<HTML>Hi Robert,
You wrote:
"How are you these days? Sorry if my response offended you. The 'offense' (if there is any) was aimed at John Wall."
I'm doing fine, thanks, and I hope you are too. As you know, I enjoy a good argument, and no offense was taken.
I wrote: "I have never put forward this line of argument. In my view, the QC shafts
were provisional and would have been opened if the need for ventilation had arisen during the construction. As things turned out, the additional ventilation was not required so the apertures were never opened, and the channels were not extended to the outside of the pyramid."
You write: "You've lost me now. I thought that this is the same as what I said you said (phew)."
Not at all. You apparently thought that I thought that the QC shafts were intended to be opened at a later date but that this was not done because the chamber was abandoned. This is not the case.
"In any case, your argument is untenable however you may wish to put it. This is because the shafts in the QC extend well above the chamber itself. If 'ventilation was not required', as you say, then why were the shafts extend to such heights above the chamber? Clearly when the roof of the chamber was completed, they would have known if ventilation was needed or not. In that case we would expect them to have dropped the idea of the shaft at this point. But they didn't, thus giving the shafts another function than 'ventilation'."
I disagree. The builders could not have known whether ventilation would be needed for the QC until after the Grand Gallery and the King's Chamber had been roofed over. Until then, the passage system was open to the outside air, bringing an air-supply to the Queen's Chamber through the relatively short length of the QC passage.
Essentially, the builders had to wait until after the last closing stone had been placed over the ceiling of the Grand Gallery, before deciding whether to continue the QC shafts to the outside or to abandon them.
"I like you idea about the link with the notion that Thoth provides "air" for the defunct Osiris. But it's a long shot, no?"
It is a long shot, in the sense that the Book of the Dead dates to the New Kingdom, or long after the Giza Pyramids were built. However, I think we may agree that such texts could have had a much earlier origin.
Regards,
John Legon</HTML>
