Author Description

"In the Time of the Pyramid-Builders" examines the great epoch of pyramid-building in Egypt, from the Fourth to the Sixth Dynasties, from an entirely new perspective. These dynasties are currently held to have flourished in the third millennium BC, whereas Sweeney demonstrates, in a great variety of ways, that they rightly belong in the early first millennium BC - almost two thousand years closer to our own time. "In the Time of the Pyramid-Builders" looks at the evidence - routinely overlooked in mainstream academic publications — for placing the Pyramid Age of Egypt in a period much closer to our own time. Once we realize that the pyramid-builders actually flourished sometime between 1000 and 740 BC., then their accomplishments — whilst still astounding — are at least now comprehensible. For the pyramid-builders used iron and probably even steel tools, and the architects of the epoch employed an advanced geometry which seems to have included a knowledge of the value of pi. But this was not the third millennium BC, it was the first. The pyramid-building pharaohs traded with, and imported timber from, the great cities of the Phoenician coast; cities such as Tyre and Byblos. And the Phoenician sailors provided the Egyptians with tin from the far west of Europe, an indispensable ingredient in the making of bronze.