The Great Pyramid - Interior

The internal design of the Great Pyrimid at Giza is absolutely unique in Egyptian architecture. In no other monument do we see such elaborate design concepts as the Grand Gallery, the so-called Relieving chambers, and the enigmatic "Ventillation Shafts". These are just a few of the internal features that set the Great Pyramid apart from all other constructions in Egypt. Click on the thumbnail below to see a diagram of the internal structure, "borrowed" from The Traveller's Guide to Ancient Egypt, by John Anthony West.

The modern tourist enters the Great Pyramid of Giza, not through the original entrance, but through the hole and tunnel forcibly made by Al Mamoon and his men, in the 9th century AD. From the surviving documentary evidence, we know that these men tunneled in horizontally, and finally met the descending passage which led them back up to the original entrance. This original entrance was apparently meant to be entered by moving a pivoted casing stone, but was so indistinguishable from all the other casing stones around it, that it was never discovered from the outside.

Mamoon and his men had discovered the inner passageways of the Great Pyramid, but must have been disappointed when they followed the descending passage all the way down to the Subterranean Chamber. They found  a rough-hewn room carved in the bedrock foundation on which the pyramid stands, and not a trace of decoration or artefacts. Many experts have tried to explain this chamber as the originally intended burial chamber of the king, which was then scrapped after a change of plan, but the evidence for this assertion is practically non-existant. This reason is the only explanation that fits into the "Pyramids as Tombs" theory.

It appeared to Mamoon that this was the only passageway in the Great Pyramid, until one of his workers accidentally dislodged a facing stone in the roof of the descending passge, revealing the entrance to the ascending passage. However, this entrance was blocked by enormous granite plugs, and these proved impossible to break through in the way that they had broken through the softer limestone core blocks. Undeterred by this problem, Mamoon and his men began to tunnel around the granite plugs through the softer limstone blocks, and eventually broke through into the ascending passage.