Anthony Wrote:
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> The pyramid was built as his tomb. It was sealed
> as his tomb. It was referred to as his tomb in the
> texts in the mastabas around it. It was robbed, as
> his tomb.
>
> Why smash open an empty, lidless sarcophagus?
Why indeed?
What you have to digest is that everything in the King's that was stored for Khufu's afterlife which was either inserted into the chamber during construction or taken up there via the passageways has disappeared down the well shaft into the bottom of the descending and then taken out that way via the long haul up the descending. Priceless paraphernalia, probably furniture and gold plated objects. Then came the destruction of the chamber itself, all the floor tiles (thank you very much), the lid of the sarcophagus (they didn't want Khafre's did they), wall decoration most probably of various matted material and whatelse whatever. They completely stripped that chamber and I guess they either burnt the body of Khufu or carried that out too. ... and then they started on the Queen's and likewise stripped it of everything including the floor tiles again (were they priceless alabaster?), any sarcophagii that might have been hanging around (don't know how they did that) and all of its decoration. All that went down the well shaft as well.
All that was left from both chambers was a rough hewn block of red granite masquerading as a sarcophagus, and that might I remind you, is standing on an unfinished floor which isn't a very reliable base for all those precious alabaster floor tiles that are reported to be missing.
The sarcophagus has been thoroughly examined by experts and can only be described as an block of red granite that was still undergoing surgery when the pyramid was sealed. It remains a sarcophagus unfit for a royal burial.
Why no trace of this destruction remains is a real mystery, no chips, no fragments, no nothing. The usual reply is that the evidence was swept out of the chambers in modern times. What a load of crap! Evidence is collected not swept out. Then there are the ridiculous reports of someone finding a few discarded chips in the debris outside the pyramid. "it came from the King's chamber" someone relied. More crap.
If all this looting of the chambers didn't go down the well shaft then you must accept that the plug blocks which sealed the ascending were only triggered at a much later date.
Alternatively you can disregard everything above which suggests there was nothing in the chambers to start with (cept a block of red granite) and stick with the evidence you have.
>
> Clearly, if his body wasn't in there, people as
> early as the First Intermediate Period certainly
> thought it was. Even his mother's tomb didn't
> survive unmolested to the end of HIS reign.
fmetrol
Graham Oaten
The great amount of labour involved in quarrying and transporting such a mass of masonry as even the casing, has always been a cause of astonishment - Sir Flinders Petrie.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/20/2007 08:06PM by fmetrol.