Page 291 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock
P. 291
Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS
The Great Pyramid: detail of corridors, shafts and chambers.
But Ma’mun and his men found nothing, not even any down-to-earth
treasure—and certainly not any high-tech, anachronistic plastic or
instruments of iron or rustproof weapons ... or strange spells either.
The erroneously named ‘Queen’s Chamber’ (which lay at the end a long
horizontal passageway that branched off from the ascending corridor)
turned out to be completely empty—just a severe, geometrical room.
10
More disappointing still, the King’s Chamber (which the Arabs reached
after climbing the imposing Grand Gallery) also offered little of interest.
Its only furniture was a granite coffer just big enough to contain the body
of a man. Later identified, on no very good grounds, as a ‘sarcophagus’,
this undecorated stone box was approached with trepidation by Ma’mun
and his team, who found it to be lidless and as empty as everything else
in the pyramid.
11
Why, how and when exactly had the Great Pyramid been emptied of its
contents? Had it been 500 years after Khufu’s death, as the Egyptologists
suggested? Or was it not more likely, as the evidence was beginning to
suggest, that the inner chambers of the pyramid had been empty all
along, from the very beginning, that is, from the day that the monument
had originally been sealed? Nobody, after all, had reached the upper part
of the ascending corridor before Ma’mun and his men. And it was certain,
too, that nobody had cut through the granite plugs blocking the entrance
to that corridor.
Commonsense ruled out the possibility of any earlier incursion—unless
there was another way in.
10 Secrets of the Great Pyramid, p. 11.
11 The Traveller’s Key to Ancient Egypt, p. 120.
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