The King's Chamber
At the top of the Grand Gallery, a horizontal passage leads to the Kings Chamber. This is another passage that is too small for one to stand upright, and has some interesting features. There is an antechamber in the middle of the passage which has 3 grooves cut on either side, which could have held portcullis stones that would seal the passage when lowered. One such stone is still lodged firmly in its "open" position, although this particular stone would in fact leave a gap above it when lowered to the floor.
The Kings Chamber is constructed of large blocks of Aswan granite, and is very precise and exact in its appearance. Its actual dimesions are 34' 4'' (10.5m) long, by 17' 2'' (5.2m) wide, by 19' 1'' (5.8m) high. These dimensions are interesting in that they make the floor a 2 x 1 rectangle, and the height is exactly one half of the length of the diagonal of that rectangle. We saw earlier while discussing the external dimensions of the pyramid, that the builders incorporated their knowledge of the transcendental number P (pi) in the angle of its slope. Well here they are using another such number, this time F (phi) which appears prolifically in nature, and is defined by the Fibonacci Series. I think these numbers are not coincidence, and that the builders of the Great Pyramid were attempting to leave a clue as to their mathematical and scientific prowess in the construction of this structure.
When Al Mamoon and his men finally reached the Kings Chamber, they found it completely empty except for a large granite box on the far side of the room. They knew they had to be the first ones to discover this room, as they had forced their way around the massive granite plugs used to block the ascending passage - rumour has it that Al Mamoon snuck into the pyramid one night and planted treasure that his men could the "discover" the next day, to avoid rebellion in the ranks.
So the question is - Is it really a King's Chamber? Is it really the place in which the Pharaoh Khufu (Cheops) was laid to rest? I would have to say a definate NO to these questions for a number of reasons.
1. Fristly, no mummy of the Pharaoh, nor any treasure/artefacts that usually accompany royal burial were found anywhere in the Great Pyramid. Egyptologists claim that this is because of tomb robbers who stripped the pyramid bare of all its treasures, but it is equally possible that there was no mummy and treasure there to begin with - the trouble Al Mamoon had finally reaching the Kings Chamber is perfect testament to this argument.
2. No inscriptions of any kind are present anywhere in the Kings Chamber, or indeed anywhere in the whole body of the pyramid. As has been well established by archaeological discoveries in the past 200 years, the Pharaoh not only was buried with an abundance of artefacts to take with him to the afterlife, but the place of burial was always elaborately decorated with inscriptions and wall paintings, paying homage to the King and guiding him in the afterlife.
3. It was customary for Pharonic burials to have the king carried to his tomb in his sarcophagus. The granite box in the Kings Chamber, if it IS a sarcophagus, could never have fulfilled this function because it is too large to fit through the passage from the top of the Grand Gallery to the Kings Chamber, and must therefore have been placed inside the room during the pyramid's construction.
The Kings Chamber also contains another unique feature in Egyptian pyramids - the so called "Air shafts" or "Ventillation Shafts". These are two small shafts which are just large enough to admit a human arm, and run from both the north and south walls of the Kings Chamber onwards through the body of the pyramid (see the diagram on the first page of this section). Whether these shafts were intended for ventillation is a matter of debate, although ironically thats what one of them is being used for now, after a French company was contracted in to attempt to reduce the humidity inside the pyramid. The lighting inside the Kings Chamber is not ideal for photography - I have put the best pictures I could take below.
At the far side of the Kings Chamber from the entrance, there sits the only item ever found in this room - a granite box carved out of a single piece of stone. It looks plain and simple at first glance, but on closer inspection it is a remarkable artefact. In fact, if you look at the pictures and see the size of the thing, it makes you wonder about its construction. The precision of its construction is also amazing - its internal volume (ie. how how much water it would hold if filled up) is exactly half its external volume (ie. how much water the block would displace if it were completely solid). Now this kind of accuracy does NOT arrive by chance, so we should read some significance into this, and ask why was this precision necessary? Also, if you look at the sides and the exposed edges, they show a remarkable degree of accuracy in the straight edges, especially for the level of stone-working technology normally attributed to the Egyptians of the 4th Dynasty.
