The classical story of the discovery of the upper chambers inside the Great pyramid at Giza is well known. In the ninth century an Arab governor of Cairo, known as the Caliph al Ma'mun, decided to see for himself what lay inside the Great Pyramid (Khufu pyramid) and began to bodily excavate a tunnel through the casing and core blocks with hammers and chisels. Fortuitously for the Caliph, the workers who were busy tunneling shook the structure so much that the capstone fell off the end of the ascending passage.
The resonating crash was heard by the workers, who dug in that direction and found not only the descending passage, but also the ascending passage and all the upper chambers in the pyramid. After thousands of years lying undisturbed deep inside the Great pyramid, the King's and Queen¹s chambers were opened at last and their treasure would soon belong to the Caliph.
But, as the story goes, there was no booty; apparently this most ancient and precious of cupboards was absolutely bare. There were not only no burial artifacts, but also no burial and no inscriptions either! The first thought to cross the mind of the Caliph must have been that the tomb had been robbed, but how? Even if the secret Well Shaft deep inside the pyramid had been found at this stage, it is hardly a suitable tunnel through which to strip a wealthy burial chamber totally bare. So where was all the loot? The Caliph and his excavators must have not only been very exasperated, after all their work, but mystified too.
Fig 1 Great pyramid.
Fable?
Are we so sure that this is what really happened, just over one millennia ago? Are we simply complacent because this it what has been taught to us by respected authorities for centuries? Perhaps it merely easier to agree with the established consensus of opinion, rather than thinking positively and laterally about the problem.
Fortunately, there are a few individuals out there, who are more than happy to challenge a whole raft of classical myths; and so it was one day that a short e-mail arrived in Ralph Ellis' in-box from a like-minded colleague, Mark Foster. Mark had an idea that had been bothering him for some time and he wanted to throw it around a bit. A quick read convinced Ralph that it was a highly original idea and definitely worth some further thought. After a few debates here and there, the following alternative scenario to the classical story developed, which is quite attractive in many respects. The new explanation not only answers some irritating puzzles, but it also poses some interesting and fundamental questions in return.
As Mark explained, the basic problem with the classical explanation was that Ma'mun's tunnel is rather too accurate for comfort, it tracks into the pyramid in a direct line for the all important junction between the descending and ascending passageways. It is often cited that Ma'mun had to turn the tunnel sharp left to discover the original passageways, a fact that Ralph and Mark had in the back of their minds when they first visited the Great Pyramid. But as Ralph and Mark ambled down the forced tunnel, they were both equally rather mystified, because the left turn cited in the literature could not be found! Having backtracked the tunnel and tried again, that left turn seemed to be no more than a slight widening of the tunnel at this point. In actual fact, the diggings were almost right on their target. So how did this happen, was Ma'mun just lucky and happened to pick the right spot? Did he have an idea of where to go to?
There is also the problem of why Ma'mun was tunneling inside the pyramid in the first place. Not only was the presence of the true entrance to the pyramid well known in classical times but also people were also aware of the descending passage and the subterranean cavern at the very bottom of the pyramid. Strabo says of the original entrance to the Great Pyramid: "The Great Pyramid, a little way up on one side, has a stone that may be taken out, which being raised up there is a sloping passage to the foundations."1
Strabo seems to be describing a door made of stone that is movable in some way, it can be moved upwards and outwards at the same time. This sounds like a hinged flap arrangement, with the hinge at the top of the stone. Strabo was clearly familiar with the internal layout of the lower portions of the pyramid, he calls the rough hewn hole there the foundations rather than the more obvious term of chamber and he is also familiar with the form that the entrance stone took.
Sir Flinders Petrie backed up this quotation with a detailed study of the entrances to the Vega (Bent) pyramid, the only pyramid that still has the doorways around the entrance intact. He found that on either side of the entrance, there were holes cut opposite each other, about 9cm in diameter by 14cm deep. These holes were just inside the entrance and only 15cm from the top of the passage. Petrie, not unreasonably, interpreted these as being the hinge sockets to swing the stone door from.
Behind these sockets, the passageway contained more door sockets. These were smaller vertical sockets, for a very lightweight door, perhaps made of wood and presumably to keep out the wind-blown sand
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