By Kate Phizackerley. Published on Egyptological, June 30th 2011.
Great Pyramid at Giza
Although we now know that there is chamber at the end of the shafts in the Queen’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid, I still remember first hearing in the late 1990s that something had been found. The whole affair was shrouded in secrecy, back in the days when Dr. Hawass was the Director in charge of the Giza Plateau rather than Minister of State, the position he holds today. Rather than just talk about what had been found, Robert Bauval presented a slide show with amazing pictures of a door with copper handles: proof indeed of a major discovery inside one of the most studied monuments in the world.
The story in fact dates back to the early 1990s when a team led by the engineer Rudolph Gantenbrink had been hired to address the critical problem of ventilation within the chambers of the Great Pyramid to reduce both the internal temperature for the comfort of tourists but more importantly to reduce the potentially damaging humidity by expelling moist air and drawing in dry desert air. The Egyptians it seems had provided for this eventuality by running a pair of conduits (generally referred to as shafts) from the two main chambers to high up on the outside of the pyramid. Of course it is doubtful this was the original purpose of the shafts, but in truth they had been little studied and nobody was really sure of their purpose.
The Gantenbrink team started work in 1992 as reported on his web site. The ventilation equipment wasn’t ready for installation so they started by clearing the external ends of the shafts. The two known ends of shafts were those arising from the Kings Chamber. Nobody was sure where the exits for the shafts from the Queen’s Chamber were, but it was generally assumed it was merely a matter of working out where they should reach the upper surface of the pyramid and then finding them.
Oh how wrong the consensus was! It is a classic case of people ignoring things which were seemingly obvious; but to be fair, exploring the shafts had not previously been technically possible. In fact, the shafts in the Queen’s Chamber have always been different to those in the higher King’s Chamber. Although the King’s Chamber shafts have been known so long it is almost impossible to know whether they were originally uncapped at their lower ends within the chamber, the Queen’s Chamber shafts were covered until 1872 when one Wayman Dixon was engaged in a classic hunt for secret passages by searching for gaps in the joints between facing stones. Finding one, he had a man smash it open and exposed first the shaft aperture in the southern wall of the Queen’s Chamber and later a matching aperture in the north wall.
Roughly square with sides of between about 7” and 8” and with an upwards slope somewhat in excess of 35° in the 19th Century the best option for exploring them was another classic explorer’s technique: if they were uncapped they would draw smoke like a chimney, so that is what they tried. The north shaft had no draw and was presumably blind or blocked, but the southern shaft drew very successfully. Mysteriously the smoke didn’t reappear on the outside of the pyramid. Certain artefacts were even found within the tunnels, clearly dating to when the pyramid was sealed. These artefacts are something of a mystery themselves. Larry Orcutt lists them as “a small bronze grapnel hook, a bit of cedar-like wood, and a grey-granite, or green-stone ball weighing 8.325 grains thought to be an Egyptian ‘mina’ weight ball,” (http://www.catchpenny.org/shafts.html, retrieved 9th June 2011).
Various attempts to probe the shafts with long rods and the like were attempted, but the small dimensions of the shafts made them impervious to full investigation. An important member of Gantenbrink’s team changed that – his robot. The first robot proved too large but they came back later in 1992 with a smaller one. Engaged by Hawass to install ventilation equipment, their priority was the King’s Chamber shafts with known exits to the surface. During the exploration of the southern shaft they made the first new discovery, one which is little known even today. Towards the top of the shaft they found an ornamental niche suggesting that the shaft was never entirely functional, if indeed it had any functional purpose.
Writing in 1610 George Sandy records in Relation of a Journey begun An Dom. 1610:
“In the walls, on each side of the upper room, there are two holes, one opposite to another, their ends not discernable, nor big enough to be crept into — sooty within, and made, as they say, by a flame of fire which darted through it.”
The impression is that the northern shafts had had some purpose as chimneys or, some believe, lamps had been lowered down them. Although recent attention has focused on the Queen’s Chamber shafts, the King’s Chamber shafts are still holding on to secrets of their own.
The first 40’ of the Queen’s Chamber shafts were explored before the robot was unable to continue because of the shape and size of the shafts which are severely constricted at some points.
Much more was to come when they returned the next year when a new and improved robot, Upuat-2, was despatched to explore up the shafts in the Queen’s chamber. On his website Gantenbrink describes two weeks made difficult by both red tape and then obstacles within the further reaches of the southern shaft which require almost constant rebuilding and reconfiguration of the robot. Then on 21st March, Dr. Hawass who had provided a lot of assistance to the project unexpectedly resigned from his post, although he would later return. As a consequence he was not in post on 22nd March when the team made the most significant discovery in the pyramid in over a century – a door at the end of the shaft.
Not that everybody agreed it was a door of course. But whatever it was, it had two copper handles and there was discoloration suggesting that originally there had been seals in place. Again Gantenbrink is the best source for a description of these features which are often overlooked in reports of what has been found behind what is now called Gantenbrink’s Door:
“Together we viewed the video of the day’s discoveries. About the seals, Prof. Stadelmann is quite adamant about the seals,. He says no such round seals were ever used in the Old Kingdom. But much later, together with a German Egyptologist, I was to investigate this issue more thoroughly and discover that this is not necessarily true. The usual practice in the Old Kingdom was to roll a cylindrical stamp over a piece of clay to create a so-called roll seal.
“Although very little is actually known about the appearance of Old Kingdom seals, it appears that some were indeed made of white gypsum. Careful scrutiny of our video images from the shaft reveals several bits of gypsum in the sand some 15 to 20 meters below the stone slab. “
Obviously elated the team was keen to issue a press release. For reasons that have never been satisfactorily explained the press release was blocked and Gantenbrink’s involvement would come to an end before he had time to explore the northern shaft as well. Indeed, another decade would pass before either shaft was explored further.
Bibliography
Gantenbrink, Rudolph – website, http://www.cheops.org
Sandy, George – book, Relation of a Journey begun An Dom. 1610:
Orcutt, Larry – website http://www.catchpenny.org/shafts.html
Credits
Feature image ©Kairoinfou via Creative Commons
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