In this classic of Pyramidology, C. Staniland Wake attempts to answer the questions: who actually built the pyramids, and why? He rejects the conventional theory that they were tombs, and explores astronomical and religious motivations for their construction instead. I was led to the conclusion that the builders of the Great Pyramid intended to perpetuate certain scientific ideas, and, moreover, that they had a religious motive in its erection. There is little doubt, indeed, that it is a monument of Sabaism—the worship of the heavenly host, which had a wide extension in the ancient world, and with which “Serpent worship” was intimately connected. The importance of the Great Pyramid as a religico-scientific structure is still further increased if, as is not improbable, it was intended to mark the substitution of an astronomy based on the passage of the sun through the twelve signs of the Zodiac for the lunar astronomy which preceded it.
