With regard to the proportioning of pyramid chambers to the limestone base plan, lobo-hotei Wrote:

> Which comparisions are you speaking of here? I
> don't see that a 10X20 King's chamber is the same
> proportions as the 440X440 base of the pyramid
> containing it.

the correlation for the king's chamber is shown on page 107 of Butler. proportion of chamber is 1 : 2. this is same as rectangle with short side Khufu south to Khafre south, and long side Khufu east to Menkaure centre. both oriented eastwest.
in a similar fashion, the only other granite-lined chamber at Giza, Menkaure's 'kings chamber', has the proportion 1 : 2.5 and is oriented northsouth. this is same as rectangle short side Menkaure east to Khafre east, long side Menkaure south to Khufu centre.
other limestone chambers fit nicely with this plan (i refer you to figure 59 on page 114 of Butler). note that (with chambers enlarged in this way to site scale) chamber entrances are aligned to the east side of Khufu. by the way, Butler shows that something similar was going on at Dashur (and I believe there is evidence that such 're-iteration' was used at Amarna, but I don't have the reference to hand. you are quite right that we sorely need more data to investigate this question).

to quote my post of june 20 'Re: Large-scale pan-generational pyramid planning.' :

'There are some similarities between Khufu and Menkaure not shared by Khafre. Robins and Shute re-evaluated the slope of Menkaure and found it to be the same as Khufu, but different from Khafre. These pyramids have bisected core-masonry faces, Khafre does not. The two each have three large subsidiaries, Khafre has one small one. The two each have one entrance, Khafre has two. The two have granite-lined chambers, Khafre does not. The two had single valley temples, Khafre has a valley temple, Sphinx temple, and the Sphinx. And some other points I shall not labour.'

you write :

> I find it hard to swallow that a "god on Earth"
> has to settle for a pyramid designed before he
> became pharoah. To one who can do as they wish why
> is it they couldn't design their own pyramids?

so why did Khafre accept a limestone chamber ? was he unusually modest ?

if someone would care to demolish Butler's figures the only loophole would be to call into question his datum for Menkaure limestone base (the rest is built in rock and cannot be moved). meanwhile there seems to be a curious symmetry at work here. and this is reinforced by chamber planning to site scale (as well as in elevations across the site).

Your stated view is :

> Instead someone sees a pattern that fits some
> number coincidences and then starts working out a
> pattern that fits and voila a new idea about how
> it's done.

yes, i suppose at a stretch this could be considered a description of the scientific method. how else is one to proceed ?

Giza has received most attention because it is the grandest site and there is a lot of data for it. Egyptian monuments exhibit great variety and indeed more dimensional data is sorely needed to find out the extent to which preferred quantities were used. But is it not rash to jump to the conclusion that the complexity is such that dimensional investigation is hardly worth doing and is unlikely to tell us much about ancient Egypt ? If not what are we left with : endless speculation and guesswork about religious development and the roles and supposed rivalries between priesthoods or kings. Meanwhile we 'dimensionalists' shall plod on, hopefully to find out more about these intriguing 'coincidences', and hopefully with the help rather than the enmity of those who have access to good dimensional data.

poundr17