(Its immediate predecessors, the Bent Pyramid and the North Pyramid at Dahshur, have vaults built at ground level all the others are solid structures whose burial chambers lie well underground.) For years, the commonly accepted theory was that the Great Pyramid's elaborate features were the product of a succession of changes in plan, perhaps to accommodate Pharaoh's increasingly divine stature as his reign went on, but the American Egyptologist Mark Lehner has marshaled evidence suggesting that the design was fixed before construction began. to contain tunnels and vaults well above ground level. His is the only one of the 35 such tombs constructed between 26 B.C. But these superlatives do not help us to understand its airless interior.įew would be so bold as to suggest that, even today, we know why Khufu ordered the construction of what is by far the most elaborate system of passages and chambers concealed within any pyramid. Yes, it is impressive to know that Khufu's monument was built from 2.3 million stone blocks, each weighing on average more than two tons and cut using nothing more than copper tools to realize that its sides are precisely aligned to the cardinal points of the compass and differ one from another in length by no more than two inches, and to calculate that, at 481 feet, the pyramid remained the tallest man-made structure in the world for practically 4,000 years-until the main spire of Lincoln Cathedral was completed in about 1400 A.D. (A separate tradition suggests that the emperor, as he waited for other members of his party to scale the outside of the pyramid, passed the time calculating that the structure contained sufficient stone to erect a wall around all France 12 feet high and one foot thick.) That the tale is told at all, however, is testament to the fascination exerted by this most mysterious of monuments–and a reminder that the pyramid's interior is at least as compelling as its exterior.
"You'd never believe me."Īs I say, the story is not true-Napoleon's private secretary, De Bourrienne, who was with him in Egypt, insists that he never went inside the tomb. "Oh, what's the use," he murmured, sinking back. Hauling himself painfully upright, he began to speak-only to halt almost immediately. Not until 23 years later, as he lay on his death bed, did the emperor at last consent to talk about his experience. Having ventured alone into the pyramid's forbidding interior and navigated its cramped passages armed with nothing but a guttering candle, Napoleon emerged the next morning white and shaken, and thenceforth refused to answer any questions about what had befallen him that night. This chamber is generally acknowledged as the spot where Khufu, the most powerful ruler of Egypt's Old Kingdom (c.2690-2180 BC), was interred for all eternity, and it still contains the remains of Pharaoh's sarcophagus-a fractured mass of red stone that is said to ring like a bell when struck. When Bonaparte visited Giza during his Nile expedition of 1798 (it goes), he determined to spend a night alone inside the King's Chamber, the granite-lined vault that lies precisely in the center of the pyramid. There is a story, regrettably apocryphal, about Napoleon and the Great Pyramid.
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