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Know_files/FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS.pdf - D Ank Unlimited

Know_files/FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS.pdf - D Ank Unlimited

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Graham Hancock – <strong>FINGERPRINTS</strong> <strong>OF</strong> <strong>THE</strong> <strong>GODS</strong><br />

Mind games of the pyramid builders<br />

The point where Ma’mun’s Hole intersected with the 26° descending<br />

corridor was closed off by a modern steel door. Beyond it, to the north,<br />

that corridor sloped up until it reached the gables of the monument’s<br />

original entrance. To the south, as we have seen, the corridor sloped<br />

down for almost another 350 feet into the bedrock, before opening out<br />

into a huge subterranean chamber 600 feet beneath the apex of the<br />

pyramid. The accuracy of this corridor was astonishing. From top to<br />

bottom the average deviation from straight amounted to less than 1/4inch<br />

in the sides and 3/10-inch on the roof. 4<br />

Passing the steel door, I continued through Ma’mun’s tunnel, breathing<br />

in its ancient air and adjusting my eyes to the gloom of the low-wattage<br />

bulbs that lit it. Then ducking my head I began to climb through the<br />

steep and narrow section hacked upwards by the Arab diggers in their<br />

feverish thrust to by-pass the series of granite plugs blocking the lower<br />

part of the ascending corridor. At the top of the tunnel two of the original<br />

plugs could be seen, still in situ but partially exposed by quarrying.<br />

Egyptologists assumed that they had been slid into their present position<br />

from above 5 —all the way down the lag-foot length of the ascending<br />

corridor from the foot of the Grand Gallery. 6 Builders and engineers,<br />

however, whose trend of thought was perhaps more practical, had<br />

pointed out that it was physically impossible for the plugs to have been<br />

installed in this way. Because of the leaf-thin clearance that separated<br />

them from the walls, floor and ceiling of the corridor, friction would have<br />

foiled any ‘sliding’ operation in a matter of inches, let alone 100 feet. 7<br />

The puzzling implication was therefore that the ascending corridor<br />

must have been plugged while the pyramid was still being built. But why<br />

would anyone have wished to block the main entrance to the monument<br />

at such an early stage in its construction (even while continuing to<br />

enlarge and elaborate its inner chambers)? Moreover, if the objective had<br />

been to deny intruders admission, wouldn’t it have been much easier and<br />

more efficient to have plugged the descending corridor from its entrance<br />

in the north face to a point below its junction with the ascending<br />

corridor? That would have been the most logical way to seal the pyramid<br />

and would have made plugs unnecessary in the ascending corridor.<br />

There was only one certainty: since the beginning of history, the single<br />

known effect of the granite plugs had not been to prevent an intruder<br />

from gaining access; instead, like Bluebeard’s locked door, the barrier<br />

had magnetized Ma’mun’s attention and inflamed his curiosity so that he<br />

had felt compelled to tunnel his way past them, convinced that<br />

4 The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh, p. 19.<br />

5 Discussed in Secrets of the Great Pyramid, p. 230ff.<br />

6 Dimension from The Traveller’s Key to Ancient Egypt, p. 114.<br />

7 Secrets of the Great Pyramid, p. 230ff.<br />

307

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