The Grand Gallery

As mentioned earlier, the Grand Gallery is an amazing yet totally unique feature in Egyptian pyramids. As one emerges crawling out of the ascending passage, the interior of the pyramid opens up - in front of you is a horizontal passage leading to the Queens Chamber (which we will see later), but above and upwards is the incredible Grand Gallery. It is 157 feet (48m) long, and 28 feet (8.5m) high to its roof, and is essentially a corbelled vault, with its sides made up of tiers of overlapping limestone blocks moving inwards and upwards towards the roof. I found it hard to describe the appearance and the impression one gets inside this magnificent feature - I can assure the reader that the effort and skill required to construct a gallery like this suggests that it must have been one of the most important parts of the whole pyramid.

The lighting was not so good inside, but hopefully the photos below will give you some idea of the splendor of the Grand Gallery.

Functional Necessities?

It is worth bearing in mind while looking at these photos, that the railings, wooden steps, and lighting were obviously not present when the pyramid was built. This means that the floor of the Grand Gallery was smooth and probably slippery along the entirety of its length, all ascending at 26 degrees to the horizontal. It makes me wonder exactly what was the purpose of this feature, and how any human was supposed to ascend to the higher levels of the pyramid. I'm afraid I have no good answers to these questions, and nor does conventional Egyptology. You may notice in some of the photos, there is a central channel here, complimented by a higher ledge on either side. Another interesting observation is that in the tops of each of the "ledges", there are 14 notches cut into the surface,  the purpose or significance of which are a complete mystery. The only comments I can make about the design of the Grand Gallery is that it appears to be functional. In other words, I think this was designed this way in order to operate or perfrom some task in some certain way - I definately do NOT think any of these features are purely symbolic.