Page 314 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

disappear entirely ...
Once again there seemed to be a clear invitation to proceed further, the
latest in a long line of invitations which had encouraged Caliph Ma’mun
and his diggers to break into the central passageways and chambers of
the monument, which had waited for Waynman Dixon to test the
hypothesis that the walls of the Queen’s Chamber might contain
concealed shafts, and which had then waited again until arousing the
curiosity of Rudolf Gantenbrink, whose high-tech robot revealed the
existence of the hidden door and brought within reach whatever secrets—
or disappointments, or further invitations—might lie behind it.

The Queen’s Chamber

We shall hear more of Rudolf Gantenbrink and Upuaut in later chapters.
16 March 1993, however, knowing nothing of this, I was frustrated to
find the Queen’s Chamber closed, and glared resentfully through the
metal grille that barred its entrance corridor.
I remembered that the height of that corridor, 3 feet 9 inches, was not
constant. Approximately 110 feet due south from where I stood, and only
about 15 feet from the entrance to the Chamber, a sudden downward
step in the floor increased the standing-room to 5 feet 8 inches. Nobody
20
had come up with a convincing explanation for this peculiar feature.
The Queen’s Chamber itself—apparently empty since the day it was
built—measured 17 feet 2 inches from north to south and 18 feet 10
inches from east to west. It was equipped with an elegant gabled ceiling,
20 feet 5 inches in height, which lay exactly along the east-west axis of
the pyramid. Its floor, however, was the opposite of elegant and looked
21
unfinished. There was a constant salty emanation through its pale, rough-
hewn limestone walls, giving rise to much fruitless speculation.
In the north and south walls, still bearing the incised legend OPENED
1872, were the rectangular apertures discovered by Waynman Dixon
which led into the dark distance of the mysterious shafts. The western
wall was quite bare. Offset a little over two feet to the south of its centre
line, the eastern wall was dominated by a niche in the form of a corbel
vault 15 feet 4 inches high and 5 feet 2 inches wide at the base.
Originally 3 feet 5 inches deep, a further cavity had been cut in the back
of this niche in medieval times by Arab treasure-seekers looking for
hidden chambers. They had found nothing.
22
Egyptologists had also been unable to come to any persuasive
conclusions about the original function of the niche, or, for that matter,
of the Queen’s Chamber as a whole.

The Pyramids of Egypt, pp. 92-3.
20
21 Ibid., p. 92; The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh, p. 23.
22 The Pyramids of Egypt, p. 92.

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