[blam]

GGG Ping.

[Sacajaweau]

My mind tells me that the Pyramids are structurally, a honey comb, built partially on a hill and there are a lot of chambers...most of them empty.

[SunkenCiv]

Japanese scientists later confirmed the existence of a cavity a few metres wide, using radar technology. The French team suggests this is a corridor leading to a further chamber, hidden deep in the belly of the pyramid,

I read about another Japanese study that drilled some very tiny holes sideways out of (if memory serves; it's been 15 years or more) the King's Chamber. They claimed to have found at least one chamber, but what they and these others have discovered is, the Pyramid underwent a wrenching catastrophe. The corbels of the Grand Gallery are holding on by a fraction of an inch on one end, the result of a tremendous earthquake in ancient times. Evidently it took place prior to Khafre's pyramid (the second big one at Giza). Fourth dynasty engineers (for want of a better term) dug those wormholes upward into those stress relieving chambers above the King's Chamber, in order to inspect the damage.

While it's possible that Khufu's mummy was removed at that time, due to fear that the whole works was going to collapse (one of Sneferu's pyramids did collapse, during construction; he was Khufu's father, and outdid him in sheer volume with his three pyramids; the collapsed pyramid is the one at Meidum, and is generally attributed to Huni, but finished by Sneferu); it's also possible that the burial place was intended to be at the bottom of the lower shaft, in that interesting, unfinished chamber deep under the pyramid, down in the bedrock, and that the earthquake convinced them otherwise. The established pattern prior to Khufu seems to have been a burial chamber deep under the pyramids and mastabas.

It's also possible that the pyramid was built as a cenotaph, and Khufu's actual tomb was somewhere else (perhaps nowhere near Giza). Most likely however, Khufu was laid to rest in the sarcophagus that is built into the King's Chamber, and his tomb was robbed in ancient times, probably during the chaotic period that seems to have closed out the 4th dynasty. IMHO of course. ;')

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