Following the Evidence

10/15/01

03/16/04

I have made quite a few mistakes in my life. One mistake may have been the presentation of my work on this website. Rather than building a case for the power plant theory by addressing the underlying evidence that supports it, I bluntly posted my conclusions in a chapter entitled, "The Mighty Crystal."

To say that this is putting the cart before the horse may be putting it mildly. As The Giza Power Plant was going to press, most of my communication was with like minded people who knew of my work and who agreed that there was some truth to it and that it should receive further study. I was blissfully unaware of a multitude of people who looked at this out-of-the-blue, from far left field radical idea of the Great Pyramid as a power plant as quite fantastic and unbelievable. Well, I suspected there were some out there. No, I knew they were out there. Their existence at that time, though, did not really affect me as it does now. This is primarily because I believe I could have done a better job of persuading intelligent critically minded people who visit this site to follow the evidence that led me to my conclusions.

In an attempt to correct part of this error, I would like to bring your attention to another chapter in my book that discusses the Grand Gallery in the Great Pyramid. But first some background information.

The details of the Grand Gallery are extremely important and have no parallel in any other structure on Earth. Its geometric design predicts that sound originating within its space is focused through a passageway past the Antechamber and into the granite complex known as the King's Chamber. This phenomena has been noted by musicians, acoustical engineers, military scientist and laypeople alike. Some of the more puzzling features of this architectural acoustical miracle, however, are not adequately explained by conventional literature or, indeed, in any other literature. They are the 27 pair of slots that are cut into the ramps that traverse both side of the Grand Gallery.

Within the context of a machine, these slots can be imagined to perform all sorts of functions. On author speculated that they may have serves as the teeth on a rack and pinion type device that would allow the device (pinion) to crawl up the Grand Gallery. Some have speculated that they may have housed devices that would serve as gates for the elevation of fluids. The conventional theory is that the granite plugs in the lower part of the Ascending passage were held in the Grand Gallery prior to being lowered into place. These slots, they surmise, housed wooden pegs that held the blocks in place.

In attempting to explain the existence of these slots in the power plant theory, my focus was to introduce an explanation that not only explained why the slots were there, but also how these slots fit with the explanations for all the other evidence found within the Great Pyramid. The evidence that I worked with at the time included the design of the Grand Gallery and all the evidence that was around it.

    "Prior to my visit to Egypt in 1986, I had speculated that the slots along the Gallery floor anchored wooden resonators, but that these devices were balanced in a vertical orientation reaching almost to the full height of the gallery. I speculated that the resonators were anchored in the slots at the bottom and held in place by utilizing dowels that fit into the groove located in the second corbeling and running the full length of the gallery. If this speculation is true, it would logically follow that the geometry of the 27 pair of slots would be unlike the drawings I have studied. The bottom of the slot may be parallel to the horizontal plane, rather than parallel with the angle of the gallery, and the side walls of the slot would be vertical to a horizontal plane, rather than perpendicular to the angle of the gallery. This was a significant detail and a simple one to check out.

    "My first trek inside the Great Pyramid in 1986 didn't reveal anything about the geometry of these slots as they were filled with dirt and debris. The following day I set out to the Great Pyramid with a soupspoon that I had 'borrowed' from the hotel restaurant. Digging out the dirt and debris, with tourists and guides looking at me like I was crazy (actually, it was probably illegal to do this as you need special permission and to carry out excavations in Egypt), I finally came to the bottom of the slot. It was as I predicted it would be; parallel to the horizontal. Also, the sides of the slots were perpendicular to the horizontal. Other slots were perpendicular to the horizontal as well, though some of them had bottoms that were parallel to the gallery floor. In either scenario, it appears that the slots were prepared to accommodate a vertical structure, rather than restrain weight that would exert shear pressure from the side."

In my book, I speculate on the existence of these resonators primarily by back engineering the phenomena we know as the King's Chamber. However, the real phenomena that was the genesis of my inquiry into the function of the Great Pyramid is the damage that the King's Chamber had suffered at some distant point in its history.

I'm not sure I would have considered that the Great Pyramid was a power plant without the evidence of energy affecting change within this structure. Reading in Petrie's Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh that the King's Chamber had been subject to a powerful force that caused the walls to push out over one inch made me sit up and take notice. The cracks in the ceiling beams did not seem, to me, to be explained by settling, and the historical explanation that all of this damage was the result of an earthquake just didn't add up.

The earthquake hypothesis does is on rather shaky ground, considering there is no similar damage in the lower parts of the Great Pyramid. Petrie surveyed the Descending Passage and found an amazing accuracy of .020 inch over 150 feet and a mere .250 inch over 350 feet of its constructed and excavated parts. With this evidence, there is no indication that the building had been shook to such an aweful extent that a chamber 175 feet above the bedrock would be significantly moved. Additionally, one might question why an earthquake would cause a chamber to expand rather than collapse? Combined, this point and the lack of supportive evidence in the lower parts of the Great Pyramid actually argues against and dismisses the earthquake theory.

Faced with this evidence, and for a variety of other reasons I bring out in more detail in The Giza Power Plant, I speculated that there had been an  explosion in the King's Chamber. I had also speculated that this explosion resulted in a conflagration in the Grand Gallery that destroyed the proposed resonators in the Grand Gallery:

    "If subjected to excessive levels of energy, what changes would take place in an object like the coffer? Perhaps the coffer was originally red and quarried at the same time, in the same place, as the rest of the granite. Depending on other elements that were present at the time of the malfunction of the power plant, it is conceivable that certain changes would be recorded in any object fortunate enough to survive the accident. The comparatively thin sides and base of the coffer would naturally be more susceptible to excessive energy levels than would the huge granite blocks comprising the walls and ceiling. It could be suggested, therefore, that the coffer, without the ability to conduct the heat to which it was subjected, simply over-cooked, with a change in color being the result.

    "The guardians, alarmed at this sudden malfunction, then accessed the inner chambers of the pyramid by climbing down the Descending Passage and then up the Well Shaft to the level of the Grand Gallery. They cut through to what is now known as Davison's Chamber where they inspected the next layer of granite. While in this chamber they could have cleaned away the limestone dust (exuviae) from the top of the beams, which is why the exuviae wasn't discovered until an opening was made by Howard Vyse into the chamber above.

    "If the resonators were made of combustible material they may have been destroyed at the same time the King's Chamber was subject to its disturbance.

    "As evidence to support this speculation, there are reports that the limestone walls in the Grand Gallery were subjected to heat, and calcination, or burning, of the limestone blocks took place. The disaster that struck the King's Chamber, therefore, may have been responsible for destroying the resonators in the Grand Gallery."

When I wrote the above in 1998, it did not occur to me that I would find evidence to support my speculation barely a year later. Following a trip to Egypt in 1999, I wrote the following in an article entitled Return to The Giza Power Plant, published on this website:

In all the literature I had read, the Grand Gallery is described as being constructed of limestone. But here I was looking at granite! I noted a transition point further down the gallery where it changed from limestone to granite. I scanned the ceiling and saw, instead of the rough crumbling limestone one sees when first entering the gallery, what appeared to be, from 28 feet below, smooth highly polished granite. This was highly significant to me. It made sense that the material closer to the power center would be constructed of a material that was more resistant to heat.

I then paid closer attention to the scorch marks on the walls. There was heavy heat damage underneath each of the corbeled layer for a distance of about 12 inches, and it seemed as though the damage was concentrated in the center of the burn marks. I then visually took a straight line through the center of each scorch mark and projected it down towards the gallery ramp. That was when the chills ran down my spine and the hair stood out on my neck. The line extended down in alignment with the slot in the ramp!

 Because I was involved in a conference and had little time for further research at that time, I could not take photographs of the scorch marks at that time. I was hopeful that some video of the experience would be released in some form, but that has not come to pass at the time of this writing. Nevertheless, patience is one's best friend in this field and in August of 2001, I again had the opportunity to go back to Egypt. This time it was under the auspices of PAX television and Grizzly Adams Productions.

Dr. Zahi Hawass was extremely ebullient and helpful to Grizzly's producer, Gail Fallen, and myself as we visited with him. He bent over backwards to accommodate any of our wishes to see anything we wanted to see. High on my list was a visit to the Serapeum, but also to be one of the limited number of tourists that are allowed inside the Great Pyramid daily.

We entered the Great Pyramid at around 3:00 PM and I was amazed at the difference in its interior. There had been a tremendous amount of cleaning of the walls and ceilings. Even the writing on the Queen's Chamber south wall near the opening of the shaft had been stripped off. The writing used to read "Opened in 1872." It was sad, in a way, to see that writing gone. While it was introduced by modern Westerners, it seemed, to me, to be a significant part of the history of the Great Pyramid.

Enhancing the interior face-lift of the Great Pyramid was a much improved lighting system. With lighting and cleaning combined, the Great Pyramid revealed more of its secrets. Some evidence may have been stripped away, but other evidence was revealed. The ceiling of the grand gallery had a pattern of what strongly resembles scorch marks. (Please see the following two images.)

The pattern is unmistakable and pronounced. The scorch marks on the Grand Gallery ceiling approximates the design and location hypothesised in my book. The support structure for the resonators are on both sides of the gallery. Correspondingly, there are pairs of scorch marks located where the support structure would have been.

These marks do not appear to be marks that could have been created by smudges from torches, either. Besides, any smoke residue, I am sure, would have been cleaned off by the very thorough cleaning performed by the Egyptians while the pyramid was closed. I am left to assume, therefore, that these marks were caused by intense heat and secondary damageintrinsically linked to the overall downfall of the entire operating system.

The photograph I wanted to take of the marks on the wall, was later taken by Jon Bodsworth and is displayed along with many other magnificant photographs on his website.

Photograph Courtesy of Jon Bodsworth of EgyptArchive.co.uk

The location of this photograph is the south wall of the Grand Gallery looking up to the passageway that leads to Davison's Chmaber. The marks on the wall look like impact craters as though an object in proximity to them exploded. Considering the angle of the camera, and the eliptical shape of the craters, it is reasonable to inferr that if looked at normal to the surface, they would be round. While one might wonder if these marks could have been made by someone climbing a rope to the top of the gallery, it would seem that there would be two sets of tracks, if that were the case, and that any impressions made by a foot would not be quite as regular.

In summary, the evidence brought to light inside the Grand Gallery, reinforces the power plant explosion hypothesis and is a predictable element that the hypothesis implies and fits perfectly without any awkward revisions thereof.

I am indebted to Dr. Zahi Hawass and to Gail Fallen of Grizzly Adams Productions. Without her impeccable diplomacy, these events would not have transpired.

 

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