Has Rajan Hooda Solved a 4,500-Year-Old Mystery?

For 50 years, Rajan Hooda, MBA ’88, PhD ’90, has been obsessed with a mystery that has baffled archaeologists, architects, and engineers for centuries: How did the ancient Egyptians build the Great Pyramid of Giza?  

In November, Hooda published “How the Pyramids Were Built: The Theory of the Conjoint Solution and the Shrinking Dual L Notch Ramps,” a paper that claims to finally have the answer. 

Hooda lays out his theory in three parts. In the first, he introduces the idea of “L notch ramps.” The Great Pyramid was built like a layer cake, he says, with 209 layers of stone blocks. “When the first layer of stones was completed, a small portion of one corner was left incomplete to create a small rising ramp from the ground to the top of the first layer,” he says. “This ramp was used to drag stones up to the top of the first layer to build the second layer.” 

Again, a small portion of that layer was left incomplete to extend the ramp to the top of the second layer, to build the third. This process was repeated 208 times. When the highest level was reached, the ramp looked like a road circling a mountain until it gets to the top. 

The Egyptians built two such L notch ramps for efficiency, according to Hooda—one to ascend and another to descend. Once the top layer was complete, the Egyptians filled in that ramp section with the missing stones and worked their way down, one level at a time, until the entire ramp was filled in, leaving no evidence that it ever existed and thus creating the construction mystery, Hooda argues. 

In the second part of his paper, he offers the proof for his theory. “The upper levels of the pyramids could not have been built without shrinking the width of the ramps to accommodate the smaller footprint of the highest layers of the pyramid,” he says. As a result, the Egyptians were forced to use much smaller stones that could be dragged up the narrower ramps at the higher levels.

“This very significant compromise in the design symmetry provides the remarkable proof. None of the existing ideas of construction explain or require this design compromise. For the L notch ramps, it is the only way the Giant Pyramid could have been built.”  

Last, Hooda identifies eight “interlocking components” of the design to provide further proof of his theory, including the “remarkable efficiency,” “elegant logistics,” and “methodological invisibility” of the engineering. “Past researchers never saw the complete puzzle,” he says. “The pyramid’s construction, as a result, became unsolvable.” 

Hooda’s interest in the pyramids began at age 8. “I am an archaeology and history enthusiast who, in the foolishness of youth, mistakenly stumbled into a life and career in finance,” he says. “Fortunately, my passion for archaeology and history survived my unfortunate detour.”