The passage is an inclined plane, extending partly through the masonry and partly through the solid rock for a distance of 318 feet; it passes through an unfinished chamber and ends in a cul-de-sac 59 feet further on. The blocks are so nicely adjusted, and the surface so finely polished, that the joints can be determined only with difficulty. The corridor which leads to the sepulchral chamber meets the roof at an angle of 120° to the descending passage, and at a distance of 62 feet from the entrance. It ascends for 108 feet to a wide landing-place, where it divides into two branches. One of these penetrates straight towards the centre, and terminates in a granite chamber with a high-pitched roof. This is called, but without reason, the “Chamber of the Queen.” The other passage continues to ascend, but its form and appearance are altered. It now becomes a gallery 148 feet long and some 28 feet high, constructed of beautiful Mokattam stone. The lower courses are placed perpendicularly one on the top of the other; each of the upper courses projects above the one beneath, and the last two, which support the ceiling, are only about 1 foot 8 inches distant from each other. The small horizontal passage which separates the upper landing from the sarcophagus chamber itself, presents features imperfectly explained. It is intersected almost in the middle by a kind of depressed hall, whose walls are channelled at equal intervals on each side by four longitudinal grooves. The first of these still supports a fine flagstone of granite which seems to hang 3 feet 7 inches above the ground, and the three others were probably intended to receive similar slabs. The latter is a kind of rectangular granite box, with a flat roof, 19 feet 10 inches high, 1 foot 5 inches deep, and 17 feet broad. No figures or hieroglyphs are to be seen, but merely a mutilated granite sarcophagus without a cover. Such were the precautions taken against man: the result witnessed to their efficacy, for the pyramid preserved its contents intact for more than four thousand years.* But a more serious danger threatened them in the great weight of the materials above. In order to prevent the vault from being crushed under the burden of the hundred metres of limestone which surmounted it, they arranged above it five low chambers placed exactly one above the other in order to relieve the superincumbent stress. The highest of these was protected by a pointed roof consisting of enormous blocks made to lean against each other at the top: this ingenious device served to transfer the perpendicular thrust almost entirely to the lateral faces of the blocks. Although an earthquake has to some extent dislocated the mass of masonry, not one of the stones which encase the chamber of the king has been crushed, not one has yielded by a hair’s-breadth, since the day when the workmen fixed it in its place.
* Professor Petrie thinks that the pyramids of Gîzeh were
rifled, and the mummies which they contained destroyed
during the long civil wars which raged in the interval
between the VIth and XIIth dynasties. If this be true, it
will be necessary to admit that the kings of one of the
subsequent dynasties must have restored what had been
damaged, for the workmen of the Caliph Al-Mamoun brought
from the sepulchral chamber of the “Horizon” “a stone
trough, in which lay a stone statue in human form, enclosing
a man who had on his breast a golden pectoral, adorned with
precious stones, and a sword of inestimable value, and on
his head a carbuncle of the size of an egg, brilliant as the
sun, having characters which no man can read.” All the Arab
authors, whose accounts have been collected by Jomard,
relate in general the same story; one can easily recognize
from this description the sarcophagus still in its place, a
stone case in human shape, and the mummy of Kheops loaded
with jewels and arms, like the body of Queen Âhhotpû I.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from pl. ix., Petrie, The Pyramids
and Temples of Gîzeh. A is the descending passage, B the
unfinished chamber, and C the horizontal passage pierced in
the rock. D is the narrow passage which provides a
communication between chamber B and the landing where the
roads divide, and with the passage FG leading to the
“Chamber of the Queen.” E is the ascending passage, H the
high gallery, I and J the chamber of barriers, K the
sepulchral vault, L indicates the chambers for relieving the
stress; finally, a, are vents which served for the
aeration of the chambers during construction, and through
which libations were introduced on certain feast-days in
honour of Kheops. The draughtsman has endeavoured to render,
by lines of unequal thickness, the varying height of the
courses of masonry; the facing, which is now wanting, has
been reinstated, and the broken line behind it indicates the
visible ending of the courses which now form the northern
face of the pyramid.
Facsimile by Boudier
of a drawing published
in the Description
de l’Egypte, Ant.,
vol. v. pl. xiii. 2.
Four barriers in all were thus interposed between the external world and the vault.*
* This appears to me to follow from the analogous
arrangements which I met with in the pyramid of Saqqâra. Mr.
Petrie refuses to recognize here a barrier chamber (cf. the
notes which he has appended to the English translation of my
Archéologie égyptienne, p. 327, note 27,) but he confesses
that the arrangement of the grooves and of the flagstone is
still an enigma to him. Perhaps only one of the four
intended barriers was inserted in its place—that which
still remains.