Hello Chris,

I've just been reading your post - and thanks for providing the link - re the possibility of the missing top end of the KC shafts having been horizontal.

I know that Gantenbrink and his (?) team had a devil of job keeping the lower end of north shaft clear of sand on a daily basis.
Mind you, this may have been exacerbated by the widening of the upper end of the shaft.

I'm very much of the mind that though these shafts work splendidly as ventilators (so I am told and have read) this is by accident and not design.
I can't help feeling that these shafts were never open to the outside because of the view held by some that nothing, not even sand, would have been allowed to enter and 'desecrate' the burial chamber following Khufu's interring.
A possible arguement against this view is, perhaps, the theory that somebody entered the Chamber post Khufu's burial and filled and plastered over cracks in the ceiling and other places.

MJ