What is "pyramidology"

n. The study of pyramids, but from a supernatural or new-age perspective, rather than the historical or archaeological viewpoint.

Pyramidology is a term used (sometimes disparagingly) to refer to various pseudoscientific speculations regarding pyramids, most often the Giza Necropolis and the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. Some "pyramidologists" also concern themselves with the monumental structures of pre-Columbian America (such as Teotihuacan, the Mesoamerican Maya civilization, and the Inca of the South American Andes), and the temples of Southeast Asia.

Scientists regard pyramidology as pseudoscience: they view pyramidologicical hypotheses as sensationalist, inaccurate and/or wholly deficient in empirical analysis and application of the scientific method (see section: Criticism).

Some pyramidologists claim that the Great Pyramid of Giza has encoded within it predictions for the exodus of Moses from Egypt, the crucifixion of Jesus, the start of World War I, the founding of modern-day Israel in 1948, and future events including the beginning of Armageddon; discovered by using what they call " pyramid inches" to calculate the passage of time (one British inch = one solar year).

Pyramidology reached its peak by the early 1980s. Interest revived when in 1992 and 1993 Rudolf Gantenbrink sent a miniature remote-controlled robot rover, known as upuaut, up one of the "air shafts" in the Queen's Chamber of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Upuaut discovered the shaft closed off by a stone block with decaying copper hooks attached to the outside. In 1994 Robert Bauval published the book The Orion Mystery, attempting to prove that the pyramids on the Giza plateau were built to mimic the stars in the belt of the constellation Orion, a claim that came to be known as the Orion correlation theory. Both Gantenbrink and Bauval have spurred greater interest in pyramidology.