JOHN REID

Sonic Technology of the Pyramid Builders

 

It is no secret that the builders of the Great Pyramid incorporated into its design profound acoustic qualities, which have never been suitably explained or understood by the scholarly community. Moreover, in the late 1990s American researcher Chris Dunn, in a series of detailed articles and in a book on the technology of the Pyramid builders, concluded that they must have used ultrasonic drills to penetrate hard rock such as basalt, granite and diorite. These were bold claims, which have been since been severely criticised and are generally dismissed by other researchers working in the field. However, quite independent to this research, British acoustics engineer John Reid had initiated his own search to understand the sonic technology of the ancient Egyptians.

Although his work began with the monuments of the Giza pyramid field, it ultimately led him south to Amarna and Beni Hassan where he was able to study the acoustics of the rock cut tombs, including what is believed to be the royal tomb of Akenhaten.

In his first appearance at QuestCon, John provides firm evidence for the existence of sonic technology in ancient Egypt, yet shows that this is just the tip of an iceberg which reveals the advanced capabilities of the ancient Egyptians. More importantly, his findings - like those of Alan Alford - do not rely on the ageing of the Sphinx or the existence of some kind of prehistoric advanced race inhabiting the Nile Valley before the rise of the Pharaohs. Having already been privileged to John’s beautiful audio-visual presentation, I can honestly say that it is so vivid that you feel part of his extraordinary research project.

John Reid is an acoustics engineer who studied the acoustics of public buildings, churches and cathedrals for 30 years in his role as a consultant with a private company. He retired from business in 1999 in order to follow a career in specialist acoustics research and he is the inventor of CymaScope, a machine with worldwide patents which exhibits the complex structure of sound in a visual medium. The CymaGlyph patterns, which appear on a membrane, are then analysed mathematically. This Cymatics research led him to use the technique to study the acoustics of the King's Chamber in the Great Pyramid, where he stretched a membrane over the sarcophagus and sat back to watch, for the first time in history, the harmonic structure of the 4-ton granite box.

The results of this research led to a unique hypothesis, in collaboration with his colleague, David Elkington, a previous speaker at QuestCon and author of IN THE NAME OF THE GODS, to which John also contributed. Their joint work may explain how the language and iconography of a culture are linked at a fundamental level. John has a booklet EGYPTIAN SONICS which gives a detailed account of his sonics research in Egypt and copies will be available at QuestCon.


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