Page 288 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

believed to have died in 2528 BC. Moreover it was assumed by Professor
5
I.E.S Edwards, a leading authority on these matters, that the burial
treasure had been removed from the famous inner sanctum now known
as the King’s Chamber and that the empty ‘granite sarcophagus’ which
stood at the western end of that sanctum had ‘once contained the King’s
body, probably enclosed within an inner coffin made of wood’.
6
All this is orthodox, mainstream, modern scholarship, which is
unquestioningly accepted as historical fact and taught as such at
universities everywhere.
7
But suppose it isn’t fact.

The cupboard was bare

The mystery of the missing mummy of Khufu begins with the records of
Caliph Al-Ma’mun, a Muslim governor of Cairo in the ninth century AD. He
had engaged a team of quarriers to tunnel their way into the pyramid’s
northern face, urging them on with promises that they would discover
treasure. Through a series of lucky accidents ‘Ma’mun’s Hole’, as
archaeologists now refer to it, had joined up with one of the monument’s
several internal passageways, the ‘descending corridor’ leading
downwards from the original concealed doorway in the northern face (the
location of which, though known in classical times, had been forgotten by
Ma’mun’s day). By a further lucky accident the vibrations that the Arabs
had caused with their battering rams and drills dislodged a block of
limestone from the ceiling of the descending corridor. When the socket
from which it had fallen was examined it was found to conceal the
opening to another corridor, this time ascending into the heart of the
pyramid.
There was a problem, however. The opening was blocked by a series of
enormous plugs of solid granite, clearly contemporaneous with the
construction of the monument, which were held in place by a narrowing
of the lower end of the corridor. The quarriers were unable either to
8
break or to cut through the plugs. They therefore tunnelled into the
slightly softer limestone surrounding them and, after several weeks of
backbreaking toil, rejoined the ascending corridor higher up—having
bypassed a formidable obstacle never before breached.
The implications were obvious. Since no previous treasure-seekers had
penetrated this far, the interior of the pyramid must still be virgin
territory. The diggers must have licked their lips with anticipation at the

5 Atlas of Ancient Egypt, p. 36.
6 The Pyramids of Egypt, pp. 94-5.
7 The Pyramids of Egypt by Professor I. E. S. Edwards is the standard text on the
pyramids.
8 W. M. Flinders Petrie, The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh (New and Revised Edition),
Histories and Mysteries of Man Ltd., London, 1990, p. 21.

286