Before the Pyramids: Cracking Archaeology's Greatest Mystery Read Free Page A

Pyramid, is attributed to Khufu’s third son, Khafre. It is almost as large as the Great Pyramid and unlike the other two it still has its higher faces covered in the original white casing, although it is now pitted and dulled with sand. Further still to the southwest is the pyramid of Menkaure, which looks almost ‘modest’ when set against its much larger companions, though it is still 61 m in height and is mightily impressive in its own right.
    It is strange to reflect that these three amazing structures, as familiar as they are to people in every corner of the world, are almost as mysterious now as they were to the 18th-century European explorers who first started a bout of ‘pyramid’ fever. Orthodox accounts suggest that the Great Pyramid of Khufu was the first of the three to be constructed, most likely around 2500 BC . Since deep within the pyramid there are three chambers, one of which contains what is taken to be a sarcophagus, it is generally accepted that the Great Pyramid was intended to be tomb – built specifically to house the body of King Khufu, the first of the great kings of fourth-dynasty Egypt. Khufu cannot be rightfully termed a Pharaoh because this was a title that came much later in Egyptian history.
    Inside the Great Pyramid the three distinct chambers, somewhat poetically and bearing no relationship to their ancient purpose, are known as the King’s Chamber, the Queen’s Chamber and the Unfinished Chamber. These modern, invented titles help shore up the widely held but entirely erroneous view that Egyptologists understand the intended function of these voids inside the pyramids.
    The ‘Unfinished Chamber’ is a particular mystery. It lies 30 m below the surface of the plateau where workers chipped away at the bedrock to cut out what was once thought to have been the original burial chamber for King Khufu. For years Egyptologists claimed the chamber is ‘unfinished’ because Khufu suddenly decided he wanted his burial chamber to be up in the main body of the pyramid rather than below ground. We find it hard to believe that the people who designed Khufu’s pyramid made such a gigantic error, or that Khufu was making up the layout as he went along. ‘I think I’ll have my burial chamber down here. Err, no, on second thoughts maybe it would be nice to have it up here.’ It just does not sound right. Khufu and his architect, Hemiwnu, were so precise in everything they did that we cannot easily accept this explanation.
    The mystery of this subterranean vault remains, but at least the orthodox Egyptology establishment has given up trying to sustain the notion that it was some kind of planning error. The powers that be have surrendered on this point, not least because there is also the problem that a similar ‘mistake’ happened with Khafre’s Pyramid, which also has an unfinished subterranean chamber – although not at such great depth.
    We had discussed these chambers at length and both of us had a strong feeling that they must have been not only deliberate but also highly important for some reason. After all, they were the first workings to be carried out on the Giza Plateau. We were later to find out that our hunch was right but we could never have guessed just how important these chambers are when it comes to understanding the enormous scale of extreme antiquity.
    No one can know for sure, but the Great Pyramid probably did originally contain interesting and valuable artefacts. It was plundered by thieves during the New Kingdom, over 3,000 years ago, leaving only one item in place. The robbers had no interest in trying to extract a large red granite sarcophagus that weighs over three tonnes. It is generally and logically assumed that this stone box once contained the mummified body of Khufu as there is also a sarcophagus in Khafre and Menkaure’s pyramid; or at least there was one in Menkaure’s pyramid, until it was looted by British archaeologists in the early 19th century and