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THE
GREAT PYRAMID -
DESCENDING PASSAGE AND SUBTERRANEAN CHAMBER
Orthodox
Theory
According
to Egyptologists, the Descending Passage provided the sole
entrance and means of access to the Great Pyramid, and was
designed primarily for the royal funeral. The Subterranean
Chamber is supposed to be either an abandoned tomb chamber (the
king
having changed his mind as to his place of burial) or possibly
a decoy tomb chamber (to persuade thieves that the burial treasures
had already been plundered).
Alford
Theory The
Descending Passage was built not only for the king’s
burial (in the Pyramid’s lower parts) but also to
provide access to the secret chamber system, or repository
(in the
Pyramid’s
upper parts), for the benefit of a future civilisation.
The entrance to the repository is the Ascending Passage,
which
was originally
concealed by the prismatic stone which formed part of the
ceiling of the Descending Passage. But there is strong
evidence for the
presence of a second secret passage, or a pair of such
passages, in the Descending Passage, located in its side
walls, about
35 to 40 feet down from the Pyramid’s main entrance.
In addition, it should be borne in mind that the Descending
Passage
might
not be the sole entrance to the Pyramid; a number of other
possible entrances are discussed in my book (following
J.P. Lepre, 1990).
As
for the Subterranean Chamber, this cave-like room symbolised
the abyss and the underworld, and would have made a most
suitable tomb chamber. However, whilst it is possible
that the king was
buried here, the vulnerability of such a burial suggests
that the Subterranean Chamber was actually a decoy tomb
chamber (see
explanation in Well Shaft).
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