Pyramid scheme

VIRGINIA BEACH

Randy Griffith has never seen a pyramid - at least not the real thing. That doesn't stop him from thinking about those ancient marvels. He thinks about pyramids at night, lying alone in his bed. He thinks about them over breakfast, when the sun spills soft through his apartment's kitchen windows. He thinks about pyramids on the job - head bent over his latest task for Farm Fresh, where the 60-year-old oversees grocery store renovations.

With little but his obsession to guide him, Griffith is convinced he has solved one of the world's most enduring mysteries - how the pyramids of Egypt were built. Relatives lift an eyebrow. Friends just wish he'd shut up. But that's not how it goes with obsessions.

We can't always choose what our brains decide to gnaw. Griffith can't say why he is consumed with the mechanics of pyramid building. He can only say that it is. From halfway around the globe and thousands of years in the past, the pyramids simply call.

"I guess I just like them," he shrugs.

And how. Pyramid drawings fill a wall in his small duplex off Shore Drive. He has devoured countless books on the subject and sketched out reams of blueprints - all meticulously detailed with measurements, weights, angles and

formulas. Fancy software could provide sophisticated simulation, but Griffith never really warmed up to computers.

Instead, using cardboard and $60 worth of duct tape, he tested his construction theory by building a 4-foot-tall pyramid on his kitchen table.

"I kept thinking about that scene from 'Close Encounters,' " he says. "Remember when he built that big mud thing on the table? I thought, 'If anyone could look in my windows... ' "

Griffith kept the 3-D model until his grown daughter moved back in with him. "Then she was like, 'Dad, there's no room for me and the pyramid... ' "

Such preoccupation would be normal in some circles. Scholars and archaeologists have devoted entire careers to studying the pyramids. After all, they're wonders of achievement. For nearly 4,000 years, Egypt's Great Pyramid reigned as the tallest manmade structure on the planet.

The particulars of how they were built are lost in the long-ago. Experts have been baffled for centuries. Griffith's theory (at right) rests on the assumption that yesterday's Egyptians made use of pulleys - a discovery that would be mere trivia to most of us, but revolutionary in the world of Egyptology, which insists that such technology did not exist back then.

When it comes to obsessions, however, intensity can override the details. Griffith's blue eyes light up when he talks about chambers and passageways and pyramid construction timetables.

"I'm almost positive this is the way it was built," Griffith says. "Actually, I am positive."

It started about 12 years ago with an accident at work. Griffith tumbled from a tall platform at the old Ford plant. The fall messed him up pretty good.

"I was out of work for 18 months," he says. "There was nothing to do but read."

The books rekindled an old spark for history - one Griffith wishes he'd fanned more in his youth. A 1967 graduate of Bayside High, Griffith says: "I thought school was just for fun."

Earning a living began right after graduation. On-the-job training turned him into an iron worker. He put in time on the James River Bridge, the Coleman and other East Coast spans. He got married and divorced a time or two, raised a daughter, went to work at Ford and found himself laid up with broken bones and a lacerated liver. Books about ancient cultures and languages helped pass the healing time.

"I started reading about pyramids, and I just couldn't stop thinking about it."

Armed with his hands-on construction experience, Griffith slowly assembled his theory. These days, he doesn't hunt, fish, drink, play sports, travel or watch much TV. Pyramids are his hobby. To improve his sketches, he bought a how-to book and taught himself to draw.

To be sure, his notes aren't always perfectly spelled. And he hasn't had the opportunity to check out a real pyramid in person.

"I would love to see them someday," he says, "but they're a long way away."

Still, he wonders if the academic types could use a little blue-collar insight.

"My brother asks me why I waste my time on things like this," Griffith says. "I don't figure anyone will really listen to me. I've got no education, no authority, no background. I'm sure they'll be like, 'Who does this guy think he is?' "

That didn't stop Griffith from rolling up his blueprints and sketches, outlining his theory in 60 points, stuffing it all in a mailing tube and sending it to The Virginian-Pilot.

"Maybe someone will see it and help me prove it. Heck, what have I got to lose? What if it turns out that I'm the guy who finally solves this thing?"

We e-mailed a boiled-down version of Griffith's theory far and wide.

From Salima Ikram, professor of Egyptology, American University in Cairo:

"An ingenious explanation, but the archaeological evidence that has thus far been uncovered does not support this theory."

From Chris Naunton, deputy director of The Egypt Exploration Society, London:

"What Mr. Griffith suggests is interesting, but from a scientific point of view it is not worthy of consideration in its present form."

From Kent Weeks, founder of a mapping project that discovered notable tombs in the Valley of the Kings:

"Sorry, no cigar."

When told of the experts' reaction, Griffith held his head high:

"That doesn't surprise me one bit. They've been working on it for 4,500 years, and they haven't figured it out yet. If they think my theory won't work, then show me. When they study it a little closer, I think they'll find out I'm right."

And that's just how it goes with obsessions.

Joanne Kimberlin, (757) 446-2338, joanne.kimberlin@pilotonline.com