The Great Pyramid of Giza actually has more than four sides

The Great Pyramid of Giza is the last remaining Wonder of the Ancient World and mystery still surrounds it to this day.

The square-based pyramid, a shape which usually has four sides, is the most famous one at the Giza pyramid site.

However researchers actually claim there are eight sides to it, making it an octagonal pyramid, reports LADBible.

In 1940, people first started to notice there could be more to the Great Pyramid's outer layer than first met the eye.

British Egyptologist Flinders Petrie looked at a set of publications on Ancient Egypt and noticed a hollow line down the middle of each side of the Great Pyramid when looking at them top down and in the correct lighting.

And he wasn't the only one to spot this.

A number of researchers claim there are actually eight sides to the Great Pyramid of Giza / Ahmad Hasaballah, Getty Images

In 1975 book The Pyramids of Egypt, IES Edwards wrote: "In the Great Pyramid the packing-blocks were laid in such a way that they sloped slightly inwards towards the centre of each course, with a result that a noticeable depression runs down the middle of each face; a peculiarity shared, as far as is known, by no other pyramid."

The Great Pyramid having eight sides was most recently referenced in a 2023 study for the Archaeological Discovery journal.

Akio Kato, an academic researcher, agreed with Petrie and Edwards.

"The Great Pyramid at Giza is known to have an amazing character of concavity that each of its four faces is slightly indented along its central line, from base to peak," Kato wrote.

"In other words, the Great Pyramid is a concave octagonal pyramid, rather than the standard square pyramid. This concavity is so subtle to be seen from any ground position but can be observed from the air."

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