Another excellent guide by Keith Hamilton.

With regard to my model of the burial chamber:

The gable of a wall is the triangular shaped section at the top of a wall with the peak of the triangle at the height of the ridge of the roof, so we only need to know the height of the gable and the width of the wall to determine the slope of the roof.

I had relied on Petrie's reported height of the gable as 38 inches as probably close to what he had seen, so a height close to 1.75 cubits or 38 inches with a theoretical slope of 20.2 degrees.

Belzoni's illustration appears to correspond to a height of approximately 76 inches, so a height close to 3.5 cubits or 76 inches with a theoretical slope of about 36.4 degrees.

The half-width of the chamber is 4.75 cubits, so the seked of 9.5 plams would result in a gable height of 3.5 cubits

The photograph shows the end wall which now appears to have a height close to 3 cubits by measuring the photo in millimetres in the knowledge the width is 9.5 cubits and that the corner height is 10 cubits.

I now think Petrie was wrong which is poor because the angle of the roof is obviously not 20.2 degrees if the photograph is close to reality.

The rectangular section beneath the gable is close to the correct proportion as it appears on my computer screen making it easy for me to assess the height of the gable, which I expect I have done accurate to 0.5 cubits if not 0.25 cubits..

The seked of 11 palms would give an irregular height of 3 cubits plus 7/11 digits (3.023 cubits). This is a slope of 32.5 degrees

My model of the roof area is obviously wrong, but this was only a corollary to my main theory assuming the gable height turned out to 36 inches (3 feet) rather than 38 inches, but it appears to be close to 5 feet, so no possibility this was the case.

Page 123 of Lehner's 'Complete Pyramids' shows the height as 6.83 metres (268.9 inches) so 13.04 cubits (for a cubit of 20.62 inches or 0.5237 metres), so a wall height of 10 cubits beneath a gable of just over 3 cubits.
Petrie's 244.4 inches was an addition of 206.4 inches plus 38 inches.

M & R accepted a height of 6.84 metres by another according to Waggy's guide.

Vyse reported 22 feet 5 inches = 269 inches = 6.83 metres

Probably worth a re-survey just in case the determination of 6.84 metres was a conversion?

Mark

PS
If anyone has been in both the Queen's Chamber of the Great Pyramid and the burial chamber of the Khafre's pyramid then it should be clear which chamber appears to have a roof with a steeper slope if there is a significant difference. I think the height of the gable is just over five feet (3 cubits) for a width of 10 cubits in QC so perhaps the same slope as the roof of Khafre's burial chamber which spans a width of 9.5 cubits. This should have been obvious to Petrie.



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 05/18/2021 06:23PM by Mark Heaton.