MJ Thomas Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------


>
> What I had in mind was that it would have been
> remarkably difficult for the builders to have
> jacked this block up off the Descending Passage
> and into the space in the roof it was intended
> for.




We're talking about people who were experienced at raising 4 million blocks into position to build a pyramid. I don't really think they'd be stumped by a single block situation.


> Having protrusions on the sides to effectively
> wedge it into place would, IMO, have made putting
> the block in place shift up from remarkably
> difficult to downright impossible.

It didn't have to be impossible... just snug. In fact, it could be that the protrusions were actually well positioned to fit easily ABOVE the visible opening, but when the block was straighted to sit flush, it came right down and wedged in perfectly, much like the granite plugsstones that fill the bottom of the Ascending Passage.



> A suitable alternative, again IMO, would have been
> the cutting of slots along the sides of the
> block's outer face into which wedges could then be
> hammered once the block was in place.
> But this latter fixing method might well have been
> visible to a searching eye; which leaves me
> wondering why nobody noticed it and, perhaps more
> pertinently, recorded it until Al Mamun and his
> band of Merry Men arrived on the scene.




Exactly why I advocate the "slipped in at an angle and then dropped flat into place" method I've tried to outline here. Unfortunately, as with most AE methods, it is easier to demonstrate than describe.

I do know where I've seen this before, though. The crawlspace above my laundry room. There's a board up there that I have to push up out of the way to gain entry. It fits right back down onto ridges on all 4 sides and effectively because part of the ceiling again. The ridges could be replaced by a fractional narrowing of the opening, though, and the doorway would still sit in place just fine.


>
> As I have mentioned elsewhere (a 'senior moment'
> is preventing me from remembering exactly where)
> Piazzi Smyth discovered two unique joints in the
> Descending Passage floor below the opening to the
> Ascending Passage.
> These joints uniquely run underneath the side
> walls of the Descending Passage.
> The uniqueness and location of these two floor
> joints strongly suggests that they are in some way
> linked to the Ascending Passage opening and
> possibly the vertical shaft in the Trial
> Passages.



My thought was that perhaps the side walls actually "push back" from where they are now, and they were "pulled forward" to help wedge the ceiling block in place.



>
> Now, as Smyth observed, these two floor joints are
> very fine and easily overlooked.
> However, Smyth viewed them as they were one
> thousand years after Al Mamun.
> I would suggest that these lines were far more
> visible in Al Mamun's time
> Even allowing for the fact that the Descending
> Passage floor in this area is noticably harder
> than the flooring north and south of it, a
> thousand years of human traffic can cause a lot of
> wear.


Agreed.



>
> Could it be that these two lines drew Al Mamun's
> attention to the block in the ceiling?
>


Almost without question.



> Consider, if you will, the following extract from
> Piazzi Smyth's Life and Work at the Great Pyramid
> Edinburgh. 1867 (to set the scene, Smyth is in the
> Descending Passage with his guide, Alee) :
>
> "Alee, you are a Pyramid guide, do you see these
> two diagonal floor joints?”
> Yes, he did see them; and confessed, now they were
> pointed out, that they were true joints of the
> masonry, going under the walls of the passage on
> either side.
> “Now why, Alee, did the kings who built the
> Pyramid make these two joints run in such very
> different directions from all the other joints in
> the passage floor?”
> He only looked up and down at the different
> joints, saw that ‘the two’ were an exception, but
> said he could form no idea.
> “Then look up, Alee, at the roof, and see why; so,
> turning his head in the narrow passage, he saw he
> was then vis-à-vis to the lower butt-end of the
> portcullis-block closing the entrance to all the
> ascending passages of the Pyramid; to everything
> constituting the interior of the Great Pyramid
> essentially different from every other Pyramid in
> Egypt.”
>
> Now go back to my suggestion that Al Mamun started
> his tunnel at the mid-length of the north side of
> the Pyramid because he saw the small groove/marker
> cut into the pavement and running under the casing
> blocks …
>



I suggest the first thing he and his men would have done would be to bang the hell out of all the stones and blocks in that area. They banged hard on the top stone, and down it came. We have to make the story jibe somewhat with reality. It certainly wasn't the tunneling 30 feet over that caused the faux roofstone to collapse. I think they knocked it out, found the granite plugs, then decided to clear a parallel tunnel to get beyond them without bringing the entire pyramid down upon their heads.

Either way, we are in very close agreement about what happened here. We're off by a single block of stone being popped out. I say before. You suggest after.

The consequences of the difference are immaterial, really. Agreed?

Anthony

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him think.