Position 25 - Khufu's Sarcophagus, Broken By Robbers, In The Sepulcher-chamber Of The Great Pyramid

Deep in the heart of the great pyramid! And before us is the sarcophagus in which the king was entombed. See how the tomb robbers have broken away the corner in their mad search for treasure. There his body was torn from its resting-place and plundered of its rich regalia and splendid jewelry, such as we have seen in the Cairo Museum, and then left in dishonor and confusion among fragments of stone and tattered mummy cloth lying upon the floor.

At least so the mummy of King Mernere was found in his pyramid chamber at Sakkara in 1881, and there is no reason to suppose that the robbers treated the body of Khufu any differently. But this great pyramid was often visited, and was the subject of a similar thieving attempt under el-Mamûn, as we have seen; so that the remains of his body, those royal limbs, that once sat upon the throne of the Pharaohs, wielding a power unknown before in the antique world, were scattered like rubbish of the street and gradually lost.

Does not Brugsch tell how he carried the body of Mernere from the Sakkara pyramid to Cairo on a donkey, and after this treatment had resulted in breaking the desiccated body into two parts, he took one of them under his arm, while his companion seized the other in the same way, and thus they walked into Cairo, bearing the mortal remains of a great king! If the body of a Pharaoh could be thus treated by an Egyptologist, who had every reason to pay it honor and respect, what may we not expect from ancient tomb plunderers!

We stand in the presence of most graphic evidences of the futility of the great pyramid and of all the hopes which inspired its construction. And yet what labor and wealth and skill went into it! Look around you here. We have stepped out of the upper end of the great hall, down which we have been looking, through a small ante-chamber, once blocked by four portcullises of granite, through which the tomb robbers were obliged to force their way; and reaching this burial-chamber, usually called the “king's chamber,” we have turned to the right (northward) and are looking west, and slightly north, with the west wall of the chamber before us.

The whole chamber is of granite, 17 by 34 feet, and 19 feet high. The great hall through which we came and all the masonry we have thus far examined, are of limestone like the core and casing of the pyramid; but for this, the final chamber where the king's body was to lie, granite from the far cataract was chosen.

Measure with your eye the huge granite blocks, as the white raiment of these two natives is outlined against them; and note the enormous slabs that form the floor. Over our heads are two hundred and fifty vertical feet of masonry threatening to crush in the roof. The great granite beams that form the roof above us are about twenty-seven feet long, four feet thick and some six feet high, as they lie on edge, and they weigh from fifty-two to fifty-four tons each.

Yet an earthquake has so wrenched the masonry that every one of these beams, nine in number, is now broken short across, from one end of the chamber to the other; but the biting grip of the enormous weight above still holds them in place. In 1763, Mr. Davison, the British consul at Algiers, while examining the uppermost corner of the great hall outside, discovered a passage leading from that hall to a rough chamber over this, where we now stand.

It was very low and was roofed with granite beams like those of the roof above us. Col. Howard Vyse, while at work on the pyramid in 1839, was led to believe that there were similar chambers above that of Davison, and after hewing a passage upward from Davison's chamber he found no less than four more, making in all five of these chambers over us. It is evident that they are construction chambers, having no other function than to render the roof of the burial chamber safer by relieving it of some of the vast weight from above. The fifth or uppermost of them may be called a great success in this respect. It consists of a massive peak, like that over the entrance passage which we saw from the outside, built of limestone blocks, which receive and by their sideward thrust transfer from the roof to the side walls, the colossal weight to be borne.

Petrie, however, thinks that there is no thrust, but that these great limestone beams extend far down into the masonry on each side of the chamber, and thus anchored in the masonry they cannot give way at the peak, but resist like cantilevers. In any case, it will be seen how effective the crowning device is in thus supporting that solid mass above it of some 250 feet in height, so that the roof of the chamber, shattered as it is, has not fallen in, bringing down the whole complex above. But Petrie thinks that the time is coming when the roof beams at least must give way, and the chamber will then cave in over our heads.

And now we must leave the interior of this stupendous monument. Can you imagine the fateful day, when passing up the great hall, with flaming torches the funeral cortege entered this granite chamber, and bearing the mighty king in his cedar coffin, they laid him in the granite sarcophagus at our feet, and hermetically fastened on with molten metal the massive granite lid? All about them, as about us now, were hundreds of feet of solid masonry; in no direction can we reach the bright Egyptian sunshine, without passing through several hundred feet of solid blocks. As they go out through this ante-chamber behind us, they let down four huge portcullises of granite, to shut in forever from all violation the sacred dead.

Down through the great hall they go, into the descending passage below it, at whose lower end, the workmen drop into the yawning opening, block after block of granite, filling the lower end of the passage for seventeen feet; and having thus shut themselves in, they escape through a secret well cut for the purpose in the masonry after it was laid. Then ascending to the entrance where the daylight appears, the cunningly fitted block, which is to hide all appearance of an opening is dropped into its place and the great Khufu is left to his eternal rest.

It is to-day nearly five thousand years since these walls reverberated to the fall of the last block into its place; the whole history of the world has been enacted since that sound died away among these stones, and here we stand at the empty sarcophagus of King Khufu. As far as preserving the soul of the great king is concerned, all the wealth and power of a kingdom spent in putting his body into this eternal husk of masonry, have been in vain. But all unconsciously, by constructing this monument he brought forward a long stage upon their way, the developing arts, which were called in to aid in the creation of an indestructible mausoleum for his body; and for what Khufu thus accomplished we should remember him, not only in wonder, but also in gratitude.

Descending the grand gallery, we shall now take a position to the southeast of the Great Pyramid by the side of the so-called Granite Temple. On Map 5 find the red lines numbered 26, which show that we shall be looking northwest.