French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin sees the answer in the arrangement of internal elements of the pyramid’s architecture still hidden from plain view, but discernable by other architectural and material oddities, such as the relieving compartments themselves.  Why were they so high?  What purpose did raising the pressure points serve?

This is the fifth in a series of fascinating dialogues held between writer Marc Chartier, of the website Pyramidales, and Jean-Pierre Houdin following the premier of Khufu Reborn, the next chapter in the unraveling the mysteries of the Great Pyramid and the Giza Plateau.  This series of articles is being provided in English for Em Hotep in an exclusive arrangement with Marc, Jean-Pierre, and the Project Khufu team at Dassault Systèmes.

I do not think this will be a scoop for anyone: the King’s Chamber in the Great Pyramid is topped by an imposing and complex superstructure, made from five so-called “relieving chambers”, supposed to protect it from hypothetically crushing the last remains of the Pharaoh nestled in the heart of the monument.

Even those uninitiated into the subtleties of the art of Egyptian construction can easily feel how much these masses and spaces capping the funereal chamber could and still can fuel debates between Egyptologists or pyramidologists. (This latter term is sufficiently vague that it usefully covers an entire army of researchers trying to understand the hows and whys of the Egyptian pyramids).

In particular, among other good questions, why a “simple” raftered vault would not have sufficed, as in what is called the “Queen’s Chamber” – also intended to house the mortal remains of the Pharaoh at some time in the pyramid’s history, and on the face of it subject to the same volumetric compression? What is the “security” bonus of this stack of utterly enormous monoliths?

We will skip over the thorny question of the cracks that appeared in this enormous structure: this is not relevant here. Moreover, Pyramidales has already made a contribution on this subject, unwittingly stirring up a pretty unhealthy controversy just where the search for knowledge is called for, to the exclusion of any favoritism or personal bitterness.

As the five superimposed chambers are not there purely for style, nor in answer to any gratuitous challenge the Egyptian builders might have set themselves, but really are important pieces of the gigantic pyramid “puzzle”, Jean-Pierre Houdin could not disregard them in his Khufu Reborn (aka Khufu Renaissance) reconstitution of the Great Pyramid’s construction. Quite the opposite, he recognizes their essential role, without which part of the “puzzle” could collapse.

Let’s summarize what we already know from Khufu Reborn. Following Jean-Pierre Houdin along what he calls the “Noble Circuit” (corridors and structures deep within the pyramid intended for the royal funeral procession), we have discovered two antechambers in front of the King’s chamber, then an access corridor running up to the “formal” entrance to this chamber, distinct from the service entrance.

The architect then continues his reading of these places, using a totally new approach. In his opinion, the relieving chambers were not designed to be, as is generally thought, a cascade of bulwarks to prevent the King’s chamber caving in. Their construction and disposition must rather be associated with the existence of the two corbel-vaulted antechambers, ensuring their stability by protecting them from the effects of transferred load.

A major technical challenge

According to Jean-Pierre Houdin, the major technical challenge that must have faced Hemienu and Ankhhaf, the architects of the Great Pyramid, derives directly from their decision to build a flat ceiling for the King’s chamber. This innovation was fundamental… but it did not make the task easier! It is the very key to the special nature of the monument’s construction and the raison d’être for some of its main structures, such as the Grand Gallery, for example.

 “From one pyramid to the next,” comments Jean-Pierre Houdin,

Egyptian builders kept what was successful, abandoned what they considered not so good and, above all, took advantage of the opportunity to try new construction techniques. For the Great Pyramid, they kept corbelling for the antechambers and set themselves a gigantic challenge: that of offering their king, Khufu, a funereal chamber with a flat ceiling. This was a technical feat that they had never before attempted.

The entire organization of the project depended on this bold choice. The architects ordered materials from different quarries, from those at Tura for the facing blocks, from those at Aswan, more than eight hundred kilometers to the south, for granite for the King’s Chamber. This granite was the only material capable of spanning a void of some 5.20 m between the north and south walls of the chamber. The quarrymen could not deliver the beams to Giza at the start of construction because it would take years to extract and transport them. While they got down to their work, the monument was taking form. The beams would all have to be delivered to the site by the fourteenth year of Khufu’s reign at the latest, the pyramid having then reached a height of 43 m.

Jean-Pierre Houdin then made a detailed examination of the consequences, in terms of cost and technological progress, of the architectural choice governing erection of the Great Pyramid, which had a funereal chamber that until then had not featured on any architect’s plans:

The Egyptians did not order granite beams from Aswan for the pleasure of hiding such a quantity of beams inside the bulk: 2,100 tons altogether in the 43 beams distributed over 5 ceilings between level +48.85 m and level +60.15 m.

Exceptional technical resources were deployed to bring them from the banks of the Nile to their final position: between the levels of the delivery port (altitude 20 m ASL) and the last ceiling (altitude 100.15 m ASL), an uphill haul of more than 80 m!

Exceptional resources for an exceptional project

Major resources for a major project. Indeed, exceptional resources for an exceptional project. According to Jean-Pierre Houdin, the construction of the Great Pyramid required nothing less than:

• the construction of a ramp more than 600 m long (in red on the sketch above) between the port and the bottom of the Great Pyramid’s exterior ramp (in blue on the sketch);
• the installation of a counterweight-assisted traction system by cutting a huge trench in the bedrock (later buried under the pyramid of Khafre: in green, in the middle, on the left on the sketch) as an extension of the ramp coming from the port (Pyramidales will return to these technical aspects in a future article);
• construction of the Grand Gallery (in green, on top on the sketch) , a real built-in “crane”, as a second counterweight-assisted traction system to bring the beams into the pyramid enclosure for the construction of the ceilings;
• creation of an entire series of additional structures (ascending corridor no. 1, horizontal corridor no. 1, portcullis chamber), needed to operate the counterweight.

Counterweight sliding in Grand Gallery

This is what it cost to implement the ambitious plans of the architects for the Pyramid of Khufu! “The construction of a corbelled roof for the King’s Chamber,” comments Jean-Pierre Houdin,

would not have required any of these facilities, and there would never have been any granite in this pyramid. To have brought granite into the pyramid, the only material capable of spanning a void more than 5 m side and thus the only material to allow the construction of a flat ceiling, is the result of an architectural choice.

The “umbrella” effect

At this stage in our reading of the architectural plan for the Great Pyramid, guided by Jean-Pierre Houdin, a question arises: Hemiunu and Ankhhaf decided to install a flat ceiling on the King’s chamber. So be it! But why were they not content with just one ceiling, then capping it directly with a raftered vault, the only structure to deflects loads laterally, rather than transmit them vertically downward?

The architects of the Great Pyramid didn’t choose this solution

With such a hypothetical single ceiling surmounted by its inverted “V” vault, the Grand Gallery with its corbelled vault constructed parallel to the slope would not have seen its stability threatened in the slightest. The location of the Grand Gallery on a projection of the northern rafters of the roof at a slope of 50% would have been structurally equivalent, for example, to a buttress of a Gothic cathedral. The gallery therefore certainly did not require the installation of additional relieving chambers.

Let’s read our architect-guide’s explanations: “Rafters transfer loads along an oblique, and if there had been only the Grand Gallery in the zone receiving the oblique load, it would have had no difficulty ‘absorbing’ it.

“There are three reasons for this:

• the Grand Gallery is aligned with the oblique load and, given its very imposing structure, it reacts as an abutment (it is even stronger than the surrounding ‘in-fill’);
• the empty part of the Grand Gallery (2 cubits: the width of the last corbelling) only receives the oblique load over half of each rafter, which is positioned so that the other half is butted against the side walls of the Grand Gallery;
• given the position of the Grand Gallery entirely to the east, the rafters transfer more than 90% of the northern oblique load into the ‘in-fill’, compared with 100% of the southern rafters’ load.

“Conclusion: there would be no structural reason for the structure of the relieving chambers, as constructed, if there were only the Grand Gallery to consider.”

The relieving chambers were not therefore constructed to protect the Grand Gallery, although the Grand Gallery was built to transport and position the monoliths for the five load-deflecting chambers.

From this it follows that the reason for the relieving chambers must be sought elsewhere. And this “elsewhere” is called the “antechambers”, an essential part, according to Jean-Pierre Houdin, of the funereal architecture in the “Khufu’s Inheritance” version (see previous article from Pyramidales).

Without the relieving chambers superstructure, the antechambers would have been crushed down by the oblique load transferred by the rafters of the North side of the roof.

Jean-Pierre continues:

If the Egyptian builders had put the inverted “V” roof immediately above the ceiling of the King’s chamber, this roof would have underpinned the entire load above it in order to transfer it to the sides. And the corbel-roofed antechambers, unable to withstand this huge oblique load, would have ended up collapsing. They would have been crushed under the load.

So the architects had not hesitated. As they needed the counterweights of the Grand Gallery to construct the first ceiling in any case, it was no harder for them to construct five of them, each one above the other, before installing the raftered roof.

In the end, what we term the ‘relieving chambers’ were not constructed to protect the King’s Chamber, but to protect the nearby antechambers. Nor are the ‘ceilings’ really ceilings, but beams that retain the side walls of a large void (described nowadays as a ‘reinforced trench’). Hemiunu and Ankhhaf, the Viziers of Khufu’s Great Royal Works, were not only great architects, they were also great engineers.

By raising the roof very high, the architects greatly enlarged the protected zone so that the oblique load passed above the corbelling of the antechambers. Therein lies the real reason for the huge structure above the King’s Chamber. The Egyptians could not have done otherwise. The ‘relieving chambers’ served only to raise the roof of the King’s Chamber as high as possible, so that the oblique loads did not push on the corbelling of the antechambers.

This is what Jean-Pierre Houdin describes as the “umbrella” effect: “This type of structure is only found in the Great Pyramid, but it is essential due to the choice made by the designers to cover the King’s Chamber with a flat ceiling.”

Jean-Pierre Houdin concludes his analysis:

With the antechambers perpendicular to the King’s Chamber, they could possibly have been covered by raftered roofs. The problem would then only have been worse: it would also have been necessary to ‘raise’ the ‘stone umbrella’ (the raftered roof) very high up in the mass, because, being perpendicular to the funereal chamber, they would have similarly received the oblique load from the northern rafters of the roof to the King’s Chamber. They would then have been distorted (tilted) or perhaps even crushed under the pressure.

But another problem would have arisen: the eastern slope of the antechambers’ raftered roofs would then have transferred the absorbed vertical loads laterally directly against the western wall of the Grand Gallery; and it is the latter that would finally have been crushed. The choice of corbelling for the antechambers was extremely shrewd and perfectly suited to the situation: they wisely absorbed the vertical loads, without spreading them around, which is why they had been considered and tested for almost a century.

The pyramid’s designers therefore created a zone devoid of oblique load from the rafters between the top of the antechambers’ corbelling and the upper oblique line of the sheltered zone.

This is explicit proof of a very great understanding of materials, loads, forces, stresses and structural behavior. Nowadays would we call this an ‘Engineering and Building Technology Consultancy’.

One little detail: this was 45 centuries ago; in other words, with 5 generations per century, 225 generations ago. Egyptology, which was itself born following Napoleon Bonaparte’s Egyptian Campaign, can only claim (a maximum of) 10 generations in existence…”

Interview by Marc Chartier for Pyramidales.

Copyright by Marc Chartier, 2011.  All rights reserved.

But erecting the final resting place of a god-king involved more than structural and aesthetic considerations.  Hemienu was creating sacred ground, and within Khufu’s holy mountain there were specific paths to be trodden and a celestial order of operations to be observed. 

Beginning with the physical evidence from the pyramid, Jean-Pierre Houdin pieces these ancient traditions together in a way that suggests where to look and what to look for in unlocking the secrets of the Great Pyramid.  This is the third in a series of articles and interviews conducted by Marc Chartier with Jean-Pierre and other key members of Team Khufu, provided in English exclusively to Em Hotep.

In his studies of the Great Pyramid, presented in Khufu Reborn (read the exclusive interview given by the author to Pyramidales), Jean-Pierre Houdin has identified a “Noble Circuit”, namely the ritual route inside the monument followed during the Pharaoh’s funeral. One stage of this circuit did not pass unnoticed, and for good reason: two antechambers with corbelled vaults, a few meters before the entrance to the King’s Chamber, designed to shelter the sovereign’s goods and personal possessions.

Here Jean-Pierre Houdin contributes a few remarks in addition to the interview mentioned above, for readers of Pyramidales.

In the summer of 2003, when Jean-Pierre Houdin had already invested several thousand hours in 3D computer modeling, he made an observation that led him to suspect the existence of two antechambers in the pyramid of Khufu. A “dark zone” in the middle of the known internal structures kept coming up in his research. He could already distinguish this zone by analysis of micro-gravimetric readings that were in his possession but, oddly, had been overlooked. Now comparative observations of pyramids from the Third and Fourth Dynasties provided an answer to this dark zone.

The architect did not in fact consider the pyramid of Khufu as an isolated monument, even if it was the most famous in ancient Egypt. He placed it in a lineage, in an architectural scheme in which, from the stepped pyramid of Djoser to the smooth pyramids, each pyramid designer built on the innovations used in previous ones, while further developing the architectural concept. This is what Jean-Pierre Houdin sums up with the term “inheritance”. And Khufu did not escape the rule.

Two Observations

Two observations in particular captured the architect’s attention.

Firstly, the strange misalignment of the corridors and the Grand Gallery in the pyramid of Khufu, relative to the north-south axis. Such an offset could not be the result of chance. Nor could it be a “mistake” made by the Egyptian architects: they knew their job perfectly, based on solid tradition. So this could not possibly be an error, but a project, a plan, even if it is not necessarily easy to grasp at first glance, especially when we are bogged down in what Jean-Pierre Houdin calls “consensus thinking”.

After years spent 3D-modeling numerous potential solutions, illumination – the second observation, the real turning point of Khufu Reborn – was finally provided by another pyramid: the Red Pyramid, the last construction of Snefru, Khufu’s father. So, what was observed? This pyramid, built just before that of Khufu, encloses two magnificent antechambers with corbelled roofs, in front of the entrance to the funeral chamber. They are level with the base of the pyramid, although the chamber is nearly 8 m higher. This was a change in pyramid architecture: the funeral apartments had gained in height.

“Why, all of a sudden,” Jean-Pierre Houdin wondered, “did Khufu’s architects abandon this type of antechamber? They already had a lot to tackle, with the new roofing technique (flat ceiling) for the King’s Chamber, and they were not going to change everything from one pyramid to the next. They had a duty to respect their tradition, thus to ‘develop’ but not ‘revolutionize’ ”.

The two antechambers and the funerary chamber of the Red Pyramid

The two antechambers and the funerary chamber of Khufu’s Pyramid: a perfect copy and paste

Jean-Pierre continued his reasoning thus: “An experiment was called for: one of taking the antechambers from the Red Pyramid of Khufu’s father and quite simply ‘pasting’ them into his son’s pyramid, on a ‘design grid’ made up of one-cubit-sided squares. (1 cubit = 52.36 cm.) The funereal apartments of the Red Pyramid then appeared perfectly positioned in the pyramid of Khufu.”

“My investigation was making clear progress,” adds the architect-researcher. “I had a perfect antechamber model, similar to those we can visit today in the Red Pyramid at Dashur. And using CATIA 3D design software from Dassault Systèmes, I merely had to paste this model onto the Khufu grid, taking into account various factors already known or that I had found:

• for the Queen’s Chamber: a second entrance, a section of the ‘Noble Circuit’ and a marked deviation in the northern shaft;
• for the King’s Chamber: a very precisely located second entrance and a bizarrely routed northern shaft.

And here again: surprise! The model fitted perfectly. Not only did both the antechambers from the Red Pyramid ‘fit’ the grid perfectly, but they were centered on the north-south axis. The two antechambers from the Red Pyramid and the associated ‘Noble Corridor’ fit perfectly into the pyramid of Khufu. The interior architecture of the Great Pyramid was finally beginning to look like the funereal architecture of Egypt’s Fourth Dynasty.”

The Red Pyramid and the Pyramid of Khufu:  Look for the Similarity!

The press release summarizing Jean-Pierre’s research and conclusions and issued at the official presentation of Khufu Reborn on January 27, 2011, provides further explanations:

The Red Pyramid has the purest plan. The funeral chamber is in the edifice, preceded by two antechambers. The access corridor, antechambers and the chamber are perfectly aligned along the monument’s axis. The antechambers served to store the funeral belongings left to the deceased.

This very pure plan and these antechambers, led Jean-Pierre Houdin to wonder about Khufu’s inheritance. No antechambers in his pyramid, strangely offset corridors? Why this apparent inconsistency in the plan for the Great Pyramid? Why was the technique of antechambers with corbelled vaults, long since perfectly mastered, not used again? Would Khufu have had no goods? Hard to imagine for a king who left us the most imposing monument ever!

Hence the intuition by the author of Khufu Reborn to superimpose plans for the two pyramids. Let’s read on:

Jean-Pierre Houdin raised the corridor from the Red Pyramid and the antechambers so that the latter became those of Khufu’s chamber. They match perfectly. Better still, an explanation emerges for the well known misalignment of the descending and ascending corridors and the Grand Gallery. On the other hand, the set of antechambers is located precisely along the north-south axis and the west wall of the second antechamber is on a perfect alignment with the west wall of the King’s Chamber!

View from above

Although the current descending and ascending corridors of the Grand Gallery are generally considered as the circuit by which Khufu’s mortal remains were transported into his pyramid, Jean-Pierre Houdin has always challenged the funereal character of the Grand Gallery. For him, it was only a slide used to house the counterweight system.

Furthermore, using this passage poses an insoluble problem in connection with the sealing of the King’s Chamber. The granite block that obstructed the north-east entrance to the King’s Chamber (which entrance is not to be confused with the other one – the real one – on the west side of the chamber’s north wall), which was removed by Al-Ma’mun, could only be put back in place from the inside. And it is inconceivable to consider that a few unfortunate workers were walled up alive in the company of the dead king!

The pyramid’s plan can now be viewed in a new light. On the one hand, a consistent architectural legacy between the Red Pyramid and that of Khufu is re-established; on the other, the offset in the distribution of the corridors, considered strange until now, is explained.

As Jean-Pierre Houdin’s research progressed, his intuition, nurtured by further clues and a comparative study of pyramids from the Third and Fourth Dynasties, became a conviction: the King’s Chamber in the Great Pyramid, just like the internal layout of the Red Pyramid, based on the logic of architectural legacy, was itself preceded by two antechambers with corbelled vaults.

One final observation: inside the second antechamber of the Red Pyramid, high up, three pairs of circular holes face each other. The upper level of these holes is at exactly the same level as the floor of the corridor leading to the funeral chamber. According to Jean-Pierre Houdin, these holes were used to embed wooden beams across the antechamber and, over these beams, Egyptian builders placed a kind of “piston” made from a long piece of wood operated from below by a system of ropes. Pulling on these ropes pushed the piston forward in the corridor leading to the King’s Chamber. The piston then moved a block forward, sliding on a very thin layer of sand, and ended up resting against the floor of the King’s Chamber and sealing its entrance forever.

This closure block had quite simply been stored in the corridor’s east wall, in a small perpendicular passage in which its “twin” was also stored; a clever system, based on a pushing block and derived from a closure technique by drop-stone trap in the Bent Pyramid at Dahshur, pushed the two twinned blocks from a notch, once a wedge has been removed: the closure block was located in the corridor ready to be pushed by the piston and its twin took its place in the wall. This system can be observed in the Red Pyramid.

For Jean-Pierre Houdin, the transfer of this technique to the pyramid of Khufu seems to be a logical conclusion. Why – in what quest for originality – would the Great Pyramid’s builders have refrained from what, as a means of sealing a pyramid, was without any doubt the fruit of an architectural legacy, which, moreover, nothing would have allowed them to disregard?

 Many Centuries of Archaeological Myopia

Even if it meant facing the wrath of the higher echelons of Egyptology or researchers with various degrees of training in the vast and inexhaustible field of pyramidology, Jean-Pierre Houdin could no longer escape his own convictions: in his view, a structural analysis of the monument sheds new light on the real route of the funeral procession inside the Great Pyramid.

In this approach, without claiming to play the killjoy or, worse still, the kamikaze, he expects to have to confront many centuries of archaeological myopia. But his new plan of the Great Pyramid, in his opinion, has the merit of being based on history and sound reasoning, and, as well as being geometrically correct, explaining the many strange features in the pyramid’s design.

Above all, in the architect’s view, it provides King Khufu with the antechambers for the royal funeral goods, a logical deduction far removed from the fantasies of the treasure hunters.

In connection with these antechambers, Jean-Pierre Houdin likes to quote something a friend wrote to him in congratulation: “You have filled a historic void with a hole that dates back several millennia…”

That sums it up…

Clues from the Red Pyramid

“The Red Pyramid at Dahshur has two antechambers. Inside the second, high up, three pairs of circular holes facing each other. The upper level of these holes is at exactly the same level as the floor of the corridor leading to the funereal chamber. I considered that these holes had been used to embed wooden beams across the antechamber and over these beams, Egyptian builders had placed a kind of ‘piston’ made from a long piece of wood operated from below by a system of ropes. Just pulling on the ropes was enough to advance the piston into the corridor. Thus it pushed the block, sliding on a very thin layer of sand, ending up resting against the floor of the King’s Chamber and sealing its entrance forever.

This scenario was perfect, but still needed one most important answer: how do you push a block that could not have been lifted high enough, and that could not have been stored in the corridor because it would have prevented the funeral procession from passing. This squares the circle!

I have found part of the answer in another pyramid of Snefru: the Bent Pyramid, built just before the Red Pyramid.” (Jean-Pierre Houdin)

Clues from the Bent Pyramid

“To block the passage and prevent access to Snefru’s funereal chamber, the architects had installed two enormous portcullises in the corridor leading to it that, were retained in very narrow and inaccessible recesses before being lowered. The most interesting thing for me was the way in which these portcullises were released to block the passage:

• firstly, in the raised position, they were held leaning on a small block that prevented them remaining stuck in place at the moment they were released;
• secondly, a simple wooden wedge (in red) held them in this raised position.

To close the passage, the workers just had to remove the wedge and the portcullis was lowered automatically.”

Copyright by Marc Chartier, 2011.  All rights reserved.

The burial room of Pharaoh Khufu required that his Overseer of Royal Projects, the great architect and engineer Hemienu, transport massive beams of granite, some of which weighed in excess of 60 tons, more than 60 meters above the pyramid’s foundation.  With each successive course of blocks his workspace became more confined, the uphill drag became longer, and the placement became more precise.  Where did the energy required for this undertaking come from?

In Phase One we looked at how two thirds of the pyramid and all of its internal structures below the King’s Chamber were constructed with a ramp that reached less than one third of its height.  In Phase Two we will look at how the King’s Chamber and its related architecture were built using this same ramp, as well as some innovations in design and methodology that included scaffolding, an elevator, and a powerful tractor, all of which were integrated into the architecture itself, and all of which used tools and principles known to be in existence during Hemienu’s time.

We will devote this current article to explaining exactly what it was Hemienu was building in Phase Two.

During Phase Two Hemienu was entirely concerned with the construction of the King’s Chamber, and perhaps it is best to forget for the moment about the rest of the pyramid.  The Great Pyramid at that point was a massive 43 meter high platform that provided both the foundation for and the machinery involved in building a smaller pyramid, which in turn served the dual purpose of support and scaffolding for the burial chamber and its related architecture.  In Phase Two, the superstructure we will be referring to is not the Great Pyramid itself, but this mini-pyramid being constructed on its fiftieth course.

But we will also be taking a much more detailed look at the Grand Gallery and its related architecture.  If the Great Pyramid was a machine of construction during Phase Two, then the Grand Gallery and the Ascending Corridor housed its engine.  Phase One was a saga of architecture, geometry, and logistics.  Phase Two is a tale of men and machines—elevators, counterweights, ballasts, even trolley tracks.  And yes, ramps.

The megalithic beams used in the King’s Chamber and the Relieving Compartments were first pulled up the external ramp and stored on a reinforced staging area.  This was accomplished with the help of a counterweight system in the Grand Gallery.  Then a mini-pyramid was built as the King’s Chamber went up.  This structure served as both the support for the King’s Chamber architecture and the scaffolding for the project.  A freight elevator, also powered by the counterweight system, was incorporated into this mini-pyramid, all of which would disappear into the core of the Great Pyramid in Phase Three.

Like Phase One, Phase Two can be divided into three sections—the worksite formed by the fiftieth course of the pyramid and how the external ramp functioned during this phase, how the counterweight system worked, and then finally the King’s Chamber.  But in order to fully appreciate how the worksite was organized, how the mini-pyramid was constructed, and how the counterweight system worked, it is best to start with a detailed description of the King’s Chamber and its related architecture.

Hemienu to Houdin Phase Two will thus be divided along these lines:  Part A—The King’s Chamber; Part B—The Grand Gallery and Counterweight System; and Part C—How It All Came Together.

The King’s Chamber… Or is it?  

Arguments to the contrary notwithstanding, as far as we know the King’s Chamber was intended to be Pharaoh Khufu’s final resting place, which (obviously) is why it is called the King’s Chamber.  While there are those who believe that Khufu’s actual burial room lies yet undiscovered within the Great Pyramid, there is some fairly good circumstantial evidence that the King’s Chamber was intended to be the focal piece of the whole ensemble.  To begin with, it contains a sarcophagus…  generally considered a pretty reliable clue that a room might be a burial chamber.

[Anecdotal Exception:  I once knew a police detective who kept a coffin in his living room.  When I asked him why, he said because the neighbors complained about it being on his porch.  True story.]

The King’s Chamber and the sarcophagus – usually, but not always, a good sign that someone was interred (Photo by Keith Payne)

But there are other reasons as well.  Structurally speaking, it is the center of the design.  This does not mean that it is literally in the physical center of the pyramid.  Instead, it means that everything below, beneath, and around the King’s Chamber was designed to support a 20×10 cubit room with a flat ceiling, exactly where it is located.  Everything else, from the materials used in its construction to its exact positioning, was geared toward achieving this goal.  Hemienu would accomplish this using tried and true methods and innovations that expanded on these techniques.

As we will see throughout our explication of Phase Two, the Grand Gallery exists as it does and where it does in order to build the King’s Chamber.  When compared with the external ramp and the elevation of the Relieving Compartments, every detail from the length and height of the Grand Gallery to the positioning of the Great Step was determined by the dimensions of the King’s Chamber and the gabled ceiling of the structure above it.  So if there is an even more regal tomb in the pyramid—we’ll call it the Emperor’s Chamber—then where is it and how was it built?

One possibility is that it could be to the south of the Queen’s Chamber, but again, where?  In order to stay on the north/south axis it would have to be lower than the southern “air shafts” (intercom channels) leading out of the King’s and Queen’s chambers, which would situate it lower than both, which is not a very stately location for an Emperor.  Royal burial chambers in the large-scale pyramids prior to Khufu (Djoser’s Step Pyramid is an exception, but a lot of changes followed Djoser) were higher than other chambers and antechambers, and Khafre would likewise follow suit. 

At this point one might rightly observe that Pharaoh Menkaure, who came after Khafre, located his final burial chamber lower than an earlier burial room.  Both of these tombs were cut into the bedrock, which could explain the deviation.  While it is true that changes in a pyramid that is already under construction are risky, one safe place to make changes is in the bedrock.  Unlike a pyramid, which becomes smaller as it rises, making alterations difficult, changing the layout of the understructure in the bedrock was comparatively simple and safe.

The point being that when construction is progressing downward, as it would be in the bedrock, rather than upward, as it would be in the superstructure, Menkaure could feasibly have decided to make an even more impressive burial room deeper than the other chamber.  I am not arguing that this is the “exception that proves the rule,” but I am saying that once the pyramid was underway the only safe place to make a large change in plan was deeper into the ground (parallel excavation would have undermined more of the superstructure), and the promise of a better tomb may have outweighed tradition.

Nothing discovered so far suggests that a larger, more impressive burial chamber was excavated in the bedrock beneath the Great Pyramid, and there is no evidence of a larger tomb in the superstructure beneath the King’s Chamber.  There is evidence of additional plans in the Subterranean Chamber, such as the so-called well-shaft and the southern extension, but whatever their intended purpose may have been, they were abandoned, most likely when the Queen’s Chamber was completed and there was no longer a use for the chamber as a provisional tomb. 

Although Menkaure’s pyramid shows that tradition is not always a hard and fast rule, it does not seem likely that Khufu would have settled for a burial chamber that was both lower and smaller than the King’s Chamber.  The man who commissioned the only surviving Wonder of the Ancient World does not strike me as a man prone to compromises.  So what about beside or above the King’s Chamber?

It is not likely that an Emperor’s Chamber could exist parallel to the King’s Chamber because if it were centered along the north-south axis (as everything else is) then one or both of the southern intercom channels would pass through it.  This same problem exists for several meters higher than the floor-level of the King’s Chamber.  In fact, an Emperor’s Chamber would have to be higher than the gabled ceiling of the Relieving Compartments, otherwise the rafters would be directing the pressure from the masonry into the hollow space of the Emperor’s Chamber, leading to a collapse of both.

Building an Emperor’s Chamber above the rafters brings us back to the problems of Phase One—how do you deliver the megalithic beams that high?  Building a higher room would require another set of Relieving Compartments for a flat ceiling, or at least another set of rafters if it had a gabled ceiling.  Recall that Hemienu went to great lengths to avoid corbelling everywhere but the Grand Gallery, and both a flat and gabled ceiling would require the transport of beams that would be too large for the internal ramp, requiring a longer and higher external ramp, a problem we already examined at length.

Building an Emperor’s Chamber—a burial room at least as impressive as the King’s Chamber, only higher—would not only have required a bigger external ramp, it would have required a second counterweight system, which means a second Grand Gallery and a second Ascending Passageway are likewise hidden somewhere in the considerably more restricted space of the top half of the Great Pyramid.  Otherwise there would be no way to raise the massive beams required for its construction.  A cursory glance at the inner workings of Khufu’s Pyramid in profile shows the impossibility of this.

So to return to the question, was the King’s Chamber intended as the final resting place for Pharaoh Khufu, or is there an even better Emperor’s Chamber that lies undiscovered, the answer seems to be the former:  the room that contains the sarcophagus was indeed the king’s burial room.  The Emperor, it would seem, has neither clothes nor a tomb.

But in the final analysis, the question is largely academic.  If a secret room containing Khufu’s mummy is discovered tomorrow it will have no bearing on the question of how the King’s Chamber was built.  It may offer new questions and potentially a few answers, but it would not change a single aspect of what we do know about the King’s Chamber and its architecture, and what was required in its construction.  So let’s take a look at what we do know for certain—dimensions and materials.  We will start with what is inside the King’s Chamber—the sarcophagus.

The Sarcophagus of Pharaoh Khufu

Just as the King’s Chamber is the focal point of the Great Pyramid, the sarcophagus is the focal point of the King’s Chamber.  And likewise, just as the King’s Chamber is not the physical center of the pyramid, the sarcophagus is not in the physical center of the King’s Chamber—both are precisely aligned, but with a larger scheme in mind. 

The sarcophagus is oriented north to south close to the west wall of the burial room, with the eastern side of the sarcophagus situated along the north-south axis of the pyramid.  It was meticulously hollowed out from a single block of red Aswan granite.

One of the pinion holes in the sarcophagus' western edge that probably held a lid in place—tubular drills were slow, but precise (Photo by Jon Bodsworth)

Spiral markings inside the box and pinion holes on the western lip indicate the use of drills.  We know that copper tubular bow-drills were used during this period, and the markings suggest drills and saws were used for precision and dolerite pounders to wear away the bulk.  Rather than teeth, the copper tools would have used an abrasive grit to cut, much like sand paper.  It would have been a long and tedious process, taking no less than 28,000 hours to complete (Brier and Houdin, pp. 199-200; Stocks, pp. 918-22).

The fitting groove for the sarcophagus lid (Photo by Andrew Currie)

The sarcophagus measures 2.28 meters long, .98 meters wide, and 1.05 meters in height.  The inner dimensions are 1.98 meters long, .67 meters wide, and .87 meters deep, and it weighs around 3.75 tons.  It is a simple box with no ornamentation or markings.  There is no lid, although the pinion holes and an inner groove on the upper edges suggest it was fitted for one.  Where the lid is now is anybody’s guess.  It is estimated that it would have weighed around two tons and is an unlikely object for theft, but never underestimate the determination of souvenir takers.

Thieves and vandals ancient and not so much (Photo by Keith Payne)

The southeastern corner of the sarcophagus has been broken away, which may have been done by thieves who either used the hole to reach inside and grab the treasures within, or may have provided a leverage point for prying the lid off.  But analysis of the breakage is made difficult by the fact that visitors (vandals) have chipped away at it over the years in order to have their own little piece.  For some, nothing says veneration like wanton destruction.  Perhaps the lid suffered a similar fate? 

An unlikely fit—entrance to the King’s Chamber. Note the northern intercom shaft in the wall (Photo by John and Morton Edgar)

The sarcophagus is too large to fit through the entrance to the King’s Chamber, and so it would have been installed during construction.  No mummy was discovered in the sarcophagus, which adds to speculation about the purpose of the King’s Chamber (not to mention the pyramid itself) and about the existence of an undiscovered Emperor’s Chamber. 

Khufu’s mummy either remains interred, was misplaced or destroyed, or lies unidentified in a museum or private collection.  Or he could be propped up in a curio show next to a stuffed two-headed calf… believe it or not, there is precedence.

The King’s Chamber

Floor to ceiling red granite—the King’s Chamber (Photo by Jon Bodsworth)

The King’s Chamber measures 20 cubits (10.47m) east to west and 10 cubits (5.23m) north to south.  It has a flat ceiling that is a little over 11 cubits (5.84m) above the floor.  As with the sarcophagus, the King’s Chamber is completely unadorned and without inscriptions.  Also like the sarcophagus, the floor, walls, and ceiling are all constructed of the red granite quarried from Aswan. 

This granite is much heavier and sturdier than the nummulitic limestone that comprises the bulk of the pyramid, and served both visual and structural purposes.  The floor and walls are made of around 120 granite blocks of various sizes, and the ceiling is made of nine granite beams.

The ceiling is significant in a couple of ways.  For one, it is located at one third the vertical height of the Great Pyramid, which may have been for both structural and symbolic reasons.  Second, and more importantly, it is flat.  This is unusual in that other pyramid burial chambers are either corbelled or, in the case of the Queen’s Chamber, have a gabled ceiling. 

Corbelling in Snefru’s burial chamber in the Red Pyramid (Photo by Hajor)

Corbelling is a roof-building strategy that involves inching each layer of blocks slightly inward until the walls come to a peak.  Long blocks of limestone are too weak to span wide spaces, so corbelling bridged these gaps a little at a time, with most of the block sandwiched between the layers above and below and only a small part extended into unsupported space. 

Corbelled structures are sometimes called ”false arches” because, unlike an arch, the blocks are not supported by leaning in on one another.  The structure relies on the downward pressure of the superstructure from which it protrudes.  The main burial chamber of the Red Pyramid is a classic example of corbelled walls.

Corbelling also distributes the weight above the chamber over a wider space.  In a flat ceiling all of the weight bears straight down over the entire surface.  This means that even using a more sturdy material than limestone would not be enough to construct Khufu’s flat ceiling, there had to be a way to distribute the pressure outward and away from the ceiling, which is where the Relieving Compartments come in. 

The Relieving Compartments

Beneath the rafters (Photo by Adam Rutherford)

The Relieving Compartments are five short chambers stacked one on top of the other between the King’s Chamber ceiling and the top gable.  Like the King’s Chamber itself, the ceilings of the Relieving Compartments were made of the megalithic beams of granite supported by limestone blocks. The granite ceiling beams, each weighing between 27 and 63 tons, are arranged side by side at each level, north to south, and the limestone supports are arranged east to west between the ceilings.  The granite beams are finished on the bottoms (the compartment ceilings) but left rough on the top (the floors).

In all, there are five granite ceilings:  the King’s Chamber located at the 48.8 meter level; the first Relieving Compartment ceiling at 51.9 meters; the second Relieving Compartment ceiling at 54.6 meters; the third Relieving Compartment ceiling at 57.5 meters; the fourth Relieving Compartment ceiling at 60 meters.  Above this are the 22 limestone rafters that form the gabled roof.  Total materials for the Relieving Compartments:  43 granite beams weighing 27-63 tons each, 22 limestone rafters weighing 28-45 tons each, and the limestone supports between the ceiling layers.

The gabled ceiling of the Relieving Compartments provides further clues to Hemienu’s planning and foresight.  Before the Great Pyramid, the Red Pyramid of Snefru represented the crowning accomplishment in pyramid technology.  Hemienu knew that the ceiling of Snefru’s corbelled burial chamber successfully supported 83 meters of masonry above it.  We know by comparing other examples that the distance between the floor of the King’s Chamber and the gabled roof is about the same as it would have been if it had been corbelled, and the gabled roof, like the Red Pyramid, supports about 83 meters of masonry.  Again, methods tried and true.

The third relieving compartment, called “Nelson’s Chamber,” has the clearest hieroglyphic inscriptions (Photo by Adam Rutherford)

The relieving Compartments are the only place within the Great Pyramid where any sort of markings or inscriptions have been found, and even these appear to have been quarry markings or “graffiti” left by the pyramid builders.  Two of these markings are cartouches of Pharaoh Khufu, the only actual written evidence that the Great Pyramid was build for him.  Some of the markings continue along surfaces now covered by other blocks, evidence that these inscriptions occurred before construction was complete.  

Sketches of the hieroglyphic graffiti found in the Relieving Compartments

This completes our description of the King’s Chamber, its only contents, and the Relieving Compartments above it.  In Phase 2, Part B:  The Grand Gallery and Counterweight System, we will look at Jean-Pierre Houdin’s theory of how the Grand Gallery once housed a counterweight system that helped power the huge sleds that brought the megalithic beams up to the 43 meter-high worksite, and the lift that delivered them to their final locations in the architecture. 

Related Articles

• Introduction:  Building a Great Pyramid
• Part One:  How Do You Prefer Your Ramp?  Straight or With a Twist
• Building the Great Pyramid Year One:  Six Letters from Hemienu
• Hemienu to Houdin: Phase One, Part A—One Third of a Ramp, Two Thirds of a Pyramid
• Hemienu to Houdin: Phase One, Part B—Alternating Lanes and Building from the Inside Out
• Hemienu to Houdin:  Phase One, Part C—The Inner Workings of the Great Pyramid of Khufu

Works Cited

• Brier, Bob, and Jean-Pierre Houdin. The Secret of the Great Pyramid: How One Man’s Obsession Led to the Solution of Ancient Egypt’s Greatest Mystery. New York: HarperCollins, 2008. Print.
• Stocks, Denys A. “Stone Sarcophagus Manufacture in Ancient Egypt.” Antiquity 73.282 (1999): 918-22. Print.

Copyright by Keith Payne, 2011.  All rights reserved.

Graphic images “King’s Chamber” and “Khufu staging area” are copyrighted by Jean-Pierre Houdin/Dassault Systemes, and are used with their permission, all rights reserved.  Graphics “south of QC”, “in the substructure”, “beside or above”, “pyramid profile cutaway”, “ceilings diagram”, “khufu and red pyramid”, are copyrighted by Jean-Pierre Houdin, and are used with his permission, all rights reserved.  Photos “Khufu King’s Chamber 01” and “Khufu sarcophagus 01” are copyrighted by Keith Payne, 1997-2011, all rights reserved.  Photos “great_pyramid_37” and “great_pyramid_34” are by Jon Bodsworth, who has released them to the public domain.  Photos and images “Image-Great_Pyramid_Edgar.jpg”, “09_edgar.jpg”, and “08_edgar.jpg” by John and Morton Edgar are in the public domain.  Photo “Inside Cheops III” by Andrew Currie is used in accordance with the Creative Commons 2.0 license.  Photo “Egypt_Dashur_RedPyramid_02” by Hajor, and image “Kheops-chambre-roi.jpg” by Franck Monnier are used in accordance with the Creative Commons 2.5 license.  Photos “Campbell’s Chamber” and “Nelson’s Chamber” by Adam Rutherford are in the public domain.  Photos and images “art – relieving chambers”, “art – north south axis”, “Menkaure inner works”, “Piazzi-plate_14.jpg”, and “relieving compartments graffiti” are in the public domain.

In preparation for what Jean-Pierre Houdin calls “Episode 2,” a comprehensive update and expansion of his work with the Great Pyramid in particular and the funerary architecture of the Pyramid Age of the Old Kingdom in general, Em Hotep has embarked on this mission to lay out his theory to-date in a simple but detailed format that will allow the specialist and layperson alike to evaluate the theory as well as mark its progress in Episode 2. 

In Phase One, Parts A and B, we looked at Jean-Pierre’s detailed explanation of how Hemienu could have built two thirds of the Great Pyramid with an external ramp that only reached one third of the pyramid’s final height, and how this ramp could have used an alternating-lanes strategy to avoid work stoppages, even while the ramp was built up from layer to layer.  Now we will lay the foundation—literally and figuratively—for Phase B by looking at how Hemienu designed the floor plan of the Great Pyramid on the vertical rather than horizontal plane. 

Hemienu to Houdin presents the opening statement and theories.  Soon the counselor himself will present the evidence and closing arguments.  My goal is to provide the transcript for the deliberations of you, the jury.

The Layout:  A Vertical, Rather Than Horizontal, Design

With conventional architectural designs, we are accustomed to seeing floor plans that are laid out on the horizontal plane.  Interconnected rooms are arranged on the same level, joined by doorways or horizontal corridors.  If there are other levels, then these too are arranged in horizontal space, with stairs, ramps, or elevators connecting the levels.  This is true of the majority of architecture in ancient Egypt as well.  But with the Great Pyramid things are a little different. 

Looking at the shape of a mastaba it’s easy to see how they evolved into the pyramidal form (Photo by Jon Bodsworth)

Although pyramids are the most celebrated funerary structures from the Old Kingdom Period, most people who could afford a luxurious send-off were interred in, or more accurately, under, a mastaba.  Mastabas are flat-roofed rectangular brick buildings with walls that lean slightly inward. 

They sit atop one or more vertical shafts cut into the bedrock that lead to subterranean burial chambers.  By the Fourth Dynasty, the peak of the Pyramid Age, mastabas could be rather elaborate in design.  (For a good example, albeit from the Sixth Dynasty, check out An Egyptian Bourgeoisie: The Tomb of Vizier Mereruka)

The Step Pyramid of Djoser (Photo by Keith Payne)

It is easy to see the genesis of the pyramidal shape in the tapered form of the mastaba.  In fact, the earliest pyramid that we know of, the Step Pyramid of Djoser, began as a large mastaba and ended as five additional mastabas stacked on top of the first, with each level smaller than the previous.  Another innovation is that the burial chamber moved progressively higher as pyramids evolved—from underground, to ground level, to suspended above ground level within the core. 

Khufu’s pyramid has three different burial chambers at three different levels.  Hemienu had his reasons for situating these burial chambers at different levels, not to mention at different phases of construction, and we will get into these details a little later in this article.  But their arrangement within the pyramid’s structure—the need to have them at different levels, but with similar alignment and orientation—is part of why the floor plan of the Great Pyramid is designed on the vertical, rather than horizontal, plane.

Convention during this period dictated that royal burial chambers should lie to the south of the pyramid’s east/west axis.  As shown in the illustration, the burial chambers in the Meidum, Bent, and Red Pyramids are all constructed south of the east/west axis, opposite the entrance.  In Khufu’s pyramid the King’s and Subterranean Chambers both lie to the south, and the Queen’s Chamber straddles the east/west axis perfectly. 

In the case of the Queen’s Chamber, the intent may have been for the sarcophagus to be placed in the southern half of the room, had it been used for the pharaoh’s interment.  Such exact placement has precedence within the Great Pyramid, as the sarcophagus in the King’s Chamber is arranged with its eastern side perfectly aligned with the north/south axis.  But even without knowing the exact reasons why, we do know that the three chambers are clustered around the midpoint of the pyramid at different levels, and the straight approach from the northern entrance makes for an easy vertical arrangement. 

One way of thinking about the inner structures is to consider that movement progresses from north to south.  The Entrance is on the northern face.  From there one progresses southward via the Descending Corridor.  At 28.2 meters inside, the Ascending Corridor branches up and continues southward from the Descending Corridor, which continues its own southerly journey to the Subterranean Chamber.  The Ascending Corridor ends at the base of the Grand Gallery, with a Horizontal Corridor leading off to the Queen’s Chamber.  Both the Grand Gallery and the Horizontal Corridor continue southward.  The King’s Chamber is the highest and southernmost known internal structure.

The vertical arrangement of the internal structures also had practical benefits.  Recall that most of the pyramid—the core—is made up of rough-cut blocks, filler chips, and gypsum mortar.  These blocks are made of the same locally quarried nummulitic limestone as the backing layer, but are not as precisely calibrated and were not suitable as a foundation for the inner structures.  The burial chambers, and especially the earth-rattling counterweight system that would be housed in the Grand Gallery, required a solid foundation of the same well-cut masonry that makes up the backing layer.

These more precisely-cut blocks were expensive in terms of the time it took to shape them and the materials expending in doing so.  Each well-cut block required more copper chisels, more runners to carry the dulled chisels from the worksite to the sharpeners, more wood (a rarity in the desert) to keep the smith’s fires burning, and most of all, more time.  Nothing in the Great Work of Khufu’s Pyramid could be wasted, especially time, so ideally the inner structures needed to be squeezed into as small a footprint as possible—the smaller the footprint, the less expensive the foundation. 

For all of these reasons it made sense to design the inner workings of the Great Pyramid on the vertical rather than horizontal plane.  Rather than rooms located on the same level and connected by horizontal passageways, Hemienu stood the floor plan on its edge.  The rooms would be aligned vertically on different levels, connected mostly by sloping corridors.  This vertical structure could rest on a shared foundation that was a simple north-to-south strip of pavement.

Before we continue on to our description of the individual elements of the inner workings of the Great Pyramid, let’s first address why Hemienu might have constructed three burial chambers, and why they couldn’t have been built on more or less the same level within the pyramid.

In the Event of Untimely Death:  The Provisional Burial Chambers

Putting aside all symbolism, and ignoring Hemienu’s personal ambitions, the Great Pyramid was ultimately built for one purpose only:  a final resting place for the body of Pharaoh Khufu.  Everything about how the pyramid was planned and executed revolved around the final burial room known as the King’s Chamber, and its unique flat ceiling.  But the King’s Chamber would not be complete until Year 15 of construction.  What if the King, gods forbid, died before that?

Hemienu had planned for such a contingency.  The Great Pyramid was designed from the outset to have three burial chambers:  the King’s Chamber and two provisional tombs.  The first provisional tomb was the Subterranean Chamber, which would serve as the royal tomb if Khufu had died during the first ten years of construction.  The second provisional tomb was the so-called Queen’s Chamber, which would have held the pharaoh’s body if he died during years ten through fifteen.  After Year 15 the King’s Chamber would be Khufu’s final resting place.

It has been argued in the past that the three different burial chambers suggest that Hemienu had altered his plan as he progressed, originally intending the Subterranean Chamber to be the tomb, then deciding to locate the burial room at the higher location of the Queen’s Chamber, then ultimately deciding to build a third, final burial room—the King’s Chamber.  However, the precision with which the King’s Chamber was located argues against this and in favor of a single, complete building plan from the very beginning.

The Great Step at the top of the Grand Gallery—its top surface is at the 43-meter level, and its face is aligned perfectly on the east/west vertical axis (Photo by Bulle Plexiglass)

We will be expanding on the evidence for Hemienu’s fore planning when we cover Phase Two, but for now consider that the placement of the “Great Step” at the top of the Grand Gallery exactly on the east/west axis, and the ceiling of the King’s Chamber exactly at the one third height of the finished pyramid, could only have been achieved with comprehensive planning. 

The length and height of the Grand Gallery are not arbitrary, as we shall see, and to know in advance where the Great Step would be located meant that Hemienu knew exactly where, and at what slope, to begin the Ascending Corridor.

For these reasons alone we can be certain that the Great Pyramid was planned with three different burial chambers from the outset.  The idea of Hemienu making radical alterations, such as adding entire rooms and corridors after construction had begun, simply does not reconcile with the exactitude of the finished product.    Planning for temporary burial chambers seems to be more in the character of Hemienu from what we can deduce from the meticulous planning which must have gone into each phase of construction.  We will now look more closely at the individual elements of the inner structure.

The Descending Corridor

Work on the Descending Corridor would have begun in the very earliest stages of pyramid construction, while the foundations were still being leveled.  It started as a passageway cut downward into the bedrock, .96 meters (3.1 feet) high and 1.04 meters (3.4 feet) wide, descending southward at a 26.5 degree angle.  Work on the Descending Corridor would have continued while the first courses of the pyramid were being laid, with the corridor being extended upward into the new masonry toward the future Entrance in the northern face of the pyramid.

Looking up the Descending Corridor toward the Entrance (Photo by Jon Bodsworth)

The bottom of the Descending Corridor at the point where it levels off (Photo by John & Morton Edgar)

Rather than the rough-cut blocks of the core, the masonry into which the Descending Corridor was extended was the well-calibrated blocks of the foundation being laid for the rest of the internal structures.  This may have contributed to the precision with which the Descending Corridor was constructed—Jean Pierre has noted that it is the most precisely cut structure within the pyramid, never deviating more than a quarter of an inch its entire run.

Once finished, the Descending Corridor passed downward from the Entrance through the masonry for 28.8 meters, continued through the bedrock for another 30.3 meters before leveling off at a depth of 30 vertical meters below ground.  After a short (8.9 meters) horizontal stretch the Descending Corridor ended at the Subterranean Chamber, for a total run of about 68 meters.

The Subterranean Chamber

Thirty meters below the base of the pyramid, the Subterranean Chamber was the first of the two provisional tombs, and is where the body of Khufu would have been interred if he had died during the first ten years of construction.  Fortunately, Khufu never had use for it, and the incomplete state of the walls and floor suggest that Hemienu considered the king to be in good enough health to move on.  Besides, the chamber was far enough along that if Khufu had died it could have been finished during the time that it took to mummify his body.

The eastern wall of the Subterranean Chamber with the entrance in the northern wall visible—the squatting fellow to the left (Photo by John & Morton Edgar, courtesy of Jon Bodsworth)

The Subterranean Chamber has irregular dimensions, but measures roughly 8 by 13 meters, with a height of about 3.1 meters, and is oriented east to west, with the northern wall aligned on the east/west axis.  The chamber also contains an unfinished “well shaft” and what appears to be an unfinished continuation of the horizontal section of the Descending Corridor exiting through the south wall.  The purpose of the pit and the southern extension are unknown, however, it is worth observing that if Hemienu did make alterations to his plan, the subterranean section—not being part of the pyramid’s superstructure—was the only safe place to do so.

The Entrance

The double-gabled Entrance (Photo by Keith Payne)

Located at the opposite end of the Descending Corridor, the Entrance is pretty self explanatory—it was the original means of entrance into the Great Pyramid.  The Entrance is located seventeen meters above the base and is centered 6.82 meters east of the north/south axis.  This 6.82-meter offset has to do with the need to align the Grand Gallery with the eastern half of the King’s Chamber. 

We will sort out these details when we cover Phase Two, but the simple explanation is that the heavy beams of Aswan granite were unloaded on the eastern side then positioned to the west.

Speaking of heavy beams, the Entrance is supported by four 20-ton blocks of Tura limestone that would have been the first heavy test of the external ramp.  These huge blocks are situated in two pairs, one on top of the other, with the paired blocks resting against each other at a 120 degree angle.  The effect is an impressive double gable that has become one of the iconic images of the Great Pyramid.  These megalithic blocks are the same that are used to form the arched ceiling of the Queen’s Chamber and the roof of the relieving compartments above the King’s Chamber.

The Ascending Corridor

The junction where the Ascending Corridor branches up from the Descending Corridor (Photo by John & Morton Edgar)

The Ascending Corridor begins as an upward branch of the Descending Corridor at about 28 meters in from the Entrance.  This cramped passageway starts literally as a hole in the ceiling of the Descending Corridor, and shares the same dimensions (.96 by 1.04 meters) and slope (26.5 degrees).  At about 39 meters in length, the bottom of the Ascending Corridor is currently plugged by three large granite blocks, each 1.5 meters long.

We will be revisiting the Ascending Corridor when we cover Phase Two.  Jean-Pierre Houdin theorizes that this passage originally housed a ballast roller that was part of the counterweight machinery of the Grand Gallery, the floor of which is a continuation of the slope of the Ascending Corridor.  Like the Descending Corridor, the Ascending Corridor is housed in the strip of well-calibrated masonry that forms the interior foundation.  It is in perfect vertical alignment with the Entrance, sharing the same 6.82 meter offset.

The Queen’s Chamber

The entrance under the Grand Gallery to the Horizontal Corridor that leads to the Queen’s Chamber (Photo by Jon Bodsworth)

By Jean-Pierre’s analysis, the pyramid should have reached a height of 21 vertical meters around Year 8 of construction, which was an important milestone.  At this elevation the Ascending Corridor came to an end and the Grand Gallery began.  Also at this junction a horizontal passageway was constructed leading to the south.  With a length of 21 meters, this Horizontal Corridor led to the second provisional tomb, the misnamed “Queen’s Chamber.”  This was to be the temporary resting place of Khufu’s body, if needed, from Years 10 through 15.

Unlike the King’s and Subterranean Chambers, the Queen’s Chamber is longer from north to south, 5.75 meters, than it is east to west, 5.23 meters.  This may give the initial impression that, unlike the other burial chambers, the Queen’s Chamber is oriented north to south rather than east to west.  But the innovative ceiling of the Queen’s Chamber, a sort of trial run for the roof of the relieving compartments above the King’s Chamber, puts this notion to rest.

Unlike the corbelled ceilings of previous pyramid burial rooms, the ceiling of the Queen’s Chamber is formed by six arching pairs of 20-ton rafters of Tura limestone identical to the gables above the Entrance.  Leaning in at 120 degrees to rest against each other, these beams form a peaked ceiling 4.6 meters above the floor of the Queen’s Chamber. 

This apex not only runs east to west, it perfectly straddles the east/west axis of the pyramid, leaving no doubt that the Queen’s Chamber, like the King’s and Subterranean, is oriented east to west.

As mentioned above, the arching ceiling of the Queen’s Chamber probably served as a proving ground for Hemienu, as he would later use the same structure atop the relieving compartments of the final burial room.  The King’s Chamber is unique in that it has a flat ceiling, an innovation with possibly aesthetic and/or symbolic significance, but which required a good deal of compensation elsewhere in the pyramid’s structure.  In order for the King’s Chamber to have a flat ceiling, Hemienu needed to divert the weight above it elsewhere, and these powerful gabled ceilings were a key part of the solution.

Of course, the reinforcement of the narrow internal foundation was also an important factor in the stability of the inner structures, and like the rest of the Great Pyramid’s “plumbing,” the Queens Chamber was aligned along this runway of masonry. 

The corbelled niche inside the Queen’s Chamber (Photo by Jon Bodsworth)

There are other elements of the Queen’s Chamber which may have served structural or symbolic purposes, or possibly both.  Situated in the eastern wall is a corbelled niche nearly as tall as the room itself which Mark Lehner believes may have once held a statue of Khufu, making the Queen’s Chamber a serdab (Lehner, Mark. The Complete Pyramids. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997, pp. 111-12). 

This theory, however, is not incompatible with the idea of a provisional burial chamber.  There is no reason why the room could not have been designed as a serdab, but used as a tomb if the king died during this time. 

Another interesting feature is the so-called air-shafts, two diagonal shafts leading out of the Queen’s Chamber through the north and south walls.  Jean-Pierre theorizes that these shafts were an intercom system that allowed the foremen working on the north side of the pyramid to communicate with those on the south side. 

This would have been particularly useful during Phase Two, when the noise level from the counterweight system and the need to coordinate would have been at their highest.  The fact that these shafts terminate at the same level that Phase Two ended seems rather telling. 

By Year 9 of construction the ceiling of the Queen’s Chamber was in place, with the tip of the rafters reaching about 24 meters above the base of the pyramid.  Although it was not used as a provisional tomb—Long Live the King!—the walls are even more polished than those of the King’s Chamber, which would have maximized the acoustics for the intercom system.  Meanwhile, even as the Queen’s Chamber was being constructed, the rest of the pyramid continued to rise, including the Grand Gallery, which also had its base at the 21 meter level.

The Grand Gallery

So to recap, by Year 10 there were three completed passageways.  One was the Descending Corridor leading from the Entrance down to the Subterranean Chamber, the first provisional tomb.  The second was the Ascending Corridor, branching up from the Descending Corridor and ending at the 21-meter level.  The third was the horizontal passageway that led due south from the top of the Ascending Corridor to the Queen’s Chamber, the second provisional tomb.  The junction at the 21-meter level is where the Ascending Corridor transitions into the Grand Gallery. 

Visualizing the junction at the top of the Ascending Corridor can be tricky business, as the Horizontal Corridor leading to the Queen’s Chamber is at the top of the Ascending Corridor and essentially tunnels under the Grand Gallery. 

The floor of the Ascending Corridor resumes at the same 26.5 degree incline opposite the gap formed by the beginning of the Horizontal Corridor.  This gap is flanked by two elevated sides, or “benches,” that run nearly the entire length of the Grand Gallery from the base to the top. 

The Grand Gallery—note the notches cut into the raised benches (Photo by Jon Bodsworth)

In total, the Grand Gallery is about 46 meters long and 8.6 meters high from floor to ceiling, with a total vertical height of 17.35 meters from the bottom (above the gap that allows access to the Horizontal Corridor) to the top of the Great Step.  The base width (including the benches) is 2.06 meters. 

The walls are corbelled with seven tiers, extending inward about 7.6 centimeters at each tier, giving the ceiling a width of 1.04 meters.  The benches are each about 51 centimeters wide and about 61 centimeters high, squeezing the floor of the Grand Gallery into a trench about 1.06 meters wide.

Looking up (south) from the base of the Grand Gallery—the regularity of the notches and the dimensions of the corridor are just a couple of the many clues suggestive of some sort of large mechanism (Photo by John & Morton Edgar)

 There are enigmatic particulars about the Grand Gallery, not the least of which are its unusual dimensions and topography, which suggest a purpose beyond a simple passageway. 

Mechanical details, such as the regular notches that run the length of the benches and the unusual wear pattern of the Great Step (now mortared over) provide clues that some sort of large-scale kinetic activity once took place in the Grand Gallery. 

The solid base provided by the internal foundation indicates that Hemienu planned for heavy bodies in motion.  Like the external ramp, the Grand Gallery was designed with durability in mind.

A close-up of one of the notches that score the benches along the Grand Gallery and the interesting wear pattern on the Great Step before it was “repaired” (Photos by Jon Bodsworth and John & Morton Edgar)

We will explore Jean-Pierre Houdin’s explanations for these details and a great many others as we unfold the mysteries of Phase Two:  the construction of the King’s Chamber.  With the external ramp completed and the fiftieth course of the Great Pyramid leveled off at a clean 43 meters, Hemienu was ready to plug the external ramp into its battery—the counterweight trolley that thundered along its tracks in the Grand Gallery.  This ancient machine, fully integrated into the structure of the pyramid itself, provided the extra muscle required to haul the great beams of granite into place above the King’s Chamber.

Related Articles

• Introduction:  Building a Great Pyramid
• Part One:  How Do You Prefer Your Ramp?  Straight or With a Twist
• Building the Great Pyramid Year One:  Six Letters from Hemienu
• Hemienu to Houdin: Phase One, Part A—One Third of a Ramp, Two Thirds of a Pyramid
• Hemienu to Houdin: Phase One, Part B—Alternating Lanes and Building from the Inside Out

Copyright by Keith Payne, 2010.  All rights reserved.

Photographs “Mastaba-faraoun-3”, “descending corridor looking up toward original entrance”, “Entrance to Horizontal Corridor”, “Looking into the ascending corridor from the GG”, “the GG”, “slot in the bench of the GG”, “niche inside the QC”, and “Ceiling of the Queens Chamber” by Jon Bodsworth have been released into the public domain.  Photographs “East wall of the subterranean chamber”, “where the descending corridor levels off”, “junction of the ascending and descending corridors”,  “doorway of the Horizontal Passage in the north wall of the Queen’s Chamber”, “sketch of QC”, “GG from the base showing benches”, and “eroded great step” by John & Morton Edgar are in the public domain and are provided courtesy of Jon Bodsworth.  Graphics “burial chamber offsets”, “inner works layout”, “internal foundation”, “the goal”, “three burial chambers”, “completion of the subterranean chamber”, “intercom system”, “completion of the grand gallery”, and “phase one complete” are copyrighted by Jean-Pierre Houdin and are used with his permission, all rights reserved.

Our master builders have different goals, however.  The first, Hemienu, was determined to build the greatest pyramid ever, and the second, Jean-Pierre Houdin, was equally determined to figure out how he did it.

Jean-Pierre Houdin and Bob Brier wrote a book—The Secret of the Great Pyramid—about this very subject in 2008 and the paperback edition is due to hit bookstores October 6, 2009.  Ahead of the paperback, Em Hotep!  is providing you with a multi-part primer to Houdin’s work, to be followed with an interview with the man himself.

But first, who are these two architects?

Hemienu, son of Nefermaat—or Snefru

Hemienu: Vizier, Master of Works, and architect of the Great Pyramid (courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Although the Great Pyramid bears the name of Pharaoh Khufu, Hemienu was the genius behind its construction.  It was no coincidence that Hemienu should be selected for the job, and his pedigree would have well prepared him for the task.  What we don’t know from primary sources we may infer from what we do know about his probable history, and history in general.

There are two main theories regarding Hemienu’s childhood.  According to one theory he was the son of Pharaoh Snefru’s vizier, Nefermaat.  Vizier Nefermaat also bore the title “King’s Eldest Son,” which taken literally would have made Hemienu Snefru’s grandson.  As the positions of Vizier and Master of Works usually went hand-in-hand, it is believed that Nefermaat probably designed and built Snefru’s pyramids, including the Red Pyramid, the first true pyramid

If Nefermaat was Hemienu’s father, it is not difficult to imagine the two of them visiting building sites together, the youngster rapt with his father’s instructions to the workers, his discussions of geography and topography as he surveyed locations, and geological reports delivered from distant provinces.  He would have witnessed firsthand the difficult and painful lessons of the failures of the collapsed pyramid at Meidum and the second guessing that led to the oddly shaped Bent Pyramid at Dashur.

Pharaoh Snefru (courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

The other theory is that Hemienu was the son of Snefru, the pharaoh himself.  As a son of the pharaoh, Hemienu would have had an elite education leaving him well versed in the principles of mathematics and astronomy, and with an appreciation for the importance of architecture in religion.  His days at the court would have familiarized him with the intricacies of leadership and logistics.

While Hemienu, as the son of Pharaoh Snefru, may not have visited the building sites of the pyramids (although he very well may have), he would have been privy to the discussions of their construction.  We may safely assume this from the fact that regardless of who his father may have been, he eventually became vizier and Master of Works himself for his brother—or uncle—Khufu.  And as such, he showed clear signs of having learned from, and improved upon, the methods used by pyramid builders who preceded him.

The Pyramid Age had been ushered in by Imhotep, the vizier and master architect of Pharaoh Djoser.  Imhotep invented the pyramid, and while the form he designed may have changed, his template for pyramids and the complexes associated with them would set the standard for centuries to follow.  Before Imhotep, pharaohs and other nobles were buried under mastabas, rectangular stone buildings that contained mortuary shrines to the deceased and often symbolically mirrored the homes they occupied in life.

Imhotep conceived of a burial monument consisting of a number of mastabas stacked on top of each other, growing smaller as they rose.  His invention was the Step Pyramid, and he arrived at it through a process of modification and experimentation.  Like a Third Dynasty Einstein, Imhotep started with the idea of a pyramid and by devising, testing, and refining his idea, he achieved what had never been done before.

Hemienu, on the other hand, was more like Michelangelo.  He knew exactly what he wanted from the beginning, and by precisely executing his vision he achieved what has never been done since.  He had a plan which underwent very little modification, nor could it have.  Hemienu understood how every layer had to look and function—from the underground provisional tomb to the pyramidion—before he began digging.

Jean-Pierre Houdin, son of Henri

Jean-Pierre Houdin (center) - An architectural solution to an architectural question (courtesy of Jean-Pierre Houdin)

Jean-Pierre Houdin also grew up among the construction of great monuments.  His father, Henri Houdin, was part of the generation of French children born after WWI whose lives would be shaped by the events of WWII.  At the end of the war, he earned a Ph.D. in engineering from Paris’s presti-gious École des Arts et Metiers.  With more than 7,000 bridges to be rebuilt, young engineers were given tremendous responsibilities. Thus in 1947 24-year-old Henri Houdin was placed in charge of rebuilding the Conflans Bridge outside of Paris (Brier and Houdin, pp. 2, 38).

Jean-Pierre was born in 1951, the younger of two sons, and spent much of his childhood playing at construction sites with his brother, Bernard.  Henri had been assigned to the Ivory Coast, a French protectorate, where he was instrumental in the rebuilding of that country, and family outings often consisted of picnics at construction sites (Brier and Houdin, pp. 38-40). 

It was thus no surprise when Jean-Pierre decided to become an architect.  He entered the École des Beaux-Arts in 1970 for that purpose where, as part of his final year studies, Jean-Pierre designed a solar house that would be considered cutting edge green technology today.  The year was 1976.

Henri Houdin first became intrigued with the construction of the Great Pyramid in 1998, when he viewed a television program on the subject, The Mystery of the Pyramid.  He watched with interest as the theories of construction were spelled out, but his instinct told him that the conventional theories didn’t quite add up.  They were illogical to the trained eye of an experienced master builder and were neither based on true civil engineering techniques nor masonry processes.

The engineer immediately spotted two misconceptions. The first was that blocks were always depicted being delivered to the site from the base to the top from the outside. The second misconception was that the pyramid facing was shown being installed at the end of the process, from top to base, with no means of controlling the shape of the monument. Henri didn’t see how that could be possible.  He then had an ingenious idea: if he would have to build a pyramid, he would build it from the inside.

Henri Houdin now had a project to keep him busy in his retirement, and he tackled the quandary with relish.  How would he, as an engineer, build the pyramid?  He worked and reworked his ideas, and in 1999 went so far as to publish his theory in the journal of the French National Society of Engineers and Scientists (Brier and Houdin, p. 126).

Henri discussed his newfound passion often with Jean-Pierre, but just as the engineer had seen flaws in the approach of the non-engineers, the architect son began to notice things his engineer father had missed.  For instance, Henri had envisioned an internal ramp spiraling up the inside of the pyramid in a circular fashion.  Jean-Pierre knew that it would be impossible to move heavy blocks in a circular pattern—there is no efficient way to push or pull such weights around a constant curve. 

Jean-Pierre also knew that there was no way the internal ramp could accommodate some of the larger blocks used in the construction of the King’s Chamber (Brier and Houdin, p. 126).  Somehow Hemienu had found a way to move granite slabs, some of which weighed more than sixty tons, to a height of nearly 200 feet and maneuver them into exactly the right place. 

So the architect stepped in where the engineer left off.  How had Hemienu done it?  Or more to the point, how was Jean-Pierre going to do it?  How do you reverse engineer a five and a half million ton pyramid?

Synthesis

About a hundred feet to the east of the Great Pyramid, cut into the limestone bedrock, is a sixty-foot trench first surveyed in the 1880’s by Sir William M. Flinders Petrie.  The trench contains, rendered in 3D, an exact model of the descending and ascending passages of the pyramid, around which the rest would be designed.  Although the halls are much shorter, they are the exact dimensions of the real thing, a veritable walk-in blueprint, right down to the narrowing of the ascending passageway to allow blocks to be wedged in (Brier and Houdin, pp. 114-17).

As it turns out, Jean-Pierre Houdin would approach the problem in exactly the same way Hemienu did.  Thinking like his architect predecessor, Jean-Pierre used architectural software to produce the first true 3D model of the pyramid since Hemienu.  Other models had been made of the pyramid, to be sure, but Jean-Pierre was able to use specialized computer imagery that allowed him to turn the pyramid in any direction, to see the interior through its external skin, and to virtually travel through its passages just as Hemienu did in his 3D model.

The Great Pyramid of Khufu - Does a mile-long ramp lie hidden within? (Photo by Keith Payne)

Jean-Pierre’s life experience as the son of an engineer, his professional training and experience as an architect, and his technological savvy made him an ideal person to reexamine the question of how Khufu’s Pyramid was conceived, planned, and ultimately built.  His zeal would bring him to the attention of Dassault Systèmes, the world leader in 3D imaging, where he would assemble a dream team of modern pyramid builders and gain the resources to give his project the attention it deserves.

Hemienu to Houdin—Building a Great Pyramid

Over the next few weeks Em Hotep! will take you inside Jean-Pierre Houdin’s ideas, explore his vision, and evaluate his conclusions.  The first part will be an examination of the internal ramp theory.  What are the shortcomings of the traditional theories and how does his internal ramp resolve these issues?  Then we will go into the core of the pyramid itself and explore Houdin’s explanations of some of the pyramid’s abiding enigmas, such as the purpose of the Grand Gallery, and how those titanic granite blocks were put into place.  Finally, we will end with an exclusive interview with Jean Pierre Houdin himself to get clarification and find out where he will take us next.

Jean-Pierre Houdin’s mind is in perpetual motion, and describing Khufu’s Pyramid as his passion is actually an understatement—it is his magnum opus, his mission.  With his and Bob Brier’s book, The Secret of the Great Pyramid, just going into paperback in October, you can rest assured his work has continued.  In addition to the coming interview, he just might provide some clarification as we explore his theory.  Who knows what new insights may arise?

Next Part: 

Hemienu to Houdin Part One: How Do You Prefer Your Ramp, Straight or With a Twist?

Work Cited:  Brier, Bob and Jean-Pierre Houdin.  The Secret of the Great Pyramid.  New York:  Smithsonian, 2008.

Photographs ”Statue-of-Hemiun.jpg” by Einsamer Schütze and “Snofru Eg Mus Kairo 2002.png” are provided courtesy of Wikimedia Commons  and are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License. In short: you are free to share and make derivative works of those files under the conditions that you appropriately attribute them, and that you distribute them only under a license identical to this one. Official license.  Both photographs of Jean-Pierre Houdin are courtesy of Jean-Pierre Houdin, all rights reserved. 

ALL OTHER photographs and text are copyright (c) 2009 by Keith Payne, all rights reserved.