Independent researcher Sefy Levy has claimed in a new paper that the exterior measurements of Egypt's Great Pyramid form an ancient numerical code.
Levy argued that rather than being carved onto internal walls, the alleged code is embedded directly within the monument's height, base width, sloping sides, and overall shape.
According to the paper, which was posted online in August, these dimensions produce striking mathematical matches with the cycles of the moon, the calendar, and planets visible to the naked eye. Levy believes the builders intended to preserve ancient Egyptian knowledge of mathematics, astronomy, and time for eternity.
"The pyramid was not built to last forever because it contained something valuable," Levy wrote in the paper. "It was built to last forever because it was something valuable."
Levy concluded the paper with its boldest assertion: "The pyramid is not a container for knowledge. It is the knowledge, made stone."
The interpretation remains highly speculative. The paper has been posted on the open-access research repositories SSRN and Zenodo, but it has not undergone independent peer review. Levy also acknowledged that the numerical matches were initially discovered after the pyramid's measurements and target astronomical values were already known.
Mainstream Egyptology regards the Great Pyramid, located on the Giza Plateau near Cairo, as a monumental tomb built for Pharaoh Khufu around 4,500 years ago during the Old Kingdom period. Scholars note that its empty granite sarcophagus, mortuary complex, and surrounding royal cemetery support its function as a funerary site, though these features do not prove Khufu was buried there. No known ancient text states that the pyramid's dimensions were designed to encode astronomical data.
Astronomical Calculations and Scribal Fractions
To uncover the proposed pattern, Levy analyzed the key exterior measurements of the Great Pyramid and divided them using mathematical fractions employed by ancient Egyptian scribes. According to the paper, the resulting answers repeatedly align closely with values that are significant in mathematics and astronomy.
One calculation yielded 27.5, which Levy identified as a near match for the roughly 27.55-day interval between successive lunar perigees. Lunar perigee is the orbital point where the moon reaches its closest distance to Earth.
Another calculation produced exactly 70. Levy connected this figure to the roughly 70-day period between the heliacal setting and rising of Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, during which the star is hidden by the glare of the sun. Ancient Egyptian tradition also associated approximately 70 days with the process of mummification, although the match does not prove a deliberate connection.
Levy claimed that other calculations come close to the repeating cycles of Saturn, Jupiter, Venus, and Mars as seen from Earth. He also argued that the proportions of the Great Pyramid yield figures resembling pi, the mathematical constant representing the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, and the golden ratio. Together, the theory suggests the builders transformed the monument into a permanent stone record of their understanding of space, time, and the heavens.
Computer Simulation Tests Coincidence
To test whether similar numerical patterns could occur purely by chance, Levy conducted a computer simulation that generated 100,000 hypothetical Old Kingdom-style pyramids. The software program varied the base widths of the models from 75 to 440 royal cubits, the standard ancient Egyptian unit of linear measurement, and altered their slopes across an ancient architectural range.
Applying the same mathematical test to every model, Levy reported that 2,419 simulated pyramids, or about 2.4 percent, scored as many astronomical matches as the Great Pyramid or more. Levy argued that this result makes coincidence less likely, though he noted that the test remains his own simulation rather than independent confirmation. A second, stricter comparison yielded inconclusive results.
Creation Myths and the Eye of the Sahara
The numerical code forms only one part of Levy's broader argument regarding the monument's origin. His larger theory draws on an ancient Egyptian creation tradition in which the first dry land emerged from a chaotic, dark world covered in water. Known as the Heliopolitan creation myth, this tradition centered on the primeval mound called the benben, and Levy believes the Great Pyramid was constructed to represent that initial mound of creation.
Levy made a more controversial claim by suggesting that this creation story was inspired by a physical location where distant ancestors of the Egyptians once lived. He proposed the Eye of the Sahara, also known as the Richat Structure, a massive ring-shaped geological formation located in Mauritania with raised land at its center.
Thousands of years ago, when the Sahara region experienced a wetter climate with vegetation, the Eye of the Sahara may have been surrounded by water. The theory posits that ancient communities departed as the climate dried and migrated east toward the Nile Valley, carrying memories of their original homeland with them.
Levy argued that later generations recreated that ancestral memory at Giza by placing a harbor and a now-lost Nile branch at the edge of the complex to represent water around the central pyramid mound. He also interpreted the westward causeways as symbolic links between the setting sun, the dead, and the proposed ancestral homeland in the west. However, there is no direct evidence connecting the Eye of the Sahara to Giza or proving that such a migration occurred.
