Page 320 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

The antechamber.

Genuinely puzzled, I ducked under it and then stood up again in the
southern portion of the Antechamber, which was some 10 feet long and
maintained the same roof height of 12 feet. Though much worn, the
grooves for the three further ‘portcullis’ slabs were still visible in the
eastern and western walls. There was no sign of the slabs themselves
and, indeed, it was difficult to see how such cumbersome pieces of stone
could have been installed in so severely constricted a working space.
I remembered that Flinders Petrie, who had systematically surveyed the
entire Giza necropolis in the late nineteenth century, had commented on
a similar puzzle in the Second Pyramid: ‘The granite portcullis in the
lower passage shows great skill in moving masses, as it would need 40 or
60 men to lift it; yet it has been moved, and raised into place, in a narrow
passage, where only a few men could possibly reach it.’ Exactly the same
3
observations applied to the portcullis slabs of the Great Pyramid. If they
were portcullis slabs—gateways capable of being raised and lowered.
The problem was that the physics of raising and lowering them required
they be shorter than the full height of the Antechamber, so that they
could be drawn into the roof space to allow the entry and exit of
legitimate individuals prior to the closure of the tomb. This meant, of
course, that when the bottom edges of the slabs were lowered to the
floor to block the Antechamber at that level, an equal and opposite space
would have opened up between the top edges of the slabs and the
ceiling, through which any enterprising tomb-robber would certainly have
been able to climb.

3 The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh, p. 36.

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