yramid.

[Illustration: 181a.jpg THE MOVABLE FLAGSTONE AT THE entrance to the
great pyramid]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Petrie's The Pyramids and
Temples of Gizeh, pl. xi.

The passage is an inclined plane, extending partly through the masonry
and partly through the solid rock for a distance of 318 feet; it passes
through an unfinished chamber and ends in a _cul-de-sac_ 59 feet
further on. The blocks are so nicely adjusted, and the surface so finely
polished, that the joints can be determined only with difficulty. The
corridor which leads to the sepulchral chamber meets the roof at an
angle of 120 deg. to the descending passage, and at a distance of 62 feet
from the entrance. It ascends for 108 feet to a wide landing-place,
where it divides into two branches. One of these penetrates straight
towards the centre, and terminates in a granite chamber with a
high-pitched roof. This is called, but without reason, the "Chamber
of the Queen." The other passage continues to ascend, but its form and
appearance are altered. It now becomes a gallery 148 feet long and some
28 feet high, constructed of beautiful Mokattam stone. The lower courses
are placed perpendicularly one on the top of the other; each of the
upper courses projects above the one beneath, and the last two, which
support the ceiling, are only about 1 foot 8 inches distant from each
other. The small horizontal passage which separates the upper landing
from the sarcophagus chamber itself, presents features imperfectly
explained. It is intersected almost in the middle by a kind of depressed
hall, whose walls are channelled at equal intervals on each side by four
longitudinal grooves. The first of these still supports a fine flagstone
of granite which seems to hang 3 feet 7 inches above the ground, and the
three others were probably intended to receive similar slabs. The latter
is a kind of rectangular granite box, with a flat roof, 19 feet 10
inches high, 1 foot 5 inches deep, and 17 feet broad. No figures or
hieroglyphs are to be seen, but merely a mutilated granite sarcophagus
without a cover. Such were the precautions taken against man: the result
witnessed to their efficacy, for the pyramid preserved its contents
intact for more than four thousand years.* But a more serious danger
threatened them in the great weight of the materials above. In order
to prevent the vault from being crushed under the burden of the hundred
metres of limestone which surm