David Davidson (engineer)
David Davidson, F.R.S.A., MIStructE (1884–1956)[1] was a Scottish structural engineer and early proponent of pyramidology.
Early life
David Davidson was born in Glasgow, but later moved to England where he became a qualified structural engineer, working in the City of Leeds.[2] An initial Agnostic and skeptic of the Bible, in his earlier years Davidson set out to disprove Robert Menzies' and Charles Piazzi Smyth's claims that the internal passages of the Great Pyramid of Giza form a chronological map of prophecies.[3][4] He subsequently spent 25 years analysing the Great Pyramid.
Conversion to pyramidology
Despite originally being a skeptic, Davidson later converted to being a proponent of pyramidology after reconciling Flinders Petrie's findings with Smyth's through a complex set of calculations.[5][6] Flinders Petrie claimed he had disproved Smyth's metrological claims regarding the Great Pyramid, but Davidson believed he had found a reconciling truth between both Petrie's and Smyth's calculations and data, later publishing them in his first book The Great Pyramid: Its Divine Message (1924) as well as an article in a journal.[7] Davidson had worked with Dr. Herbert Aldersmith between 1910-1918 on his book and through Aldersmith converted to being a Christian and believer in British Israelism. Aldersmith's contributions to the book concerned the prophecies he believed were contained in the Great Pyramid (e.g. a chronological metrological map in the passageways and chambers of the pyramid) while Davidson's contributions were purely mathematical. Later in his life Davidson published several works on British Israelism through Covenant Publishing.
In a 1940 edition of his book on pyramidology, Davidson revised Aldersmith's date predictions for End Times (see Herbert Aldersmith for these revisions).
On the topic of his conversion to British Israelism he had this to say:[8]
"I studied "critical theology" and God became remote.
I studied "skeptical theology" to find God less than man.
I studied a "freak theory" and found it TRUTH
In the TRUTH of British Israel I found the Bible the living Word of a living God."
References
- Civil engineering and public works review, Vol. 51, Lomax, Erskine & Co., 1956.
- The Yorkshire archaeological journal, Volumes 67-68, Yorkshire Archaeological Society, p. 228.
- "David Davidson, an avowed agnostic, set out to discredit Robert Menzies' theory" (Peter Tompkins, Secrets of the Great Pyramid, 1971, Harper & Row, p. 108).
- The Great pyramid, its divine message (1941, reprint) contains a preface noting: "In the early part of the present century, Mr. D. Davidson, who had been studying Egyptology as accessory to agnostic criticism of the Scriptures, was introduced to the study of the Great Pyramid by Mr. James Moncrieff of Glasgow, who forwarded him a small elementary book on the subject."
- Great Pyramid Its Divine Message, D. Davidson, H. Aldersmith, Kessinger Publishing, 1992, p. 11.
- The chariots still crash, Clifford A. Wilson, New American Library, 1976, p. 26.
- Pyramid and Prophecy 1924
- [Thy Kingdom Come, Vol. 27, No. 9 September 2015, pg. 25]