These media are from the Khufu Reborn/Khufu Renaissance phase of Project Khufu, an international and interdisciplinary initiative to explain how the Great Pyramid of Pharaoh Khufu was built based on the theories and research of French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin.

Audio/Video

Sealing the King’s Chamber—animation uploaded by Marc Chartier (posted to YouTube February 09, 2011)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sealing the King’s Chamber Up Close—another animation of the sealing mechanism uploaded by Marc Chartier, focusing on the sealing blocks (posted to YouTube February 09, 2011)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Architects Find New Rooms in the Pyramid of Khufu—Indonesian coverage of Khufu Reborn, but the clips are fantastic (posted to YouTube February 04, 2011)

Click here to view the embedded video.

An Architect Uncovers the Secrets of the Great Pyramid—Euronews’ coverage of Khufu Reborn, again in French but visually wonderful (posted to YouTube February 02, 2011)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Khufu Reborn coverage on France 3—French language, but excellent clips (posted to YouTube February 02, 2011)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Khufu Pyramid Secret Rooms—English-language coverage of Khufu Reborn from CCTV News (posted to YouTube January 29, 2011)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Websites and Journal Articles

• Talking Pyramids:  Two Secret Pyramid Chambers Revealed—by Vincent Brown (January 29, 2011)

Thursday was ‘D Day’ and Jean-Pierre and Dassault Systèmes ended all the intrigue and mystery with their spectacular 3D presentation of Episode 2 “Legacy of Khufu” at the La Géode conference in Paris.

• Talking Pyramids:  ‘Khufu Reborn’—Unveiling Secrets—by Vincent Brown (January 24, 2011)

In three days time Jean-Pierre Houdin and Dassault Systèmes will be at a conference in La Géode to reveal ‘Khufu Reborn’, the sequel to Jean-Pierre’s internal spiral ramp theory.

News Stories

• NTD Television:  French Architect Discovers New Rooms in Ancient Khufu Pyramid—no author listed.  (January 28, 2011)

French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin unveiled in Paris on Thursday the existence of two hidden and so far unknown rooms in Egypt’s Great Pyramid.  No one had ever suspected the existence of any such rooms.  But in his many visits to Khufu’s king’s chamber, Houdin noticed that one stone element in the burial room was not supporting any weight and therefore had once been a passage.  According to funeral rites of ancient Egypt, kings would be buried with all their belongings in close proximity. In other pyramids these items are situated in a room adjacent to the burial room.

• Physorg:  Great Pyramid has two secret chambers—no author listed (January 27, 2011)

A French architect campaigning for a new exploration of the 4,500-year-old Great Pyramid of Giza said on Thursday that the edifice may contain two chambers housing funereal furniture.

These media are from the Khufu Revealed phase of Project Khufu, Jean-Pierre Houdin’s work up to and ending with the premier of Khufu Reborn in January 2011.

Audio/Video

National Geographic Expedition Week:  Unlocking the Great Pyramid—the NatGeo special on Jean-Pierre Houdin’s Khufu Revealed work, in its entirety!  (posted to YouTube March 17, 2011)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Another Pyramid Fly Through—this one even better!  (posted to YouTube August 17, 2009)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Jean-Pierre Houdin and Bob Brier Interviewed—Associated Press (posted to YouTube November 19, 2008)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Interview with Jean-Pierre Houdin—World News Australia (posted to YouTube November 13, 2008)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Great Pyramid Mystery Solved?—National Geographic short piece from their special on Jean-Pierre Houdin’s work, Unlocking the Great Pyramid (posted to YouTube October 31, 2008)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Jean-Pierre Houdin and Mehdi Tayoubi Interviewed—Also French audio, but also worth viewing for the clips (posted to YouTube June 24, 2007)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Jean-Pierre Houdin, Mehdi Tayoubi, Richard Breitner Interviewed—French audio, but the clips of the Dassault Systèmes animations make it worth viewing even if you don’t speak French (posted to YouTube June 24, 2007)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Pyramid of Cheops by Jean-Pierre Houdin—Spanish-language coverage of Khufu Revealed, as always the visuals make viewing desirable even if you don’t speak the language (posted to YouTube April 3, 2007)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Pyramid Fly Through–The Khufu Pyramid modeled by architect Jean-Pierre Houdin in Dassault Systèmes’ 3D Life.  (posted to YouTube April 01, 2007)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Websites and Journal Articles

• The Khufu Revealed/Kheops Révélé Official Page at Dassault Systèmes

The site dedicated to the first phase of Jean-Pierre Houdin’s internal ramp theory.  The site provides a good, basic explanation of the general concepts of the theory up to that point, with sections for explanations, clues/evidence, and a 3D demo that requires installation of Dassault Systèmes’ proprietary 3d viewer, 3DVIA, which can be downloaded from the site.

• Heritage Key:  Exclusive Interview: Jean-Pierre Houdin Defends His Internal Ramp Pyramid Theory—by Malcolm Jack (September 07, 2009)

The question of how the Great Pyramid of Giza was built is one of the most hotly-debated topics in ancient history. Maverick French architect and self-styled “Mr. Pyramid” Jean-Pierre Houdin is determined that he has the answer – the 4,569 year-old monument was, he argues, erected from the inside-out, using an internal ramp built into the fabric of the structure. Others are skeptical of his theory, but Houdin is certain he has the proof.

• Heritage Key:  Building the Great Pyramid of Giza:  Jean-Pierre Houdin’s Internal Ramp Theory—by Malcolm Jack (September 04, 2009)

We know lots about the Great Pyramid of Giza – it’s age (about 4,569 years), who it was built for (the Fourth Dynasty Egyptian King Khufu), who designed it (Khufu’s brother, the architect Hemienu) and even who rolled up their sleeves and did the work (tens of thousands of skilled labourers from across the kingdom, as opposed to slaves as was once believed). But ask a room full of experts how it was built, and you can expect a whole lot of head-scratching and beard-stroking, followed by heated argument and possibly some light fisticuffs.

• Talking Pyramids:  How Were the Egyptian Pyramids Built? Part 5:  Houdin’s Internal Ramp—by Vincent Brown (April 10, 2008)

French Architect Jean-Pierre Houdin has a revolutionary theory on how the pyramids were built.  He looked at the three main existing theories: the large long straight ramp used to drag the stone up on sleds or rolled on logs, the wooden ‘machines’ mentioned by Herodotus & the spiral ramp theory.

• Smithsonian:  Monumental Shift—by Diana Parsall (August 01, 2007)

In 1999, Henri Houdin, a retired French civil engineer, was watching a television documentary on the construction of Egypt’s ancient pyramids. He had supervised many dam and bridge projects, and much of what he saw on the show struck him as impractical. “It was the usual pyramid-building theories, but he wasn’t satisfied as an engineer,” says his son, Jean-Pierre, an independent architect. “He had a sparkle in the brain. ‘If I had to build one now, I would do it from the inside out.’

• Archaeology:  How to build a pyramid—by Bob Brier (Vol. 60 no. 3, May/June 2007)

Of the seven wonders of the ancient world, only the Great Pyramid of Giza remains. An estimated 2 million stone blocks weighing an average of 2.5 tons went into its construction. When completed, the 481-foot-tall pyramid was the world’s tallest structure, a record it held for more than 3,800 years, when England’s Lincoln Cathedral surpassed it by a mere 44 feet.

News Stories

• National Geographic News:  Great Pyramid Mystery to be Solved by Hidden Room?—by Brian Handwerk (November 14, 2008)

A sealed space in Egypt’s Great Pyramid may help solve a centuries-old mystery: How did the ancient Egyptians move two million 2.5-ton blocks to build the ancient wonder?

• National Geographic Channel:  Unlocking the Great Pyramid—by Bob Brier (November 11, 2008)

It always surprises my students when I tell them we don’t know how the Great Pyramid of Giza was built. Dancing in their heads are Hollywood’s images of lots of guys hauling blocks up a huge ramp. The truth is, that simply won’t work. In order for the workers to pull the blocks, the ramp would have to have a gentle slope, but the pyramid is 480 feet high and that would mean that Hollywood’s ramp stretches for more than a mile. The ramp would be greater in volume than the pyramid! Also, archaeologists have never found the remains of such a ramp, and something that big doesn’t just disappear in the dry desert. So how the Great Pyramid was built is still one of the greatest archaeological mysteries of our time.

• Free Republic:  Egyptologists use high-tech software to analyze construction of the Great Pyramid—by Sumathi Reddy and Nia-Malika Henderson (October 21, 2008)

Using cutting edge technology, Egyptologist Bob Brier of the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University delved into the only standing wonder of the ancient world, the Great Pyramid, and uncovered the mystery behind cracks in the massive Egyptian structure, unearthing a new room along the way.

• USA Today:  Scientists Ramp up for pyramid theory—by Dan Vergano (May 16, 2007)

The Great Pyramid of Giza, the sole surviving member of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, stands today as the most massive puzzle in the history of civilization.

• National Geographic News:  Great Pyramid Built Inside Out, French Architect Says—by Dan Morrison (April 02, 2007)

Ancient Egyptians built the 480-foot-high (146-meter-high) Great Pyramid of Giza from the inside out, according to a French architect.  Based on eight years of study, Jean-Pierre Houdin has created a novel three-dimensional computer simulation to present his hypothesis. He says his findings solve the mystery of how the massive monument just outside Cairo was constructed.

• A VR Geek’s Blog:  The Pyramid and the biggest VR screen (March 31, 2007)

On Friday March 30th 2007, the biggest VR screen was inaugurated with a great event; A big show at La Géode (IMAX theater in Paris) to unveil the theory of Jean-Pierre Houdin about his theory on the construction of the Great Pyramid of Khufu (Kheops).

• BBC News:  “Mystery of Great Pyramid ‘solved’—no author listed (March 31, 2007)

A French architect claims to have solved the mystery of how Egypt’s Great Pyramid was built.  Jean-Pierre Houdin said the 4,500-year-old pyramid, just outside Cairo, was built using an inner ramp to lift the massive stones into place.

“The Egyptians built what they knew how to, as simply and logically as possible.”  –Jean-Pierre Houdin

Continuation of the interview Jean-Pierre Houdin gave exclusively to Pyramidales, to coincide with the public presentation of his “theory” Khufu Reborn (aka Khufu Renaissance).

After discussing his working approach in presenting the Great Pyramid’s construction in a new light, then flying us over the Giza Plateau (royal causeway, external ramp extended by a second internal ramp), he takes us inside the monument to show us structures abandoned a great many centuries ago to the silence of the stone.

The aim of his reasoning:  to reveal the “how” of the pyramid’s primary function. Before being a gigantic arrangement of limestone and granite blocks, this monument was actually designed and built to serve as the eternal resting place for a deceased Pharaoh. Now, the similarities between the Fourth Dynasty pyramids lead the architect to draw the obvious conclusions, given the funereal architectural logic of the era: the inference of the existence of two antechambers in front of the King’s Chamber; the abandoning of the “service circuit” (descending and ascending corridors, Grand Gallery, etc.) as insufficiently “noble” for the royal funeral; the second entrance (the real one) to the King’s Chamber, and so on.

The “Noble Circuit” inside the Great Pyramid

For Jean-Pierre Houdin, the constructional logic of his former builder “colleagues” is irrefutable: how could Khufu have given up the technical advances used in pyramids built immediately before his own? Unthinkable! The seventh Wonder of the World, the Great Pyramid, in its internal configuration, was only able to include the “Noble Circuit” and the essential facilities for an eternal resting place, by starting with the antechambers to the sarcophagus chamber.

Calling on the 3D techniques in which they are the internationally renowned specialists, the experts at Dassault Systèmes made virtual models of the pyramid to test the “feasibility” of the construction project as identified by Jean-Pierre in his study of the monument. The architect himself drew practical conclusions from this study: from now on, we can no longer look at or study the Pyramid of Khufu as we have considered it in the past. Archaeological myopia no longer applies to this illustrious monument.

The external ramp : up to 1/3 of the pyramid’s height

Pyramidales: “The facts learned from your reconstitution of the Great Pyramid’s construction are now well known: an external ramp up to one third of the final height, equivalent to two thirds of the pyramid’s final volume; a regularly reset counterweight system, developing into the Grand Gallery and the ascending corridor, to raise the monoliths for the King’s Chamber; an internal ramp to transport the blocks used for the last third of the volume, equivalent to the last two-thirds of the pyramid’s total height. Are you sticking to these facts? Or are you changing them with Khufu Reborn?”

Two Internal Ramps

J.-P. Houdin: “In fact I am coming back to these facts, by building on them. The new position of the external ramp, determined by the position of the plateau ramp, and the discovery of a room behind the notch on the north-east edge had a very special significance: 85% of the pyramid’s volume could be built using the external ramp.

Level +43m (storage area for the granite beams)

“From then on, I suspend construction of the internal ramp at level +43 m (south face) during the construction of the King’s Chamber and until the pyramid reaches a height of 70 m. The internal ramp ends in the south-west corner at level +43 m and resumes its progress at the same level in the south-east corner. Between the two, the teams dragging the facing blocks made of Tura stone passed through the storage area for the granite beams at this same level. The internal ramp, which runs counter-clockwise and which I now call the ‘main internal ramp’, no longer cuts across the path of the external ramp, so a second internal, spiral, open-trench ramp extends the route up a slope in the body of the pyramid, this time in a clockwise direction. The possibilities offered by this second ramp stop at about +70 m, as the snake chases its own tail.

Advancement of the construction (external ramp and internal ramp)

The trench is then filled in and the section of the internal ramp between the two south-west and south-east edges is built, permanently connecting the two parts. The southern part is built up to catch up with level +70 m. The external ramp can then be dismantled to provide the limestone blocks needed to construct the last 76 meters in height. No extracted stone will be wasted.

“The price paid by the Egyptians: a section of the main internal ramp is horizontal, which might appear stupid: on the contrary, by sacrificing slope in this section, the Egyptians greatly reduced the workload of the ramp: it still needed to provide supplies for the construction up to the summit, that is to enable construction of the remaining 76 m in height, but only 15% of the volume instead of 33%. The advantage far outweighs the disadvantage.

“Moreover, the very strong supposition concerning the presence of a first counterweight on the plateau consequently supports the function of the Grand Gallery as a slide channel for the second counterweight. I fail to see any reason constraining the designers to give the Grand Gallery two functions. Making an antechamber of it? With a slope of 50%, it is not the most practical place to store funereal goods!

In the Khufu Reborn version of the theory of Jean-Pierre Houdin, the internal ramp has two levels: The first one, at the lower level, for the teams pulling the sledges carrying the blocks; the second, the upper level, for the teams coming back to their base with the empty sledges. The big advantage: the external gangway has disappeared. Everything is done inside the pyramid. At the junction of two sections of the internal ramp the sledges were rotated at a 90° angle to face the next section. An example is “Bob’s Room”, the notch which has been explored by Dr Bob Brier, the Egyptologist and friend of Jean-Pierre Houdin

“We forget that the pyramid was built in successive horizontal layers (courses) and that therefore, at each level, workers were working on a flat surface. It was then easy to construct rooms of the same type as the antechambers in the Red Pyramid in parallel with construction of the Grand Gallery, and to create the shortest possible corridors to connect them to the entrance in the north face. For example, the second horizontal corridor of the Queen’s Chamber, discovered by the Japanese, is located at the same level as the summit of the first series of rafters above the descending corridor. No need to use a donkey to follow the route: it’s flat!

“I cannot see my colleagues of the period forgetting to make such as corridor and being content only to keep a route leading to the Queen’s Chamber, passing through the known structures. Taking the descending corridor over nearly 40 m, then continuing by going back up the ascending corridor for 35 m, and following another 35 m of horizontal corridor finally to enter this chamber: this is an assault course, not a logical plan for a precise function, namely to get from A to B by the shortest route, as the Egyptians had the habit of doing in pyramids.”

Pyramidales: “Now let’s go inside the pyramid, in your company. Let’s begin at the start of the journey that will bring us as far as the funereal chamber: the entrance to the monument.

What is the configuration?”

The “Adaptor”

Jean-Pierre Houdin: “This other structure of the Great Pyramid still reveals the genius of its designers: it’s what I call the ‘adaptor’.

The entrance of the pyramid: the “adaptor”

“The Egyptians, while keeping a single entrance shared by all the pyramid’s corridors, grafted a double room a few meters from the north face onto the descending corridor. The role of the rafters we can see in this area was to cover voids (the double room) to the back of which the other circuit, the ‘Noble Circuit’, could be connected. The funereal route then became logical and short: 5 m of descending corridor, passing through a 2 m-high shaft into the double room, continuing through a second ascending corridor, 35 m long and parallel to but higher than the known one, arriving in a horizontal corridor linking the first antechamber, passing into the second antechamber and ending up in the King’s Chamber through a short 5 m corridor beginning more than 7 m above the floor of the antechambers.

“I could describe the route of Snefru’s funeral in similar fashion, with the difference that, for the latter, the procession descended from the entrance, while for Khufu it climbs. And this adaptor had a last function: to link the ‘Noble Circuit’ to the internal ramp, which crosses a few meters above, through a small vertical shaft that was modeled in the bedrock and 50 m east of the pyramid, as the same time as other complex details that we find inside, such as the junctions of different corridors.

“This small shaft will play a very significant role at the end of the funeral: after having sealed the King’s Chamber and corridors, the workers will leave the pyramid by going back up this shaft and taking the internal ramp as far as its entrance at the pyramid’s base; once outside, this entrance will be sealed in its turn. Nothing simpler and more logical… because it was designed in advance!

“One last thing: the Egyptians certainly never thought of constructing pyramids so that their architectural structures would become enigmas to be solved by a civilization coming along several millennia later. They built what they knew how to, as simply and logically as possible. They never considered building tricks, to fool possible looters; this function was reserved, with a greater or lesser degree of luck, to the portcullis and especially the stopper-blocks we find in the pyramids. The ‘Noble Circuit’ that I suspected matches the architectural logic perfectly.”

Structures of the internal ramp

Pyramidales: “After having followed a second ascending corridor, then a second horizontal corridor – ‘new features’, if I may say so, in Khufu Reborn – the solemn funeral procession ended up at what you call the ‘Royal Apartments’. What were their function and their configuration?”

Two Antechambers

J.-P. Houdin: “In the funereal architectural tradition of the end of the Third Dynasty and a large part of the Fourth, the deceased’s apartments in the hereafter were composed of two antechambers immediately adjacent to the sepulchral chamber. To continue his life in the next world, the King therefore had his goods and personal possessions stored in these antechambers, what through the greed of man would later be called the ‘treasures of the Pharaohs’, but which in the spirit of the age had only a religious purpose; and this is only the later which interest me.

“At the end of the Third Dynasty, then in the Fourth under Snefru’s long reign, the architectural model of these apartments was based on the principle of a funereal chamber immediately preceded by two antechambers, slightly offset on a longitudinal axis. We find them in the form of two small cubicles in the Pyramid of Meidum, then as two contiguous rooms in the Bent Pyramid at Dashur, and finally as two twinned rooms in the Red Pyramid, again at Dashur.

“In parallel, we see continuous elevation of the funereal apartments, constructed first in the bedrock, then totally within the mass of the stonework for the Red Pyramid, the last one built before Khufu’s Pyramid.

“We find nothing of this architectural logic in Khufu; and there lies the real reason that we can ask ourselves: do we really know this pyramid? Would its looting and exploration by the Caliph Al-Ma’mun have led to a misunderstanding that lasted twelve centuries? The simple fact that looters reached as far as the King’s Chamber does not necessarily imply that we were aware of the funereal apartments. The end of the story of looting by the Caliph, finally ending in failure, must be seen as an invitation to push on further in terms of the internal architecture.”

Pyramidales: “We may wonder about the structural link between the configuration of the two chambers in front of the actual King’s Chamber and the monumental superstructure, over several floors – the so-called “relieving chambers” – for this latter chamber…”

Without the “Relieving Chambers” structure, the antechambers would have been crushed by the oblique load transferred by the rafters on the north side of the roof, their corbelled roofs being unable to bear any other load than a vertical one.

Above the King’s Chamber, the purpose of the “Relieving Chambers” is to raise up, higher up in the core of the masonry, the limestone rafters which cover the whole structure, acting like an umbrella.

The “Umbrella” Roof

J.-P. Houdin: “If, in the Pyramid of Khufu, we include conceptual consideration about the possible existence of a funereal apartment in this architectural continuity, while also including a change in technical expression (here I am talking about the innovative choice made by the designers to cover the sepulchral chamber with a flat ceiling, but without challenging technical knowledge, the magnificent corbelling of the antechambers in the Red Pyramid), the reason for the presence of this structure of “relieving chambers” suddenly becomes crystal clear.

“By combining antechambers roofed by corbelling (arches with springer stones), structurally only able to withstand vertical loads, and a vault with rafters located on a perpendicular axis, for the roof of the King’s Chamber, transferring oblique loads, the Egyptians made the bold choice by taking a calculated risk. Very knowledgeable about materials and force transfer, they chose granite to make the ceiling of the King’s Chamber, because it was the only stone that made it possible. As this ceiling takes no load, they would then have been able to place the roof of limestone rafters immediately above it, but then, the north slope of the latter would have transferred the supported load laterally and the corbelling would have been crushed under the load. They only had one solution: move the roof very high into the mass, which we can compare to an umbrella protecting the ceilings, so that the oblique loads transferred from the northern slope are no longer applied to the corbelling.

“The cost was worthy of the stakes: to create a room with absolutely perfect dimensions in the heart of the edifice, because the pyramid’s constructors had to place more than 3,000 tons of granite stacked over five ceilings. After having already been obliged to build in the counterweight systems for the beams for the first ceiling, they used installation methods that were already planned anyway.”

Pyramidales: “In your opinion, the only visible entrance to the King’s Chamber, which is still used today, only had an access role to this part of the construction site. How was it permanently blocked off?

“And the other entrance, in the west part of the north wall of the King’s Chamber, the one that you say was used for the funeral ceremonies, how was it permanently closed in its turn, to preserve the privacy and secret of the royal sepulcher?”

A Complex and “Wonderful” Closure System

J.-P. Houdin: “The entrance to the King’s Chamber on the east side of its north wall, from what I call the service circuit (ascending corridor and Grand Gallery), could only be sealed from inside the chamber. Many details prove it. The sealing block that “lay around” in the chamber for 1,200 years is the absolute proof of it.

“To close off access to the chamber from the 2nd circuit, the “Noble (or funereal) Circuit”, the Egyptians had included the essential technical process for perfect and simple closure right from the original plans, in the section of the corridor linking the last antechamber to the King’s Chamber.

“If we carefully analyze the closure system in the west access corridor of the Bent Pyramid at Dahshur, we notice the presence of two enormous oblique portcullis stones intended to block the passage to the funereal chamber. Through the chance of history, one of these two portcullis stones remained in its raised position, the second blocking the corridor in front. This closure mechanism is based on a block weighing several tons maintained in its raised position by a wooden prop on the corridor side (visible on the second, unreleased portcullis), while being ‘unstuck’ from its slide by being tipped up on a limestone block on the opposite side. Such unsticking is fundamental to avoid what is called ‘starting (or sticky) friction’, which if not dealt with prevents any movement without a ‘bit of a boost’, even on a pronounced slope (this is why on Egyptian bas-reliefs we often see figures carrying wooden levers used to unstick the back of the runners on transport sledges).

“The operating principle of this type of portcullis is therefore as follows: a worker removes the wooden prop straddling the corridor, thus releasing the portcullis that, not being ‘stuck’ to its slide, moves forward by making the rear block tip over. The portcullis then gains speed on its slide and ends its travel in the rebate made at the other end of its journey. We can say that this is practically an ‘automatic’ portcullis.

“From this system, the architects transposed a more elaborate version of it than that in the Bent Pyramid at Dashur. In the case of the Great Pyramid, it was no longer a question of closing the access corridor, but of very cleanly and almost undetectably sealing the funereal chamber itself. The closure block therefore had to be able to merge completely with the other blocks in the room. The floor of the last antechamber before the funereal chamber being nearly 8 m lower than that of the chamber, it was impossible for a dozen workers to raise a block weighing more than 3 tons to such a height, and particularly to introduce it into a corridor having an identical cross-section, to the nearest 2 mm. The only solution: store this block between the two rooms, as close to the connecting corridor as possible, and bring it into the corridor after interring the King in his sarcophagus.

“And here again Egyptian genius has worked wonders: this block was positioned, with a little bit of play, in the wall of the corridor, halfway along it, as an integral part of this wall; it was held in place by a wooden prop laid on the floor across the corridor, this prop becoming the trigger for the planned mechanism. Stuck to the back of this block, a second ‘twinned’ block was positioned in a small corridor perpendicular to the access corridor. The aim was to bring the first block into position in the access corridor and to replace it in the wall by its twin. So that the operation was able to function, it was necessary to be able to push the two blocks from behind the second block using an independent mechanism; and this is where we find the development from the Bent Pyramid’s portcullis system. This was transformed into a ‘push-block’, while keeping the same original characteristics for starting it moving.

“The mechanism was very simple: after having sprinkled a very fine layer of Sinai sand on the corridor floor (for its perfectly regular ‘quartz beads’ properties), workers positioned in the second antechamber removed the wooden prop from the corridor using a rope. Once it was cleared away, the push-block was released and pushed the two twin blocks, the first taking its place in the corridor, and the second its place in the corridor wall. It only remained to push the closure block up to its final position in the wall of the funereal chamber.

“And here again, a stroke of genius: a wooden ‘piston’ (a single piece of wood about 7 m long) positioned longitudinally over cross-beams fitted between the corbelling of the second antechamber, at the same level as the corridor floor, was operated from the room. Once the block was in the corridor, there only remained about 1.50 m to travel for it to reach its final position. The piston was then brought up to the rear of this block weighing more than 3 tons. To push it, a force of about 750 kg/f was required, which was a mere formality for the workers. The piston was operated using ropes from the base of the antechamber, almost 8 m below. About eight workers climbed ‘by rope’, adding their own weight to the mechanism, four others remained on the floor pulling the entire system until the block arrived at its stop against the floor slab of the funereal chamber.

“In the Red Pyramid, it is very easy to confirm that this system was also used, by analyzing the second antechamber (holes in the corbelling for the beams supporting the piston) and the connecting corridor (twin block different from the other wall blocks and special feature of the ceiling in two parts).

“This system functioned perfectly and was repeated for Khufu’s Pyramid. When the closure block was put into place, some sand was perhaps pushed inside the funereal chamber, leaving something unusual on the floor. It was perhaps this that attracted the attention of looters from the time of Al-Ma’mun: although there are close to 32 linear meters of wall in this room, they dug a tunnel just to the right of this closure block…nowhere else. They felt that there should have been ‘something’ in this area, but instead of thinking of digging horizontally into the wall, they dug vertically to a depth of more than 5 meters!”

Pyramidales: “Every construction project comes to an end. Like others, even that of the most sumptuous pyramid. And of course an exit route was needed for the last workers… Until now, a certain consensus was formed around the usefulness, for this purpose, of the ‘well’ leaving from the junction of the ascending corridor-horizontal corridor towards the Queen’s Chamber, coming out into the descending corridor. Now, according to you, this well had no other function than to ventilate the site. So from where did the last workers leave? And, for that matter, the priests and officials from the funeral procession, once the royal mummy had been laid in its eternal resting place?”

The Exit Well

J.-P. Houdin: “The technique used to construct this ventilation shaft says a lot. Originally, there would have had to be a vertical route between the bedrock and the rear of the west wall of the Great Gallery at its junction with the ascending corridor, its route being the most logical. It had to be extended into the rocky footing at an angle, until it joined the descending corridor level with the ceiling of the underground chamber, thus creating what is called a ‘throat effect’, like in a fireplace to increase the draw and create a double circuit with the descending corridor.

“The presence of an unexpected cave immediately adjacent in the footing pushed the architects to take advantage of this void to save time. The part dug towards the underground chamber started vertically to join the theoretical oblique route and continue as planned. On the other hand, to return to the vertical towards the Great Gallery, the architects were obliged to reduce the deviation from the original vertical route: being so close to the north-south axis, they had the means of knowing where they were going. So they constructed the part of the shaft within the mass by remembering that they were sappers, people who dig. So they laid a first horizontal layer (course) of limestone blocks and dug into this layer to ‘find’ the shaft beneath. They continued in this way slightly offsetting the hole towards the north, but always the same distance from the north-south axis, until they returned to the vertical of the planned outlet. From then on they continued the process vertically.

 “This well was necessary to enable a dozen workers to dig the underground chamber under acceptable conditions. The position of its outlet at the bottom of the Grand Gallery was shrewd: throughout its entire construction, ventilation was provided at no great cost! The well had taken the shortest possible route in order to be used for the longest possible time.

“But when the King’s Chamber was constructed, the underground chamber was permanently abandoned and the Grand Gallery was going to be used for the reason it had been constructed: to be the slide channel for a giant counterweight. The well’s outlet, dug into the shelf on the west side, was filled in with perfectly executed masonry, in order to enable the roller train to move correctly.

“The way it was rediscovered by Al-Ma’mun’s men clearly shows that this shaft had been very carefully filled in from inside the Grand Gallery, preventing it being used to evacuate workers after the funeral, what’s more setting off the stopper-blocks obstructed the bottom of the ascending corridor.

“Nonetheless we must remember a fundamental element: the architects that designed this pyramid certainly did not forget the ‘why’ of the project, namely to construct a royal tomb to ensure eternity for their King. The question of the funeral was therefore one of the main subjects in their thoughts. They weren’t going to ‘botch’ this part of their project. In designing the ‘Noble Circuit’, the one passing through the antechambers, they planned the way out for priests and workers.

“Fifty meters east of the pyramid, they modeled all the slightly complex details that they were not able to deal with using their design system (using a horizontal grid and a vertical grid, which gives 3D when you read the two grids at the same time!). Thus we find details of the entrance to the descending corridor, its junctions with the ascending corridor, and finally the junction between the ascending corridor, Grand Gallery and horizontal corridor. And they detailed, above the junction of the ascending and descending corridor, a shaft that had very great significance for the project and that has not (yet) been found in the pyramid: this well had to connect the ‘Noble Circuit’ to an element that had already been included in the project from the start, for good reason: the internal ramp. The designers traced its route by making it cross the ‘Noble Circuit’ close to and a few meters above the entrance rooms (under the rafters).

“One shaft four meters high settled the problem of evacuating the workers after sealing the ‘Noble Circuit’ from the inside. The rest was just a ‘walk in the park’! The workers, once they had reached the internal ramp, were able to descend as far as its entrance on the south face. Stonemasons were waiting to close this entrance for good and bury it beneath the cloak of Tura limestone: 10 m2 of blocks immersed in a facade of 21,000 m2… a needle in a haystack!”

Pyramidales: Following Khufu Revealed, you have called Episode 2 Khufu Reborn – for Khufu Renaissance  -. Why this term? Our dictionaries offer several definitions for the word “renaissance”: “new birth”, “reappearance or new lease of life”, “intellectual and artistic revival”, appeared with the Italian Rinascimento in the XVth-XVIth centuries… Which of these definitions did you use as your reference?”

J.-P. Houdin: “This is a very interesting question. Khufu Renaissance is a title suggested by Mehdi Tayoubi. It matches the content of this new stage in the development of my work perfectly, by combining each of the definitions you quoted:

• ‘new birth’, because our knowledge of the Great Pyramid is incomplete and it was really ‘born’ on January 27, 2011 (from my point of view, at least);
• ‘intellectual revival’, because this challenges our perception and our analysis of this monument: all the explanations regarding its construction, its internal layout and the funeral journey are ‘blown apart’;
• ‘reappearance’: we had not actually given any news since 2007;
• ‘new lease of life’: this presentation will relaunch the theory and especially bring an analysis and a new look to the whole Giza Plateau and beyond, including the other great pyramids: the Red Pyramid, the Bent Pyramid and Khafre’s Pyramid.

“And finally, in the context of The Renaissance as ‘intellectual and artistic revival’, it is actually a major evolution/revolution in the approach of archaeology; it brings it out of the simple context of studying documents, analysis on the ground and excavations, projecting it into the past using technologies of the future, at the center of which is 3D in all its forms (design, virtual reconstitution, animation and real time and relief immersion, for example). It brings a new dimension, anticipatory archaeology, enabling research on the ground to be guided.”

Pyramidales: “Jean-Pierre, to thank you for the welcome you have given readers of Pyramidales and for the clarity of your answers… a trick question! There was Episode 1 (the Great Pyramid in its operational structures). Now there is Episode 2 (the pyramid in its functional and ritual structures), from which we can already catch a glimpse of the impact on the general public and informed ‘pyramidologists’. Will there be, in the medium or longer term, an Episode 3? Or there again, are you planning to pitch your researcher’s tent at the foot of some other pyramid?

And now?

J.-P. Houdin: “Marc, strictly speaking there will be no Episode 3. No Hollywood thoughts in my approach, no desire for a Khufu Saga, but throughout all these years of research, I have discovered and studied all the great smooth pyramids from Snefru’s to Menkaure’s and, little by little, I have, in parallel, solved the problem of constructing each one.

“A fundamental point common to them all: they were all constructed from the inside and they all, except Menkaure’s (and the Djedefre interlude), had an internal ramp running around their mass; on the other hand, this internal ramp was adapted to each pyramid. The route for one differed from that of another.

“Starting with Menkaure’s Pyramid, the technique of constructing from the inside continued for the smooth pyramids, but the problem of height, less serious, would be solved by construction trenches as can be seen in the ruins of the pyramids of Sahure and Neferirkare at Abu Sir.

“My next steps should lead me to North Dashur (the Red Pyramid) and South Dashur (the Bent Pyramid), with yet another surprise in terms of the stages of construction for the latter.

“But nothing will take me away from the Giza Plateau, because I still have one last small formality to complete: to be able to walk along the internal ramp and visit the funereal apartments… This is the only thing I have not achieved!”

Copyright by Marc Chartier, 2011.  All rights reserved.

The purpose of these imaginary missives from the desk of the Overseer of All the King’s Works is to give the reader an idea of the amount of planning, materials, and manpower involved not only in building the Great Pyramid, but in preparation for the work itself.  There were mines and quarries to be opened, a fully functional workers’ city to be constructed, and an entire nation to be mobilized.

In many ways this is a re-introduction to the Hemienu to Houdin series, but it is also intended to be a stand-alone monologic narrative (fancy-speak for letters from just one person that tell a story) of how Hemienu initiated the project that would occupy all of Egypt for more than two decades.  Methods and materials, labor and logistics, tools and tasks, they are all here for your evaluation, along with a short annotated bibliography at the end.

Note:  The names used, with the exception of the Grand Vizier himself, are invented but not without some forethought (the Overseer of the Expedition to the Sinai to open the copper mines, for instance, is named Biah-Ahky, which translates to copper miner), and the titles and positions they hold do have their historical counterparts. 

Letter 1:  The Selection of the Building Site

From the Greatest of the Five of the House of Thoth, Chief Justice, Grand Vizier and Overseer of All the King’s Works, Hemienu, Holder of the King’s Seal, to the overseers, administrators, and nomarchs of the Two Lands:  Life, Prosperity, Health!

All of Upper and Lower Egypt Rejoice!  A place has been chosen for the pyramid complex of our pharaoh, Khufu, May He Live!  May He Prosper!  May He Be Healthy!  The pyramid where our king shall rest in body will be called Akhet Khufu—Khufu on the Horizon.

Hemienu and his entourage would have sailed the Nile in a more luxuriously appointed barge than this one, from the tomb of Vizier Mereruka, but the scale was probably about the same (Photo by Keith Payne)

Many of you have travelled with me the length of the Nile and have surveyed numerous sites, providing good counsel.  Many days and nights have we held court on the land and on my barge, and many passionate cases have been tendered.  Your service to our king will be remembered by all people, for all time.

I have decided against Saqqara and Dashur and have chosen instead the site in the north, at Rostau.  

I have good reasons for this choice.  First, there is a vast quantity of good yellow limestone there from which to build the inner structures of the pyramid and temples.  Second, there is a gentle slope which begins in the low area, suitable for a quay, and which connects the best location for the main quarry to the top of the plateau.  A donkey released at the summit will follow this same natural ramp down to an easy path to the Nile.  Donkeys have uncanny judgment in these matters and we should heed his guidance.

Of equal consideration are the plateau’s qualities of expanse and orientation.  It is an elevated plane with room enough for at least three, possibly more, large pyramids and numerous precincts for cemeteries.  Its elevation and orientation will make these monuments visible from Saqqara and Dashur and provide a desirable view when approached from the capital at Memphis.  In particular, I have decided upon the site that we identified as the lesser quarry, on the northeast extreme of the plateau.  This location is not the highest, but I have good reasons for this choice as well. 

The Pyramids of Abu Sir and Giza as viewed from Saqqara (Photo by Gaspa)

By constructing the first pyramid at the northeast corner, the natural ramp formed by the slope is left open to allow future building projects on the plateau.  Building on the highest point first would block access to the northeast corner.  To make the best use of the space, the plateau should be developed in the northeast first, with successive pharaohs building their pyramids along a southwest trajectory.  This will assure that the natural ramp remains open to future construction on the summit.

Building the pyramid within the lesser quarry is advantageous in other ways as well, not the least of which is 147 setat of limestone that needn’t be transported once cut.  Another advantage is the lay of the land, which slopes upward to the west.  When the outline of the pyramid is leveled, the elevated section inside the perimeter will be left intact.  By shaping this hill to fit within the construction, one tenth of the pyramid’s core will already be complete.

The main quarry at the bottom of the slope holds another 176 setat of good limestone, which together with the northeast quarry will provide more than enough blocks to construct the greatest pyramid complex ever built. 

All of Upper and Lower Egypt:  Unite for our pharaoh, Son of Re, Khufu, May He Live!  May He Prosper!  May He Be Healthy!

Letter 2:  Expedition to Open the Sinai Copper Mines

To Iahbty-Semyt, Administrator of the Eastern Desert, and to Biah-Ahky, Overseer of the Expedition to Sinai, Peace upon your goings!

There can be no doubt, Khufu on the Horizon is the greatest project ever undertaken by the people of Egypt, but this great work will require more resources than we have on hand.  There is enough copper for chisels and other tools to begin operations, but as work progresses we will have need of much more than we have now.  By way of investment, I have apportioned such supplies as you will require to lead a mining expedition to the Sinai.

Copper picks, saws, and drilling tubes have been made available, along with the powdered quartzite needed to make the drills and saws cut.  I call this an investment because these resources are in need all throughout Egypt as the great work begins.  In return, the pharaoh will need 840,000 deben of processed copper over the course of your operations.  Your work will be hard, but your afterlife will hold every luxury.

To avoid the transport of unnecessary waste materials, all smelting will take place at the mines.  You will be provided with mud brick to build the kilns and granite pounders for crushing the ore.  Moulds will be provided for pouring the copper into 50 deben ingots.  A supply train will make regular deliveries of wood for the kilns and will return with your finished ingots.

The number of donkeys and carts, baskets, and other equipment required has been left to your expert discretion, you need only inform the Overseer of Provisions of your needs.  A company of soldiers will be attached to your expedition to protect you in your journey, and will remain with you throughout operations to defend against the wild people of the desert.

The tools and methods used by these New Kingdom metal workers to smelt ore were largely the same as those used by Hemienu's workers (Graphic by Achille-Constant-Theodore Emile Prisse d'Avennes)

For this expedition you will select fifty of your best miners, no slaves or prisoners.  Your route will take you across the Eastern Desert to the Red Sea, where ships will bear you to the Sinai.  From there you will continue on donkey to the Plains of Markha and the mines at Wadi Maghara, where the greenest veins of ore—the easiest to smelt—are to be found. 

If in the course of your work turquoise is discovered and may be extracted with ease, please do so, but not at the expense of mining the ore.

In addition to reopening the copper mines at Wadi Maghara, you are to assemble missions to Sewew and the Faiyum to cull the dolerite which is abundant in those lands, and which is vital to the operation of the granite quarry at Aswan. 

It is imperative that your expeditions depart as soon as your equipment, supplies, and provisions may be gathered.  The quarries at Rostau and Tura require more copper as soon as you can deliver it, and the work at Aswan must not be delayed if the granite is to be delivered on schedule. 

May Isis watch over you.

Letter 3: Recruitment of the Unskilled and Semi-Skilled Labor Force

To Ahwet-Tepey, Administrator of the Corvée, Life and Peace!

An important task is given you, for you are my eyes and voice throughout the Two Lands.  You are to send recruiters to every nome, from Theb-Ka in the Delta to Ta-Seti at Aswan.  These recruiters will identify those men whose privilege will be to pay their bak debt working to raise Khufu on the Horizon from the Plateau of Rostau.  All the strongest men of the realm are summoned to pit their endurance and athleticism against one another for the glory of the king and the honor of their towns and families!

These recruiters will arrange the schedule of rotation and provide the men with their work assignments.  Men will be needed for the quarries at Aswan and Tura, as well as the main quarry at Rostau and the lesser quarry where the pyramid will be raised.  Men will also be needed to provide supporting services to the great work, both at home and in the quarries.

There will be jobs for hearty men of few skills who will work under direct supervision.  For these jobs select men who are stout of body and spirited in nature.  These men they will be working in teams with others from their families and villages, competing in their labor with men from all over Egypt for glory and honor.  Tell these men they will travel, gain experience and character, and will come to be all they are capable of being.  And they will eat better every day in service to the king than they do on festival days at home!

When selecting these men bear in mind the sort of labor they will be doing.  Their backs will move the levers that free the blocks in the quarries, pull the laden sleds, and load, unload, and arrange the great blocks of Khufu on the Horizon. Their arms will clear the debris and bust rocks for filler material.  They will grind gypsum and pour mortar.  Their legs will carry water for the work, wood for the fires, and tools to and from the sharpeners and the stonecutters.  They will work in quarries, on docks, and on the pyramid itself.

Teams from the corvée pulling a colossal statue on a great sled. Most of the stone moved throughout Giza would have been on much smaller sleds, but the granite beams quarried at Aswan would have been pulled on sleds not unlike this one (Drawn by Faucher-Gudin)

Of course, some men will need to remain behind on their farms to do their part for Khufu on the Horizon.  These men will till the earth, fish the Nile, and tend their flocks and herds as they have always done.  Their bak debt will be paid on hooves, in barrels, and in grain sacks.  Cattle and goats, and the drovers to deliver them.  Fish and fowl.  Emmer and Barley, garlic and leeks.  Onions, radishes, cucumbers, dates, honey, and figs.  Salt and herbs.  All for the glory of Egypt, all for the glory of the Pharaoh, all for the sake of Ma’at!

Your recruiters must also seek men with useful talents or the ability to learn quickly.  Unlike the unskilled men, who will be constantly told come here and go there, these men will have regular assignments such as positioning levers, rough shaping stone, and sharpening tools.  They will operate machines which have been designed to lift and turn the laden sleds.  They will cook the meals in the barracks and assist the bakers and brewers. 

A Young brewery worker from the Old Kingdom (Photo by Jon Bodsworth)

These are coveted positions to which they will return for their season of bak labor year after year, with prospects for advancement.  They are opportunities to learn a trade, and a clever man may find himself apprenticed to a master.  For this reason your recruiters should know that bribes and nepotism will not be tolerated.  Any man who corrupts this great work will find himself and his family made destitute, his lands seized, and his place in the afterlife forfeit.

Your men need not worry about skilled artisans and craftsmen, as these will be recruited by their nomarchs and overseers.  Your recruiters need only concern themselves with mobilizing the main body of the corvée to the pharaoh’s service. 

Arrange shifts and rotations of the corvée, send the right workers where they are needed most, and coordinate with the Royal Treasury and the Overseer of Provisions to assure that the granaries and storehouses remain stocked.

It is important for your men to work with haste, but of especial importance that those who will be recruiting from Lower Egypt, particularly the nomes of Khensu, Ka-Khem, Heq-At, and lower Aneb-Hetch—those nomes closest to Rostau—immediately send workers to the plateau to begin construction of the city where the permanent residents and rotating labor force will dwell. 

This city will grow over time, but even in Year One there will be need for barracks, granaries, bakeries, breweries, and other facilities necessary to support the great work.

I wish you peace!  May you live, prosper, and be healthy!

Letter 4:  Recruitment of the Skilled Labor Force

To the Nomarchs and Overseers of Upper and Lower Egypt—Life, Prosperity, and Health!

Let word go out to all nomes and territories—men and women of wisdom and ability, your skills are required at the main site and in the quarries for Khufu on the Horizon! 

The mudbrick buildings and narrow streets of the workers’ city (Graphic courtesy of Jean-Pierre Houdin/Dassault Systemes)

To all the nomarchs:  send proclamations throughout your domains saying that Pharaoh Khufu (May He Live!  May He Prosper!  May He be Healthy!) requires the immediate services of skilled tradesmen of all professions!

Potters, weavers, metallurgists and smiths, woodworkers, carpenters, drovers, millers, butchers, bakers, and brewers–come to Rostau to serve your bak debt.  If you choose to remain, opportunities abound for you to make your fortunes.  There will be commerce and industry the year round.

A worker’s city is to be constructed at Rostau straight away—barracks, administrative buildings, granaries, bakeries, breweries, work yards, smithies, and foundries.  There will be permanent dwellings for those who bring their families to settle, and your king encourages this heartily!  Already the workers gather to build this city, to labor in the quarry, and to cut the foundations for Khufu on the Horizon!  Those craftsmen and artisans who are first to arrive will have the most desirable jobs, the finest housing, the best in all things!

Mudbrick was used for the worker’s city because there was a need to build as quickly and cheaply as possible (Graphic by Achille-Constant-Theodore Emile Prisse d'Avennes)

To Sha-Asha, the Overseer of Craftsmen, there is immediate need at Rostau for journeymen of all professions—mudbrick makers, thatchers, carpenters, wood workers, potters, smiths, rope makers and weavers.  There is need in the quarries for men skilled in the working of copper and the making of tools.  Everywhere there is demand for basket makers.  There are ships to be built and sails to be made.  All sons and daughters of Egypt owe bak, but those who have a trade can truly better their lives.  

To Henem-Meha, Overseer of the King’s Quarries and Inspector of Masons, there is need at Rostau to build containment walls for the workers’ city, to construct a quay at the foot of the plateau, and to pave the access road from the quay to the northeast quarry.  There will also be need for a canal to be dug from the Nile to the quay, a distance of more than half an iter.  Plan for the canal to be at least 12,380 cubits in length and wide and deep enough to support a barge carrying granite beams equal in weight to well over 2 million deben of copper.

In addition, operations are to commence at the quarry at Tura, eight miles upstream from Rostau, from which the fine white limestone for the pyramid and temple facings will be cut and dressed.  Work is also to begin at the granite quarry at Aswan.

There is need in all places for surveyors, stone cutters, breakers and ledgemen, masons, dredgers, drillers, pounders, and grinders.  Your teams will be provided with related specialists, such as carpenters and smiths, as they require.  The unskilled and semi-skilled help are being dispatched.

To Qai-Sesh, Magistrate, Overseer of the Scribes, and Overseer of the Priests of Re, to you I bid Life, Prosperity, and Health!  In all work centers, but especially at Rostau, there is need of architects and master surveyors, engineers, overseers of labor, priests to advise and bless construction and to sanctify grounds, astrologers, lawyers, physicians and herbalists, counters and inspectors, logisticians, provisioners, and scribes of all varieties.

With all haste let word go out!  As the Nile rises in Akhet, let all Egypt rise to the great work of Khufu on the Horizon!  As the crops emerge in Peret, let the wise and skilled of Upper and Lower Egypt emerge and come forth to the pharaoh’s service!  As grain is harvested in Shemu, nomarchs and overseers:  gather the bounty of Egypt’s craftsmen, artisans, and experts in all things!

Letter Five:  The Opening of the Quarry at Tura

To Iner-Sedjenajeninmer, Quarry Master and Overseer of the Expedition at Tura, Long Life!

Soon the professional craftsmen, semi-skilled workmen, and main force of no less than 500 men will begin arriving at Tura for the commencement of work.  The luminous white limestone of Tura shines in the sun like the surface of the Nile, unlike the dull and course yellow limestone of Rostau. 

For this reason the Tura limestone will be the finished outer facing of Khufu on the Horizon, as well as the mortuary and valley temples, ka and queens’ pyramids, and the finished causeway.  All of Khufu’s (Life!  Prosperity!  Health!) pyramid complex will shine like a diadem on the brow of Isis!

But those who say take leisure, that the outer casing stones will not be needed until the core is erected, are in serious error and know nothing of what my father Snefru (May He Have Life in the East!) achieved.  If the outer surface of a smooth-sided pyramid is not laid first, the corners will not meet at the top.  Small errors at the beginning grow to colossal failures in the end.  The angle and its maintenance are determined by the surface, not the core.  For these reasons, the limestone of Tura will be needed before the first course of Khufu on the Horizon can be laid.

This copper adze would have been used in woodwork, but the copper chisels used in the quarries and at the pyramid site would have looked similar (Original photo by Jon Bodsworth)

This need is compounded by the qualities of the limestone of Tura.  The limestone you will be working with is soft when it is first quarried and cuts easily in straight lines.  This makes extraction, precise shaping, and polishing very easy. 

But as soon as the surfaces are exposed to the air they begin to calcify and form a hard shell.  This increases their durability, but means that all shaping and polishing must be completed at the quarry before they are ever shipped.  This means, of course, that some blocks will sustain damage in transport, but these can be easily patched and mortared.

Dressing the blocks will require a high degree of exactitude.  To finish the stone before the surface hardens the workers will need to move fast.  You will be provided with enough copper to assure that as each chisel dulls there will be another to replace it.  Runners will be in constant motion, carrying away dulled tools and returning with sharpened ones.  Each tool will have to be reheated to be sharpened, so other runners will keep the fire of the smithies stoked.  Coordination of your workforce will be essential.

Cubit measuring rods such as these from the Eighteenth Dynasty tomb of Aperia would have been common tools in the quarries and at the pyramid construction site (Photo by Jon Bodsworth)

As the blocks are cut, they must each be lined up side by side exactly as they will be installed on the pyramid.  Once the face is cut to a perfect angle of 14/11 seked, the angle of the pyramid, it must be polished with quartzite powder.  To assure an ideal fit, a toothless copper saw with quartzite grit will need to be passed between each block to perfect their sides to their one another.  

Each block will be numbered to ensure that it is placed correctly when installed.  By installing the outer layer of Tura limestone first, the surveyors and architects will be able to observe that all the angles are correct, which if your work is exact, they will be.  With the facing stones in place, a supporting layer of well calibrated Rostau limestone forty cubits thick will be erected behind them.  The internal ramp will be built into this sturdy layer.  The rough core filling, as well as all chambers, passageways, and some machinery necessary for construction, will be contained behind the support layer.

Building from within—Workers lever one of the Tura limestone blocks into place. Also depicted is the 20 meter-thick layer of local limestone which supported the internal ramp. Some of the rough core is represented in the upper-right corner (Graphic courtesy of Jean-Pierre Houdin/Dassault Systemes)

Course by course, this is how Khufu on the Horizon will come into being.  Iner-Sedjenajeninmer, you have been chosen to oversee the work at Tura because of your qualifications, and the pharaoh is counting on you.  As you cut, shape, and perfect each numbered course of blocks, you will be essentially building the pyramid first at Tura and then shipping it to Rostau.  The rest of the pyramid will be built within what you provide.  It is imperative that you know this.  Great will be your reward, and you will dwell with the pharaoh forever.  Friend of the King, go in peace!

Letter Six:  The Opening of the Quarry at Aswan

To Emratab-Neb, Quarry Master and Overseer of the Expedition to Aswan, Prosperity!

A workforce of no less than 500 men, including quarry workers, supportive staff, and all manner of experts has been dispatched to Aswan.  Although we will not have need for granite until Year Twelve, work must begin immediately.  The qualities of the stone and the logistics required to deliver it to Rostau will make your work slow and tedious and even more reliant on the seasons than other quarry work.  Rest assured, all of these difficulties have been resolved, but your mastery and patience will be demanded in equal measure.  The pharaoh asks much of you, and great will be the glory.

An Aswan granite quarry at the site of the Unfinished Obelisk (Photo by Joe Pyrek)

The granite you will be quarrying is too hard for chisels, so expect a minimum of copper to be rationed to your operation.  Instead you will be receiving large quantities of dolerite, which is harder than the granite of Aswan.  Wooden wedges driven into natural cracks and those opened with dolerite mallets can be soaked with water, causing them to expand and free the stone.  Once extracted, the granite can be shaped into great beams with dolerite pounders.

A spherical dolerite pounder left behind in the Great Pyramid. These pounders were harder than the Aswan granite, which couldn’t be shaped with copper tools (Photo by Jon Bodsworth)

Dolerite is being collected by missions dispatched to Sewew and the Faiyum for that purpose.   Additionally, teams have been sent forth to the cataracts, where the Nile gives up dolerite shaped into spheres.  These special pounders will allow your most expert stone cutters to shape the hard granite into the specific forms needed for the great work.

These great beams will weigh up to 2 million deben [around 60 tons], some of them possibly more.  They will be used to protect vulnerable chambers within the pyramid, to bear and direct the pressure of incredible amounts of weight, and to span wide reaches with minimal support, where limestone would crack under its own mass.  They will likewise be used for structural purposes in the temples connected to Khufu on the Horizon.

You will have to quarry, shape, and ship more than 118 million deben [3,500 tons, give or take] of granite from Aswan before this great work is done, more than has been used in the entirety of Egypt’s past.  The beams will make the twenty-day journey down the Nile on mighty barges.  An expedition has been sent to Lebanon to acquire cedar for the manufacture of these barges, and the Overseer of Shipwrights and Chandlers, who has already begun work on the lesser barges for the Tura limestone, has the plans for these vessels at the ready.

Along with the other experts being sent to Aswan, you will receive a team of dredgers who will oversee the digging of trenches in the flood lands during the season of Shemu, when the plains are dry.  These trenches will be deep enough to hold the barges so that their decks are level with the land.  As granite beams are completed they will be loaded onto great sleds, wood for which is also being procured from Lebanon, and these sleds will be towed onto the barges and left there.  When the plains flood in the season of Akhet, the barges will be lifted by the Nile and carried to Rostau on the rapid currents of the inundation.

Granite beams lined up on the King’s Chamber level of the pyramid (Graphic courtesy of Jean-Pierre Houdin/Dassault Systems)

As you can see, you will need every day of the following twelve years to maintain the schedule required by the construction.  The quarrying will be slow, and the dressing of the stone many times more so.  Beams should be shipped in the Akhet immediately following their completion, to be stored on site at Rostau. 

The center of all this effort, the primary reason for the great work, is the 10 by 20 cubits chamber in which the king’s body will rest.  Everything else, from the bottom of the causeway to the tip of pyramidion, is there to physically and spiritually support that sacred space. 

The granite beams you will be sending to the plateau are what make this sacred space possible.  Without them, the great work will fail.  You labor for the king, for Ma’at, and for the glory of all Egypt. 

Cut-away view of the King’s Chamber with its granite support beams. The physics required in constructing the 10 by 20 cubits burial chamber with its flat ceiling guided nearly every other decision made by Hemienu (Graphic courtesy of Jean-Pierre Houdin/Dassault Systemes)

Annotated Bibliography

• 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.

In this paradigm-shifter, Jean-Pierre Houdin and Bob Brier introduce M. Houdin’s theories about the construction of the Great Pyramid.  Written for a general audience, but without skimming over details or dumbing down the material, The Secret of the Great Pyramid is a detailed explanation of the internal ramp theory and the physical and circumstantial evidence in support of it.

The Secret of the Great Pyramid accomplishes the delightful achievement of being a book that is equally at home in your Works Cited page and your beach bag.  But don’t confuse its mass appeal with being light on scholarship.  I do not use the words paradigm-shifter lightly–Jean-Pierre Houdin’s work takes us around the corner and into the next phase of understanding how the monuments of the Memphis Necropolis, from Saqqara to Giza, were constructed, and The Secret of the Great Pyramid is your introduction to the future of comprehending the past.  A strong endorsement, I know..  And I stand behind every word!

For this article the following sections were especially helpful:  Pyramid site selection (pp. 58-78); details of the Tura limestone (pp. 67-72); the granite quarry at Aswan (pp. 67-69); the workers’ city (pp. 64-66); logistics (pp. 70-1); Sinai mining operations (pp. 71-2).

• Hitchins, Derek K.  The Pyramid Builder’s Handbook.  Self-published via Lulu, 2010.

In The Pyramid Builder’s Handbook, Derek K. Hitchins sets out to explain how these massive national building projects were carried out in terms of systems engineering.  Hitchins brings his experience as an engineer to the task of exploring the history of pyramid development, logistics, and how the process of problem resolution utilized existing technologies and methods as well as led to new ones.

Hitchins is effective in debunking the construction theories involving external ramps only (pp. 141-5), but does not address the possibility of an internal ramp, much less a combined solution of an internal and external ramp.  He favors what he calls “rocking methods” (pp. 146-48), which involves balancing the stones on two facing wedges and inserting planks beneath each wedge while the block is “rocked” onto the other, thus raising the stone step by step. 

While this method could certainly work in raising individual blocks, and was possibly used in certain applications, compared to the internal ramp theory it seems to this writer to be tedious and impractical.  Hitchins is an expert in systems engineering and the Gentle Reader is encouraged to evaluate his arguments for him/herself.  But in the writing of this article, The Pyramid Builder’s Handbook was most useful in describing the corvée and the division of labor.

The Pyramid Builder’s Handbook is well written and presented in a textbook-style, with ample photographs and illustrations.  The material can be fairly technical at times, and general readers may find it more useful as a reference work, as opposed to something you will read from cover to cover.  While I do not agree with all of Hitchins’ conclusions, I found the book to be incredibly informative and packed with useful data and information. 

For this article the following sections were especially helpful:  The corvée and labor organization (pp. 9-12, 123-26. 138-41); logistics and feeding the workforce (pp. 117-21); Khufu’s Pyramid in general (pp. 39-45).

• Houdin, Jean-Pierre.  Khufu’s Pyramid Revealed.  Giza:  Abydos Pub., 2010.

In Khufu’s Pyramid Revealed, Jean-Pierre Houdin expands on the materiel introduced in The Secret of the Great Pyramid, going into much greater detail regarding how all of the elements of both his theory and the pyramid itself fit together into a cohesive whole.  While still a highly readable work, Khufu’s Pyramid Revealed delves further into Hemienu’s simple solutions for the complex problems posed by the Great Work of building Khufu on the Horizon. 

Nearly every page is beautifully illustrated by the aesthetically pleasing and intricately detailed computer graphics produced by M. Houdin and Dassault Systemes (some of which appear in this article), who have graciously supported Jean-Pierre in every aspect of his work.  Khufu’s Pyramid Revealed leaves—literally—no stone unturned in showing how the Great Pyramid was constructed using tools and techniques known to have been in use during the period in question.

For this article the following sections were especially helpful:  Details of the Tura limestone (p. 17); tools and logistics (pp. 19-21); requirements for the King’s Chamber (pp. 29, 53); building from within (pp. 33-35); pyramid site selection (p. 43); the corvée and workers’ city (pp. 45-47).

• Lehner, Mark. The Complete Pyramids. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997.

Mark Lehner’s magnum opus of all things pyramidical, The Complete Pyramids covers the history and development not only of the pyramids themselves, but of the people who have studied them.  From the first instance of stacking one mastaba on top of another to the pyramids of Late Antiquity, Lehner explicates the design, function, and evolution of these complex tombs and “resurrection machines.”

The Complete Pyramids predates the publication of Jean-Pierre Houdin’s work by a couple of years, so the internal ramp theory gets a grand total of one paragraph (p. 216) and is limited to the theories proposed by Dieter Arnold.  However, for his detailed treatment of the individual pyramids, the people who built them, and the tools they used, Lehner’s Complete Pyramids is required reading for every Egyptologist, amateur and professional alike. 

Heavily illustrated and presented in textbook format, The Complete Pyramids is as accessible to laypersons as it is useful to experts, which is to say, very.  Again, I have to admit my biases in favor of Jean-Pierre Houdin’s work as being the most thorough and up to date treatment of pyramid construction, but it is difficult to fully appreciate the achievements of the latter without understanding the historical and cultural context which Lehner gives to the subject. 

As always, the Gentle Reader is encouraged to explore these books first hand and with a joyous heart and an open mind reach his or her own conclusions—and reading The Complete Pyramids is a joy.

For this article the following sections were especially helpful:  Khufu’s Pyramid in general (pp. 108-19); pyramid site selection (pp. 12-13); the Giza Plateau (pp. 106-07); logistics (pp. 202-05); quarries (pp. 206-07); tools (210-11); the corvée (pp. 224-25); the workers’ city (pp. 230-33, 238-39); feeding the workforce (236-37).

• Lehner, Mark.  Et al.  AERAgram:  The Official Newsletter of Ancient Egypt Research Associates.  Vol. 1-10.

The Ancient Egypt Research Associates (AERA) is the organization founded in 1985 by Mark Lehner and Matthew McCauley for the purpose of funding and facilitating the Giza Plateau Mapping Project, and extension of Lehner’s work with the Great Sphinx.  AERA’s primary focus in the last decade has been the excavation and analysis of the pyramid workers’ city at Giza.

AERAgram is the newsletter and biannual report of the work at the site and has been extremely valuable in understanding the corvée and the bak system, as well as how the various social strata of the pyramid city worked and lived.  All ten volumes of AERAgram, which are available in pdf format from the official AERA website, were consulted in writing this article.

• Siliotti, Alberto. Guide to the Pyramids of Egypt. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1997.

Alberto Siliotti’s Guide to the Pyramids of Egypt is an excellent introductory-level encyclopedia of pyramids, with hundreds of photographs, maps, and diagrams.  Siliotti’s large-format book has entries on all of the major pyramids and necropolises, with details of the temples and complexes associated with them.

While the photography provides a veritable tour of the architecture and landscape, I found the site and structure maps especially useful.  While clearly an entry level book, its thoroughness and layout makes it a handy reference for Egypt aficionados of all varieties.  This is one of those coffee table books you often see on the bargain tables and in the remainder bins, and if you come across a copy you will not regret picking it up.

For this article the following sections were especially helpful:  Khufu’s Pyramid in general (pp. 48-53); the Giza Plateau (pp. 46-7); tools and construction (pp. 40-4); workers’ city (p. 45).

• Wilkinson, A. H. Toby.  Early Dynastic Egypt.  New York:  Routledge, 1999.

Early Dynastic Egypt explores how government and the world’s first bureaucracy developed in the earliest phase of Old Kingdom Period of Egypt, from Dynasties Zero to Three.  In this heavily researched work (nearly every paragraph in this book has at least one citation!), author Toby A. H. Wilkinson delves into the subjects of administration, foreign relations, and the establishment of urban centers with the thoroughness of a master who knows his subject and sincerely wants you to know it as well.

Wilkinson provides individual mini-biographies for every Egyptian ruler from the unnamed kings of Dynasty 0 through to Huni and Qahedjet.  The section on the establishment of authority (pp. 92-279) explains in detail how the royal administration developed, from the petty nobility to the creation of the vizier, and the growth (by necessity) of a complex system of titles and functionaries. 

Although the timeframe of Early Dynastic Egypt (just barely) predates the subject of this article, it was an invaluable resource in understanding the foundations of the political system and hierarchy in which Hemienu operated and how it was vital to mobilizing the nation toward the singular goal of building Khufu’s Pyramid.   It has been stated that while the Egyptians built the pyramids, the pyramids built Egypt.  In other words, the national political system emerged from the process of organizing the great work of pyramid construction.  Toby Wilkinson shows that the roots of the nation-state of Egypt actually reach considerably further back than the Fourth Dynasty.

For this article the following sections were especially helpful:  Administration and royal titles (pp. 92-126); Sinai mining operations (pp. 121-22; 139-46); mines and quarries in general (144-45); development of the corvée (pp. 94-95, 120); the institution of the vizier (116-118); administration of royal building projects (pp. 113-14).

Copyright by Keith Payne, 2010.  All rights reserved.

Graphics “Workers’ city”, “Building from within”, Granite beams qued”, and “King’s chamber” by Jean-Pierre Houdin/Dassault Systemes are copyrighted by Jean-Pierre Houdin and Dassault Systems and are used with their kind permission—all rights reserved.  Graphic “Contour Map of the Giza Plateau” by Jean-Pierre Houdin/Albert Ranson is copyrighted by Jean-Pierre Houdin and Albert Ranson and is used with their kind permission—all rights reserved.  Photographs “The Pyramids of Dashur and Giza as viewed from Saqqara” by Gaspa, and “Aswan granite quarry” by Joe Pyrek are used in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.  Photographs  “Dolerite Sphere”, “Cubit measuring rods”, “Old kingdom figure showing beer making”, “Basalt drill core”, and “Copper adze” by Jon Bodsworth have been kindly released by Mr. Bodsworth to the public domain.  Drawings “Stone-cutters finishing the dressing of limestone blocks”, “Colossal statue being dragged on a sled”, and “Measuring wheat and depositing it in the granaries“ drawn by Faucher-Gudin (Maspero, Gaston. History of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria. Vol. II, Part A. London: Grolier Society), courtesy of Project Gutenberg, and plates “Metal workers” and “Mudbrick makers”, by Achille-Constant-Theodore Emile Prisse d’Avennes (Atlas de I’Histoire de I’Art Egyptien, d’apres les monuments, depuis les temps les plus reculesjusqu’d la domination romains, 1877), are in the public domain as their copyrights have expired.

If we can take physical samples from some of the most important and fragile “artifacts” in all of Egypt—royal mummies—then why can’t we allow Jean Pierre to conduct completely non-invasive work which may unravel one of humankind’s most abiding riddles:  How was the Great Pyramid built?

After receiving a copy of Khufu’s Pyramid Revealed, Jean-Pierre’s follow-up and supplement to his and Bob Brier’s bestselling book, The Secret of the Great Pyramid, Mr. Rose found himself wondering why M. Houdin’s work has hit a snag at the administrative level.  Jean-Pierre’s request to have his internal ramp theory tested and opened to peer review has met with a suspicious amount of bureaucratic leg-dragging.

Mr. Rose correctly points out that all Jean-Pierre is requesting is an opportunity to spend about eighteen hours using infrared thermographic and similar technologies to test his theories.  The equipment would not come into actual physical contact with the pyramid—it wouldn’t need to.

It does seem as if a double standard is being applied in light of the cautious—but admittedly more intrusive—work recently completed on Eighteenth Dynasty royal mummies, including that of Tutankhamun.  “But surely, if we are comfortable with sampling the royal mummies for DNA, it should be possible to structure this research in a way that meets the permit criteria,” Mr. Rose suggests (Source:  Beyond Stone & Bone:  “Time for the Great Pyramid?”). 

Whether it ultimately proves to be correct or not, Jean-Pierre Houdin’s work is rock solid and based on science where he is a proven expert.  In addition to Bob “Mr. Mummy” Brier, Mark Rose adds his voice to Egyptologists of the caliber of Dieter Arnold and Rainer Stadelman in support of allowing Jean-Pierre to put his theories to the test.

Jean-Pierre Houdin signing autographs for Magdy El-Ghandour, Director of Foreign Missions for the Supreme Council of Antiquities, and Taha Abdallah, Dean of Shorouk University (Photo courtesy of Jean-Pierre Houdin)

The answer to Mr. Rose’s question is a resounding yes:  it is indeed time for the Great Pyramid. 

Dr. Hawass, tear down this wall!

See Also

• Hemienu to Houdin: Building A Great Pyramid – Introduction
• Hemienu to Houdin Part One: How Do You Prefer Your Ramp, Straight or With a Twist?
• Jean-Pierre Houdin’s Work With the Great Pyramid of Khufu Subject of New Documentary

Copyright by Keith Payne, 2010.  All rights reserved.

Photograph of Jean-Pierre Houdin used by permission.  All rights reserved.

The documentary is in French, but there are numerous segments with Jean-Pierre and Bob Brier that are in English, and the 3D animations, of which there are many, are just fantastic.  A good bit of Khéops Révélé can be viewed at this link to France 5.  I am not certain if it is the documentary in full, but there is plenty there worth viewing.  In addition to Khéops Révélé there are interactive 3D animations, driven by Dassault Systemes, with English versions.  But even the French segments of the documentary are so well produced that you will have very little trouble following the story.

As support for Houdin’s work continues to gain momentum it is hoped that pressure will continue to build for allowing him to put his theories to the test.  Thus far Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities has resisted proposals for even the least invasive forms of analysis, such as infrared thermography.  General Secretary Zahi Hawass’ opinion has vacillated from open-minded support to dismissive.  Increased media attention, support from the professional community, and growing public attention will hopefully force an endgame to what is looking more and more like a case of suppression of a well-founded but contrary theory. 

The next installment of Hemienu to Houdin, Em Hotep!’s exclusive in-depth series exploring Jean-Pierre’s work, is nearing the rough-draft stage.  In Part Two we will be looking in detail at the internal ramp theory and Jean-Pierre’s solution to the perplexing problem of navigating those 2.5 ton blocks, on sleds, around sharp right angle turns.  Here is a hint:  Herodotus had part of the story.  Keep checking back with Em Hotep! for the rest!

Related Stories:

Hemienu to Houdin: Building A Great Pyramid – Introduction

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

New Theory on the Great Pyramid

Copyright by Keith Payne, 2009.  All rights reserved.

Graphic of the internal ramp inside the Great Pyramid of Khufu courtesy of Dassault Systemes.

But a French architect by the name of Jean-Pierre Houdin may be changing that.  He has put forth the first comprehensive explanation of how the Great Pyramid was built that stands the tests of physics and common sense, and his work continues to gain support from prominent architects, engineers, and Egyptologists.  

Jean-Pierre has kindly agreed to work with Em Hotep! to put his theory into terms that are accessible to those of us who may not be professional architects or engineers, but who may be amateur and professional Egyptologists of varying degrees.  In Part One we take a close look at the evolution of ramp theories, how they work and fail to work, and what was involved with building the only remaining Wonder of the Ancient World. 

Hemienu—the architect and builder of the Great Pyramid of Khufu (Photo by Einsamer Schütze)

 In the Introduction to Hemienu to Houdin:  Building a Great Pyramid we met the primary characters of our story.  Hemienu, who was vizier and Master of Works for Pharaoh Khufu, and who designed, planned, and built the Great Pyramid.  Henri Houdin, a French engineer who became enthralled with Khufu’s Pyramid and took up the task of reverse engineering its construction.  And the protagonist of our tale, Jean-Pierre Houdin, Henri’s architect son and heir to the Great Work of figuring out how Hemienu accomplished one of the greatest architectural and engineering feats of human history. 

We traced out a short biography of these three master builders and examined how the times they lived in, the circumstances of history, and even their family lives drove them toward their respective quests.  We were also introduced to some of the shortcomings of the many theories that have been offered by others regarding how the Great Pyramid was constructed, and touched on insights that set this father and son team on the trail of Hemienu’s secrets.    

I also proposed an outline and timetable for how I wanted to approach this project, namely, that this series of articles would be posted over the course of several weeks, and that Part One would get into the specifics of Jean-Pierre’s internal ramp, and Part Two would look at how he proposes the interior architecture of Khufu’s Pyramid was planned and carried out.  Now, more than a month later, it is obvious that the timetable is out the window, and for that I apologize. 

But after much correspondence with M. Houdin, I have decided that this subject deserves more than just a rush-through.  There are numerous short introductions available online and in print that can give you the basics of Jean-Pierre’s work, and for the full treatment you really must read his and Bob Brier’s book, The Secret of the Great Pyramid, which has just become available in paperback.  As for Em Hotep!, my goal is to provide news and reference articles about Egyptology for “the Curious Layperson and the Budding Scholar,” and that means being both comprehensive and comprehendible.  

So Part One:  How Do You Prefer Your Ramp? is going to be a detailed look at the primary theories that have preceded Jean-Pierre and exactly why they simply cannot work.  This will lay a good foundation for Part Two, which will deal with Jean-Pierre’s innovations on the various ramp theories, and as you will soon see, foundations are very important with this topic! 

The entrance to Khufu’s Pyramid, with the Thieves’ Entrance in the lower right corner. The people entering the Thieves’ Entrance give an indication of the size of the blocks involved. Note the large blocks and beams of the Main Entrance—there are larger blocks deeper within and much higher up. (Photo by Keith Payne)

The first section of this article will deal with the straight ramp theories, which really serve as a sort of negative benchmark against which all others are measured.  This may sound a bit harsh, but an understanding of what these theories attempt to accomplish and why they fail is vital to following their evolution and how each theory moves us closer to the answer.  In order to make 100% certain I got this rather important aspect of our discussion right, the first section takes the form of a dialogue with Jean-Pierre. 

The next section will take a look at external spiraling ramp theories.  These theories suggest that the Great Pyramid was constructed by use of a ramp that corkscrews up the outside surface.  They resolve a number of the problems that make the straight ramp theories impossible, but leave several major issues unresolved, and come with their own set of issues. 

The third section will take a closer look at Henri Houdin’s eureka moment—Hemienu constructed the Great Pyramid by building from the inside out, and he accomplished this by using internal ramps.  Henri’s epiphany resolved nearly all of the remaining problems with the previous theories, but as his son realized, a couple of snags remained.  

The External Straight Ramp:  A Dialogue with Jean-Pierre Houdin

Egyptologist Ludwig Borchardt

The straight ramp theory was first worked out by Ludwig Borchardt and completed by Jean-Philippe Lauer.  The basic idea was that a straight ramp constructed of mudbrick and filler would be used to haul the blocks into place.  As each level of the pyramid is completed, work on the pyramid stops so the ramp can be built up to the next level.  The base had to be fairly wide, about 50 meters, so that its top surface would still be both wide enough and stable enough as it rises.  Keep in mind that as the pyramid grows narrower, so must the ramp. 

As the ramp reaches the 35 meter level, where construction on the King’s Chamber begins, Lauer believed his and Borchardt’s ramp would be short enough and shallow enough in terms of its slope to enable men to pull the large blocks, some of them weighing in excess of 60 tons, up to the construction site of the King’s Chamber where machines using sacks of sand for counterweights and smaller ramps cut into the core masonry to maneuver the huge blocks and stone beams into place. 

For the top of the pyramid, Lauer’s ramp would increase in gradient as the width decreased.  He believed that blocks weighing a ton could still be moved to a height of 112 meters on a 14 degree incline, and that the last stretch could be as steep as 18 degrees to reach the final 146 meters.  Lauer postulates that to compensate for the very steep gradients smaller blocks would be used to complete the pyramid. 

Egyptologist Jean-Philippe Lauer

A couple of problems present themselves right away with the Borchardt-Lauer ramp.  First, contrary to Lauer’s assumption, the blocks do not grow progressively smaller higher up the pyramid.  The thickness of layers continues to alternate pretty much from the bottom to the top, and blocks weighing as much as 2.5 tons are used at least as high as 90 meters.  

Then there is the pyramidion.  The pyramidion was the capstone of the pyramid, a sort of small solid pyramid itself.  Constructed of limestone and covered in electrum, the pyramidion would have weighed at the very least 5.5 tons, and possibly as much as fifteen tons!  Plus, although the top layers of stone are now missing, as is the pyramidion itself, they would have been especially thick to support the pyramidion.  Several layers of smaller blocks would have been crushed over time.  It is simply implausible that a 5.5-15 ton pyramidion, plus its supporting masonry, could have been moved up an 18 percent incline. 

Jean-Pierre:   In fact human strength falls very quickly above 10% grade.  You must keep an optimum ratio of force-to-grade: 7-8% grade is the highest figure to consider. 

So forget the gradually increasing incline.  To build the pyramid using a straight ramp you have to maintain a 7-8% grade from bottom to top.  In The Secret of the Great Pyramid, Jean-Pierre Houdin and Bob Brier talk about the straight ramp being a mile long.  But in order for the ramp to reach the top of the pyramid, about 146 meters, while maintaining a 7-8% grade, it seems the ramp would have to be even longer. 

Jean-Pierre:  Discussions of a straight external ramp always talk about reaching the summit.  That is wrong.  No ramp can go above the 130-135 meter level—the ramp would be wider than the pyramid.  So to reach a level of 130-135 meters at a 7% grade, a frontal ramp has to be 1,860 meters long, about 1.15 miles.  To build the same ramp with an 8% grade it would be 1,625 meters long, about one mile, which is why I always talk about a mile long ramp. 

This means that, in order to maintain a manageable 8% slope, the straight external ramp has to be about a mile long, and comes about eleven meters (about 36 feet) short of the estimated apex of the pyramid.  So, where could Hemienu have built such a ramp?  

The terrain has a lot to say about that.  The Great Pyramid was built on a bluff, and there is a steep drop to the north, so no ramp there.  To the east and west there are cemeteries contemporary with the pyramid, so no ramps there either.  That leaves the south, which is far from ideal for such a construction.  

Jean Pierre:  Absolutely.  A single frontal ramp has to be perpendicular to the south face of the pyramid which puts it cutting through the quarry before filling the wadi on the other side!  The topography speaks for itself. 

So the ramp would not only overshoot the quarry, it would have to account for the rise and fall of the terrain, which would mean filling in the wadi, a sort of canyon made by a dry river bed, which would add even more material and labor to the ramp project.  Keep in mind that the further you have to build the ramp downward to account for the dip created by the wadi the wider the base has to be in that section. 

The Straight Ramp—Ninth Wonder of the Ancient World? Not only would it have been as large a project as the pyramid itself, where did it go? (Courtesy of Jean-Pierre Houdin and Dassault Systèmes)

Everywhere you look in the Great Pyramid you see signs not only of Hemienu’s architectural genius, but of the economy of his methods.  Nothing is wasted in terms of time or materials.  A ramp that requires the workers to drag the blocks in the opposite direction of the pyramid before mounting the ramp just doesn’t seem to make sense. 

The volume of material and man-hours required in making such a ramp raise their own set of questions.  Building a mile-long ramp that reaches 135 meters on its high end would require a huge amount of material and labor even if it was built on a flat surface, which it wasn’t.  And where did all the millions of tons of stone go?  

When you account for the terrain you are talking about a project similar in scope to the pyramid itself, just to build the ramp.  Even allowing for filler material, a significant portion of such a ramp would have to be solid masonry.  Remember, some of the blocks it would have to support weighed more than sixty tons.  Think about it.  If the ramp was, say, two-thirds the mass of the pyramid, then where would you dispose of two-thirds of the Great Pyramid, without a trace? 

Another nagging problem with all external ramp theories, from Lauer onward, is the notion of stopping work on the pyramid while constructing the next layer of the ramp.  Hemienu built the Great Pyramid in about 21-23 years.  This task simply could not be accomplished in the time frame if practically all work on the pyramid had to stop every time the ramp had to be raised another level.  

Jean-Pierre:  Nor was it.  Up to now, “rampists” have always talked about a ramp being raised and lengthened as the pyramid rises, which means that you have to stop the construction to enlarge the ramp. My theory, which you will see does include an external ramp along with an internal ramp, is the first to describe an external ramp that is being built as the pyramid rises. 

 The ramp was built at its maximum length, about a quarter of a mile, but with two parts, or lanes, built horizontally, layer by layer, following a 7-8% slope.  While one lane is used to pull the blocks, the other is raised by 2 layers to be ready for the next step.  The ramp is always rising with the pyramid and so there is no need for work on the pyramid to stop. 

Lastly, with regard to the “rampists” theories, there is the issue of logistics.  The higher you go, the less workspace you have on both the ramp and the top surface of the pyramid.  And the logistics involved with moving the 60 ton blocks to the top of the King’s Chamber and maneuvering them into place.. 

Jean Pierre:  On a 7% grade ramp, 600 men are needed to pull a 60 ton block.  Can you imagine 600 guys?  With six hauling lines, that gives a 100 meter-long line for each..  It is impossible to coordinate such numbers.  And at the 60+ meters level you have only 50 meters of work space left on the north side to work around the King’s Chamber. 

A single straight mile-long ramp just seems to create more problems than it solves.  Not only would it have required as much work and material as the pyramid itself, there is no evidence for such a huge ramp.  Where did it go?  And how was the pyramid completed in time if work had to stop in order to build up the ramp at each level.  Jean-Pierre’s two-lane ramp works fine up to the level of the King’s Chamber, but what about twice that height, about 135 meters?  The ramp would be far too narrow at that height. 

Perhaps a straight ramp may have worked on other pyramids, but Hemienu wasn’t building just any pyramid.  He knew he was facing multiple challenges that would require complex answers, all of which had to be worked out before hand. 

The External Spiraling Ramp:  The Corkscrew Solution

For several very good reasons the long, straight ramp theory doesn’t seem to work.  One can imagine that Hemienu might have figured this out pretty quickly.  A fast survey of the landscape, lining up the only feasible approach for the ramp to the pyramid’s south face, calculating the amount of material it would take to keep the grade constant even as the ramp spans the wadi, the ratio of the width of the base to the width of the top, the length of the ramp—It would have been obvious from the outset to Hemienu that the long single ramp wouldn’t work. 

It was probably an early lunch for Hemienu and his crew after a morning walk around the building site, checking surveying points, taking mental notes.  As the architect and his crew sat around the table sipping karkade and brainstorming while the servants cleared the tableware, someone might have proposed what seemed to be the perfect solution. 

“Think about a length of papyrus,” he might have said.  “Stretched out it would cover this entire table, and spill over each end.  But if you roll it up, it can fit into your robe.  What if we fold the ramp to fit into the usable terrain and onto the surface of the pyramid itself?” 

Hemienu would have pondered this idea.  With his chin resting in his palm, he probably considered the advantages.  What problems would a spiraling ramp address? 

Advantages 

Several advantages of a spiraling ramp are immediately apparent.  Terrain is no longer an issue, as the terrain would be the pyramid itself.  Using the surface of the pyramid to support the ramp would mean a constant 7-8% grade could be easily maintained and the supporting surface would be a constant—no wadi to span and no 50-meter wide base to support a ramp 135 meters high.  As it winds up the pyramid, the ramp itself would maintain a fairly regular height, except at the top, where it would actually grow shorter.  This would also reduce the amount of material and man-hours required to build the ramp. 

Hemienu’s assistant would have been pleased with his epiphany.  The problem of the ramp, which was turning into as large a project as the pyramid itself, had been solved.  Perhaps Vizier Hemienu, Master of Works for Pharaoh Khufu, would honor him with a memorial stela praising his genius?  But his exaltation would have been short lived.   

“What about the blocks for the King’s Chamber?” the Master Architect would have asked.  “How do we navigate those, or any of the other blocks, for that matter, around the corners of your folded papyrus?” 

The Spiraling Collapse of the Corkscrew Theory  

Hemienu would have seen right away that for all its advantages, and there were admittedly several, there were also some flaws with the spiraling ramp, and they were deal breakers.  The most obvious, and perhaps most vexing, would be how to handle the corners.  The most common blocks used in the building of the pyramid weighed 1.5 to 2.5 tons and were moved on a type of sled.  Wheels would not work because they would have sunk in the sand, and besides, there is no evidence of the wheel in use in Egypt this early.  So turning the sled 90 degrees to face the next course of the ramp at the corners was an issue—simply spinning it on its rails would have destroyed the sleds. 

There is also the issue of time.  Keep in mind that every time you stop the production line to reorient a sled at the corner, the entire chain below you has to stop as well.  Hemienu is believed to have completed the pyramid in about 21-23 years, which means that a block was being put into place during every minute of construction.  How were the workers moving the sleds around in less than one minute on the tight corners of the corkscrew ramp?   

Even if the problem of orienting the standard blocks at the corners of an external winding ramp was solved, there was still the problem of the huge blocks used to construct the King’ Chamber.  The largest of these slabs weighed in excess of 60 tons and were over eight meters (a little over 26 feet) in length.  

If you can picture trying to maneuver such a block around a corner, even if there was someplace where the workmen could stand while pushing/pulling (which there would not be), at around 45 degrees into the turn the full weight of these blocks would be balanced entirely on the corner of the ramp.  Given that the corner of the ramp, obviously, would be built on the corner of the pyramid, we are talking about a tiny segment of the ramp pressed between a wedge below (the edge of the pyramid) and 60 tons of weight from above!  This isn’t a model for supporting a weight, it’s a model for splitting something in half! 

Another issue Hemienu would have realized was that you just wouldn’t be able to build a winding ramp against the surface of the pyramid that would be stable enough.  Again, ignoring the problem of the 60 ton blocks, if you were to build a ramp wide enough and sturdy enough to move the average block up the pyramid, then the external ramp would obscure the corners of the pyramid, and that is another big problem. 

The Narrow External Spiral Ramp—while the sight lines remain visible in this model, there is simply no way to secure such a ramp to the surface of the pyramid with any stability. (Courtesy of Jean-Pierre Houdin and Dassault Systèmes)

In order to ensure that the four corners of the pyramid were rising at the same constant angle, Hemienu would have needed to take regular measurements.  If the slope of one side of the pyramid was off by as much as a fraction of a degree, then the shape of the entire pyramid would be off and the four edges would not meet at a single point at the top.   In order to make these exact measurements the corners and edges of the pyramid had to be visible, and a sturdy ramp corkscrewing around the pyramid would make this impossible.  

The Wide External Spiral Ramp—this is how a stable external ramp would have appeared, but there is no way to survey the sides of the pyramid and control its shape during construction. (Courtesy of Jean-Pierre Houdin and Dassault Systèmes)

It seems that for every problem the external corkscrew ramp solves, another is uncovered.  You can’t build a ramp that allows the corners to be surveyed that will also be stable enough to bear the load of the blocks.  Such a ramp would entail trying to build a pyramid consisting of four perfectly equal triangles, with exactly the same slope on each side, without being able to survey the slopes and angles as construction proceeds.   If you build a ramp narrow enough to allow the measurements to be made, then it will be too unstable for the 1.5 to 2.5 ton blocks.  Keep in mind that at any given time there will be multiple blocks on each stretch of the ramp. 

The external corkscrew ramp could not work, not for the standard blocks, and certainly not for the huge blocks required for building the King’s Chamber, or for that matter, the Queen’s Chamber.  Of course, other models have been offered—multiple ramps, zigzagging ramps, and some ramps that seem to have leapt from an M. C. Escher drawing.  But down through the ages the long single ramp and the external spiral ramp have stood the test of time. 

And failed the tests of physics and engineering. 

The Internal Spiraling Ramp:  Now We’re Getting Somewhere!

As we learned in the Introduction, the question of how the Great Pyramid was built caught the attention of an engineer named Henri Houdin back in 1999 after he viewed a television program called The Mystery of the Pyramid.  Henri was one of the many French youth who inherited a post-WWII France, with all of the reconstruction that went with it.  Soon after receiving his Ph. D. from École des Arts et Metiers, 24-year-old Henri found himself in charge of rebuilding the Conflans Bridge outside of Paris (Brier and Houdin, pp. 2, 38).  The year was 1947, and a long and impressive career lay before young Henri. 

In 1999, Henri was retired, but far from tired.  He needed something to occupy his mind, which was as sharp and hungry for activity as ever.  He approached the problem of Khufu’s Pyramid the same way he approached any other engineering problem he had ever taken on—How do I build this?   

The advantages of the spiraling ramp still held true.  A workable ramp that would maintain a 7-8% grade would have to be around a mile long, and the only way to do that with the terrain where Hemienu built the Great Pyramid was by wrapping the ramp around the pyramid itself.  Multiple straight ramps would not work because the only side where a straight ramp could be built was on the southern side, and the terrain there only allowed for one ramp to approach the pyramid. 

Making use of the artificial terrain of the pyramid itself would have the benefit of a regular surface free of obstacles, if there was only some way to construct a sturdy enough ramp that would also leave the site lines visible for surveying.  So how would the engineer Henri Houdin build this? 

Henri’s epiphany came as he pondered how he would deliver the building materials to the worksites.  In this sense, the worksites are different from the construction site.  The construction site was the entire project, but the construction site was made up of many worksites that were all over the structure, and many of which were in constant movement as the pyramid rose.  Henri’s epiphany was that if he were to build the pyramid using the tools available at the time he would build it from the inside out, and the ramp would likewise be located on the inside. 

An internal ramp would retain all of the benefits of the corkscrew ramp while solving many of the problems.  The pyramid would not only be the building surface, it would be the ramp itself.  The sight lines would remain visible because the ramp would be concealed within the pyramid.  This meant that there would be no need to trade off between visibility and stability, which became doubly moot because the ramp would be as sturdy as the pyramid itself. 

This solution also was in keeping with the economy Hemienu expressed throughout the rest of the pyramid.  There was no wasted material—the material would already be in place.  No wasted man-hours because virtually every block put in place for the ramp would have been required in the construction of the pyramid anyway.  And there would be no need to explain why there are no ruins of the ramp, or how its materials were disposed of.  The ramp is still there, within the core of the pyramid. 

Henri Houdin’s first drawing of this ramp looks even more like a corkscrew than the external corkscrew model did.  The external spiral ramp models follow the contour of the pyramid and are square in shape, with right-angle turns at the corners.  Henri’s first model was a curving spiral that started on the eastern corner of the southern face and curled its way up at an 8% grade.  

Henri revised his model to include four separate ramps, one entering on each face of the pyramid.  Each of these ramps would reach a different level of the pyramid, but also allowed for multiple ramps to be in use at different levels.  For instance, at the lowest levels, where most of the work took place and most of the material had to be transported, there would be four ramps in use at the same time.  As each ramp reached its maximum height, and thus usability, the pyramid also became smaller requiring less material and labor. 

The idea of building the pyramid from the inside out by using four spiraling internal ramps answered more problems than any model proposed so far.  Perhaps most importantly Henri had put the train on the right track by moving the works inside.  Building the pyramid layer by layer by use of an external ramp alone might make good sense to a layperson, but an engineer knows that the inner structures within the core of the pyramid would not only have to come first, but would dictate how the rest of the pyramid would have to be constructed.  

Henri had shared his ideas with his architect son, Jean-Pierre, who had taken up the task with a relish of his own.  But Jean-Pierre Houdin brought the skills of a seasoned architect to the table, and he saw problems even the engineer had missed.  Obviously the ramp would have to be inside the pyramid, that much had been settled.  But the circular spiral simply couldn’t work. 

The 1.5 to 2.5 ton blocks had to be pulled by teams of men, and this cannot be done from around a curve.  The men would have to be standing in a straight line in order to effectively pull the lines connected to the sleds, and the constant curve would place uneven pressure on the sleds that would lead to a rapid breakdown. 

Henri’s model also left the problem of the large 60+ ton blocks unresolved.  Even ignoring the weight, the length of these blocks would preclude them from fitting into the circular internal ramps.  Jean-Pierre knew that he was back to a square spiraling ramp, which brought him back to the question of how to navigate the right angles.  There was really only one answer—the sleds would have to be lifted and turned 90 degrees at each corner.  Easier said than done. 

And what about the masonry of the King’s Chamber?  No internal ramp could manage that.  Henri had set the train on the right track, but now it was up to Jean-Pierre to move it forward.  A straight ramp, perhaps one that was an internal/external combination, could reach the King’s Chamber worksite with a 7-8% grade, and would still be short enough to fit into the terrain.  But would it be long enough to accommodate enough men to pull the 60+ ton blocks?  Probably not.  And even if the blocks could be hauled to the worksite, how would they be maneuvered into place? 

Jean-Pierre Houdin signs copies of his first book about The Great Pyramid for Magdy El-Ghandour, Director for the foreign missions at the Supreme Council of Antiquities and Taha Abdallah, Dean of Shorouk University. (Photo courtesy of Jean-Pierre Houdin)

Jean-Pierre knew that the solution had to involve both an internal and an external ramp, and both straight and spiraling ramps, but how?  How were the blocks turned at the corners?  How were the giant slabs of the King’s Chamber pulled up the straight ramp and fitted into place with such precision?  

In Hemienu to Houdin:  Part Two we will get into the details of Jean-Pierre Houdin’s theory starting with his own ramp theory, and how it answers all of the above questions, and more. 

Photograph ”Statue-of-Hemiun.jpg” by Einsamer Schütze is 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.

Copyright by Keith Payne, 2009.  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.

But somehow Nefertiti seems to keep slipping back into the story.

When I interviewed Zahi Hawass for Heritage Key back in August (see Exclusive Interview: Dr Zahi Hawass in Indianapolis) a lot of interesting hints were tossed out for the curious.  It’s no secret that he will be retiring from the Supreme Council of Antiquities, but it’s also no surprise that Dr. Hawass’ influence will continue to be felt in Egyptology for years, probably decades.  After all, he is retiring his position, not his pick and shovel.

In the same interview Dr. Hawass revealed that he would not only continue writing, but that his work in the Valley of the Kings is far from over, so weep not for the Good Doctor just yet.  Zahi Hawass is like the Terminator—so long as there is a spark alive within him he will continue to dig.  But nonetheless, what will the last year at the helm of the SCA hold for Egyptology’s consummate showman?

There are the secret doors in the Great Pyramid, where he has hinted that a major breakthrough has already occurred (See Goings-on at Giza in Lecture Review: Zahi Hawass’ Mysteries of King Tut Revealed in my blog on Heritage Key).  No doubt the news will be exciting.  Personally, I think it would be wonderful, poetic, and kind of funny all at once if what he discovered was Jean-Pierre Houdin’s internal ramp, but you can expect more about that on Em Hotep! in coming weeks.  Stranger things have happened…

There is the restoration work taking place in the complex of Djoser and the tomb of Seti I, and practically everywhere in Thebes.  Historic mosques, even churches and synagogues, are benefitting from conservation efforts as well.  All important, to be certain, but not quite the sort of headline grabbers that get a National Geographic Explorer special.

Let’s not forget the forensic mummy studies.  In the Lecture at Clowes Hall that preceded the interview, Dr. Hawass let drop that he would be revealing sometime in September exactly what caused the death of Tutankhamun.  That’s pretty exciting. 

Then there are the DNA studies…

One of Dr. Hawass’ most exciting projects has been the genetic mapping of the Eighteenth Dynasty.  This is important because there are a lot of anonymous New Kingdom mummies, and hidden somewhere within the pile are such luminaries as Tutankhamun’s parents, Queen Tiye, and yes, Nefertiti.

Another fact Dr. Hawass mentioned in the above lecture is that a second lab has confirmed that Tutankhamun is the father of one of the fetuses recovered from his tomb, and that both studies have been submitted for peer review.  If it turns out that Tut is the father, then cross analysis will also identify the mother, Ankhesenamun, who happens to be the daughter of Nefertiti.

A couple of weeks ago, Dr. Hawass revealed in an article on Al-Ahram Weekly On-Line (“Dig Days:  The Search for Queen Mutnodjmet”) that a genetic profile was to be constructed for Queen Mutnodjmet, as soon as they could relocate her missing mummy.  He goes on to say that this would bring us closer to identifying Queen Nefertiti, who happens to be Mutnodjmet’s sister  is thought by some, including Dr. Hawass, to be Mutnojmet’s sister.  For the full story, see my blog entry at Heritage Key, Queen Mutnodjmet: Another Branch in Tutankhamun’s Genetic Line Found (and Lost)?

This is called triangulation.  I am no Dominick Dunne, may he rest in peace, but identifying Queen Nefertiti through both Ankhesenamun and Mutnodjmet [given that they are sisters--Ed.] seems to make a pretty solid case.  So assuming final confirmation of Tut’s paternity and the subsequent cross analysis of the fetus, and assuming the AWOL Queen Mutnodjmet makes a show, we may have the positive identification of Nefertiti’s mummy some time this year.

If I may again refer to the August 7^th lecture at Indianapolis, Dr. Hawass stated that he hopes to reveal a “new tomb” in October.  He then states later that he hopes to reveal the location of Nefertiti’s tomb this winter (2009/10).  To speculate on a connection here would be, well, speculation.  But it would not be unlike Dr. Hawass to announce the location of a new tomb one month, and then identify it several months later.  He is a master of suspense.

The smart money, however, is on the “October Surprise” being KV64, and I have to admit that I tend to agree.  That wouldn’t be a bad thing.  Getting both KV64 and Nefertiti’s tomb within months of each other would make my Christmas merry, and I’m a Buddhist.  But either way, Dr. Hawass did state explicitly that he hopes to reveal the location of Nefertiti’s tomb this winter, probably under a modern rest house just northeast of Seti I’s tomb.  So far that gives us the mummy and tomb of Nefertiti.

To refer again to the Heritage Key interview, one of the things I asked Dr. Hawass about was the repatriation of the bust of Nefertiti.  He responded that he would be writing a letter this October to the Altes Museum in Berlin requesting that the artifact be returned.  In another recent article in Al-Ahram Weekly (“Queen of Egypt’s Heart”) we learn that Germany is prepared for a fight, but so is the dauntless Dr. Hawass.  For more on this, see my blog entry at Heritage Key, The Bust of Nefertiti – A Century-Old Archaeological Detective Story Nearing an End?

Dr. Hawass mentioned in the interview that he has about ten (!) books coming out in the next year, eight of which he more or less identified.  That leaves two.  Who wants to bet one of them will be about Nefertiti?  Of course, I could be way off base with all of this, and Nefertiti may end up playing a bit part in Dr. Hawass’ Final Act with the Supreme Council of Antiquities.  And stockbrokers are hardly reliable these days.  But I stand by my advice—if you are investing in Egyptian personas this year, buy Nefertiti.  You’ll thank me.

Copyright 2009, all rights reserved.