Thanks for your insight.

You mentioned mastaba 17 as containing the earliest granite sarcophagus. Where is it? At Giza? What is its age relative to Khufu's sarcophagus?

From memory the royal sarcophagus of Sekhemket was made of alabaster with a sliding lid, which was thought to have been found intact but there was no mummy inside when opened in the full glare of publicity.

(I was aware that AE were somehow able to plane down hard granite delivered to Giza with lifting bosses, so that's why I think that the sides could have been planed down if the dimensions were not critical.That's obvious, and equally obvious that the huge stones in the ceiling were sawn to an approximate size.
The walls of the King's Chamber have two huge stones 10 cubits long at the top of the east and west walls which could be measured to give the length of the cubit, and these stones were sure surely sawn to width and length before finishing the side facing the chamber and the bottom flat. The ends may be square.

Smyth presented a geometric model in which the lid fitted inside as an upright diagonal from which he argued that although the lid would have fitted in the rebate it would have spoiled the geometric design, so described the sarcophagus as 'the coffer', as John Taylor, as if it was intended as an open chest. It does appear that interior dimensions were crafted more precisely than the exterior dimensions, but Smyth spotted the doubling of volume, the sphere latent in the interior, and the division of volume into 6 parts with 3 parts for the internal volume, 2 parts for the sides and 1 part for base.

All Smyth's observations are valid, but do not explain the design.

Petrie described the theories of the Coffer as 'interminable' and I suppose you may have thought that you might be able to 'crack' the design if there was a design to be cracked - like thousands of others.

The King's Chamber is clearly a model of the size and shape of the Great Pyramid (as published in my monograph on the Grand Gallery in 2006) on a scale of 1 digit to 1 cubit. I have no idea idea why this simple observation was overlooked by others. Smyth and all authors known to me have overlooked a key aspect of the design which unifies several other theories. This is the difference between number theories and concordant geometric observations.

A big clue is the diameter and depth of three holes in the rebate on the west side of the lid. My notes are in excess of 12,000 words, but I can post a few observations on the holes to get you started. If you ignore numbers and look for a picture you may see the model and the reason for many geometric features.
I suggest you concentrate on Smyth's survey if you want to arrive at a different conclusion than those who have just read Petrie.

I appreciate that you have looked at the sarcophagus in great detail and tried to 'crack' the design, but like so many others found the possibilities endless. I do not know why you and others have missed a crucial observation. It could be worth just thinking how you would design the sarcophagus if Khufu had asked you to design a marvel.

From memory, Denys Stocks estimated that it would have taken 28,000 hours to make the sarcophagus. Not long considering the size of the pyramid, given that this was the purpose of the pyramid.

Mark



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/10/2019 01:29PM by Mark Heaton.