A POSSIBLE EXPLANATION OF THE VOID IN THE PYRAMID OF KHUFU ON THE BASIS OF THE PYRAMID TEXTS Giulio Magli Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy. giulio.magli@polimi.it A recent exploration has shown the presence of a significant void in the pyramid of Khufu at Giza. A pos sible explanation of this space, interpreted as a chamber connected to the lower north channel and aimed to contain a specific funerary equipment is tentatively proposed. According to the Pyramid Texts, this equipment might consist of a “Iron throne”, actually a wooden throne endowed with meteoritic Iron sheets.
KEYWORDS: Pyramid Texts – Khufu void – Archaeoastronomy of ancient Egypt.
1.
INTRODUCTION
This paper concerns the internal structure of the Pyramid of Khufu at Giza. In what follows it is assumed that the reader has some familiarity with this monument (for a discussion see e.g. Lehner 1998). The origin of the present work is the recent investigation carried out with muon detectors, which has shown that the Pyramid of Khufu does not – in spite of repeated claims -contain inhomogeneities and/or vacuum zones of a certain relevance in the bulk of the stone material, with only one exception (Morishima et al. 2017). Homogeneity is a result which was to be expected, taking into account the extreme care exhibited by its builders in any detail of construction. The unique exception to the structural homogeneity of the monument which has been discovered is a huge void located exactly along the midway north-south section of the pyramid, over the Great Gallery. The void has a cross section similar to the Grand Gallery and a length of 30 m minimum. The muon excess is similar to the one generated by the Grand Gallery itself, which means that the volume of the two voids is of the same order. In other words, the newly discovered space is certainly a chamber or a system of chambers. The center of the void is located between 40 m and 50 m from the floor of the Queen's Chamber. Although the detailed structure has yet to be determined, it is obvious that this void cannot be interpreted as a result of sloppy behavior on the part of the builders. Indeed, the very fact that this is the unique relevant non-homogeneity present in the bulk of the pyramid points to its deliberateness. Further, the void cannot be interpreted – as proposed by some Egyptologists - as a chamber devoted to relief weight from the roof of the Great Gallery. In fact, in all structural situations in which a relief of the weight exerted on roofs was needed, it was dutifully operated by the ancient Egyptians. Specifically, the Khufu architect adopted the inverted V vault for the roof of the Queen Chamber and for the roof of the uppermost chamber located over the King's chamber (for a detailed discussion see Magli 2013). The roof of the Great Gallery was of course in danger as well, and for this reason the builders adopted the corbelled ceiling for it. The uppermost part of the corbel is closed by flat slabs, but – even admitting the existence of a relieving tunnel for this last part – this structure would be a small corridor running immediately over the ceiling, like the one discovered some years ago in Meidum, and certainly not a huge space such as the one shown by the prospection. All in all, if the void cannot be attributed either to chance or to structural reasons, its presence must be functional to the scope of the pyramid: the tomb of the Pharaoh, built to assure its eternal afterlife. Thus, there must be a solid reason for its existence, and this reason must be deeply connected with the Egyptian funer ary religion. The present paper is a first, admittedly highly speculative, attempt at possible explanation on the basis of the funerary beliefs of the epoch.