Part 5 : The Great Pyramid

The burial chamber was large with its two small shafts connecting to the skies. There was a Grand Gallery with a stone stairway each side and there was Great Step at the top vertically under the apex. Also a second chamber, called the Queen’s Chamber, again vertically under the apex.

The Grand Gallery was much 'grander' than its small prototype in the satellite pyramid of the Bent Pyramid with its sliding blocks. The centre part was a smooth slope, and each side had a narrow slope which might have been covered with a wooden staircase or ladder.

An underground burial chamber was started but the important chambers were going to be hidden higher up in the structure. The underground chamber was maybe a dummy burial chamber to disappoint thieves.

If you thought that Heb Sed nature of the pyramids since Djoser was waning, I think you would be wrong. As each king came there was fresh thinking and new ways to interpret the Heb Sed requirements. The Great Pyramid certainly exhibited that.

At first sight the Heb Sed requirements were not in evidence. There was originally no satellite pyramid inside the enclosure. The enclosure was tight around the pyramid, about 10c wide only. This is not really suitable for Heb Sed Run ceremonies. There was no crowning facility around the enclosure. There was only a mortuary temple outside the enclosure on the eastside.

Evidence of Heb Sed

A fragment has been recovered from stones re-used at Lisht. It has been ascribed to the mortuary temple of Khufu.



It shows the King's Run in progress. Khufu is approaching from the left (but not seen) preceded by the Wepwawet standard. He is coming to the three D-shaped end markers on the right of the relief, above the line of stars.

Standing in front of the markers is the goddess Meret, the goddess who keeps cosmic order through rejoicing and song. She tells the king in the inscription "Come and Bring" (bring offerings presumably).

The whole scene was under the hieroglyph for 'sky', including the three boundary markers.

Another of the few pieces of evidence found at the complex came from the top of the causeway. A fragment of a relief from the north wall showed Khufu in his Sed cloth and tail being crowned.



The Sed cloth, tail, crowns and throne meant that the king was rejuvenated, had become a Horus in the sky, completed the King’s Run, and was being double crowned.

In front this scene there were parts of rows of text :

"The Great Wild Bull" which refers to the king Khufu after he ‘became’ the bull and the King’s Run

"The Splendour of Khufu" which refers to the Great Pyramid itself

This line tells the reader that these Heb Sed rituals took place IN the Great Pyramid. It is quite surprising that this amazing piece of evidence has almost been overlooked.

Here is a quote from Zawi Hawass referring to the pyramid complexes :

"Khufu and Khafra had ritual palaces for the Sed Festival".

It looks like Khufu wanted to perform his whole Heb Sed rituals not in the outside enclosure but WITHIN the pyramid. Building the rooms and other facilities needed inside for this was an amazing technical achievement.

The Run inside the Chamber

So if the builders created the interior of the pyramid to permit the king to conduct his Heb Sed totally inside the pyramid, he would be the first – but not the last to do this.

In many underground tombs of the VOK the kings have vaulted ceilings of the two skies and they also performed their Heb Seds from the within the tomb.

Here is the ceiling from the tomb of Seti I showing his Heb Sed :



The two halves of the vaulted ceiling illustrated the northern half of the sky (bottom) and the southern half of the sky (top). The Hed Sed hieroglyph was shown on the left of register above the 11 gods.
These 11 gods together with the 9 gods on the right hand side were probably the two Enneads that had approved Seti’s entry to the stars at the celestial pole.

We see Seti 1 standing between Ursa Major (the Bull) and Ursa Minor (the base level)

The bull was tethered to the mooring post and rotated around the pole. The picture of it was shown as a hieroglyph (from Gardiner’s list) The picture on the ceiling reads ‘Bull’, but unfortunately gives us no other information about its orientation, nor the stars that make up the asterism.

So in this case we could claim that the two stars Alioth and Mizar of Ursa Major are the hooves of the two centre legs. The resurrected Seti 1 directly beneath was pointing to the bull.
The base line had stars of Ursa Minor - Kocab and Pherkad. Pherkad was at the base of the mooring post (held by hippo goddess Taweret) and the star Thuban was at the top of it.

Under the bull was ‘the sacrificer’ with a falcon head. Sometimes he held a spear pointing at the bull. Here he holds a rope which went under the bull’s feet, with a small loop in the centre. Normally bulls were not speared for a sacrifice, but brought to the ground first and then the throat was cut. First the rope was tied around the legs of the bull. The front left leg was put into the loop. A bit similar perhaps to this scene:



The King awaited the tail of the bull and became ‘The Wild Bull of the Skies’. He then conducted the King’s Run in the chamber by circumnavigating the four walls of it. After that he would have received his two crowns in a double dais before the assembled gods.

Now back to the concept in the Great Pyramid.

The Location in the Sky

The burial chamber was offset to the south of the apex of the pyramid. It sat over the virtual intersection of the two small sky shafts (if they were extended down instead of entering the chamber horizontally). From the geometry we can get an exact fix on the position. The small shafts intersected 22 cubits south of the east west axis.

So in plan view the burial chamber was not over the centre of the base 220 / 220. It was over a point south of the east west axis 22c, which split the north–south axis 198 / 242. This is in the ratio 9 to 11 exactly
.


The star shafts’ exits were at a height which split the slant height in the same ratio 160 to 196. It means that the vertical height of the pyramid was also split 9 over 11 (at the dotted line). This was the reverse of the Bent Pyramid which was 11 over 9.

And one more to mention. The upper entrance passage had two parts, the grand gallery and the blocking passage. The lengths were 88c for the grand gallery and 72c for the lower section up to its floor intersection with the descending passage. Again 11 to 9. The ascending passage was probably symbolic of the gods of the two Enneads on King’s way to the burial chamber.

A possible reason why this ratio was important to Khufu was a matching of the Pyramid, the sky and the two Enneads.

It is even possible to date this matching. More on this in a subsequent thread.

From the PTs :

Utt 509 “I ascend to the sky among the imperishable stars . . . I sit on this iron throne of mine , the faces of which are those of lions, and its feet are the hooves of the Great Wild Bull. I stand in my empty place which is between two great gods . . .they will find me among the Two Enneads, doing judgment . . . and they have installed me among the Two Enneads”

Utt 667 “Sit upon your iron throne and govern in company with the Two Enneads”

It sounds like the Mizar-Kocab line split by the pole 9 to 11 was also the location of the Two Enneads with the same split. The throne was at the pole with the gods each side.
Utt 503 “I am back to back with those gods in the north of the sky”

The counterpart location of the pyramid in the sky was the same square around the pole as for the Bent Pyramid the other pyramids, ie the space between Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.



Note that this is exactly the location of the King as illustrated in Seti 1’s tomb.

Now we have this exact match :




The Star Shafts

On the ceiling of Khufu’s burial chamber there were no illustrations of the north and south stars. But there were two small shafts.
The southern one from the direction of the Belt of Orion, and the northern one from the direction of the asterism formed by the three stars Mizar-Thuban-Kocab. Both of these sets of three stars had a similar shape.
The shafts were thus able to bring down two sets of three markers from the sky into the chamber. The resurrected king was thus able to perform his King’s Run by circumnavigating the north and south sides of the chamber and performing the required rituals.



There was no need for a satellite pyramid.


The Double Crowning

There was a need for the double dais crowning of the King before the stellar deities.
The Grand Gallery looked as if it had this as a second purpose.
The double dais was possibly the Great Step.
Notice the similarities between these two pictures :
. . .
. . .

The top picture is the (worn) Great Step at the top of the Grand Galley. The bottom picture is the throne dias in the Sed Court of Djoser at Saqqara. They are similar in structure.

The Great Step with its two stairs leading up could have been the venue for the crowning of the resurrected king before the gods on his throne. It can be compared with the one for Djoser. The grand gallery may have housed representations of the gods at the crowning ceremony – possibly statues lined up on each side using the slots there.

It is not a new idea to suggest that wood panels or even statues were inserted into the niches of the Grand Gallery. What is new here is the idea that the panels were representations of the deities - the same as at Saqqara’s Heb Sed court with its stone shrines of the deities lined up alongside the double thrones.

The panels would be the width of one space ie about 1.7 metres and the legs would take up two slots. There would be a space of about 1.5 metres between each panel.
The height up to the first corbel was 4 cubits or about 2 metres. The throne itself would have used the two slots across the Great Step.

The Queen’s Chamber

The Great Pyramid did have one more room inside the pyramid, the Queen’s Chamber, for which there has not been a satisfactory explanation. However looking at how the Heb Sed requirements have shaped most other features, then this should be no exception.

The Heb Sed was conducted always at the time of the heliacal rising of Sirius over the eastern horizon. This time is when the Nile, and the country revives itself by flooding. The kings own revival mirrors this. But the timing must be right. The Queen’s Chamber (magically) allowed for the tracking of the stars. There were three false windows. One from Kocab in the north. Kocab was a daily stellar marker. Also Kocab’s culmination corresponded with Sirius and Orion rising in the east. The second window was from Sirius, the annual marker for counting the stellar years. The third window was in the east wall as a niche just south of east towards the place where Sirius rose and to observe the rising sun.




Using these windows, when Sirius was observed in the sky, and it rose with the sun a total of 4 times, Kocab will have culminated 4x365 times. Meanwhile the sun will have risen 365+365+365+366 which equals 1461 days over the 4 year cycle.


Conclusions

The burial chamber, it’s star shafts, the Great Step, the Grand gallery and the Queen’s Chamber within the pyramid were all designed and used for Khufu’s Hed Sed - in addition to their other purposes.

The accuracy of the geometry enables us to know the exact location of the burial chamber over the north-south axis of the Pyramid, and this matched the location at the pole in the sky. The 9-11 ratio split related the Pyramid to the sky and the Two Enneads.

A new purpose of the star shafts in the burial chamber has been proposed. They were a re-interpretation of the King’s Run requirements – two sets of 3 markers brought down from each half of the sky.


In Part 6 some new ideas for Khafre's Heb Sed !