whether you're making it with your own voice or whether you're receiving sound from somebody else, is that every single membrane in your body—and don't forget, every cell has a membrane around it—will receive a pattern of energy from that sound source, whatever it is.
And I can tell you more if you come to the workshop tomorrow about what actually happens to the cell when it receives a beautiful pattern of sonic energy, and it does actually create a healing triggering effect.
The cell is in a state of senescence when it's traumatized. Whenever you have an injury or even have a pathogen in your body, the cells become traumatized, and they go into a kind of state of sleep, a senescent state.
The sound triggers the cells out of the senescence, the natural senescence that they have, and reanimates them, awakens them, and they go back to their normal replication process.
That is why I believe my back was healed in that moment. I could do with some sound now. Thank you very much!
Please come to my workshop tomorrow. A big thank you to John Stewart Reed, and we've got about a ten-minute window now. Teas and coffees are going to be on in about ten minutes or so, I think.
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