Ken: "If the Khufu pyramid shafts were star alignment devices for the benefit of the king, why was the lower set of shafts plugged up?"



The top end of the lower shafts have 'closure stones'. The first closure stone' in the south shaft is 59.47 m (195 ft) up the shaft and stops short of the outside face of the casing by 15.39 m (50.49 ft) - what is beyond these is not known yet.


The top ends of the upper shafts reached at least as far as the core masonry behind the casing stones, but its not known if the shafts continued on a further approx. 3 m (9.8 ft) through the casing stones to the outside of the pyramid.


In all probabilty the upper shafts did not continue through the casing stones - the outlets were effectively "plugged up" by the casing stones. If they had reached the outside of the pyramid, it would have meant water, fine wind blown sand, bats, creepy crawlies of all shapes and sizes would have violated the sanctity of the sarcophagus chamber - unthinkable in an AE context.


So probably, BOTH the upper and lower shafts were "plugged up".


The upper south shaft does have some enigmatic niches 45.5 m (149.3 ft) up the shaft that may have been designed to hold some kind of 'door'. These 'niches' are similar to the 'niches' in the lower shafts where the closure stones are located. The niches in the upper shaft are not quite the same as in the lower shafts, so if there was a 'door' here, it was different to the closure stones in the lower shafts.


Even though all the shafts were probably effectively 'plugged', this does not invalidate Badawy's star alignment theory - the shafts were not designed to observe stars - according to Badawy and other Egyptologists, they were model passageways for the ba of the king to reach specific regions of the sky where significant stars were found.

CT