Page 294 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

other facts, particularly where the Great Pyramid was concerned, seemed
to speak persuasively against any robbery having occurred. It was not just
a matter of the narrowness and unsuitability of the well-shaft as an
escape route for bulky treasures. The other remarkable feature of Khufu’s
Pyramid was the absence of inscriptions or decorations anywhere within
its immense network of galleries, corridors, passageways and chambers,
and the same was true of Khafre’s and Menkaure’s Pyramids. In none of
these amazing monuments had a single word been written in praise of
the pharaohs whose bodies they were supposed to house.
This was exceptional. No other proven burial place of any Egyptian
monarch had ever been found undecorated. The fashion throughout
Egyptian history had been for the tombs of the pharaohs to be extensively
decorated, beautifully painted from top to bottom (as in the Valley of the
Kings at Luxor, for example) and densely inscribed with the ritual spells
and invocations required to assist the deceased on his journey towards
eternal life (as in the Fifth Dynasty pyramids at Saqqara, just twenty miles
to the south of Giza.)
19
Why had Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure done things so differently? Had
they not built their monuments to serve as tombs at all, but for another
and more subtle purpose? Or was it possible, as certain Arab and esoteric
traditions maintained, that the Giza pyramids had been erected long
before the Fourth Dynasty by the architects of some earlier and more
advanced civilization?
Neither hypothesis was popular with Egyptologists for reasons that
were easy to understand. Moreover, while conceding that the Second and
Third Pyramids were completely devoid of internal inscriptions, lacking
even the names of Khafre and Menkaure, the scholars were able to cite
certain hieroglyphic ‘quarry marks’ (graffiti daubed on stone blocks
before they left the quarry) found inside the Great Pyramid, which did
seem to bear the name of Khufu.

A certain smell ...

The discoverer of the quarry marks was Colonel Howard Vyse, during the
destructive excavations he undertook at Giza in 1837. Extending an
existing crawlway, he cut a tunnel into the series of narrow cavities,
called ‘relieving chambers’, which lay directly above the King’s Chamber.
The quarry marks were found on the walls and ceilings of the top four of
these cavities and said things like this:

THE CRAFTSMEN-GANG,
HOW POWERFUL IS THE WHITE CROWN OF KHNUM—

19 See Valley of the Kings; for Saqqara (Fifth and Sixth Dynasties) see Traveller’s Key to
Ancient Egypt, pp. 163-7.

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