Great Pyramid of Giza

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The Great Pyramid of Giza (29°58′45″ N 31°08′01″ E) is the oldest and last remaining of the Seven Wonders of the World and the most widely recognized pyramid in the world. It is part of the Giza pyramid complex. Though no pharaoh has ever been found buried in an Egyptian pyramid, it is presumed by traditional egyptologists to have been built as a tomb for the Fourth dynasty Egyptian king Khufu (also known under his Greek name Cheops), after whom it is often called Khufu's Pyramid or the Pyramid of Khufu. The architect of the pyramid was Hemon, a relative of Khufu.
(Editors note: Many of the theories in this article are not accepted by the mainstream, peer-reviewed archaeological and scientific community, and are considered by that community to be pseudoarchaeology. See the the Archeology links at the bottom of this article for information on mainstream views of the Great Pyramid of Giza.)

Age and location

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The most widely accepted estimate for its date of completion is 2580 BC; it is the oldest and largest of the three great pyramids in the Giza Necropolis on the outskirts of modern Cairo, Egypt.

A few hundred metres southwest of Khufu's Great Pyramid lies the slightly smaller Pyramid of Khafre, one of Khufu's successors who is believed to have built the Great Sphinx, and a few hundred metres further southwest is the Pyramid of Menkaure, Khafre's successor, which is about half as tall. Khafre's pyramid appears the tallest on some photographs as it is somewhat steeper and built on higher terrain.

However, although this is the widely accepted age and ownership of the Great Pyramid and its sisters, it is by far not the only one. There are many discrepancies with the above account. First, the problem for any dating is that the age of the rock is of no help. Dating is usally a result of circumstancial evidence: what artifacts, marks or other clues that are found in close proximity to the site.

Second, there is no evidence at all to suggest that the pyramids were built as tombs. No funeral contents have ever been found, nor is there the common markings and painting on the inside of the building that always accompany a burial.

Third, there is very limited evidence of any connection with the respective pharaohs of Khafre, Khufu and Menkaure, let alone any connection with this dynasty to the Sphinx (which is considered by many to be far older than the pyramids). The evidence is limited to small markings, the type of which often accompanied repairs by subsequent rulers. Architects and builders consistently marked their creations with the insignia of their Pharaoh as well as that of the god to which it was offered. Neither is the case with any of these huge constructs. That the pyramid has been granted little restoration since Khufu (4500 years) and has survived so well might point to a date of maybe double that. It would certainly be reasonable to contend that the work of the original architect might have lasted longer than a subsequent patch-up.

Either way, much that is written about any of these buildings is only hypothesis and conjecture, and it is clear they will not give up their mysteries easily.

Construction

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At construction (vc) the Great Pyramid was 280 Egyptian Old Royal Cubits tall (146.5 metres or 481 feet), but due to erosion and the theft of its topmost stone (the so-called pyramidion) its current height is approximately 137 m. As has been proven by papyrus documents, each base side measured in Antiquity 440 (20.63-inch) Royal Cubits (RC). Thus, the Great Pyramid originally covered approximately 5.3 hectares (53,158 m²) at its base. (230.5 m). Today each side has a length of approximately 230.36 m. The reduction in area and the current rough-hewn appearance of the structure is due to the removal of the polished white limestone casing stones, most of which were shaken loose by a massive earthquake in the 14th century (1301AD)and subsequently carted off and used as building material for much of early Cairo.

For four millennia it was the world's tallest building, not being surpassed until the 160-metre tall spire of Lincoln Cathedral was completed in around AD 1300. The accuracy of work is such that the four sides of the base have a mean error of only 50 mm in length, and 12 seconds in angle from a perfect square. The sides of the square are aligned quite precisely in North-South and East-West directions. These alignments are based on true north, not magnetic north. The sides of the pyramid rise at an angle of approximately 51°51′.
The pyramid was constructed of limestone, basalt, and granite blocks from two to four tonnes in weight each with stones used in the interior as heavy as 70 tonnes, adding up to a total estimated weight of some 5.9 million tonnes, and a volume of 2,600,600 cubic metres, making it the largest pyramid in Egypt, surpassed only by the Great Pyramid of Cholula in Mexico, which is larger in volume. When originally built, the pyramid had inset facing blocks (casing stones) of polished limestone, creating smooth sides; they have since fallen out, or been recycled for other building projects, leaving the underlying step-pyramid structure visible. Most of the limestone casing was removed by Bahri Sultan An-Nasir Nasir-ad-Din al-Hasan in 1356 in order to build mosques and fortresses in nearby Cairo.

A wonder of the ancient world in their own right, the casing stones of the Great Pyramid were cut with optical precision many of which being off of true plane for their entire surface area by as little as 1/50th of an inch as well as being fit so perfectly together that the tip of a knife could not be inserted between their joints along any edge even to this day. Another interesting feature is that the light reflected by the Great Pyramid being encased in this precision laid, highly polished, bone-white limestone could be seen miles away even under moonlight.

The Great Pyramid differs in its internal arrangement from the other pyramids in the area. The greater number of passages and chambers, the high finish of parts of the work, and the accuracy of construction all distinguish it. The walls throughout the pyramid are predominantly bare and uninscribed. Three chambers are arranged centrally, on the vertical axis of the pyramid.

The lowest chamber is cut in the bedrock upon which the pyramid was built; it is the largest of the three and appears to be unfinished, roughly cut in stone.

The middle chamber or Queen's Chamber is the smallest, measuring approximately 5.74 by 5.23 metres, and 4.57 metres in height. Its eastern wall has a large angular doorway or niche, and two narrow shafts, about 20 centimeters wide, extending from the chamber to the outer surface of the pyramid, but blocked by limestone "doors" at several points. Egyptologist Mark Lehner believes that the Queen's chamber was intended as a serdab—a structure found in several other Egyptian pyramids—and that the niche would have contained a statue of the interred, but the true purpose of the chamber remains a mystery.[1]
King's Chamber

The uppermost chamber, commonly referred to as the King's Room or King's Chamber, is now somewhat subsided. Originally, however, the chamber was based upon a double SQUARE of 10 x 20 royal cubits (20.63 inches). This is according to archeologist Dr Zahi Hawass, Giza Plateau Research Director. The height of the chamber (possibly not even calculated) amounts to a construction, based on the chamber's floor-diagonal HALF-LENGTH. Such a floor-diagonal would, if calculated, be the square-on-the-hypotenuse (SOTH) of the 10 x 20 footprint of the chamber's (unsubsided) floor; viz., 10V5. The height of the King's Chamber, being constructed from HALF of the floor-diagonal, can thus be said to be -- IN ROYAL CUBITS -- 5 times the square root of 5 (5V5).

Today, with the advantage of the decimal system, we would say the the height of the King's Chamber --in (20.63-inch) royal cubits -- was 11.1803398875, the equivalent of 5V5; but -- as the pyramid designers were deprived of decimals until their invention c.950AD by Arabian mathematician al Uqlidisi -- 'construction' of the KC height was essentially a last option. (Fractions for 0.1103398875 available, but unsuitable for GP practical application, would have been; 2/11, too erroneous for GP accuracy consistency; 2706/15005, beyond usual egyptian fractional limits, besides being excessively precise [costly] for construction work; and, 1475/8179, within fractional limits, but unnecessarily difficult [costly] when a convenient 'construction' height-determination was at hand.)

In current dimensions, the King's Chamber 10 x 20 x 5V5 royal cubits would be, in INCHES, 206.3 x 412.6 x 230.65. Therefore, in feet & inches, the original KC (in 20.63-inch cubits) is 17' 2.3" x 34' 4.6" x 19' 2.65". But, notice that a 12.13529412-inch foot divides equally into these inches: On that basis, the King's Chamber dimensions could be stated in modern terms as EXACTLY 17 x 34 x 19 FEET. The error in doing this is 1 part in 2,888; but, this error is less even than is the (1 in 2,784) error when world-famous 22/7ths is used in construction applications where a value for a circle's pi is called-for. (In Egyptian mathematics, a reciprocal-fraction system, one expression for the special foot would have been 12'8'98'11107; height 19'153'23889, for which, when EXACTLY '19' feet is substituted, produces the minor 2888 error mentioned -- on the basis of the special 12.13529412-inch foot.)

The King's Chamber, similar to those of the Queen's chamber, also bears outwardly heading shafts. Each shaft, angling upward; North at 45 degrees, South at 32 degrees; hence are departing from and entering into the chamber. However, the KC- and QC-shafts differ in construction, in that the KC shafts penetrate through to the Pyramid's outside completely. Thus, fresh air can, and does, rush in. Of course, such air in the case of a mummy would be destructive; but, for the suspected use of the Pyramid as a temple for Initiates during their initiating interment in their study of Mysticism, the fresh air would, of course, be simply life-sustaining .

Entry into the King's Chamber is quite unlike that into the Queen's Chamber. One cannot simply 'walk in'. This is partly due to an intervening antechamber, which a person, after 'walking through', heading for the King's Chamber, in order to enter the final chamber, is then obligated to crouch -- or duck-walk -- through a short, approximately 3 x 3 x 8.5 foot tunnel. This begs the question of how might a deceased be transported into the chamber if, in fact, the King's Chamber was ever meant to contain a pharoanic, or any other, body. And, since the one and only sarcophagus in the KC (at its west end) stands 4ft high, of solid granite, how could such a deceased, let alone the coffer itself, be brought in? The conclusion among scholars is that the sarcophagus was deposited before the roof was.

The sarcophagus is completely hewn out of a single block of granite -- from a particular variety known as "Red Aswan Granite." This stone is found only at a location some 250 miles south of Cairo, then transported by boat to the various designated Egyptian pyramid construction sites, such as Giza. This granite, as well as other types of stone, was used not only in construction on the Giza plateau, but elsewhere within the approximately 80 Northern Egypt pharoanic pyramid building sites.

The King's Chamber flat ceiling comprises nine large granite timbers. The weight of each timber is an estimated 70 tonnes. Above the ceiling is built a series of five small relieving chambers surmounted by a final hip-roofed chamber, intended to divert and spread away from the King's Chamber the tremendous downward pressure from the pyramid's weight above. Hence, despite its airy compartment, the King's Chamber is hopefully prevented from being crashed-in upon itself. A similar arrangement is, of course, provided in the so-called Queen's Chamber, for its safety. The hip-shape is strictly for construction purposes and has nothing to do with the gender of any interred. Furthermore, in actuality, pharoanic queens typically had their own pyramid, so that the term 'Queen's Chamber' generally is simply one of convenient nomenclature. R.J.Sloan

A descending passage leads from the pyramid entrace to the underground chamber. About half-way, a second passage begins ascending towards the upper chambers. This again breaks into two corridors, one runs horizontal, leading to the Queen's Chamber, and the other continues ascending, leading into the burial, or King's Chamber.

The final ascending corridor is a fantastic space with a height of approximately 8 metres. This has earned it the name of 'Grand Gallery'. After about 100 yards of grueling upward climb, the Grand Gallery ends suddenly with a 3 foot high 'Great Step'. Laboriously climbing over that Step, one is in the Antechamber prior to the King's Chamber. The antechamber functioned to stand between the King's Chamber and the Great Step, to be used for a one-time release of each of three huge granite slabs, let down into place by three heavy hawsers, blocking and permanently sealing the entrance to the King's Chamber.

The foot of the Grand Gallery also contained some sort of sealing device; a sand release mechanism for releasing three enormous stone plugs to block entry into the ascending passage. Once the three giant ascending passage plugs were slid down into position, the entire upper part of the pyramid was permanently sealed.

There was one secret passage that was not sealed, leading through the very rock upon which the pyramid was built, towards the descending passage and outside the pyramid, through which the last of the workers and funerary priests could escape after the ascending passage plugs were set.

Apart from accessible chambers and corridors, the Great Pyramid also holds inaccessible spaces. The previously mentioned airways or 'air shafts' are channels which run in opposite directions through the stone mass of the pyramid at about a 45 degree angle, connecting the burial chamber of the king with the north and south faces of the pyramid outside. Why these were planned and built is now believed to have been for 'air' or 'ventilation' shafts for possible templar periods of the Pyramid. Formerly, possibly the airways had a symbolic meaning, allowing the soul of the deceased king to travel to the stars in the north and south sky, which were important in Egyptian religion and mythology. (Today, based on further evidence, it is understood by certain societies that the Great Pyramid was a tomb only symbolically, while in actuality a temple, used by and for Initiates into the mysteries of the cosmos -- of which doubtless Khufu was himself the main financing student. Hence, the open shafts purpose was simply to provide primarily for Initiate ventilation.)

In 1993 a miniature remote controlled robot was used to enter the southern shaft and after a considerable distance found it to be blocked by a small stone door with eroded copper pins or handles. Later discoveries which were made by inserting a fiber optic camera into a tiny opening at the edge of the door revealed another 'blocking stone' lying several inches behind it. In 2002 a second robot was sent into the northern shaft and encountered a nearly identical door. What lies beyond these doors or what purpose they may have served is currently unknown.[2]

Another interesting feature of the Great Pyramid are the so-called 'relieving chambers'. They are part of an ingenious system raised over the king's burial chamber, constructed to relieve vertical and horizontal loads. The relatively thin wall between the burial chamber and the grand gallery likely could not absorb all of the horizontal pressure from the granite roof of the chamber. Thus, the granite roof had to be raised above the level of the grand gallery.

However, this created another problem, since now the walls of the burial chamber would be more than 8 meters high, and thus very unstable. Thus, huge granite slabs were placed horizontally as stabilizers between the walls, one above another. The five empty spaces between granite slabs today are called relieving chambers, though they were never meant to be accessed; and they were not until the 18th and 19th centuries.

It was Nathaniel Davison, British Consul in Algiers, who discovered the first relieving chamber during a visit in 1763. Davison gained entrance to the space after climbing through a small hole near the ceiling of the Grand Gallery and crawling through a 25-foot-long shaft. The uncovering of the other four relieving chambers was the work of British Colonel Howard Vyse, who gained access to them in 1836 by blasting away part of the underlying granite slab with gunpowder. On the walls of the chambers, which were not meant to be seen or accessed, Vyse made the remarkable discovery of hieroglyphic graffiti, thought to have been left by pyramid workers during the pyramid's construction. Aside from this find, the Great Pyramid was, and remains to this day, completely devoid of original inscriptions or artwork.

The grafitti is believed by some to be authentic because it was written in Ancient Egyptian, upside down.

Included in the relieving chambers' inscriptions were cartouches containing the name of Khufu. The allusion to Khufu is of great importance, being possibly the only connection between the Old Kingdom ruler and the Great Pyramid other than the writings of the historian Herodotus, who lived approximately two millennia after Khufu. Vyse's discovery was accepted by Egyptologists for a long time, but doubt has been cast on his inscriptions in recent years. Some experts claim the hieroglyphs found in the relieving chambers are written incorrectly and with a mish-mash of linguistic styles, incorporating forms that do not appear elsewhere in Egypt until the Middle Kingdom era. It is also considered suspicious by some that all four of Vyse's relieving chambers contained graffiti, while Davison's did not; and that Vyse did not mention the hieroglyphs until the day after his discovery of the relieving chambers. From Wikipedia

The Great Pyramid of Giza Egypt

Great Pyramid of Giza

Age and location

Construction