Heaton said: “The idea of science being an alternative to religion is a modern set of thoughts. A cache of manuscripts on these subjects surfaced at Sotheby’s in 1936 some of them were bought by the economist and Newton devotee John Maynard Keynes, who described his hero as “the last of the magicians”. This was not because he feared his faith might discredit his scientific work, or vice versa, but because his unorthodox views would cost him his career.Īlthough his reputation rested on his mathematical and scientific discoveries, to Newton these were secondary to his “greater” studies in alchemy and theology. Newton kept his obsession with alchemy and his heterodox religious beliefs – a rejection of the doctrine of the Trinity – to himself. “Today, these seem disparate areas of study – but they didn’t seem that way to Newton in the 17th century.” “He was trying to find proof for his theory of gravitation, but in addition the ancient Egyptians were thought to have held the secrets of alchemy that have since been lost,” said Heaton. He hoped that would lead him to other ancient measures, allowing him to uncover the architecture and dimensions of the Temple of Solomon – the setting of the apocalypse – and interpret the Bible’s hidden meanings.
He thought it was likely that the ancient Egyptians had been able to measure the Earth and that, by unlocking the cubit of the Great Pyramid, he too would be able to measure the circumference of the Earth. Newton was trying to uncover the unit of measurement used by those constructing the pyramids. Newton studied the pyramids in the 1680s, during a period of self-imposed scholarly exile at Woolsthorpe Manor in Lincolnshire, away from his base at Cambridge University, following criticism of his work by his rival Robert Hooke of the Royal Society. Handwritten notes by Isaac Newton show his investigations into the Egyptian pyramids. The papers take you remarkably quickly straight to the heart of a number of the deepest questions Newton was investigating.” “It’s a wonderful confluence of bringing together Newton and these great objects from classical antiquity which have fascinated people for thousands of years.
“These are really fascinating papers because in them you can see Newton trying to work out the secrets of the pyramids,” Gabriel Heaton, Sotheby’s manuscript specialist, told the Observer.
In a variation on “the dog ate my homework”, the notes are scorched from a fire apparently caused by Newton’s hound, Diamond, jumping onto a table and tipping over a candle. Three pages of scribblings on the Egyptian pyramids, which Newton believed held the key to profound secrets, are expected to fetch hundreds of thousands of pounds when online bidding closes on Tuesday. Now unpublished notes showing Newton’s attempts to unlock codes hidden in the Bible and determine the timing of the apocalypse are now being sold by Sotheby’s.
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