Isaac Newton Theorized That the Egyptian Pyramids Revealed the Timing of the Apocalypse: See His Burnt Manuscript from the 1680s

Today one can behold the pyra­mids of Giza and feel the temp­ta­tion to believe that the ancient Egyp­tians knew some­thing we mod­erns did­n’t. Just imag­ine, then, what it must have felt like in the 17th cen­tu­ry, when the recov­ery of lost ancient knowl­edge was still very much an active enter­prise. Back then, no less for­mi­da­ble a mind than Sir Isaac New­ton sus­pect­ed that to under­stand the pyra­mids would be to under­stand much else besides, from the nature of grav­i­ty — a sub­ject on which he would become some­thing of an author­i­ty — to Bib­li­cal prophe­cy. The key he reck­oned, lay in an ancient Egypt­ian unit of mea­sure­ment called the roy­al cubit.

“Estab­lish­ing the pre­cise length of the Egypt­ian cubit would allow him to recon­struct in turn oth­er ancient mea­sures, cru­cial­ly the sacred cubit of the Hebrews, and so be able to recon­struct with pre­ci­sion a build­ing that was, to New­ton, of much greater import even than the Great Pyra­mid: the Tem­ple of Solomon,” says Sothe­by’s.

There, a few pages of New­ton’s notes on the sub­ject (burnt at the edges, which leg­end has it hap­pened when his dog knocked over a can­dle) recent­ly sold for £378,000, but you can still view them online. Giv­en that Ezekiel describes the Tem­ple of Solomon as the set­ting of the Apoc­a­lypse — the end of the world being anoth­er sub­ject of New­ton­ian inter­est“an exact knowl­edge of the Tem­ple’s archi­tec­ture and dimen­sions was there­fore need­ed to cor­rect­ly inter­pret the Bible’s deep and hid­den mean­ings.” It would also reveal the even­tu­al tim­ing of the the Apoc­a­lypse.

New­ton’s belief that “the ancient Egyp­tians pos­sessed knowl­edge that had been lost in the inter­ven­ing cen­turies,” as Smithsonian.com’s Livia Ger­shon puts it, did not set him far apart from main­stream Euro­pean schol­ar­ship at the time. He also thought, Ger­shon writes, “that the ancient Greeks had suc­cess­ful­ly mea­sured Earth’s cir­cum­fer­ence using a unit called the stade, which he believed was bor­rowed from the Egyp­tians. By trans­lat­ing the ancient mea­sure­ment, New­ton hoped to val­i­date his own the­o­ry of grav­i­ty,” as he ulti­mate­ly did, though not, per­haps, in the man­ner he first expect­ed to. We must, it seems, con­sid­er the pyra­mids, along­side the Philoso­pher’s stone, the South Sea Com­pa­ny, and toad-vom­it plague cures, as anoth­er exam­ple of the great genius’ occa­sion­al­ly exces­sive enthu­si­asms — albeit an unusu­al­ly pow­er­ful one.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil deGrasse Tyson on the Stag­ger­ing Genius of Isaac New­ton

Isaac New­ton Con­ceived of His Most Ground­break­ing Ideas Dur­ing the Great Plague of 1665

In 1704, Isaac New­ton Pre­dicts the World Will End in 2060

Isaac Newton’s Recipe for the Myth­i­cal ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ Is Being Dig­i­tized & Put Online (Along with His Oth­er Alche­my Man­u­scripts)

How the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids Were Built: A New The­o­ry in 3D Ani­ma­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.


by | Permalink | Comments (14) |

Sup­port Open Cul­ture

We’re hop­ing to rely on our loy­al read­ers rather than errat­ic ads. To sup­port Open Cul­ture’s edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion. We accept Pay­Pal, Ven­mo (@openculture), Patre­on and Cryp­to! Please find all options here. We thank you!


Comments (14)
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
  • Annette Hodges says:

    Let us think..! Qui­et­ly lis­ten to your thoughts…
    Time,is advanc­ing quickly.…One day is as always..one night, the same night..One long day, one short night until time is no more.

  • jim says:

    fut the wuck??

  • Krystal says:

    These are sci­en­tists, not peo­ple who believe in an enti­ty that does­n’t exist.
    When writ­ing about oth­ers you should stay with the fact and leave your reli­gious views out of it.
    Reli­gion holds ones mind back. This is why many sci­en­tists do not believe in this enti­ty of yours. They like to have the will of free think­ing.

  • A luber says:

    I have nev­er been raised up by reli­gion so being this I can ce of open mind on. The dif­fer­ence in reli­gion. So far since the Bible has been reroute many times and inter­pre­ta­tions are all changed. Why is a good. Ques­tion and many answers. But there is con­flict of dif­fer­ent cul­tures. They don’t agree and. You get vio­lence this is not what I feel what the Bible should rep­re­sent being a per­son of no reli­gion. I’m in a bet­ter per­son on opin­ions

  • Rick Angel says:

    One is always free until you let a con­trol­ling fac­tor Dom­i­nate. Enti­ties gods demons spir­it’s of moth­er earth all cre­ate hope. We all hope.not all have faith. I would hope we would have faith in each oth­er to under­stand the reli­gious views that our cul­ture’s shows us.Emotions kill us via our religiu­os Views mak­ing reli­gion one of the most dead­liest beast. So I hope you have faith to uti­lize your freewill and may your gods guide you in your endeav­ors.

  • Timothy says:

    That ‘Enti­ty’­does exist,just maybe not in the exact form men­tioned.
    Our plan­et is that enti­ty and the alive force in which we all belong.
    Why can’t some choose to rec­og­nize that force and embrace the con­nec­tion that makes them emit a pos­i­tive force for oth­ers to embrace as well.?.
    Ignor­ing that force is the sin we all are pro­grammed to not allow occurr.
    It is best for us all to cher­ish and hon­or this force for preser­va­tion of what is tak­ing care of us all.
    We did not occurr by luck as every fac­tor is pre­de­ter­mined to make us show up with­in the earths time.
    Even our tech­no­log­i­cal pro­gres­sion is pre­de­ter­mined and only with­in real­iz­ing this can we alter our path.
    We devel­oped Nuclear technology,radio waves and keep repeat­ing his­to­ry.
    Our height­ened radio activ­i­ty has cre­at­ed a safe­ty buffer that is build­ing a man made belt that has been push­ing The radi­a­tion belt furthur away,making us safer.
    These traits are not just dumb luck.
    Some­thing orga­nized us here,even if we are a can­cer or rust show­ing late with­in a pre­de­ter­mined cycle.
    WE BEST PRESERVE AN OPENED MIND,because it is all con­nect­ed …

  • Laura Woods says:

    To thy own self be true. The rest is adven­ture forth.

  • Jo-Anne says:

    We all do have free will, in what­ev­er you choose to believe. There is evil and good going on here on earth, whether “your free will” believes it or not. It’s clear. Reli­gion is dif­fer­ent then know­ing and trust­ing in Jesus. The one who died for every­one’s sin. And loved us all before any of us had found him as sav­ior, Don’t rob your­self of the truth and give your life to the ene­my. By deny­ing Christ was born and died, does­n’t mean it’s not true. Reli­gions is mind blind­ing, and you feel brain washed or what­ev­er you want to call it indi­vid­u­al­ly, but find out your own way. If your heart is in the right place, ask him your­self.…. And wait for an answer, and go from there. BUT please don’t just leave your­self believ­ing in your own puffed up hero that can take care of your­self. Jesus loves all of you… All of us. It’s the hope I trust in for my life here and eter­nal life.

  • Peter says:

    What a waste of time.

  • Anthony Sullivan says:

    Why should we ask Log­i­cal ques­tions of Illog­i­cal Peo­ple? Or ask illog­i­cal ques­tions of Log­i­cal peo­ple? Either way we are not gonna get the answers we all want. We can’t pre­dict the future but make an edu­cat­ed guess? Yes. We do that all the time. The cre­ator keeps cer­tain knowl­edge at a dis­tance from those who want it. He knows that our destruc­tive side would surly Destroy each oth­er, Every­thing . The end of days will be if our own doing? I’m not pre­dict­ing , I’m mak­ing and Edu­cat­ed guess. Cheers T$

  • Rory Lee Hilburn says:

    I feel so priv­i­leged to be alive at this time in Earth­’s his­to­ry. Even with all life’s hard­ships and mean cru­el peo­ple liv­ing on Earth our world is so beau­ti­ful and won­der­ful. Now more to the point; why are cer­tain peo­ple, com­pa­nies, and whole coun­tries allowed to harm our beau­ti­ful world. If peo­ple see absolute­ly for sure great wrongs being done and do noth­ing, espe­cial­ly peo­ple in posi­tions who have the means (countries)become guilty by allowance and accep­tance. Reli­gious blind­ers keep­ing our world seper­at­ed and seg­re­gat­ed. Why? If you tru­ly believe in the bible as a his­tor­i­cal his­to­ry then you know we once all spoke the same lan­guage and worked togeth­er in many of our endeav­ors. Our cre­ator God for some rea­son feared this and cre­at­ed huge social bar­ri­ers by cre­at­ing dif­fer­ent lan­guages and mak­ing dif­fer­ent races. Our cre­ator God for some rea­son has a very strong rea­son to keep mankind from uni­fy­ing that has noth­ing to do with any­thing New Tes­ta­ment. These reli­gious beliefs are the main tools being used to keep the peo­ple of the world seper­at­ed, bick­er­ing, and war­ring with each oth­er. I don’t mean to be dis­re­spect­ing any­one and their beliefs but by the same token how can peo­ple dis­re­spect our beau­ti­ful world, our won­der­ful plan­et, our home. It’s real­ly a shame we don’t have a world prison for incar­cer­a­tion of peo­ple who know­ing­ly harm our world. Once con­vict­ed no parole and no release. Pret­ty soon peo­ple would think of Earth first and per­son­al desire sec­ond. Which is how we should think any­way. The most impor­tant and most valu­able pos­ses­sion a per­son can have is: INTEGRITY

  • Michael says:

    That is noth­ing but your opin­ion, and there is noth­ing sci­en­tif­ic about it. Leave your opin­ion out of this.

  • Marria says:

    Why is it being said to oth­ers for them to keep opin­ions of how one wants to do, think an or go about what they belive in? Don’t we all as indi­vid­u­als have a mind of our own! So with that being said, MY OPINION IS THAT ANYONE CAN LEAVE A REPLY OR COMMENT ABOUT WHATEVER IT MAY BE! JUST REMEMBER THAT YOUR THE ONE THAT READ IT. SO RESPECT IT OR LEAVE IT! CUZ THE NEXT PERSON JUST MIGHT HAVE A BETTER OUTCOME THAN THE NEXT PERSONS OPINION OR EVEN YOURS!

  • George Washington says:

    These same so called sci­en­tists also told us they cre­at­ed a bet­ter gas can we all learned that is a lie

Leave a Reply

Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.