M.Williams: “Thought Petrie nailed down the inclination for the most part ? How do you decide which part of a a crooked shaft is the important part ?”

Well you obviously did when you declared the shafts take the “shortest route to the exterior”, so how did you decide?

Petrie could only measure the angle between the initial 2m horizontal section and the beginning of the ascending slope of the QC shafts - 37 degs 28’ for the N shaft and 38 degs 28’ for the south shaft - a one degree difference between the two shafts. Petrie had no idea of the angle of incline for the rest of the shafts up to the closure stones.

Gantenbrink sent a small robot up the shafts and measured the angles of incline further up the shafts that Petrie was unable to access.

North shaft: angle of incline over 17m fluctuated between 33.3 degs and 40.1 degs. The robot was then unable to go any further because of 45 deg bend in the shaft so the upper section of the shaft was not measured.

Gantenbrink noted that: “Only further measurements in the still unexplored upper areas of the shaft will tell whether the intended angle is several degrees smaller than that of the southern shaft, or whether both shafts were to be constructed at the same angle, that is, quasi-symmetrically.”


South shaft: average angle of incline over a distance of 28m, 39.6078 degs. He did not measure the rest of the nearly 30m section of the shaft up to the closure stone.

These surveys of the QC shafts are missing crucial measurements, so “the shortest route to the exterior” idea, although possible, remains uncertain.


M.Williams: “You have two Northern shafts-pointing at two different stars. You have two Southern shafts-pointing at two different stars. So you are saying they changed their entire religion and the Pharoahs destination after building the QC shafts ? Egyptologists say the shafts were built close in time to each other. This is where the theory falls apart.”

Their afterlife beliefs are a complex tapestry with many threads so it was not necessary to change anything.

An afterlife text in the PTs tells of the king’s four walkways in front of Horus’s tomb - the king walked on them to the god once the Sun went down. They may have had a similar purpose to the four shafts inside Khufu’s pyramid (Khufu was a Horus king). Why four walkways? The PTs inform us the king was entitled to 7 meals, 4 for the sky and 3 for the earth and the king was to course the sky on its 4 parts.


“The single king is always an aspect of the one solar disk, whereas the many kings of history find a more persuasive celestial metaphor in the myriad stars, above all the circumpolar stars that never set - ‘never perishing’ as the inscriptions within the late Old Kingdom pyramids describe them. Each king is singular in space, plural across time. This reconciles the alignment of the greatest pyramids to the north star with the use of sunshine to name the pyramid capstone.” (Quirke 2001:117)


M.Williams: “The practical part is the shortest route being taken and ending on the same exterior courses. As for me, since you asked, I think they are associated with the other unique feature of G1, the ascending passage/GG. I think they rolled stone balls down them to 'trigger' something that released the plugging stones.”

This obviously would not work for the QC shafts as they had no openings to the QC and further up they were blocked by closure stones - it was not possible to access the QC shafts, so what was the purpose of the QC shafts?

If they rolled balls down the KC shafts to trigger a mechanism that released the plug stones stored in the GG, then the mechanism would need to avoid the three granite stones that blocked the antechamber passage that led to the GG. It’s more likely, workmen were left in the GG to release the plug-stones and carefully guide them down into the ascending passage, before exiting the GG down the ‘well-shaft’.


M.Williams: “If I said they were Duat Shafts designed for priests to monitor the Pharoah's journey through the Duat from the OUTSIDE looking inside id have a more solid theory than O.C.T. because they all point down to the same place. But, i have no evidence for that, like star shaft theory people have no evidence for that theory either”


The QC shafts were blocked, so the priests could not monitor anything, so again what was the purpose of the QC shafts - its not enough to say they had “practical considerations” because without more info it cannot provide an explanation for the purpose of the shafts.

The priests could not monitor the KC either because it is not possible to see inside the KC from the top of the shafts.

The theory that the upper shafts were aligned with Orion in the southern and Thuban in the northern sky was proposed by the egyptologist Alexander Badawy in the 1950’s way before the OCT.

“The importance of the starry sky also seems clear in the positioning of narrow shafts through the masonry core, from the inner chambers of the GP. Whatever their practical application as air vents, these are too carefully incorporated into the design to escape symbolic significance.” (Quirke 2001: 115-6)


Astronomer and archaeoastronomy researcher, Dr. E. Krupp, recognized that the shafts had an astronomical significance that reflect what he considers to be the most probable function of the pyramid:  a "transcendental launch pad" that propelled the king's soul into the sky.

"The Pyramid Texts describe the ascent of the departed king to the sky. He joins Orion (Osiris), and Sirius is his guide. They continue together as participants in the cosmic cycle. A similar wish is expressed in other texts. The spirits of the dead hope to join the never-setting, never-dying, circumpolar stars. These two possible transfigurations, in which the dead pharaoh joins Osiris or the Circumpolar stars, may explain the orientation of the so-called air shafts from the King's Chamber in the Great Pyramid. They may be ramps by which the dead king makes his way to heaven." ('In Search of Ancient Astronomies', Krupp 1979)

Chris