Page 309 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

Mind games of the pyramid builders

The point where Ma’mun’s Hole intersected with the 26° descending
corridor was closed off by a modern steel door. Beyond it, to the north,
that corridor sloped up until it reached the gables of the monument’s
original entrance. To the south, as we have seen, the corridor sloped
down for almost another 350 feet into the bedrock, before opening out
into a huge subterranean chamber 600 feet beneath the apex of the
pyramid. The accuracy of this corridor was astonishing. From top to
bottom the average deviation from straight amounted to less than 1/4-
inch in the sides and 3/10-inch on the roof.
4
Passing the steel door, I continued through Ma’mun’s tunnel, breathing
in its ancient air and adjusting my eyes to the gloom of the low-wattage
bulbs that lit it. Then ducking my head I began to climb through the
steep and narrow section hacked upwards by the Arab diggers in their
feverish thrust to by-pass the series of granite plugs blocking the lower
part of the ascending corridor. At the top of the tunnel two of the original
plugs could be seen, still in situ but partially exposed by quarrying.
Egyptologists assumed that they had been slid into their present position
from above —all the way down the lag-foot length of the ascending
5
corridor from the foot of the Grand Gallery. Builders and engineers,
6
however, whose trend of thought was perhaps more practical, had
pointed out that it was physically impossible for the plugs to have been
installed in this way. Because of the leaf-thin clearance that separated
them from the walls, floor and ceiling of the corridor, friction would have
foiled any ‘sliding’ operation in a matter of inches, let alone 100 feet.
7
The puzzling implication was therefore that the ascending corridor
must have been plugged while the pyramid was still being built. But why
would anyone have wished to block the main entrance to the monument
at such an early stage in its construction (even while continuing to
enlarge and elaborate its inner chambers)? Moreover, if the objective had
been to deny intruders admission, wouldn’t it have been much easier and
more efficient to have plugged the descending corridor from its entrance
in the north face to a point below its junction with the ascending
corridor? That would have been the most logical way to seal the pyramid
and would have made plugs unnecessary in the ascending corridor.
There was only one certainty: since the beginning of history, the single
known effect of the granite plugs had not been to prevent an intruder
from gaining access; instead, like Bluebeard’s locked door, the barrier
had magnetized Ma’mun’s attention and inflamed his curiosity so that he
had felt compelled to tunnel his way past them, convinced that

4 The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh, p. 19.
Discussed in Secrets of the Great Pyramid, p. 230ff.
5
6 Dimension from The Traveller’s Key to Ancient Egypt, p. 114.
7 Secrets of the Great Pyramid, p. 230ff.

307