Forgotten Ages Research

The Great Pyramid—The Enigma of Its Interior

Report Topics:

• A comprehensive tour of the inside of the Great Pyramid with a focus on the mysterious architectural designs of the True Entrance, the Descending Passage, the Pit Chamber, the Well Shaft and Grotto, the Granite Plugs, the Ascending Passage, the Queen’s Chamber, the Grand Gallery, the Great Stone Step, the Antechamber, the King’s Chamber, the Stone Box and the Relieving Chambers
• Evidence for secret passages, chambers and hidden entrances yet to be found throughout the monument

Full Report:

Inside the 85 million cubic feet of masonry in the interior of the Great Pyramid an intricate system of passageways and rooms were constructed, which are as much a mystery as is the outer aspects of the structure itself. Conservative historians are of the opinion that the rooms were meant to contain the mummy and treasures of a Pharaoh, but the hard evidence for this is decidedly lacking. What is intriguing is the very real possibility that other rooms, sealed and still intact after thousands of years, may still remain hidden in the Pyramid. And it will be these rooms that will someday reveal to us the knowledge of a lost advanced civilization, the same civilization that once built the Pyramid before known history.

In the year 820 Caliph Al Mamoun, the son of Caliph Haroun Al Raschid of A Thousand and One Arabian Nights, learned of the many legends recorded by the Copts and medieval Arabs which told of fabulous wealth and secret knowledge locked away in the silent Pyramid of Giza. His curiosity aroused, he ordered a large number of local workmen to begin the task of finding an entranceway into the monument’s interior. The legends told that an entrance existed on the north side of the Pyramid, and there the search started, on the middle of the face.

As was later discovered, the legend is correct, an entrance was indeed placed 49 feet above the north base. But the Pyramid builders, anticipating the possibility of future vandalism, purposely located the entrance 24 feet off from the center of the face, so that it would not be so easily detected. The trick worked, because Al Mamoun’s men never found it. Instead, they had to settle on choosing a likely spot at about the fifth course of masonry, and commenced the arduous task of breaking the limestone rock with repeated applications of vinegar poured on fire, followed by blows of hammers, wooden rams and chisels.

After about six months, the workmen had penetrated no more than 92 feet inward. Tired and discouraged, they threatened to mutiny and quit. But one day as they were chiseling away they heard a large stone fall with a heavy thud somewhere inside the Pyramid near them, and with renewed vigor began removing rock in the direction of the sound.

Their efforts were rewarded. In a few days they broke into what is today called the Descending Passage, the entrance tunnel into the interior of the Pyramid.

Had Al Mamoun studied certain Greek and Roman sources, he would have learned that the entrance was known in classical times. It is located at the level of the 15th course of masonry, or in the casing stone layers what must have been the 16th or 17th layer, before their dismantling. Strabo, in about 24 B.C.E., described how the outer casing stone which concealed the entrance was designed. It was really a moveable stone flap, self-replacing, and finished on its outer surface so as to perfectly resemble the surrounding casing stones. It fit tightly into the opening, and turned about on pivot, with compensating weights to counteract. The stone could not be opened except with a strong push at one end followed by a pull at the other, powerful enough to lift it out and up from the face. This intriguing door unfortunately was among the thousands of casing stones removed and re-carved after the Cairo earthquake of 1356.

Immediately behind the swivel door there once existed a small chamber. Because of the removal of the casing stones, and subsequent despoiling by vandals, this chamber is now completely open to the elements. On the south wall is the entranceway into the Descending Passage, surmounted by a massive limestone block estimated to weigh about 50 tons. It is topped by a small lintel block, which in turn is capped with an unusual arch composed of 4 angled blocks that are between 30 and 40 tons each. The arch and lintel together form a triangle with a base length of 10.5 feet and side lengths of 7.5 feet.

Within this triangle is a most peculiar wave pattern carved into it. W. Marshall Adams, at the turn of the last century, proposed that this pattern, now much worn by wind and time, may have been the hieroglyph of two hills and a valley, which means “door of the horizon.” At certain angles of sunlight, however, and probably the way it was seen originally inside the chamber when the swing door was opened, the pattern takes on the appearance of a large eye.

It has in fact more than once been called the “Eye of the Pyramid,” and may have been the inspiration of the All-Seeing Eye seen in Masonic symbology, today found in the Great Seal of the United States and appearing on every dollar bill.

Deep within the recess of the Eye is a very strange tetragram or series of four symbols, which are not Egyptian or of any known language.

Beyond the casing stone door and chamber were once supposed to be a series of ten or more doors made of heavy wood and all with locks, interspersed along the Descending Passage. There are in fact ten holes evenly spaced along the upper end of the Passage, on the east wall, into which the doors were attached. But when the Arabs broke in, they reported finding no such wooden doors remaining. That Strabo and his contemporaries indeed knew about the Pyramid’s secret entrance and doorways was confirmed when Al Mamoun’s men finally arrived at the Pit Chamber, at the end of the Descending Passage. There they found the names of Greek and Roman citizens scrawled on the walls—the graffiti left by tourists of another age.

The Descending Passage slopes down from the outside entrance at an angle of 26 degrees 17 minutes and 37.4 seconds for a distance of 345 feet, then levels off for 31 feet before ending at the Pit Chamber. The Passage measures only 47 inches high and 42 inches wide, making the climb up and down somewhat difficult.

The first 150 feet of the Passage is made of highly polished limestone, while the remaining portion is of harder limestone, finally descending into the bedrock on which the Pyramid was constructed. Sir Flinders Petrie, in his survey of the Pyramid more than a century ago, discovered that the Passage had been made with a remarkable precision. A side to side measurement varied only by one-fourth of an inch over 345 feet from a perfectly straight line, and from top to bottom by one-ten of an inch over the same length. Within the first 150 feet—the area of polished limestone—the precision was within one-fiftieth of an inch in either direction.

The upper portion of the Descending Passage is also distinguished by having two small catwalks on either side of the Passage, measuring 7 inches wide and 1 foot high, and extending down to three small steps on the Passage floor, the third located below the entrance to the Ascending Passage. Each step is, respectively, 3 inches, 7 and one-third feet, and 5 and a quarter feet long, averaging 8 inches high.

About 40 feet in from the entrance, the Passage east and west walls are marked by a heavily scored line, perpendicular to the angle of the Passage. Immediately above the scored line are two vertical joints in the masonry.

Another curious feature exists near the end of the Descending Passage, in the level tunnel near the entrance to the Pit Chamber. Here, within 4 and three-quarters feet of the doorway, is a niche or recess on the right side 6 feet ling and 3 feet deep, that is the same height as the Passage.

At the bottom of the Descending Passage is the Pit Chamber, sometimes called the Upside Down Chamber, because while its root is finished and polished, the floor is not. Those who believe the Pyramid was built as a tomb, think the Pit Chamber was meant as a blind or decoy for would-be robbers. But this does not adequately explain why only the roof of the Chamber is finished. The Pit Chamber in reality constitutes a remarkable engineering feat because in its construction nearly 2,000 tons of material had to be excavated from the bedrock and removed.

The room is located 100 feet below the Pyramid’s base and measure 27 feet from north to south, 46 feet east to west, and 16.5 feet at its greatest height.

The west end of the Chamber is dominated by a roughly shaped platform from which large rocky protrusions rise, coming within 5.5 feet of the ceiling. The platform is partly divided in two by an irregular aisle cut into it midway along its length.

In the middle of the east side of the Chamber is a peculiarly shaped shaft or pit. Its opening is square, abut 7 feet each way, yet it is not square with the Chamber, but rather at diagonals. This first stage of the pit is about 5 feet deep. At the bottom of the first square hole and in its north corner is another smaller square hole extending 3.5 feet deeper, and approximately 5 feet to the side wide. Finally, below this is a round hole plummeting a depth of over 19 feet, the result of excavations carried out by Italian explorer Caviglia and Englishman Colonel Howard-Vyse in 1817 and 1838 respectively, in search of another secret chamber below. The total depth of the pit at present is thus about 38 feet.

Above the pit shaft on the Chamber south wall, and directly opposite the Descending Passage entranceway on the north wall, is a tunnel 28 inches square that penetrates the rock for 53.5 feet, ending in a blank wall.

Originally, the Pit Chamber was empty and clean, but as a result of excavations carried out by the Arabs through the opened Descending Passage, at various times the Chamber had been blocked up or filled in. When the room was finally and completely cleared out in 1909 by the Edgar brothers, they found in the debris several small fragments of carved green stone of what appears to have been statuettes. Unfortunately, because of the chaotic nature of the depositing of the debris, there is no way of knowing how old these fragments are, of where exactly they came from. No Arab historian reported Al Mamoun’s men finding such statuettes. Either they were a later addition, or the fragments came from Colonel Howard-Vyse’s excavation of the pit, in which case they may date to classical times, when the Greeks and Romans knew of this Chamber and may have worshipped in it.

When Al Mamoun’s workmen clambered down the Descending Passage and found the Pit Chamber bare and empty, they were disappointed and not a little disgruntled that all their work had been for nothing. But tracing their steps back up the Descending Passage, they discovered about 92 feet from the true entrance the stone block that had fallen out and had created the noise they had heard days earlier.

The block was triangle-shaped, and had tumbled out of the ceiling, revealing behind it another passageway, this one going upward, obstructed by a plug of Aswan red granite. Not being able to penetrate the hard granite, the workmen dug around it, into the softer limestone walls of the passage, only to find another granite plug beyond. Finally, after digging 15.5 feet around a total of 3 plugs, the men soon entered the empty passage, called the Ascending Passage.

There is controversy in academic circles today as to just how the plugs were placed in the Passage during the Pyramid construction. Conservative scholars argue that, once the supposed mummy of the Pharaoh was laid to rest in his chamber farther up inside the Pyramid, and all personnel had been evacuated, the plugs were somehow released from below, and they slid down the Ascending Passage to their intended location near the bottom of the Passage. But those who have examined the plugs firsthand report that the plugs are tightly fitted into the Passage, and there is no greater depth at the upper end of the Passage for clearance, allowing them to slide through.

Kingsland reported: “The Granite Plugs are slightly wedge-shaped to prevent them from sliding down, the end of the Passage being similarly shaped to accommodate them. This wedging, however, is only done on the width of the Plugs and Passage to the extent of about 3 inches; the measurement according to Petrie being 38.2 inches at the lower end and 41.6 inches at the upper end. There is evidence that the stones were cemented in, but opinions differ as to whether they were built in originally, or were slid down the Ascending Passage after the structure was finished, having been meanwhile accommodated in the Grand Gallery.

“This is Flinders Petrie’s theory, but I do not think it can be maintained in view of the extremely close fit depth-wise of the stones in the upper portion of the Passage, which, according to his own measurements only allows a clearance of one-tenth of an inch. Mr. Morton Edgar shares my opinion that the granite blocks were built in.”

Andre Pochan adds: “I disagree with Petrie; it is absolutely impossible to slide the three blocks (whose section is, according to the most recent measurements found to equal to, indeed slightly greater than the passage) over a distance of 39 meters; the friction coefficient would moreover unquestionably prevent such an undertaking.”

For all practical purposes, the only conclusion we can come to is the plugs were built into their positions.

The total length of the Ascending Passage is 110 feet, and it is 47 inches high and 41 inches wide. Curiously, it slopes upward at an angle of 26 degrees 15 minutes and 0.2 seconds, or almost the exact same angle the Descending Passage slopes downward from the entrance.

Another feature, first noticed by explorer J. Wayman Dixon in 1872, is that the Ascending Passage walls are composed of odd-shaped block plates that fit together with exact precision, like pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle. Among these plates are what are called 4 girdle stones, each 32 to 33 inches wide, and evenly spaced out with about 206 inches between them, lower end to lower end. Significantly, this is very close to the breadth of the King’s Chamber, situated farther up inside the Pyramid. Strange too are a number of inset stones grouped in two found on both walls of the Passage, which appear to be linked with the girdle stones.

At its upper end, the Ascending Passage opens up into a small area at which point the visitor has a choice of three directions to go: Downward, into what is called the Well Shaft, horizontally along another Passageway leading into the Queen’s Chamber, or continuing on the same upward slope into the Grand Gallery.

The Passage leading into the Queen’s Chamber is 42 feet long, which is smooth for one-third distance, then drops 21 inches to a second floor, which is level with the Chamber’s floor. Originally, the entrance to the Passage appears to have been covered over.

Two lateral walls of the lower landing of the Grand Galley each contain 5 facing holes which once held stone cross-beams, which supported other slabs, and their remains eventually cluttered the bottom of the Well Shaft and the Descending Passage below for several centuries.

At the end of the horizontal Passage is the Queen’s Chamber, measuring 17 by 18 feet long, with a ceiling height at its gabled apex of 20 feet. The level of the Chamber is 80 feet high in the Pyramid, or exactly half the distance between the base foundation and the King’s Chamber--the one-sixth level. The entire Queen’s Chamber is composed of brilliant Tura limestone and was once covered with stucco, giving it a brighter appearance than other Pyramid rooms and tunnels. The roof, however, looks to have been originally painted blue. The sloping roof blocks measure an average of 119 inches from the apex to the walls, and Col, Howard-Vyse, who excavated underneath one of then at the northwest corner, discovered they extend another 21.5 inches on the slope beyond the walls.

Thus the center of gravity for each block is well beyond the face wall, and there is no pressure or arch thrust at the apex. The ceiling blocks are inclined at a mean angle of 30 degrees 26 minutes from the horizontal—closely mirroring the latitudinal degrees of the Pyramid’s location on the Earth. The ceiling apex ridge lies exactly along the Pyramid’s north-south axis.

One major mystery of the Queen’s Chamber focuses on what is called the Niche, carved into the Chamber’s east wall, 3.5 feet deep, 15 feet high, and 5 feet wide at the base, narrowing to less than 3 feet at the top in four corbelled sections. This corbelling effect, also reflected in the Grand Gallery, is not typical of Dynastic Egyptian architecture, and may hark back to a Predynastic and perhaps even prehistoric era, possibly touching upon another, more hidden influence that once helped direct the Pyramid’s construction.

There is evidence someone long ago excavated into the lower portion of the Niche for 16.5 feet distance, but with no results of finding any other chamber or tunnels.

Curiously, the Niche is not placed symmetrically in the center of the east wall, but—taking the mean of the distance of the sides from a plumb-line suspended from the apex of the roof—the center is 25 inches south of the midline. Also, the edges of the Niche were at one time painted blue, matching the ceiling.

The floor of the Queen’s Chamber is today in a roughened state, and there is a projection of stone extending beyond the Chamber walls 1 to 4 inches out and about 1.4 inches high, showing where the original floor height had been. The Arabs of the ninth century, after breaking into the Queen’s Chamber, stripped off the original floor covering, probably in an endeavor to look for secret doorways to other passages. The French engineer Jomard, at the end of the eighteenth century, reported the horizontal Passage to the Chamber, and the Chamber itself, to be littered with broken pieces of stone, which the Italian Caviglia partially cleared out two decades later. Despite this destruction, the roughened floor surface reveals a number of strange markings.

Directly in front of the Niche is a square depression with a slight ridge and stony knob protrusion. Andre Pochan believes this may have once held a small stairway leading into the Niche, with an offering table at the base. Also, spaced along the floor at regular intervals are 5 small holes which may have held posts, 3 to the south and 2 to the north. There are also two prominent holes located at eye level on the north and south walls that are air channels.

When Al Mamoun’s workmen opened the Queen’s Chamber, they found two objects which unfortunately they smashed to pieces in their zeal to find treasures hidden within them, but nothing was reported to have been found that was of any worth to them. Sir Flinders Petrie, in exploring the debris taken from the room, brought to light a number of basalt or black stone fragments which he thought composed a statue which once may have stood in the Niche.

Petrie also quoted the Arab historian Edrisi, who wrote in 1236 that in the Queen’s Chamber once was an empty “stone vessel” not unlike the Stone Box found in the King’s Chamber. It was probably made of Tura limestone, and its broken pieces, along with the floor stones, have long disappeared.

The one thing we do know for certain about the Chamber is that its name, the “Queen’s Chamber,” is really a misnomer, for several reasons. Even if the Great Pyramid had served the purpose of being a tomb, in Pharaonic Egypt the royal consort was never buried with the king, but always in a totally separate and subsidiary tomb or structure. The Arabs who discovered this Pyramid Chamber identified it as being that of a queen, simply because it was their custom to bury women in vaults with gabled ceilings, which this Chamber happens to have. But in fact no woman or queen’s remains were found in the Chamber. It is as empty today of human remains as when Al Mamoun’s men first entered it.

Back to where the Queen’s Chamber Passageway meets the upper end of the Ascending Passage, we find ourselves at the bottom of what is called the Grand Gallery. It is a high and lofty hall which takes one up to the Antechamber and King’s Chamber.

The Gallery’s overall length is 157 feet, and height 28 feet, and the walls rise vertically on either side in 7 courses of polished limestone, each corbelled 3 inches toward the center. Much like the Ascending Passage below, the Gallery slopes upward at 26 degrees 16 minutes and 43 seconds. The roof of the Gallery is composed of 40 blocks which overlap like roof tiles, each overlap being 2 inches deep. This step form prevents the formation of any accumulative pressure on the Gallery from above. Even though these blocks are made of Tura limestone, they have a red-brown hue at their edges, giving the impression being made of Aswan granite instead.

The corbelled walls of the Gallery are also composed of Tura limestone blocks, some of the most massive in size used in the Pyramid. The joints between the blocks are perpendicular to the angle of the Gallery, and though having suffered decay and breakage by despoilers through the course of the centuries, they still exhibit a breathtaking degree of precision.

One early Arab historian remarked concerning the jointing in the Gallery, that it is so fine that the Egyptians had used the precision of a watchmaker.

Just above the third corbel on each wall is a strange groove running the whole length of the Gallery. It is about 5.5 inches above the edge of the corbel, 6 inches wide, and three-quarters of an inch deep. Its lower edge is approximately half the height of the Gallery.

Along the base of both walls of the Gallery are catwalks 2 feet high and 1 and three quarters feet wide, restricting the climber to a path 3.5 feet between them. Each catwalk top surface slopes slightly downward toward the wall by nearly an inch, and contains evenly spaced oblong holes, 28 on the east catwalk and 27 on the west. In the place of where should be the 28th hole on the west wall is the entranceway into the Well Shaft. The catwalk holes, oddly enough, are alternately long and short, on both sides of the Gallery. Each holes averages 10 inches in depth, 6.25 inches wide, but the long holes are over 23 inches in length, while the short ones are 20.5 inches. Curious too is the fact that in the wall above each of these holes is a vertical inset stone 18 inches high and 13 inches across, with a groove deeply cut across each stone.

Finally reaching to the top of the Gallery, one finds a 3 foot stone step which, once negotiated, places the climber on a 6 x 8 foot platform, facing a small entranceway only 41 inches square.

This entranceway leads into what is called the Antechamber, a tiny red-stoned room one can stand up in, with peculiar grooved lines on the wall, which appear as if they once held sliding panels or doors, raised and lowered on a system of ropes and wooden poles. Pochan is of the opinion that the entranceway into the Antechamber was once blocked by a small limestone plug, and that the severe damage inflicted by the Al Mamoun despoilers on the Great Step and Chamber doorway are proof of the tremendous labor and efforts to free the plug, break it up and cast it down the Grand Gallery.

Beyond the 4 and one-third foot long entrance tunnel, in the Antechamber itself which measures nearly 9 feet long, 5 feet wide and 12.5 feet high, we find a strange mixture of both limestone and Aswan red granite. The granite floor does not begin until 13 inches inside the Chamber, and the first block projects a quarter inch above the entrance floor, with another three-quarter inch rise just before going into the King’s Chamber.

The north wall of the Antechamber is simply the other side of the limestone blocks of the upper end of the Grand Gallery, while the south wall is mostly composed of granite, except for one prominent block of limestone at the top. The ceiling is 3 blocks of granite. The side walls are also of granite, with the exception of a space of 21 inches between the north wall and what is called the granite leaf or hanging lintel.

The most intriguing features in the Antechamber, as noted, are the four grooves, each separated from each other by 5 inches, carved into the east and west walls, three of which served as runners for lowering and raising large sliding granite slabs or panels. The first three grooves extend from the floor three-quarters of the way up the walls to within 46 inches of the ceiling, and are 21.5 inches wide and 3.25 inches deep. The fourth groove, located 18 inches from the north wall, is only 16 and three-quarters inches wide, and holds the hanging lintel, which is 13.5 inches across and is composed of two superimposed granite parts, having a fractured appearance.

On the upper portion is a prominent horseshoe-shaped boss measuring 5 x 5 inches and one inch deep, perhaps once used to lift the lintel in place, as a handle. The wall grooves for the lintel extend downward only to within 3.5 feet of the floor, and its solid ends are what holds the lintel in place. Atop the other three wall grooves—those which extend to the floor—are peculiar projections. On the west wall are three semi-circular projections, while on the opposite wall they take the form of flat projections.

As Pochan observed: “There is no doubt that this apparatus was designed to hold three poles 1.5 feet in diameter, the west ends of which were to be inserted in the semi-circular cavities, while their east ends, notched halfway, were to rest on the flat upper surfaces, with their sides wedged between the projections. These poles could not turn—their wood friction against the ropes (which held the sliding stone panels in place) played the major role in temporarily restraining the stone panels.”

The supporting ropes were strung around the poles and then led down the south wall, and here we find four grooves about 4 inches wide and 2 to 3 inches deep located about 6 inches apart, through which the ropes passed. From here the ropes either straddled the undersides of the missing three stone panels, or more likely penetrated through holes drilled into them. They then were tied together at, and operated from, the lintel stone near the entrance.

When Al Mamoun’s intruding workmen removed the limestone plug at the Antechamber entrance, they then came into contact with the three lowered granite panels, in the middle of the Chamber. The ropes which operated the lifting mechanism apparently were no longer in place, so the Arabs, instead of tackling the stones head on, did the next best thing. The dug up above the panels and went around them. The destruction they wrought on the top of the lintel stone and particularly on the lower lip of the south wall is still very much evident today.

Eventually, to gain better access, the workmen broke the stone panels apart at a later time, and had the pieces transported to lower areas of the Pyramid. One piece fell down into the Well Shaft, into a cavity called the Grotto—it is well shaped, is badly battered and has two circular holes drilled into it.

A similar granite stone was found in the Descending Passage a little above the lower end of the Well Shaft—it too had two drilled holes in it.

Another stone Petrie found at the juncture point of the Descending and Ascending Passages, though afterwards it fell to the bottom of the Descending Passage. It was carefully carved, and again, there are the remains of a 4-inch hole through it.

Yet another granite piece lay in the recess of the Passage just before the entranceway into the Pit Chamber. It is worked, but has no hole.

Unfortunately, many of these fragments no longer remain, but were taken out when Baraize and Barsanti subjected the entire monument to a methodical cleaning, between 1917 and 1932.

Having successfully bypassed the Antechamber’s stone panels, the Arabs then stooped down and crawled along another tunnel 8.5 feet long, 41 inches wide and 48 inches high, to see what lay beyond. What they found was the King’s Chamber, in many respects the most unique Chamber in the Pyramid.

After passing through the last doorway, visitors turn to the right to find themselves in the center of a room 34 feet 4 inches long, 17 feet 2 inches wide, and 17 feet 6 inches high, and made entirely of Aswan granite. The walls of the King’s Chamber are, like the Pyramid itself, almost perfectly oriented to the cardinal points. They are built in 5 courses of nearly equal height, slightly over 47 inches, and the blocks exactly totaling 100 in number. Above the entranceway is one block that take up 2 courses in height, or 94 inches and 117.5 inches long, and is estimated to be 45 tons in weight.

The lowest wall course does not end at the floor, but extends below the floor level by more than 5 inches. All the walls are polished, and the joints between the course blocks for the most part are hardly perceptible, coming in contact with the same kind of optical precision we find evident in the casing stones on the Pyramid’s exterior, in the Descending Passage, the Grand Gallery, and elsewhere in the monument.

However, in places in the King’s Chamber, walls and joints have separated due to the pressures being exerted on them from above. The same characteristics can be seen in the 3.5 foot thick floor blocks, which were once smooth, but now are irregular and uneven. The Chamber granite blocks are not so red in hue as they are chocolate-colored. The surfaces have been oxidized over the millennia, and is an indication of great age.

At the top of the Chamber, its ceiling consists of 9 granite beams, from 45 to 63 inches wide and 7 feet deep. They extend about 5 feet beyond the tops of the walls, so that their total length averages 27 feet 8 inches. The largest of these beams has an estimated capacity of 987 cubic feet, which, figuring 165 lbs. per cubic foot, weighs in excess of 73 tons. Curiously, all these roof beams are fractured right across near the southern wall, indicating that the Chamber, as well as the entire Pyramid structure, was subjected to a tremendous earth moment at some time in its past history.

Above these ceiling beams is an air space of 4 feet, then 9 more blocks, another air space, then more blocks—a total of 5 separate air spaces alternating with 5 courses of granite, and topped with a massive gable of limestone. The conservative explanation for this type of ceiling construction was that it was supposed to help support the pressure of over 300 feet of masonry pressing down on the Chamber from above.

But there are curious elements in the architecture and design which suggest this was not its full purpose. First, the Queen’s Chamber is located below the King’s Chamber and offset from it, so that it receives the full pressure of even more weight, 400 feet worth, pressing down upon it from the upper portion of the Pyramid. And yet it possesses no so-called relieving chambers above it.

Second, in the King’s Chamber ceiling complex, the first 4 layers of granite rest on granite supports, but the 5th as well as the topmost gable—which theoretically are receiving the brunt of the weight—lie on soft limestone supports, which today have a crushed and flaked appearance. There must be a special reason why this particular layer of stone is disconnected from the granite circuit of the rest of the structure.

Curious too is the fact that only the undersides of the blocks of every layer were expertly carved and smoothed, while their topsides were left in roughened form, though they are shaped to be thicker toward their centers. Together, they look like a series of huge convex lenses which once focused energy streaming down from above, into the King’s Chamber below. When Colonel Howard-Vyse blasted his way with gunpowder 40 feet up into the upper 4 air spaces between the ceiling stone layers, he discovered all the topsides of the blocks covered up to one-quarter inch with a strange black powdery substance that appeared burnt, as if by the force of some tremendous chemical or heat action to which the granite surfaces had once been subjected.

The lowermost air space is called the Davison’s Chamber after Nathaniel Davison, who discovered it in 1765, after finding and crawling through a small passages to it 28 inches wide by 32 inches high by 20 feet long, entered by way of a crack above the top east course in the Grand Gallery.

Incredibly, the Davison’s air space Chamber was lived in during the 1830’s by the Italian explorer Captain Giovanni Caviglia. Caviglia was well aware of the energies of the ceiling complex and King’s Chamber, for he told Alexander William Crawford (Lord Lindsay) that his studies within included the actions of “magic and animal magnetism,” the power of which on several occasions “nearly killed him.” He felt he was “on the verge of what was forbidden for man to know, and it was only the purity of his intentions which saved him.” He was aware too that his ideas would be considered “strange and unearthly” for his day, and that it would be “highly dangerous to communicate them” to the world not ready for such secrets. True to his word, not long after these few thoughts were shared, Caviglia left the Pyramid and Egypt, and died years later in Paris, without leaving any of his discoveries or experiences in writing.

Just as there are cracks evident in the ceiling beams of the King’s Chamber roof, s too are there fractures in the air space chambers. Kingsland stated:

“In the first Chamber some of the beams in the southwest corner are fractured, and the whole south wall appears to have fallen outward to some extent. The second Chamber also shows some cracks in the southeast beams, but in the higher Chambers the beams appear to be intact, though there are indications in the fourth Chamber that the great core masonry walls between which the Chambers stand have sunk about 3 inches. The sloping limestone beams which form the culminating roof have parted at their junctions at the apex to the extend of from 1 to 1.5 inches.”

There appears to have been a special reason for both the position of the King’s Chamber in the Pyramid, and the dimensions of the Chamber itself. Careful measurements have demonstrated that the floor of the Chamber is within one-half inch of a line precisely marking the one-third level of the Pyramid from the base, a line also on a square which divides the area of the Pyramid exactly in half. Measurements within the Chamber reveal that the width wall diagonal to the room height and wall length creates a 3–4–5 Pythagorean triangle. In the same way, the floor diagonal to the room height creates a 2– square root 5 –3 Pythagorean triangle. Now Pythagoras, considered the father of modern geometry, is supposed to have leaved at least 2,000 years after the Pyramid was built, yet we find his advanced geometric principles preserved in the King’s Chamber.

This indicates whoever constructed the Pyramid knew how to employ geometry far earlier than any other ancient people. In fact, we learn from history that Pythagoras studied mathematics and philosophy in Egypt fro the high priests and priestesses in the Temples of Initiation, before he began teaching his first pupils in the laws of geometry as found in nature. It is more than likely that Pythagoras was not the originator of the geometric sciences as has been claimed, but instead gleaned his knowledge from the Egyptians, who in turn had preserved the ancient knowledge from those who had built the Great Pyramid.

Unhappily, when Al Mamoun’s workmen reached the King’s Chamber, they were not concerned with its beauty of geometric proportions. They were distraught by the fact that here, in the last chamber left to be opened by them, there was no treasure to be found anywhere.

The room was practically bare, except for a Stone Box carved out of a solid block of Aswan red granite, located 4 feet from the north wall, 5 feet 8 inches from the south wall, and 4 feet 8 inches from the west wall. It weighs 3 tons, measuring 7.5 feet by 3.25 feet by 3 and one-third feet, with sides averaging 6.5 inches thick. Its inside resonates to F above and below middle C.

The Box appears to have once had a sliding dovetailed lid, which fit into a 1.5 inch ledge or groove cut into the Box’s sides at its top, and was fixed into place by 3 pins which penetrated the lid and anchored into the 3 dowel-holes on the Box’s western lip.

The severe damage done to the Box’s southeast corner suggests the Arabs broke through the Box at this point, to insert a large pole and gain a leverage for lifting the lid up from its holding pins, and then pulling off the top. What became of the Box lid is not entirely known. It no longer exists in the King’s Chamber, and Arab accounts say it was transported out of the Pyramid as a souvenir for Caliph Al Mamoun. Several medieval Arab historians reported seeing such a relic in the Caliph’s residency at Fostat, in the ninth century.

Once the Box was opened, however, the workmen were in for another severe shock, for inside was no gold and jewel-encrusted royal mummy. Instead, all it contained was a very small amount of black sand or powder, like that found in the ceiling chambers. Here was the place, the exasperated Arab workmen had thought, being the focal point of the entire Pyramid, which should have contained the fabulous treasure and mummy of a forgotten monarch. Yet the Box, like the King’s Chamber, only echoed with a hollow emptiness.

The fact that no human remains or body was ever found in the Pyramid is the best evidence that the Pyramid was not constructed for the purpose of being a tomb. This position is supported by a number of many findings, dealing with the internal design of the Pyramid itself.

First, both the King’s Chamber and the Queen’s Chamber have air shafts leading to them from the outside. In 1872 J. Wayman Dixon noticed a crack in the south wall of the Queen’s Chamber, and upon inserting a long piece of wire, discovered it penetrated inward for a considerable distance quite freely. He ordered his assistant Bill Grundy to break open the crack, and found that behind a 5 inch thick projection of the wall masonry was a long air passage 8 x 8.5 inches square, extending upward at an angle of 38 degrees 28 minutes for a length of 208 feet, opening outside at the 116th course.

Examining the north wall of the Queen’s Chamber, directly opposite the first opening, Dixon discovered a second crack which covered a similar air passage, the same width and height, 175 feet long, angling to the 116th course at 37 degrees 28 minutes. That these air shafts had been open and free was evident from the fact that, first, very fine grained sand that had blown through the cracks was found partially covering the Chamber floor. Second, Dixon brought to light from deep inside the shafts an early Arab bronze grapnel hook with wooden handle, and a small late Egyptian carved gray granite ball weight, both of which had been dropped down the passage from the outside.

In the King’s Chamber, near the center of the north wall is an opening 9 inches square leading into an air shaft 233 feet long and ending at the 260 foot level in the 100th masonry course. John Shae Perring discovered its mouth in 1837, with evidence of an earlier forced excavation forming a small tunnel 3 feet by 2.5 feet in length. At the opposite end, Italian explorer Caviglia broke through the west side of the Antechamber between the north wall and the lintel in 1817 and 1837, to examine the lower length of the air shaft as it passed through the core masonry. He found that it takes several sharp turns to the west, to avoid the Grand Gallery, then rises upward to its destination at an angle of 31 degrees 33 minutes.

As in the Queen’s Chamber, directly opposite the northern shaft in the King’s Chamber o the south wall is a second opening leading to a second shaft. John Greaves, who visited the Pyramid in 1638, reported that the Arabs had already attempted to break into the entrance to this southern air passage, its opening battered and blackened with soot. Curiously, behind the opening is first found a horizontal barrel-shaped cavity 1.5 feet in diameter and 5 feet deep. Beyond, the shaft becomes a 9 x 9 inch square, extending 174 feet in an angle of 45 degrees 14 minutes and 40 seconds, ending like the northern channel at the 100th course.

Now when we look at all other examples of royal Egyptian tombs of the Dynastic era, we find that they were sealed tight, to prevent air from entering and accelerating the decaying process of the body. Open air shafts, on the other hand, suggest the Pyramid Chambers were not meant for the dead, but for the living.

Conservative scholars counter-argue, however, that many Predynastic tombs do contain a hole in the tomb ceiling, in order for the dead person’s Ka or soul consciousness to escape to the Underworld. But if this belief is what is represented in the Pyramid, why then are there two shafts for each Chamber? Why, also, if the shafts were spiritual exits, do they point north and south, when the traditional place for the flight of the soul was in the west? Why, too, were the shafts in the Queen’s Chamber partially blocked with masonry, so that air entered through small cracks, yet the air channels in the King’s Chamber were made to be wide and open? Clearly, the Queen’s Chamber vents acted as a filtering mechanism for air passing through, not an exit for the soul.

The true purpose behind the dual shaft system appears to have been not only to conduct air to the Pyramid Chambers, but to also keep the temperature constant. In the mid-nineteenth century, when the King’s Chamber air shafts were unclogged of the sand and debris which had accumulated in them over the millennia, it was discovered by Col Howard-Vyse that the temperature in the Pyramid leveled and remained at 68 degrees F., regardless of the climate or time of day or night outside. Today, unfortunately, because of the very large number of visitors climbing about inside, and the installation of electric lighting, the temperature constancy no longer is possible. Electric fans have now been placed inside in order to get rid of excessive heat and moisture.

It is not without significance that in the science of metrology, dealing with standards of weights and measures, and in modern electronics, temperature control is critical as a factor in preventing expansion-contraction or energy loss.

Did the Chambers in the Great Pyramid once house highly sophisticated instruments of power, which vibrated only at specific lengths and frequencies, that were super-sensitive to temperature change? May these instruments still be hidden in chambers yet to be discovered within?

Over fifty years ago, mystic author and world traveler Dr. Paul Brunton, writing in A Search in Secret Egypt, offered these further arguments against the tomb theory:

“Why was this presumed coffin placed in a room which is one hundred and sixty feet above the ground level for a burial vault? In fact, it was and is a world-wide custom to dispose of the dead either under or on the ground. Why should that lofty hall, the Grand Gallery, have been built to give access to the King’s Chamber, and built nearly thirty feet high, when a continuation of the Ascending Passage, which is a mere four feet in height, would have served the purpose equally well and entailed much less labor through being far less complicated in construction, than the Grand Gallery itself? Whey was the second room, the so-called Queen’s Chamber, built near the first one? Pharaohs were never laid to rest near their queens, and a single mummy does not need two vaults. Had the Queen’s Chamber contained the conventional wall paintings and inscriptions of Egyptian tombs, its existence as an anteroom (or serdab for the king’s ka spirit) might have been justified, but it is as bare and unornamented as the King’s Chamber. And why should the builders have troubled to ventilate these so-called tombs? It is a point worth repeating: The dead do no breathe.”

It has been argued that the reason why no Pharaoh or treasure was found in the King’s Chamber is because, between the time the Pharaoh was entombed and the time Al Mamoun’s men broke in, tomb robbers must have entered the Pyramid secretly and emptied it. How this could have been accomplished, however, is an unexplained mystery. When the Arabs found the Ascending Passage, you remember, they were confronted by stone plugs which had been built into place, and had not been disturbed. Since the plugs occur at a level 17 feet above the base of the Pyramid, and the King’s Chamber is at the 160-foot level, this means the plugs had to have been placed into position before the King’s Chamber was built, so that, once the King’s Chamber was sealed shut as the Pyramid construction rose around and above it, there was no further access by any known physical means to the Chambers via the Ascending Passage.

One suggested alternate route for would-be tomb robbers of the King’s Chamber might have been the Well Shaft. The Well Shaft, recalling our earlier tour through the Pyramid, is found at the beginning of the Grand Gallery, near the juncture point of the Ascending Passage and the Passageway to the Queen’s Chamber.

This Shaft is considered by scholars to be a curiosity all to itself, because unlike any of the other finely constructed passages, the Shaft was very roughly made, in places cut through the masonry after the courses were completed, and descends sharply down for a good part at a vertical angle. Halfway along its length is a small cavern-like chamber called the Grotto. From the Grotto the Shaft continues downward, sloping toward the south and west, and finally exits into the Descending Passage, only a few feet from the entrance to the Pit Chamber.

The reason why Al Mamoun’s men did not find the exit way is because it was plugged with sand and pebbles and carefully covered over, and was not discovered until 1817, by explorer Caviglia.

The conservatives propose that this Well Shaft was a tunnel dug by tomb robbers, by which they penetrated into the Pyramid’s upper Chambers, and ransacked the Pharaoh’s body and wealth. But there are several key points which dictate against this theory:

A. Why should the robbers have gone to great length at hiding the Shaft exit with a covering once their job of emptying the Pyramid had been completed? What is more, the covering revealed the same expert skills of shaping stone exhibited in the construction of the rest of the Descending Passage, which is why it took so long to find the secret exit. In other words, the covering was put in place during the construction of the Pyramid by its builders, and not afterward, by tomb robbers of a later age.

B. Until 1893, most of the Well Shaft was filled with broken stones, sand and pebbles to a depth of 133 feet. The distribution of this debris indicated the Shaft was filled from above, and not from below, as would have been the case if the robbers had exited from the Shaft through the Descending Passage, and had tried to choke up the Shaft behind them. And what, exactly, would have been the purpose of that, to begin with?

C. Even though the Well Shaft is only a rough tunnel, the fact that it exactly connected two diverse Passages through almost 250 feet of masonry and bedrock indicates engineering abilities commensurate only to the feats of the Pyramid builders themselves.

D. At the beginning of the Grand Gallery, there is a part of the ramp stone missing which covered the hole of the Well Shaft. A fragment of stone still adheres to the adjoining stone, held by a cemented joint. The problem is, if the robbers had dug upwards and forced their way through the floor, what happened to the broken ramp stone pieces? When the Arab intruders arrived on the spot, they found no chips, no loose stones, nor even a pile of dust, only a clean-cut hole leading down into the depths.

Why, after supposedly breaking their way into the Grand Gallery, would the robbers have expended time and energy to sweep the floor and leave it neat and tidy, taking the sweepings with them down the Shaft?

Moreover, as Pochan observed: “The mouth of the shaft in the Gallery has sides that are very well cut, quite as good as the dressing of the Gallery itself.” Kingsland was convinced: “My examination of the stonework at the entrance to the Shaft in the Grand Gallery led me to conclude that it was an original feature of the construction.” Again, this is indicative not of the work of robbers, but of the Pyramid builders.

E. Then there is the question of just what size and kinds of objects were supposed to have been removed by way of the Well Shaft. At its narrowest point, the Shaft is a little less than 3 feet in diameter, which is barely enough for a small built man to fit through. But what about the Pharaoh’s treasure, which surely would have included large statues, vases, furnishings, weapons and boxes of precious metals, etc.? Are we to believe these were deliberately broken up into small pieces, to fit down the Shaft? And what about the mummy? Why should it have been shredded to pieces, and removed?

When archaeologists have uncovered the underground tombs of the Pharaohs that they know were broken into by robbers, they invariably find the unmistakable signs of vandalism. The robbers broke pottery to extract the wealth within, jewels were pried off and gold leafing stripped from wooden furniture, and mummies were torn open for the gold amulets in their wrappings. But the pottery, the wood, and the pieces were left behind, strewn about.

The robbers, working against time, were ever fearful of being discovered and were thus only interested in what they could quickly find of value. The rest was of no use to them.

Yet in the King’s Chamber in the Pyramid, the Arabs found not a single artifact, not so much as a potsherd, a splinter of wood or a bandage wrapping. The room was completely spotless. It is far easier to assume the Chamber had always been empty, then try to surmise the existence of tomb robbers who were enterprising enough to reduce a king’s fortune (as well as the king himself) to 3-foot pieces, and then leave the Chamber with a “good housekeeping seal” of cleanliness.

Associated with these points is the curious fact that when Al Mamoun’s men entered the King’s Chamber, they found the Stone Box sealed, with its lid in place and pinned down. Why, if robbers had broken open the Box to retrieve its treasures, would they have taken time and effort to close it again?

F. Still another significant point carefully observed by Al Mamoun’s workmen as they explored the Pyramid was that nowhere, except in the Descending Passage and Pit Chamber, was there evidence of black soot on the ceiling walls, before their own torches began leaving their marks. As we noted earlier, the Descending Passage and Pit Chamber had been visited by tourists in classical times, so the finding of soot in these places is understandable. But the fact that no soot existed in any of the upper Chambers before the Arabs broke in, proves that they were the first intruders to enter since the most ancient of times.

G. It is also very significant to note that when the Arab chronicler Telmahre visited the Pyramid in 830, only a decade after Al Mamoun’s work party broke into the monument, the chronicler indicated that the Pit Chamber and lower Descending Passage were completely blocked with broken stonework which had come from opening the ways through the Ascending Passage, the Queen’s Chamber and the Antechamber far above. Since we know the Caliph’s men originally entered into the Pit Chamber unhampered by any obstructions, this means the broken stones were the result of their subsequent handiwork alone, and not of anyone before them.

Had the upper Chambers been entered at any time before the ninth century break-in, the Arabs would have found the Descending Passage already blocked with debris.

H. Finally, about 300 feet to the east of the Great Pyramid, there exists a series of underground tunnels which match almost exactly the configuration of the various Passages and Chambers in the Pyramid. Even the mysterious angle 26 degrees found in the Descending and Ascending Passages, and the Grand Gallery, can be seen faithfully duplicated in the corresponding tunnel system. These ancient excavations are thought to have been made before the Pyramid’s construction, and served as an architect’s trial run and perhaps the model during the building project.

What is noteworthy is that the Well Shaft is also represented in the tunnel system. Here, it is clear the tunnel Shaft was made to determine the point of impact in the rock of the end of the main tunnel, and this also probably was one of the major functions of the Well Shaft in the final Pyramid layout. The orientation of the entire Pyramid monument was very likely based on the critical angle of the Descending Passage pointing toward the celestial pole, and it was thus essential for the builders to be cognizant of the target point at the lower end of the Passage during the entire course of excavation directed toward it. Locating the target by a simple shaft extending down to it from above would have solved the problem.

What this tells us is the Well Shaft was designed as an integral part of the Pyramid interior by its builders, with a definite purpose in mind. It therefore can in no way be explained, as conservative historians claim, as a later addition made by robbers of another age.

The trial tunnel system close to the Pyramid also tells us something else very important. Had the configuration of Pyramid Passages and Chambers been meant to house a tomb and precious treasure, then surely the tunnel system mapping out this configuration would have been destroyed soon after the Pyramid was completed, so that the secret could not be found. Instead, however, the tunnels were only superficially buried. It was as if the true intention of the Pyramid was not to hide anything but to preserve something that could be revealed at a later time.

What that “something” was is not hard to figure out. A society that could build the Pyramid, a structure we today could not begin to duplicate, would have a lot to offer us in the form of advanced knowledge. It took our civilization the first thousand years of our existence just to find the front door and three small Chambers. We are still somewhat in the dark as to what purpose these Chambers served, though we can be certain that they were not necessarily meant to hold anything. Their secret lies in what once happened within, and in the configuration and dimensions of the Chambers themselves. But beyond this, could there be other Chambers, still yet to be found elsewhere in the Pyramid, that do contain writings and artifacts about an advanced wisdom we seek? And what will they tell us once we find them?

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