The Secret Chamber of Osiris: Lost Knowledge of the Sixteen Pyramids (10 page)

7. PYRAMID SECURITY

Within the Great Pyramid of Khufu there are a number of curious features that permit us to question just how secure such a structure—were it to have been constructed as the king’s tomb—would have been in fending off unwanted attention. As noted earlier in this chapter, the sheer physical size of the early pyramids would have attracted the attention of the unscrupulous for miles around. Remarkably, when these undesirables reached the Great Pyramid, it seems that its architect, far from making the structure impossible to breach, designed it in such a way as to practically
ensure
that it
could
be breached—not exactly the kind of thing a king seeking an eternal afterlife among the gods would remotely have sanctioned. There are a number of features of the Great Pyramid that lead us to this conclusion.

The Trial Passages

Slightly to the east of the Great Pyramid on the Giza plateau are a series of passages hewn out of the bedrock that run deep underground. The arrangement of these “trial passages,” as they are known to Egyptologists, almost exactly replicates (on a much smaller scale) the internal arrangement of the passage system within the Great Pyramid, including the concealed Ascending Passage that leads to the upper chambers of the pyramid, including the supposed King’s Chamber. In effect, the trial passages could be viewed as a map of the interior of the Great Pyramid, showing where to find and how to access the vital upper chambers within the structure.

The Descending Passage

The original entrance to the Great Pyramid was via a stone block that is believed to have swiveled open, revealing the long, unblocked Descending Passage. This narrow passage would take anyone who entered directly down to the lowest chamber known as the Subterranean Chamber. At around the halfway point down the long Descending Passage is the overhead junction of the Ascending Passage, and onward through the passage to the Grand Gallery lie the Ante Chamber and then the King’s Chamber. We have to ask, however, why would the Descending Passage have been left unblocked?

When we consider how Khufu filled in the shaft entrance to his mother’s underground tomb at Giza with rock-and-gypsum cement, we have to ask why this wasn’t done for the tomb of the king. If this was to be the tomb of Khufu, it is simply inconceivable that Khufu would have permitted such easy access down this passage to allow intruders to attack the Prism Stone that once concealed the entrance to the Ascending Passage.

The Ascending Passage, the Granite Plugs, and the Prism Stone

As stated above, the entrance to the Ascending Passage was once concealed by a block of limestone known as the Prism Stone (now lost), and behind this an additional three massive granite plugs served to block this passageway. Given the estimated weight of the Prism Stone (several tons), manipulating it within the narrow confines of the passage system would have been virtually impossible, because it would have been physically impossible to deploy enough manual labor in this tight space for such an awkward and labor-intensive task. This has led some to argue that the Prism Stone was actually set in place
during construction
of the pyramid and, like the stone block at the entrance to the Descending Passage, perhaps swiveled open to allow entrance to the Ascending Passage. It has been calculated that the opening would have been around eighteen inches, making it difficult in the extreme for any funeral party with a bound mummy to pass through in any dignified fashion in order to reach the upper chambers for the final burial of the king.

It is further believed that the Prism Stone was set in place to camouflage the three granite plugs that were supposedly slid into place down the Ascending Passage (from their supposed storage location in the Grand Gallery) after the funeral party had squeezed themselves back out of the Ascending Passage through the narrow gap provided by the open Prism Stone. Because the passageways are mostly limestone constructions, anyone passing down the Descending Passage would immediately have noticed the different-colored granite plugs that blocked the entrance to the Ascending Passage, hence the need for the limestone Prism Stone that effectively covered the granite plugs, thus camouflaging the entrance to the upper passage system. If that was the case then we have to ask why the builders of the Great Pyramid simply did not block the Ascending Passage with large limestone blocks, thereby making it harder to distinguish them from the surrounding limestone structure. And why mark the location of the Prism Stone (thus the entrance to the upper passage system) on the floor of the Descending Passage? In this regard, one of the earliest pyramid explorers, the Astronomer Royal of Scotland Piazzi Smyth, wrote the following about the location marker, which was found by accident.

Here, therefore, was a secret sign in the pavement of the entrance-passage, appreciable only to a careful eye and a measurement by angle, but made in such hard material that it was evidently intended to last to the end of human time with the Great Pyramid and has done so thus far.

Had, then, that ceiling stone never dropped out at all, still the day might have come when the right man at last, duly instructed, would have entered the passage, understood that floor sign, and, removing the ceiling-stone opposite to it, would have laid bare the beginning of the whole train of those subaerial features of construction . . .
⁹

Why would the builders create a “secret sign” on the floor of the Descending Passage, indicating the entrance to the Ascending Passage right overhead? Why leave such clues to assist in the discovery of the concealed upper passage system where, supposedly, the king’s burial chamber was to be found? Surely such would have been the
last
thing Khufu would have wanted in his tomb since such markings would surely have invited inquiry, thus leading the intruder to investigate the right spots that would have inevitably led to the discovery of the upper passage system and the chambers beyond. As the tomb of Khufu, it is again quite inconceivable that such clues would have been set in place to assist an intruder.

Granite Plugs

As stated briefly above, beyond the Prism Stone blocking the lower end of the Ascending Passage are three granite plugs (still in situ), each weighing around five tons. Conventional thought asserts that these blocks would have been stored within the Grand Gallery and slid down the Ascending Passage after Khufu had been laid to rest in the King’s Chamber at the top end of this passage system. The workers who pulled the release mechanism would then have made good their own escape via some unknown, secret passage system (presently believed to be the so-called Well Shaft) leading from the Grand Gallery to the unblocked Descending Passage. Of course, such an ancillary entrance completely bypasses and fatally undermines the granite plugs that were supposed to secure the tomb’s main entrance passage.

Figure 3.5. Great Pyramid passages with the granite plugs

But why were these unwieldy granite blocks even deemed necessary? As already mentioned, entrance to the pyramid could have been secured by simply blocking the Descending Passage with rock-and-gypsum mortar in the same manner that Khufu had sealed his mother’s shaft tomb at Giza. And keeping in mind that all of this had to work the first time, how would the descent of these blocks into position within a gradually tapering passageway have been controlled and assured? In the words of Philip Femano, Ph.D.:

It is not conclusive that the builders chose to rely on the unpredictable behavior of gravity on two hewn and unpolished surfaces with different densities and coefficients of friction sliding along each other within a steep tunnel of carved block masonry, as their preferred method of securing a royal burial chamber. Likewise, it is not clear why the builders did not simply seal the pyramid at its main entrance on the north face, sliding the plugs from outside the pyramid into the initial, upper segment of the Descending Passage, capping the plugs with a casing stone, and dissuading anyone from entering the entire pyramid in the first place.

Unless one is to believe that the builders assumed ancient plunderers would stumble on the original entrance, crawl down the unremarkable Descending Passage to reach what appeared to be an “unfinished” Subterranean Chamber and be convinced that there were no other passages to plunder in the Great Pyramid, one is left to wonder why the builders allowed easy passage (or at least such an easy breach) down the Descending Passage at all.
¹⁰

The Ante Chamber and the Portcullis Slabs

Having discovered the upper passage system (if by no other means then certainly via the clues left behind by the builders), the task for the intruders would then have been to work around the granite stones that blocked this passage (assuming, of course, that they had not discovered the secret exit used by the builders). Though difficult, this would not have been an insurmountable problem for a people who could quarry limestone and granite blocks of anywhere from 2.5 to 70 tons and maneuver them into place to construct a pyramid. If they could do that then it is not unreasonable to suggest that they could just as easily do the reverse by cutting around the much softer limestone.

Once entry into the Grand Gallery had been achieved, then the only remaining “security measures” protecting the King’s Chamber were three portcullis slabs made of granite and set in place within the Ante Chamber, a small room just before the King’s Chamber. But once again, as if the builders went out of their way to assist an intruder, these granite slabs would have presented little resistance since the builders—rather conveniently—had left in place a fourth granite block known as the Granite Leaf (see figure 3.6). This stone, which is set into two grooves on either side of the Ante Chamber (akin to a sliding guillotine), could easily have been used as a counterweight mechanism with which to raise each of the three portcullis blocking stones, thereby allowing easy access to the King’s Chamber.

Figure 3.6. Ante Chamber portcullis system with Granite Leaf. (A) Shows
the Granite Leaf being raised using a wooden lever under the “ boss” (small
stone protrusion), and (B) shows the Granite Leaf being used as a counterweight
to raise one of the granite blocking slabs to the King’s Chamber.
Images by Scott Creighton. Image B based on Adam Rutherford original.

So, once again we are left puzzled and perplexed as to why the builders would conceivably have left in place such a convenient and useful mechanism that would surely have assisted an intruder in gaining easy access into the heart of the pyramid. It is simply inconceivable that if this pyramid were the tomb of an ancient Egyptian king that such a mechanism would have been left in place to further assist anyone who might happen to reach the upper levels of the pyramid. For the builders to have left this counterweight stone intact is akin to a guard locking a bank vault and leaving the key in the lock. Simply removing this Granite Leaf after the King’s Chamber had been sealed would have made it so much more difficult (though not impossible) for any intruder to then raise the portcullis blocking slabs. Yet the Granite Leaf counterweight was left in place and intact—the key left in the lock—and we have to ask why.

In summary then, what we have here is an accessible “map” of the Great Pyramid’s interior passage system (the trial passages) outside the pyramid. We have easy access to the Descending Passage as it was never blocked. We have the camouflaged junction to the upper Ascending Passage conveniently marked on the floor of the Descending Passage. And we have an intact counterweight system to facilitate the raising of the portcullis blocks that were supposedly the final barrier to the King’s Chamber.

Given all of this, one has to conclude that the ancient architects went out of their way to ensure that the Great Pyramid (and its internal chambers), although reasonably secure, was in no way as tightly secure as the builders
could
have made it; it is almost as though the builders were going out of their way to
invite
relatively easy access to whatever lay within.

8. INTRUSIVE BURIALS

Intrusive burials were part of a long tradition in ancient Egypt. Two such burials were discovered at Giza within G3 and G3b (Menkaure’s Pyramid and one of his queens’ pyramids). We have to ask: Why would such an intrusive burial be allowed to occur? Intrusive burial implies that an original burial was removed to allow for the intrusive burial to then take place. While these two acts may have been separated by a long period of time and completely unrelated to one another, it was the custom in ancient Egypt that if the body of the king was desecrated or otherwise destroyed by looters, then a ka statue could be made and placed within the tomb to serve in place of the original royal mummy that had perhaps been desecrated and/or removed. In this way the King’s afterlife among the gods would be secured, as would the security of the kingdom. This religious belief and the facts that no original burial was found and that it was clearly considered permissible for someone else to use the pyramid as a tomb much later all strongly suggest that these pyramids had never actually been used as tombs in the first place.