Forgotten Ages Research

Are There Hidden Chambers Inside the Great Pyramid Yet to be Found?

Report Topics:

• Both ancient legends and actual discoveries indicate that lost chambers still exist in the Great Pyramid waiting to be discovered
• Report Update—Is There a Spiral Tunnel Yet to be Found in the Great Pyramid?

Full Report:

There are a multitude of legends and stories from the past which tell of still undiscovered chambers containing great mysteries yet to be discovered inside the Great Pyramid.

In A.D. 390, the Roman Ammianus Marcellinus noted: “Inscriptions which the ancients asserted were on the walls of certain underground galleries in the pyramids were intended to prevent the ancient wisdom from being lost in the Flood.”

Abou Balkh, in 870, preserved the same tradition, as did most later medieval Arab writers.

In 1584, Martadi wrote concerning the forgotten ancient magician and priest, Saiouph, a contemporary of Noah and the Great Flood: “He made his abode in the maritime pyramid, which pyramid contained a temple of the stars, where there was a figure of the sun, and one of the moon both of which spoke. In this foremost pyramid King Saurid was translated. There were within it several admiral things, and among others, the laughing statue, which was made of a great precious stone. They had disposed all these things within that place for fear of the inundation and spoil.”

One detailed tradition was recounted by Ibn Abd Alhokim, and can still be read today in the Akbar Ezzeman Manuscript kept at Oxford. Pyramid researcher John Greaves, in 1646, offered this translation of the tradition in his work, The Enduring Mystery:

“He who built the Pyramid was Saurid Ibn Salhouk, who lived three hundred years before the Flood. The occasion of this was because he saw in his sleep, that the whole earth was turned over, with the inhabitants of it, and men lying upon their faces, and the stars falling down and striking one another, with terrible noise, and being troubled with this, he concealed it. Then after he saw the first star falling to the earth in the similitude of while fowl, and they snatched men up, and they carried them between two great mountains, and these mountains closed upon them, and the shining stars were made dark. And he awakened with great fear, and assembled the chief Priests of all the provinces, a hundred and thirty Priests, the chief of them called Aclimun.

“He related the whole matter to them, and they took the altitude of the stars, and made their prognostication, and they foretold the deluge. The king said, will it come to our country? They answered yes, and will destroy it. And there remained a certain number of years to come, and he commanded in the mean space to build the Pyramid.

“And he built in the Pyramid thirty rooms, filled with stones and riches, and utensils, and with signatures made of precious stones, and with instruments of iron, and vessels of earth and with arms which rust not, and with glass which might be bent and yet not broken, and with strange spells, and with several kinds of akakirs, single and double, and with deadly poisons, and with other things besides.

“He made also diverse celestial spheres and stars, and what they severely operate, in their aspects, and their perfumes which are to be used with them, and the books which treat of these matters.

“He put also the commentaries of the Priests, in chests of black marble, and with every Priest a book, in which were the wonders of his profession, and of his actions, and of his nature, and what was done in his time, and what is, and what shall be, from the beginning of time to the end of it.”

It was intriguing traditions such as this which led Caliph Al Mamoun to plan and execute his forced entrance into the Great Pyramid. But he only found three Chambers, while Ibn Abd Alhokim recorded there were at least thirty, perhaps even more.

That more Chambers exist does not seem unreasonable, especially when we realize that, given the area of the known Chamber spaces, and comparing it with the total volume of the Pyramid and its foundation base, there is still room enough for 3,700 more Chambers the size of the King’s Chamber. The question is, were do we begin looking for them?

One very real possibility is deep beneath the Pyramid’s foundations, below the Pit Chamber. Danish architect Herbert Paulsen, examining the geometry of the Pyramid structure, believes this is precisely where a forgotten vault is to be found. Interestingly, the Greek historian Herodotus received from Egyptian sources of the fifth century B.C.E. the story that a Chamber does indeed exist at such a subterranean level. Herodotus further recorded that the Chamber consists of an “island surrounded by the waters from the Nile, introduced through artificial ducts.” He was definitely not referring to the Pit Chamber, since the Pit Chamber is located 86.5 feet above the ancient Nile bed, and 82.5 feet above the ancient Nile high water stage, far too high to be flooded by the river.

French Egyptologist Andre Pochan has determined that the subterranean room Herodotus alluded to must be located at least 190.6 feet below the Great Pyramid base level, or about 90 feet below the Pit Chamber. The Greek chronicler wrote that, before the Pyramid was built, “ten years” were spent in “building the chambers under the earth.”

As Pochan observed, the historian used the plural, “chambers,” in recounting about the excavations. Today, the Pit Chamber is the only known room to be below the Pyramid’s base—Herodotus was hinting at others as yet unfound. Second, Pochan calculated it should have taken no more than two years’ labor to excavate the Pit Chamber, so the Greek’s decade figure can only mean that at least one possibly more vaults had been dug out farther below.

If there is a secret Chamber below water level, as Herodotus suggested, then its architect may have installed within it an ingenious safeguard system. The Chamber, being sealed, probably possesses an air pocket, the pressure of which prevents the Chamber from being completely filled with water. If someone attempted to enter the Chamber from above, the air pocket would be released, and the Chamber would be immediately flooded. Anyone wanting to enter and keep the Chamber intact would have to excavate up from below it, and in a manner that would prevent flooding from taking place. This of course would call for feats of engineering of an advanced order.

In 1836, Col. Howard-Vyse reported finding what he thought was an entranceway to the underground Chamber. He recorded in his diary of March 29:

“In examining the ground to the northward of the Great Pyramid, I observed a line of rock projecting above the sand, which appears to be sculpted down, and might, therefore, I considered, have contained an entrance to the subterranean passage mentioned by Herodotus. I was parallel to the building and about a hundred yards from it. But, upon removing the sand to the depth of six or seven feet, it was found to be in its natural state and the work was given up.”

An examination of the same areas today reveals that there are large vertical shafts located on the east and south sides of the Great Pyramid. On the east side the shaft is situated 10 feet from the center of the side, and is today surrounded by an iron fence. This shaft is divided in two by a central wall running east-west. Wind blown sand covers the bottom of both aspects at a depth of three feet below the surface, and there is no evidence any of the sand has been excavated out for a very long time. At the top of the dividing wall and in the northeast corner of the double shaft are remains of stone steps. The shafts presently contain broken bottles, cans and pieces of desert stony debris. A secret entranceway into the Pyramid by way of these shafts has long been suspected.

Another possibility is also situated along the north side of the Pyramid, about 70 feet from the northeast corner, where there is a stone measuring 4 feet by 10 feet that is sunk into the foundation at an angle, having joints very precise. This is the only stone in the foundation perimeter not at a right angle to the rest of the construction. It had once been covered by a mantle stone, but is now accessible as the mantle was long ago removed. Is this a lost entrance to the structure, once secret and still unknown?

Still another possibility exists inside the Pyramid itself. In October, 1992, Professor Jean Kerisal—as part of a team conducting ground penetrating radar and micro gravimetric measurements in the Pit Chamber and horizontal passage connecting the bottom of the Descending Passage—detected an anomalous structure under the floor of the horizontal passage. A second anomaly was detected on the western side of the passage only a few feet in front of the entrance to the Chamber. Soundings indicated the presence of a vertical shaft at a shallow depth very close to the western wall of the passage. Professor Kerisal was of the opinion that this could be either a hidden chamber in the limestone or a completely separate passageway system.

Herodotus also wrote that the Egyptians regarded this subterranean Chamber as the tomb of the mysterious builder and architect of the Pyramid. Arab chroniclers, such as Ibn Abd Alhokim and Ben Abdul Rahman, told how through a square shaft about 10 cubits deep one could enter 4 lower Chambers, and from here a passageway 5 spans wide led to a vault wherein lies a sarcophagus of green stone containing the body of a man wearing a breastplate of gold set with jewels. On his headdress is a ruby as large as a hen’s egg that “glimmers like a flame,” inscribed with inscriptions of a lost language. At his side is an emerald vase a foot in diameter, with a pearl embedded in it, “that shone with a light like the light of day, and perpetually illuminated the entire Chamber. There was also nearby a sword 7 spans long, and the vestments of a king 12 spans long. And on the lid of the king’s sarcophagus are the words: “I am he who built this Pyramid in one thousand days.”

It is significant that in the Pit Chamber there is a vertical shaft sunk into the floor, now filled with rubble. Though in recent times explorers excavated into this shaft to a depth of 38 feet, the true bottom has never been reached. One idea is that the Pit Chamber may have been designed by the Pyramid builders to make those who broke in to think that it was a dead-end or blind. Since the Chamber appeared unfinished, it was thought that the intruders might interpret this to mean the room never served any useful purpose, and thus would have been discouraged from looking further. This is in fact just how Al Mamoun’s workmen reacted when they discovered the Chamber.

One modern researcher, Norman Gholson, also thinks this design was an intentional decoy, and believes that the uncleared shaft in the middle of the Chamber floor may actually serve as a passageway leading to a tomb or secret vault farther underground. There is, too, the possibility that the shaft itself is a decoy, and that somewhere else hidden below the Pit Chamber floor is the true opening to the compartment below. Pochan noted that, when he struck the Chamber floor hard with an ordinary key, “I had the strange impression that I made the entire Pyramid tremble. The strange resonance in this room suggests the probable existence of an immense lower chamber as yet undiscovered.”

It may be possible that a portion of the secrets below the Pit Chamber may already have been penetrated, for we find medieval Arab sources which allude to hidden vaults explored by them, containing the preserved bodies of the Masters of the Pyramid, which are today lost to us.

Ben Abdul Rahman, in the twelfth century, wrote: “There is a well that is square, 10 cubits deep, in the center of a subterranean room that is square at the bottom and round at the top.” Chronicler Ibn Abd Alhokim, copying from ancient sources, offered these further details:

“In the largest of the pyramids there is a very large chamber with a square base and a vaulted ceiling; a well 10 cubits had been dug in the middle of the chamber. This well was square and at the bottom is found in each side a door leading to a vast hall full of dead bodies, each wrapped in a shroud longer than any hundred robes. The passages of time has affected these corpses, which are turned black; these bodies, which are no longer than our own, have lost none of their tissue or hair; no bodies of old or white-haired men are found; these bodies were still solid and not a single limb is missing, but they are extremely light, the passage of time having rendered them as weightless as dry straw. Thus, in this well are found four chambers full of corpses.”

It is clear from these descriptions that it is not the Pit Chamber that is being pictured here, but rather another, unknown Chamber or Chambers below the Pyramid, the entranceway of which was once known, but which has yet to be rediscovered by explorers in our day.

Another theory, advanced by Donald Lorenzen, foresees that one day a walled up unexplored portion of the Queen’s Chamber will come to light, and that the key to its discovery can be found by clues left in the other Pyramid rooms. Lorenzen noted the curious fact that the King’s Chamber is almost exactly the same width but twice the length of the Queen’s Chamber, with its Stone Box originally squarely centered in the second half.

If we were to extend the Queen’s Chamber in the Pyramid so that its length matched that of the King’s Chamber, the center of the extension, corresponding with the location of the Stone Box, would fall exactly under the apex center of the Pyramid. Lorenzen believes that what is now considered to be the west wall in the Queen’s Chamber may only be a thin barrier to the rest of the Chamber, which lies beyond.

In June, 1990 the author facilitated a tour to Great Britain, and as a side trip I led a short excursion of six people to Cairo for a four-day weekend. We stayed at the Mena House in the Giza area, and on the morning of our first full day we walked up the winding road to the top of the plateau, purchased our Giza area tickets, and entered the Great Pyramid.

After spending meditation time in the King’s Chamber, we climbed back down the Grand Gallery and proceeded through the Passageway leading to the Queen’s Chamber. We were lucky to have the Chamber to ourselves, and each of us was able to choose our own spot to meditate. My inner Guide directed me to sit on the Chamber floor facing toward the blank western limestone wall.

As I closed my eyes, the picture of the wall before me remained as an after-image. I could see the hand of my spirit stretch out and point a finger to two locations along the wall’s surface. To my surprise I witnessed two Doorways outlined in golden light suddenly appear, evenly spaced from each other and straddling the wall’s center.

I quickly opened my eyes, got up, and before my vision could evaporate, I walked over to the Chamber wall and began slowly pounding my fist against it, in a straight line acorss the horizontal middle of the wall.

Sure enough, in the exact two locations had been shown the golden Doorways, the sound of my pounding returned with a low, echoing sound, as if I was hitting where the wall was thinner and a hollow space was directly behind it. Everywhere else, my fist made a sharper, higher pitched rapping sound indicative of solid masonry.

Three times I crossed the wall’s horizontal meridian, each time moving closer to the floor—and three times I was able to define the outline of the two Doorways by the very audible change in pitch and echoing effect.

All the members of the tour group acknowledged they could also hear the changes in sound, and pummeled the wall for themselves, confirming the results. Even our Egyptian tour guide, who worked for the Department of Antiquities, was fascinated by our discovery, telling us that as far as he knew no one else had ever found such a phenomenon before, and that he would report it to the Department authorities.

However, to this date I have not heard of anyone else following up on our finding inside the Queen’s Chamber.

In the Great Pyramid, there is almost 300 feet between the top of the King’s Chamber ceiling superstructure and the platform at the very pinnacle of the monument, ample room for a secret room or rooms of considerable size.

One day after a rainstorm in 1880, Charles Piazzi Smyth, who spent many years exploring and measuring the Great Pyramid, noted something peculiar as he walked through the piles of stone chips and splinters scattered around the base of the structure, which were left over from when the Pyramid was built. Toward the top of one heap, located directly in front of but at a distance from the northern entranceway into the Pyramid, Smyth found a large number of pieces of green and white stone. He described it as being a “compact, very hard, crypto-crystalline formation, whitish, speckled with black and greenish-black.”

The material is not native to the Giza area, and must have been brought to the location from a considerable distance. What is more, the number of stone chips, and their occurrence near the top of and in the farthest pile of castoff debris from the Pyramid’s construction strongly suggests that the stone was used quite extensively, and in a position near the top portion of the Pyramid. However, in not one of the known Chambers inside the structure does the material occur. This observation led Smyth to write: “I was compelled to gaze up at the Pyramid with its vast bulk, and believe that there is another chamber still undiscovered there, one which will prove to be the most wondrous room of the whole monument.”

Because the mysterious white and black chippings, identified as quartz and tourmaline, were found beyond the pile of Aswan granite chips, carved off the blocks that went into the King’s Chamber, Smyth further surmised that the hidden Chamber must be located high above the King’s Chamber, near the apex.

Smyth’s observations were complemented by contemporary evidence and further speculations concerning unopened vaults high up in the Great Pyramid. Early British explorer Col. Howard-Vyse, after blasting his way into the air-space chambers above the King’s Chamber, noted a strange resonance effect which allowed him and his fellow workers to hear voices in other parts of the Pyramid, as if somewhere around them were hollow voids that carried and amplified the sounds.

In 1877, Joseph A. Seiss, in his work on the Pyramid, suggested that the large granite blocks which are suspended in the Antechamber entrance to the King’s Chamber, may hide a secret door. “These blocks,” Seiss observed, “hang in grooves and have a boss or knob on the side, as if meant to be slide up for a purpose. A light bore with a rod directed behind these blocks would reveal the presence of a passage, if it exists.” Seiss believed that the passages would lead to a Chamber directly above the King’s Chamber complex, at about the 100th course of masonry. But Seiss also added somewhat cryptically: “We aren’t yet ready to discover these hidden vaults. We don’t even understand the esoteric nature of the Great Pyramid’s known chambers and passages today, let alone the still hidden rooms.”

Echoing these same sentiments, a more modern researcher, George Hunt Williamson, in Secret Places of the Lion, revealed from ancient prophecies:

“Near the top of the Great Pyramid there is the most secret of chambers. It contains written records of all world civilizations—a legacy to mankind that cannot even be imagined by modern man. In the coming Age, when the sign of the Son of Man has appeared in the heavens, all things will stand revealed. Once again in the source of the ages will mankind have reached the same goal which the builders of the Great Pyramid reached in that far remote age.”

Other esoteric sources reveal that not only records are housed in the hidden compartments above, but also the instruments of power, and the energy tools that were once used in the Initiation process which once took place inside the Pyramid, in the King’s Chamber.

Prophecies reveal that this Chamber, where the instruments are being perpetually charged by being in the high energy apex position in the pyramid form, will someday be opened again, so that the processes of Transcendence beyond the physical plane may be begun again.

Brown Landone, writing nearly 60 years ago, called the high Chamber the “Temple of Godhead,” and foretold that humankind will not be allowed to enter until either the latter portion of the last century or the beginning decades of the present century—the time frame we are now in. The doorway is covered perfectly by one of the giant stone blocks in the King’s Chamber. An obscure ancient legend, which Landone quoted, spoke of, “the steps behind the rosy stone which is behind the stone that swings like unto the sun,” making their way to the Chamber of “red, black and white stone.”

L. Dow Covington, who worked at the Great Pyramid from 1901 to 1910, and was an aid to John and Morton Edgar in their detailed measuring of the inner Chambers, believed that the so-called Aswan granite plugs in the Ascending Passage are not plugs at all, but hide the entranceways to one or more secret tunnels.

As we noted earlier, the blocks could never have in fact served as plugs, for the Ascending Passage is just as narrow at its top as at its bottom, and the plugs could thus not have been slid into place. Rather, they were purposed built into their present location. Their position of course created a barrier to intruders wishing to scale the Ascending Passage and break into the upper Chambers. But perhaps secretly they are still barricading other tunnels which enter the Ascending Passage at right angles to it. Covington was so convinced of this, he seriously considered having the blocks broken up by his workers. But he was finally dissuaded by the Edgars, who wished to preserve as much of the internal design of the Pyramid as possible.

There is evidence that long ago the Pyramid was partially submerged by mass flooding caused by the rising Mediterranean Sea and Nile River. As one proof of this, we find the presence of sea salt deposits inside the Pyramid. What is fascinating is that we do not find this salt where we would most expect it, in the Pit Chamber, the lowest known room in the Pyramid, but rather it appears in the Queen’s Chamber and its Passage, with small residues existing in the Grand Gallery and Ascending Passage, all at about the one-sixth distance up inside the Pyramid.

What this suggests is that somewhere through the south of the Queen’s Chamber is an unknown direct exit to the outside, through the Pyramid’s south face. In 1836, Col. Howard-Vyse searched for this exit by digging a 30-foot hole inward at a distance of 24 feet westward of the center of the south side, but failed to find it.

During the great floods, the known northern passage entrance to the Pyramid appears to have remained sealed tight, and kept the lower Chambers and Passages dry. But the other, southern secret entrance, leading to the Queen’s Chamber, must not have remained intact, and allowed water to leak into this area of the Pyramid.

There may be other hidden Chambers situated along the entranceway, which may or may not have received some water damage by salt incrustation. One of these Chambers may be that which researcher-author Wing Anderson cryptically referred to in the 1940’s when he wrote:

“The archives of the Essenes contain what purports to be a true account of the Great Pyramid and its builders. In this history we find the statement made that within the south (undiscovered) room of the Pyramid records were stored covering thousands of years. Gathered from all inhabited sections of the earth, these records cover data pertaining to weather, wars, races and other items used by the prophets in predicting the future. This room is protected by unseen forces.”

It is noteworthy that some salt incrustations also exist on the large inclined stones which form the topmost ceiling cap of the air space chambers above the King’s Chamber. Was there also leakage here, at about the 230-foot level—near the highest level the flood waters reached on the outside of the Pyramid, the evidence for which was seen in the erosion marks on the casing stones, before they were stripped off—through yet another passage so far undetected?

In 1986 a French team using micro gravimeter equipment detected small hidden cavities behind the west wall of the horizontal passage to the Queen’s Chamber. They were permitted to bore a one inch diameter hole and found the cavity to be filled with fine-grained sand. After these initial findings, no further penetration work was permitted.

In 1987 a Japanese team, using an electromagnetic wave method to search for cavities, identified a cavity under the horizontal passage to the Queen’s Chamber several feet beneath and extending for about 5 feet in depth. They also pinpointed a cavity behind the western part of the northern wall of the Queen’s Chamber.

In 1988 another Japanese team, lead by Professor Yoshimura, found a cavity off the passageway very near to where the French team had drilled. They also located a large cavity behind the northwest wall of the Queen’s Chamber, and a sign of a tunnel outside of the Pyramid, which appears to run underneath the structure. Before further work could be accomplished, however, Egyptian authorities intervened and halted the project.

A tell-tale sign that something more may be present is the fact that where these cavities are located there are two floor stones in the Passageway with joints perpendicular to the rest of the joints in the floor stones. This type of indicator is also found at the junction of the Descending and Ascending Passageways, showing where the two Passage systems diverge. Do the perpendicular joints in the Queen’s Passage mark where another similar divergence of Passages, one of them beginning behind the wall?

An interesting observation made by pyramid researchers Bill Kerrill and Kathy Goggin is that neither the Antechamber nor the King’s Chamber fall beneath the apex point of the Pyramid, but instead together form a right angle around it. The two researchers suggest there is another room, measuring 35 feet square, situated adjacent to the King’s Chamber on its northern side, with the apex falling in its very center.

Other sources, of ancient origin, suggest that instead of a room, there is a great shaft running through the core of the Pyramid, from just below the apex down to the very foundation, along which energies of an unknown spectrum were once conducted. Significantly, none of the known Chambers or Passages fall directly under the apex point. They all lie at a certain distance east of the north-south meridian of the Pyramid.

The possibilities of yet another hidden vault, this one located somewhere between the King’s Chamber and the Queen’s Chamber, has long been suspected. Sir Flinders Petrie once had the multi-ton Stone Box raised off the Chamber floor 1.5 inches and rested on a piece of flint stone, to see if it possibly covered a secret tunnel leading downward. Someone before him had already performed this task, excavating a small hole beneath the Box, which was then filled with rubble after finding nothing.

Less scrupulous explorers in earlier centuries also sought after hidden stairwells, and left their marks of gaping holes in the King’s Chamber floor, particularly along the north wall toward the northwest corner, where several blocks were removed, one of which can still be found in the room, up-ended, looking like a small altar stone.

The search for another Chamber below the King’s Chamber has continued, and led to one of the most important experiments to be performed inside the Great Pyramid in the last century, conducted by Stanford Research International in September, 1977. SRI tested an instrument called a sonic transducer or acoustic sounder which, operating at 4000 Hz., can beam sound waves down into rock and can record the presence of empty spaces. Directing the beam down into the masonry from the floor of the Passage connecting the King’s Chamber and the Antechamber, the instrument detected an anomaly or open space 7.25 meters (about 22.2 feet) below. This is at a position roughly one-half the distance between the King’s and Queen’s Chambers.

Recommendations have been made to the Egyptian government to explore the cavity with a bore-scope. A bore-scope involves drilling a 3-inch diameter hole toward the unknown Chamber, then inserting a special miniature remote control TV camera lens and lights, to observe what might be inside.

Another recommendation was to search the floor slope of the Grand Gallery in the area 16.4 meters (about 53.8 feet) from the entrance to the Antechamber, for features which might indicate a covering over a secret Passageway, leading horizontally into the Pyramid, southward toward the anomalous room.

The official SRI Report on the project likewise suggested: “It is now obvious that the unknown chamber or void in the Pyramid might be detectable, even through block construction, from the Grand Gallery. If this is true, then the acoustic sounder may have some use even in the block and mortar parts of the pyramids. Thus more acoustic measurements within the Pyramid are in order.”

There is also the possibility that a secret door may be present in the King’s Chamber itself. In the Chamber all of the stone joints are very tight except in the lower left-hand corner of the west wall. Here the joints are larger and are covered with mortar. This is a good indication that an opening to another Chamber or Passage is behind what has been sealed.

The possibility of other Chambers existing in the vicinity of the King’s Chamber was made very real in 1993 by Rudolf Gantenbrink, a robotics engineer employed by the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo. One of the ongoing problems inside the Great Pyramid was a constant 85% humidity level caused by the high number of tourists daily visiting the interior, each person depositing an average of 20 grams of water from breathing. Gantenbrink helped to successfully clear out the air passages in the King’s Chamber and install a ventilating system to bring in fresh air. In addition, he also built and experimented with a small camera attached to a moveable miniature robot, and sent it a considerable distance up the air shafts to verify that the cleaning process had worked.

A few months later after this initial work, the German engineer, working with California film maker Jochen Breitenstein, built and even more sophisticated robot they called Upuaut 2—named after the Egyptian god whose appellation means the Opener of Ways—and sent it up the southern air passage in the Queen’s Chamber, which had never been explored before. Utilizing a special double track system, miniature lights, TV camera and laser for measuring distances, the robot slowly traveled up the 8-inch by 8-inch wide shaft, going where no human could possibly go.

The robot traveled horizontally for 12 feet, then followed the shaft up a 42 degree angle incline. About 195 feet in—and approximately 50 feet from the Pyramid’s exterior—the rough walls suddenly became highly polished, gleaming with Tura limestone. Then 10 feet beyond this change, the camera picked up a stone door covering the shaft hole, complete with two finely made copper handles on its upper third. The left handle had been broken at some point in the past, and the missing piece was found lying about 6 feet in front of the door stone.

In the 1920‘s British pyramid researcher Morton Edgar had attempted to insert lengths of metal rods up the shaft to determine its length, but had run into a barrier—the stone door. The rod‘s end, pushing against the door, very likely damaged and broke the handle.

The door appears to have been designed to slide up and down, the stone fitting into grooves in each side of the shaft. The door is open slightly at the bottom, allowing air to pass through. There is a small triangular crack in the right-hand corner of the door, The robot’s laser was slipped through the opening, and beams indicated there is a definite space beyond.

In front of the door is a small deposit of debris, which I. E. S. Edwards of the British Museum believes may be organic remains from wood, cloth or a mummy.

Following this initial exploration, Zahi Hawas and the Supreme Council of the Department of Antiquities asked the National Geographic Society and the iRobot company of Boston to design an improved robot only 5 inches tall, called the Pyramid Rover, to be sent through the shaft to take a look at what exists beyond the door.

On September 17, 2002, with the whole world watching via live television transmission, the new robot was inserted into the air shaft, and once reaching the stone door, carefully drilled a three-quarters inch hole through it and sent in an optical fiber with light. To everyone’s surprise, the camera revealed the presence of a second door 7 inches beyond the first one, this one made of unpolished limestone with no handles, and having several cracks in it.

A few days after the program, the Pyramid Rover was sent into the northern air shaft in the Queen’s Chamber. Previously, in 1872 shaft discoverer Wayman Dixon, early twentieth century researcher Edgar Morton, and more recently engineer Gantenbrink all failed in their attempts to fully penetrate into it, because of sharp turns in its construction due to the shaft’s avoidance of the Grand Gallery. The Rover was able to maneuver passed these turns, but was stopped after a total of 208 feet, confronted by another stone door, identical to the one in the southern air shaft, only with both its copper handles intact.

It appears that this twin door is located at exactly the same level as the first door is in the other shaft. Since their designs are so similar, another limestone barrier, like in the southern air shaft, is suspected to exist beyond.

The questions which remain unanswered are, what was the purpose of the stone doors and other barriers? If they were moved up and down, are there other Chambers above each set of doors from which the doors were manipulated? And why are there only doors present in the Queen’s Chamber air shafts and not in those of the King’s Chamber air shafts? As of this writing, plans are now underway to attempt to clean out and penetrate through the south shaft from the outside. Proposals and designs have also been received by the Egyptian Antiquities Department for smaller yet more advanced robots created by universities in Singapore and Hong Kong that will penetrate the southern shaft and bring back the debris in front of the first door to determine its composition and age.

Report Update—Is a Spiral Tunnel Yet to be Found Inside the Great Pyramid?

Over the last two decades French engineer Jean-Pierre Houdin has done practically nothing else but eat, sleep and work on developing computer graphics in his attempt to solve the mystery of how the Great Pyramid was built. His final results contain a number of ingenius construction solutions that no one else has thought of before. But serious questions remain about his design interpretations. Has Houdin used the right facts to come up with inaccurate conclusions?

The French engineer visualizes that the Giza monument was built in three major stages:

In stage one, a straight ramp was slowly constructed, up which the ancient laborers dragged over a million and a half blocks that went into the Pyramid as far as the one-third level of the King’s Chamber. Also at this time, as the structure slowly rose, the beginning of an internal spiral ramp was begun, twisting around just inside the outer edge of the core masonry.

In stage two, the peculiar design of the Grand Gallery, Houdin believes, was utilized for operating a series of counterweights and control mechanisms to help move the huge granite blocks—some weighing over seventy tons each—that were positioned into the ceiling and relieving chambers above the King’s Chamber.

Finally, in stage three, the blocks that had been employed to build the outside straight ramp were now taken away one by one and moved up through the internal spiral ramp. These blocks, probably over a million in number, were used to construct the upper two-thirds of the Pyramid. As the monument continued to rise skyward, the inside spiral ramp also continued to lengthen all the way to the apex. By the time of the Pyramid’s completion, the outer straight ramp was completely dismantled and removed, while the inside spiral ramp—its purpose now finished— was sealed shut so that no evidence of its existence was visible from the outside. And, Houdin is convinced, it remains there hidden to this day, waiting to be rediscovered.

As impressive as this scenario may be, it has a few fundamental flaws. Let us examine it more closely, stage by stage.

In the first portion of the Pyramid’s building process, Houdin relies on the conservative historians’ old standby, the straight ramp, to explain how the stone blocks were moved and placed into the monument. Other engineers have long discounted the use of such a ramp, because even at a modest gradient of seven percent, such an incline would have put too much strain on the existing labor force in hauling multi-ton loads uphill on a continuous basis over a long period of time.

Then there was the added problem that, as the ramp extended farther out as the Pyramid got higher, the ramp width at the top would have gotten increasingly narrower, leaving less and less room for the hundreds of haulers to be able to adequately maneuver their individual stones. Even with Houndin’s dependence on such a ramp for only building up to the one-third level, nevertheless the major problems of utilizing such an incline would still have become very apparent.

The engineer’s solution as to what happened to the straight ramp—that its constituent blocks eventually became incorporated into the Pyramid itself—is a clever idea, and it helps to solve a major mystery for which conservative Egyptologists have had no answer. If a straight ramp was utilized, the experts have never found any trace of it on the Giza plateau. With Houdin’s theory, at least, he proposes one possible solution as to what may have happened to it.

But there is, in fact, an even simpler answer that also fits the facts, which is this—there never was a straight ramp to begin with. If no evidence of a ramp was ever detected, it is because no such ramp was ever employed in the building of the Great Pyramid.

In the second stage of construction, Houdin tries to explain that the reason for the unique design of the Grand Gallery was because its only purpose was to aid in moving and raising the huge granite blocks that were placed above the King’s Chamber.

The shortcoming here with this explanation is that, as a typical engineer, Houdin approaches the design features of the Great Pyramid from a purely functional viewpoint. Houdin himself admits that he has no background in ancient Egyptian history, art, religion or mythology. His very first visit to the Pyramid did not take place until long after he completed his theories. As a result, a whole dimension of essential architectural symbolism based on the complexities of Egyptian belief systems is missing from his consideration and computation. In reality, there are any number of other purposes to the design features of the Grand Gallery that have nothing to do with functionality from an exclusively engineering perspective.

What aspect of modern Egyptology Houdin unfortunately does embrace is the prevailing conservative belief that the Pyramid was nothing more than a royal tomb. Any alternative concepts—for example, that the monument was instead used for other more religious purposes—are not even considered, and other more expansive design possibilities are ignored.

As for the idea of using the Grand Gallery for a counterweight mechanism, there is one basic problem that emerges—and one that once again conservative historians have relied on but for which there is no proof. In Houdin’s own video graphics of the supposed counterweight system, we are shown hundreds of virtual laborers grappling with huge virtual ropes that are pictured as being a yard or two in diameter and extending hundreds of feet in length. From an engineering standpoint, this would have been the only type of rope that could have had the capacity of handling the tremendous weights of the granite blocks, without stretching, unraveling and breaking.

However, from an archaeological perspective we have to ask, where would all this rope have come from? When diggers opened the boat pit discovered on the south side of the Great Pyramid, they found preserved within a few samples of much smaller rope remains four thousand years old that had been used for Khufu’s solar boat rigging. But nothing like the proposed super-ropes for hauling large stone blocks have ever been found, and for good reason. The land of the Nile has never had an abundant supply of fibrous plant material to manufacture huge ropes on a scale that would have been necessary for moving massive numbers of stone blocks, especially in the exertion of pulling large weights up an incline. In the last analysis, Houdin’s virtual mega-ropes exist only in cyberspace, but never were they present in the past real world of the ancient Egyptians.

Now we come to the most intriguing part of Houdin’s construction theory that is the crownpiece of his third stage of building—the existence of an internal spiral ramp up through the entire length of the inside of the Pyramid monument. He pictures it as a very long corridor that when completed was perhaps a mile in length. It snaked its way upward at a seven percent gradient, making as many as fourteen turns around the circumference, just inside the first layers of core masonry. According to Houdin’s proposed reconstruction, the corridor’s floor would have to have been wide enough to accommodate the width of the stone blocks being moved, as well as the workers handling them. The ceiling of the ramp corridor was most likely corbelled, which means the walls were inclined inward and high.

But here again we are confronted with several difficulties in this interpretation. First of all, a ramp by any other name is still a ramp. A seven percent gradient, and extending a mile long, would impose nearly impossible feats of strength and endurance on the part of the stone haulers. Add to this the cramped quarters of surrounding walls on either side through which to try to maneuver large blocks using hundreds of men. Then envision this activity going on in an enclosed atmosphere with hardly any light and little air, and the working conditions would have worsened even more, to the point of being impractical.

A third obstacle becomes apparent when we consider how to turn the blocks around the corner at the end of each incline and into the beginning of the next incline going up. Houdin tries to get around this problem by proposing that, at each corner turn, the corridor opened to an outside ledge where the laborers— using a system of wooden levers and supports—turned the stones ninety degrees before taking them back inside through the next corridor length. However, no evidence for any such openings exist in the present masonry. One possibility was thought to be what is called the Niche, which can be seen today about two-thirds of the way up the Pyramid’s northeast corner. But a closer inspection of the Niche by several observers produced no results of any opening.

There would also have been the problem, toward the end of the corridor circuit near the apex of the Pyramid, where the ramp gradient would have had to have been more sharply inclined in order to avoid the corridor height from the turn below. Calculations show that, at this point, the incline would have been far too steep for any stones to even be budged out of place.

While it would not have worked as a ramp, nevertheless there is evidence that Houdin’s proposed spiral corridor may actually exist. In 1986, a French team of experts conducted a microgravimetric survey of the Great Pyramid, which was much like taking an x-ray of the inside of the monument. Examining the structure from above, Houdin’s compatriots detected a definite internal spiral design, looking exactly like an empty tunnel twisting around near the edge of the exterior.

As a possible corroboration, modern-day digital images show the faint outline of gradual spiral turns seen across the face of the Pyramid when the core masonry is observed in certain angles of light.

There are also reports of animals—indigenous cats, dogs and foxes—which occasionally suddenly appear out of gaps among the blocks high up on the monument’s outer surface. These creatures are not observed climbing up the exterior beforehand, so they must have reached these heights by an unknown means from somewhere inside.

What we can conclude from all this is that, yes, there exists a forgotten spiral tunnel within the Pyramid, but no, it was not used as a ramp as Houdin suggests. Significantly, in a number of ancient Egyptian temples—such as at Edfu and Dendera—there are hidden spiral staircases that were utilized by the officiating priests and priestesses as procession ways. During certain rituals and ceremonies such features served the purpose of secretly interconnecting several sacred chambers within the sanctuary, located on different levels.

Similarly, especially if we regard the Great Pyramid as also once having been a form of temple, a long spiral corridor that traversed the entire length of the monument very likely connected its many interior chambers. The high priests, priestesses and initiates—who performed their special transformational processes within the Pyramid—secretly passed through this lost corridor as part of their religious functions over many ages of time.

. Will this forgotten tunnel be opened again one day soon? Where will it lead and what secrets could it reveal?

[Copyright 2009. Joseph Robert Jochmans. All Rights Reserved.]