The Entrance Vault to the Great Pyramid and ScanPyramids corridor explained

[Music] welcome to history for granite join me to explore ancient egypt together we'll uncover secrets that only stones from antiquity can reveal please subscribe to the channel to show your support for this line of inquiry that drives me to make more of this content for you [Music] today the great pyramid of giza lies stripped of its beautiful white casing stones exposing secrets of its construction that were obscured for millennia the most iconic feature of the pyramid that was once hidden is the enormous chevron blocks which form a gabled ceiling above the entrance to the descending corridor this particular feature has been the subject of curiosity for centuries its original purpose has been cloaked in mystery partially because much of the original stonework has been lost to plundering in 2016 the scan pyramids research mission reignited interest in this architectural feature with an announcement that empty space had been detected directly behind the chevron blocks that still remain part of the pyramid further scanning yielded evidence that the empty space resembles a corridor in its physical dimensions however since then the academic field of egyptology has made little to no effort in explaining or investigating this phenomenon many of you have shown tremendous support for this channel's investigation of pyramid stonework and so i'm going to fill the void so to speak that i know you are all waiting for in this video we're going to fully examine the evidence of this structure and see if we can solve the mystery once and for all we'll start with a brief history of why the old kingdom egyptians began to design their ceilings in this way then we'll attempt to reconstruct stonework that is missing and explain why it was plundered rather than simply imagining what might have existed here as others have done we'll align all the anomalies and physical evidence towards a probable design with a good framework for how the structure was originally made we then investigate a likely purpose for this design and finally i will put forth my hypothesis for what the scan pyramid's north face corridor is and how it relates to the now missing adjacent structure with the gabled ceiling i'll lay out what future evidence will support or reject this hypothesis should the hidden scan pyramids corridor ever be examined with an endoscopic camera to see exactly what's inside so let's start with a brief history of what led the egyptians to design gabled ceilings of pyramid chambers in this way there are four existing pyramids that are widely accepted to predate the great pyramid of giza which have internal chambers or corridors within the superstructure itself they are the pyramid of my doom the bent pyramid the bent pyramids satellite pyramid and the red pyramid the construction order of these four pyramids is uncertain and a somewhat controversial topic since they are all attributed to the pharaoh sneferu fortunately that does not matter much for our analysis notably these four pyramids all use the same sealing design that can support the enormous weight of the pyramid upon its internal chambers this technique is called corbiling and involves laying successive courses of stone that overlap a small amount above an empty space so that they eventually connect to form a ceiling intuitively this allows the weight to be dispersed evenly among each corboled layer so that no single stone must bear an excessive load the pyramids of snefru experiment with different types of corbelling some chambers use corbels on two sides of a ceiling and others on all four sides the current condition of these corbels varies tremendously from room to room and reveals that such a design is not without its flaws engineer peter james who supervised the recent structural repair of jose and snefru's pyramids published a book titled saving the pyramids in 2018. this book analyzes the problems faced with kobeling and why the my doom and bent pyramid corbels are in such disrepair he states that corbel's cantilever meaning move laterally when they have too much overhang for the loads imposed upon them this causes corbels to collapse inward and also creates stress that can cause the exposed sharp edges to break off the fact that layers of masonry in the my doom and bent pyramid are leaning inward would also add to this lateral pressure that the ancient egyptians could not fully calculate nor control the corbels in the red pyramid and the satellite pyramid to the bent are in much better shape in part due to their level coursework evidence that the builders of these pyramids were aware and concerned about the lateral pressure exerted upon the corbels is demonstrated by original wooden logs that are still in place bracing the corbels near the very top of the chambers therefore we know that the ancient egyptians became aware that when building with corbels an abundance of caution was necessary this meant that for increasingly large pyramids and chambers smaller overlaps and thus enormously tall ceilings would be required it's not surprising that a more efficient ceiling design for chambers was desired in the great pyramid of giza we first see this new design called a saddle vault where enormous chevron blocks lean inward to form a gabled ceiling the earliest known saddle vault constructed is in fact this partially destroyed structure that sits above the descending corridor entrance of the pyramid for simplicity's sake i will refer to it as the entrance vault the next known saddle vault built is the queen's chamber its chevron blocks start only four meters higher in elevation than the entrance vault so these two structures were built in a very short time frame the final known saddle vault constructed in the great pyramid is called campbell's chamber which sits high above the king's chamber and the four so-called relieving chambers below it's important to distinguish the four empty spaces below campbell's chamber because even though they are often referred to as relieving chambers they don't actually reduce any vertical load upon the king's chamber and thus aren't relieving any weight their enormous flat granite ceilings actually add to the vertical load upon the king's chamber and it is only the saddle vault of campbell's chamber that is redirecting the massive weight of the pyramid from above another important detail is that the pyramids in the fourth dynasty all kept their internal corridors no wider than 105 centimeters which is equal to two royal cubits corridors this narrow could have flat lintel ceilings that would manage to support the weight from above without collapse this would keep construction simplified since flat ceilings are much easier to build armed with this understanding of fourth dynasty pyramids we can begin to analyze the entrance vault and begin its reconstruction one immediately notable feature is that the entrance vault sits above an enormous lintel block that covers the entrance to the descending corridor this lintel is oversized being about one meter taller than every other lintel that covers an entrance to a fourth dynasty pyramid's descending corridor compounding this anomaly is that right behind the oversized lintel rests another two lentils which are even taller or perhaps made up of two sets stacked on top of one another these lintels in combination with the oversized lentil block in front of them make for an excessive amount of vertical reinforcement above the corridor entrance it's important to note that even though the great pyramid is the largest in size the lentils at the entrance still only bear the weight directly above them this means the entrance doesn't need any more vertical support than the smaller pyramids that come before and after because the loads are very similar at the outer layer of the structure with this anomaly in mind let us attempt to reconstruct what the entrance vault probably looked like there are two pairs of chevrons that remain intact and they are stacked on top of each other in a perfectly vertical arrangement the upper pair of chevrons are slightly taller and wider than the lower pair by about 20 to 30 centimeters the chevrons are all made from the same white tura limestone that made up the casing stones of the pyramids in addition to its beauty this limestone is more homogeneous and structurally sound the great pyramid uses turret limestone for important building elements including corridors and chambers because of these benefits below the chevrons lies a block type known in architecture as a tympanum which refers to a triangular wall surface below an arch and above a lintel this tympanum is highly irregular having three semicircular notches carved into it and an empty space at its apex that is filled with two additional stones that remain mostly obscured there are no other tympana or any stone for that matter that resemble this block in old kingdom pyramids the tympanum is also made from tura limestone two broken fragments of additional chevrons remain in place on the lower eastern side approximately level at the bottom with the fully intact chevrons behind them with so many anomalies and so few existing stones to examine it is no wonder that the entrance vault has confounded explorers and researchers to this day unfortunately useful historical records of the entrance vault only date back to 1757 when frederick norden made sketches of its front end profile outline in 1837 john pairing made more detailed sketches and by 1870 we get high quality photographs of this space all of these images are very similar to present day photographs and so there isn't much additional information that they provide our first break comes from the keen eye of flinders petri in 1883 when examining the intact chevrons he writes quote on the faces of these blocks are many traces of mortaring which it joined to the sloping blocks next in front of them these were placed some 70 inches lower at the top and were not so deep vertically end quote here petrie is describing the evidence for what the next pair of chevrons would have looked like if they were still intact to help keep track of all these blocks i'll refer to the intact chevrons as layer 1 the next layer of chevrons that are broken off in front of them as layer 2 and so on as you go northward now flinders petrie's observations and measurements are widely considered to be of the highest standard and many are still used in egyptology to this day but i don't want to just take his word for granted let's look and see if we can corroborate what he says with visual evidence when examining the broken layer to chevron we can observe that this stone is taller than the bottom layer one chevron behind it following the trajectory of the slope of its upper face does indeed land us about 70 inches below the apex of the upper layer 1 chevrons there's also a conspicuous chip in the layer 1 chevrons where the apex of the layer 2 chevrons would originally be petri seems to be correct so far and that's a good sign it is uncertain whether or not the layer 2 chevrons had an additional upper pair as well the eastern and western sides of this space contain blocks angled as if to receive an upper pair however if an upper pair of layer two chevrons existed it would have been notably shorter because as you can see from this stone protruding above the western side there is no more vertical space for them it's also important to ask if an upper pair of layer two chevrons existed why did petrie find no traces of mortar for them at any rate either there was only one pair of layer 2 chevrons at the bottom where the additional upper pair was dramatically smaller in size both scenarios demonstrate that layer 1 and layer 2 were very dissimilar in their arrangement moving outward to our last remaining chevron fragment in layer 3 is where things get really interesting flinders petri continues quote in front of these came the third pair similar but leaning some 7.5 or 8 degrees inward on the face judging by the remaining fragment probably a fourth and fifth pair were also placed here and the abutment of the fifth pair shows an angle of 70.5 or 73

degrees in place of 50 degrees end quote petri is describing layer 3 as leaning inwards towards layer 2 by a small amount he then speculates that layer 4 and layer 5 would increasingly lean inwards and also that the angle of their apex would widen by over 20 degrees by layer 5. when examining the layer 3 fragment from a good angle you can indeed see that it leans slightly inward against layer two layers four and five are hypothetical and it's difficult to reconstruct these three-dimensional angles from two-dimensional photographs the angle of the eastern bench does appear to get slightly less inclined and you can definitely see a block with an irregular upper face that would follow the angle of an inward leaning chevron modern and precise 3d measurements of these spaces could refine this model but the visual evidence suggests that petri is generally correct in his description with no obvious reason for this arrangement petri is left to conclude that quote the successive lowering of the tops leaning the faces in and flattening the angle of slope of the stones as they approach the outside being apparently to prevent their coming too close to the casing end quote this is a reasonable observation that leaning the chevrons inward does prevent them from protruding against the casing stones but it doesn't at all explain what the chevrons are doing there in the first place i want to point out that if the chevrons ended at layer 3 i don't think they would have been visible even after the outer torah casing stones of the pyramid were plundered however if layer 5 existed as petri speculates its entire length would be visible and the enormous torah block would have been an obvious target the removal of layer 5 would then reveal layer 4 and so on until the effort became too difficult to remove the last layer 1 chevrons that remain in place one additional piece of evidence for the flattening of the chevron slopes in layers 4 and 5 is the notched tympanum beneath layer 1. the grooves in this block could hypothetically hold wooden beams that would assist in supporting the chevrons as they were laid in place but two of the grooves are cut deeper than a line with supporting layer one but if petri is correct and the outer layers of chevrons have lower tops then these deeper grooves would be in a better position to support them now with sufficient evidence to give a good model of the original entrance vault we can begin to examine what its likely purpose was we've already established that saddle vaults relieve weight from above and distribute the force laterally but at the entrance vault there is almost no weight above to distribute furthermore the oversized lintels below the entrance vault are already larger than necessary for resisting the vertical load at the outer layer of the pyramid there's another detail about the entrance vault which demonstrates the egyptians weren't concerned about the vertical load this is that the entrance vault chevrons are set together in perfectly matched pairs every other saddle vault in fourth dynasty pyramids offsets chevrons so that they are never leaning against a single block in doing so should any single chevron crack and fail it won't automatically cause an opposing chevron to fail because that stone will still have some support this rule of design begins with the queen's chamber a mere four meters higher in the great pyramid than the entrance vault so we can be confident that the entrance vault was neither designed nor required to resist heavy vertical loads and that the ancient egyptians were fully aware of this lacking an obvious structural purpose we might be left with nothing but spiritual reasons for an explanation fortunately the scan pyramids research mission has given us an essential clue that may explain the unique and confounding configuration of the entrance vault repeated muon scans with a greater than 99.9999 confidence prove that an empty

corridor-like space exists behind the layer one chevrons so what is the purpose of this corridor and how does it relate to the entrance vault my hypothesis is that the entrance vault is in fact a tool the ancient egyptians used to test the tolerance level of a saddle vault for lateral stress and perhaps some vertical tolerance as well but you can't conduct a useful test without observing the results and so the scan pyramid's north face corridor would provide access to the entrance vault after it had been surrounded by masonry on all sides it remains unclear if the corridor would actually penetrate through beneath the layer 1 chevrons the most likely place is above the notched tympanum where the corners of two blocks are now set in place if this space were open it would be wide enough for a person to crawl through this is not unlike the crawl space the original builders made to access the so-called relieving chambers that sit on top of the king's chamber the tunnel above the king's chamber sets a precedent that the builders wanted to visually inspect how ceilings were performing under stress but even if the corridor is not configured to have access to the space under the layer 1 chevrons they might still be satisfied with observing the back side of layer 1 and measuring any lateral movement imposed on it by the force from layers 3 4 and 5. this relates directly to the observations that corbels were being pushed laterally and gave the egyptians a good reason to attempt to improve their design the builders needed a way to simulate the lateral stresses that might be imposed on chevrons deep within the great pyramid they purposefully made the entrance vault with chevrons of different sizes and inclinations in order to observe how these variables might affect them they never intended to use chambers with chevrons leaning to the side this was simply an easy way to add horizontal force for their test the oversized lintels protecting the descending corridor beneath the entrance vault are to ensure the corridor will be protected in case of a catastrophic entrance fault collapse this location for the entrance vault experiment was ideal because the corridor axis of the pyramid was already where oversized blocks were being delivered and maneuvered also in the worst case scenario of an entrance vault failure an outer section of the pyramid next to the entrance would be the easiest location for a repair to take place because permanent access would be set up in this area until the pyramid was completed now having put forth my analysis of the entrance vault and the scan pyramids corridor let me quickly touch upon the ideas that others have put forth the only other person i'm aware of with a proposal that incorporates both the entrance vault and the corridor is architect jean-pierre hudan who is most known for his theory of an internal construction ramp but his model of the entrance vault doesn't show the chevrons leaning inward nor provide a good explanation for the notched tympanum instead assigning it the functionality of a door with a spiritual design it's not impossible that the entrance vault could connect the interior of the pyramid to a second entrance but i failed to see the logic of putting two entrances right on top of each other i can't find a good reason why one entrance would be standard and the other completely out of character with corridor design there is another idea put forth by egyptologists such as mark laner he writes in his co-authored 2021 book the red sea scrolls that the empty corridor-shaped void is likely quote another weight relieving space above the descending passage end quote this explanation faces similar problems as calling the entrance vault a weight relieving space the descending corridor is only two cubits wide and the large ceiling lentils over this width had proven adequate for resisting the loads of earlier pyramids also the location of the scanned pyramids corridor is near the edge of the pyramid where the least amount of weight would bear down on the descending corridor there are corbled weight relieving chambers in the my doom pyramid discovered by architect researcher jill dormian in the year 1999 but these weight relieving chambers mostly cover the flat ceilings of wider antechambers with only a short section covering the corridor at the very bottom of the pyramid where the load from above is heaviest notably the weight relieving space above the my doom corridor follows its slope and stays very close to the corridor itself in contrast the scan pyramids corridor is known to either stay horizontal or incline upwards this is the wrong direction for a weight relieving space to travel based upon how we see the construction in the my doom pyramid i'm hoping that soon the egyptian authorities will allow a small drill hole to be made under the chevrons of layer 1 in order to introduce an endoscopic camera and peer into the scanned pyramids corridor even if they assume it is only relieving space there could still be valuable information inside they let gil dormian's team drill five separate holes exploring the various parts of the relieving space in the my doom pyramid so certainly there is precedent for this investigation the scan pyramids team has produced a range of physical dimensions that the corridor could be comprised of and i will use these variables to test my hypothesis the most important variable is the width of the corridor and in correlation the design of its ceiling if the corridor is no wider than 105 centimeters with a flat lentil ceiling then it is definitely not a relieving space if the corridor is closer to two meters in width with a corbel or saddle vault ceiling then you can assign a function of relieving weight to it this would not outright reject my hypothesis but it would reduce its probability the next variable to consider is the precise location of the northern end of the corridor if the corridor ends below where the entrance vault would be accessible that would be evidence against my hypothesis but if the corridor ends higher up right behind the chevrons with its floor near the top of the notched tympanum that would be evidence in its favor a final variable to consider is the height of the corridor itself the pyramids of the fourth dynasty always used low corridors as a security method to make it difficult for someone to remove large valuables or maneuver levers and other plundering equipment if the scan pyramid's corridor is low in height that suggests it may have once connected the outside of the pyramid to its internal chambers and passages but if the corridor is tall enough for a grown person to walk freely through it that would be evidence that it was only used for construction and making the entrance vault accessible for workers the greatest uncertainty about the scan pyramids corridor is where it leads and how far it goes the latest published results give a minimum length of 5 meters but the muon detection is not ideally suited to corridor-sized spaces for example the scan pyramid's test on the bent pyramid didn't appear to detect its corridors from their published samples i'm not sure if the great pyramid's hidden north face corridor was more visible because the muon detectors were so close to it if so perhaps a deeper portion of the corridor remains undetectable without any evidence to the contrary i'm assuming the scan pyramids corridor is blocked at 5 meters and if additional corridors are behind the blockage they will not be detectable in the near future in summary the core of my hypothesis is as follows i don't believe the builders of the great pyramid would load up the entrance vault with lateral forces and then leave empty space where those forces would cause maximum stress by accident if the entrance vault was truly just a symbolic design for spirituality they would have plugged up the corridor behind it to make it more structurally secure it remains unclear when the egyptian government will visually inspect the scan pyramids corridor my best guess is that they will wait until the mission has completed scanning and provided a final approximation of its location egypt may not time a visual investigation with a tourism campaign because previous efforts similar to this have ended in disappointment i remain optimistic that a visual inspection will come within the next few years and we can put my ideas to the test and even if the only thing revealed is an empty five-meter corridor all of you will have a very good idea of what that means based on its physical parameters your support of this channel means that you'll be among the very first to understand what the great pyramid is telling us when its hidden structures are revealed a very special thanks to everyone who watched this video to the end please subscribe to the channel to see more of this content give a like or comment as you see fit and above all remember to ask your friends if they take their 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2022-02-15 15:37

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