Written in Stone and Space The Invisible Language of Ancient Architecture

Written In Stone and Space takes an in depth look at the role of measure in the art and architecture of the ancient world. The authors propose that ancient builders actualized a high degree of intuition in their work, accompanied by a surprising level of scientific mastery. Evidence of their proficiency survives in the dimensions and geometry of the pyramids, tombs, and burial sites considered in this study. Measure is the key to reading the language of their attainments.

At the heart of archaic art lies a system the authors refer to as the "canon of measure." The canon evolved over eons of observation of the patterns that link all of Nature with the cycles of the heavens and the rhythms of the human body. Documentation of the canon is scant but fragments of its DNA, though dis-integrated over time, have trickled down through history and are still detectable in modern units of measure. This investigation connects the missing links between modern metrology and its ancient canonical roots.

Written in Stone and Space also ponders the enduring qualities of sacred architecture. "Is there some "mystical potency," (as Howard Carter called it) that informs architecture and disposes it to be perennially revered?" Traditional rhetoric, though lofty, says little on the subject.

In addressing this question, the authors draw upon detailed examples from China, the Great Pyramid, the Tomb of Tutankhamun, the Washington Monument and other well-known sites. They distill into ten elements, the features that distinguish iconic architecture from the mundane. The specificity of the data presented may challenge archaeology to reappraise ancient artifacts for their intelligent content. Modern builders may be inspired to restore the power of architectural design to its rightful station—as an instrument of communication and repository of knowledge. Written in Stone and Space commences that restoration.

Bernard I. Pietsch, archaeo-metrologist and independent researcher, has spent over six decades exploring the geometry and dimensions of the world's greatest stone monuments. Prior to his foray into ancient art, Pietsch had been studying how changes in the Earth's magnetic field effected the behavior of living organisms. He observed pendulums and gyroscopes, studied earthquakes, tornadoes, earth magnetism, and astronomy. In the living sciences, he surveyed everything from the vagaries of mass migrations to microscopic changes in blood sedimentation rates. From this wide perspective, he began to focus on how data from various scientific domains were cataloged and graphed.  "After surveying many fields," he recalls, "I could see that events occurring in Nature defied prediction. Why doesn't Nature perform as we might expect? I wanted to know what gives rise to so many so-called anomalies. Clearly an unaccounted factor was at work. I began to ask if perhaps there was another kind of framework or time-sense that would more clearly resonate with Nature's time—a single, reconciling dynamic to which all was responding.

"By the spring of 1971, I had drafted some promising explanations for these questions and was able to formulate an innovative, general statement about frequency expressing a natural law. About that time, and quite accidentally, my attention was captured by a book on the Great Pyramid—a diversion that was to last for decades. By the fall of that year, l was deep into the geometry and measurements of the Pyramid. I realized that it confirmed, supported, and upgraded my derived concepts. It seemed as if all my research into astronomical cycles and biological rhythms had prepared me to "read" what I came to call the "book" of the Pyramid. I discovered in its architecture a geometric idiom that expressed insights I had gleaned from mathematics, psychology, epistemology, and Nature—it was a cosmological model."

Nearing the century mark at the time of this writing, Pietsch is no stranger to the boundaries of convention. His willingness to challenge, if not violate the rules of practical mathematics has enabled him to use the functions of number as an artist would—in complete freedom. As a result, the novel insights and "coincident correspondences" documented in his work are not random or serendipitous. They are evidence of an order implicitly revealed through the plasticity of number. 

Pietsch doesn't claim to have discovered anything, only that he has recovered the language of ancient artists who expressed in their work, a level of harmony we moderns do not yet enjoy. "I just read well," he says. "If a work is allowed to penetrate and inform our sensibilities, we may be fortunate enough to contact within ourselves, an experience of understanding modeled by the work."

Pietsch has tapped into those models and left signposts for the rest of us to follow.