The Door in the Pyramid, the mystery deepens

The atmosphere was electric and everyone present sat in stunned silence as the robot made its steady progress up the narrow shaft (its cross-section is only some 20 cm. x 20 cm.). Eventually it came to a halt before a slab of white, Tura limestone with what appeared to be a small copper handle on it. On the floor of the shaft was another of these handles which had evidently broken off from the slab. Where it should have been attached there was now only a tarnished, copper stump remaining. Through its main length the shaft had cut through the ordinary, rough limestone out of which is made the pyramids core but the last few courses had been made of the softer and more valuable white, Tura limestone. This material had been used for the casing of the pyramid, which has now been all but stripped away. Its use here, at the top of the shaft, suggested that the narrow passage way, now called an air-shaft but clearly never intended for purposes of ventilation as it was originally blocked at both ends, led to something important. The question was what?

When the tape finished and discussion began, opinion was divided concerning the significance of the discovery. Some delegates, still holding to the abandonment theory, were adamant that the slab was no more than a simple blocking stone and therefore of no great significance. This, however, did not explain the copper handles or indeed the smooth working of the Tura limestone in the last few course of stone. Others believed that though still a simple slab in reality, it was symbolic of some sort of entrance way. Just as the Egyptian's often built false doors to their tombs to allow the soul of the deceased to pass in and out, so they had constructed a similar device here to indicate to that the pharaoh's soul could exit through the solid stone. The third opinion, and the one shared by Gantenbrink himself, was that it was not a blocking stone as such but a door (or perhaps a portcullis) leading to a secret chamber beyond. This almost heretical notion that there might still be at least one secret chamber inside the pyramid went down like a lead balloon with most of the assembled dignitaries, though truth be told a few nights before Professor I.E.S. Edwards, another former Keeper of Egyptian Antiquities at the museum and the world's foremost authority on the pyramids, had appeared on British Television and voiced his own opinion that beyond the "door" there could well be a concealed statue of the pharaoh gazing out at the constellation of Orion. Clearly he at least believed in the possibility of a chamber beyond the slab else there would be nothing hollow in which to place the statue.

Evidence that the slab was not just an ordinary core stone of the pyramid was provided by the camera. A small laser beam mounted on the robot could be seen shining on the "door" and then, when it was moved downwards, disappearing in a gap underneath. This gap seemed to be at least a centimetre in depth, meaning the door-block was not a tight fit. One corner of the block was chipped, leaving a triangular space and revealing what seemed to be a groove in the block to the side through which the "portcullis", if such it was, could run.

These details lent support to the secret chamber theory, though it was not clear if the chamber (if such it was) had been sealed at the time the pyramid was built or during some ritual, perhaps connected with the funeral of the pharaoh Khufu after whom the pyramid is named. What was now not in dispute was the importance of these shafts as markers (there are two others in the King's Chamber) pointing towards significant stars. It had been known since 1964, as a result of the pioneering work of Egyptologist Dr Alexander Badawi and his associate (now herself a very senior Professor of Astronomy) Virginia Trimble, that at the time the pyramids were built the Southern shaft of the King's Chamber pointed towards the culmination point of Orion's Belt. In 1986 Robert Bauval (later to be my co-author on The Orion Mystery) demonstrated that the equivalent shaft from the Queen's Chamber and the one at the end of which Gantenbrink had now discovered his "door" pointed towards the star Sirius. This was clearly no coincidence as in the Egyptian religion Orion was linked with the god of the dead, Osiris, and Sirius with his sister-consort Isis. If there were to be a statue beyond the door, it would more likely be staring out towards Sirius rather than Orion as this was the star towards whose culmination (the highest point in the sky to which a star climbs in the course of its daily rotation through the sky) the shaft was directed.

On the strength of this stellar orientation of the shafts, Robert Bauval and I postulated in our book that the Queen's Chamber was designed to be used for the performance of the Egyptian rebirth ritual known as "The Opening of the Mouth" ceremony. In this the mummy of the deceased was stood upright and its mouth quite literally opened using a small tool made from meteoritic iron. As it is recognised that this tool was made in the shape of the Little Bear constellation, itself associated with the jackal god called Upuaut (whose name means "opener of the ways" and after whom Gantenbrink's robot was named) it is not unreasonable to see this as a stellar ritual. Further evidence for this is that the Northern shaft of the Queen's chamber pointed at the culmination of the star Kochab, the most prominent in the Little Bear constellation. This aligned with the shaft at the precise time that Orion's Belt would appear over the Eastern Horizon. As the Northern shaft of the King's Chamber pointed directly at the then pole star, Thuban, it is more proper to refer to the "air-shafts" as star-shafts. In fact Professor Edwards has started doing so.

What lies behind the door has become the $64,000 question of the decade. According to Gantenbrink it would be a relatively easy task to poke a fibre-optic camera through the small crack in the corner of the "door" and thereby to take a peak at what lies behind. Unfortunately, because of the furore that surrounded the discovery and the unorthodox way that it was announced to the world, the Egyptian authorities have till now been in no mood to allow him back into the pyramid to continue his work. There have been rumours about other teams, from Germany, Canada and the US, taking up the challenge but to my knowledge, nobody has yet publicly announced that they have either opened the door or put a fibre optic camera through the broken corner. If it has happened both they and the Egyptians are keeping quiet about it, perhaps out of concern for what this might provoke in terms of a reaction by the Islamic fundamentalists, who in 1993 just prior to the door's discovery, placed a bomb in the pyramid of Khafra. The current rumour is that a team from Canada are, with the approval of the Egyptian authorities, going to attempt further exploration of the shaft in September. <\BODY> <\HTML>