It is not for the weak souls to ascend the gateway that leads to the other world. Half bent and crawling, you have to make your way down and then pass through the passage ways that are so narrow that you will fear getting crushed. If you slip at any point there are no concrete stairs that will help you regain balance but the wooden boards will ensure that you foot gets stuck there forever with ‘time’ coming to deliver you. One needs to have flexible joints and strong lungs to draw in any oxygen molecules that may be present in the periphery. To add to the horror, the passage is dark, smelly and claustrophobic but a strange dim light creeps through from an unknown source. The passage doesn’t seem to end but eventually it leads to a chamber that measure 10 meter by 5 meter.
Wonder where you are? Well where else than the structure that has withstood the test of time, unshaken by quakes and unscratched by storms? We are talking about the largest of the three monstrous pyramids of Giza the Cheops. The huge coffin as if tempts you to lie down and search for the immortality. But on touching them you realize that they are dead cold and you feel a strange current through your body.
The chamber has no murals as do the other caves of the Pharaohs in Luxor, the Valley of Kings. The light from somewhere manages to peep through two tiny holes on the wall but for most part you will have to depend on your torches. Actually these holes were made to capture the rays of two specific stars which are at a certain angle to each other. The Egyptians were of the belief that the soul when leaves the body would go directly to the stars through the holes.
The Cheops was completed at around B.C. 2560. Also known as the Khufu the structure houses the mummy of King Khufu whose reign lasted for 23 years. Recorded by Manetho, an Egyptian priest, the evidence dates back to B.C. 3000. The priest on behest of King Ptolemy I of Greece culled facts out of the funerary monuments, temples and other records. The information passed on and eventually we get to know of it.
The pyramid for Khufu required over two million limestone blocks and stands 137 meter high. Each of the limestone blocks weighs around 4.5 tons which were to be cut and brought from the nearby mines. It is not staggering after getting these details that it took an army of men to put the structure in place. The king along with his sons, whose mummy rest in the pyramids alongside emptied their whole treasury for the structure. As a result the kingdom was put into famine and the rulers that came after didn’t dare try something so big. They settled for smaller and less extravagant structures.
Before Khufu all the pyramids that were made were box like structures. It was because Khufu’s mummy was stolen by the tomb raiders and he somehow sensed of it. However the effort was not work after all. Egyptians believed that mummies were to be preserved to perfection to get the best afterlife. All the Egyptian sculptures, art and mythology speak of the embalmment of the royal body. Anubis, the jackal god looked after the process. They believed that if any harm is done to the mummy, the afterlife would be worse than death itself. To make sure nothing such happened Khufu appointed Hem Iwno to chalk out a secure design that itself would ensure the mummy’s protection. Thus the step pyramid structure came to the forefront. The soul was only to be escorted by goddess Isis and god Osiris to the immortal paradise.
But how did the tomb raiders manage to work out the passages and steal out the mummy? Well, Khufu made this extravagant pyramid but he had no intentions to rest in it. He built a secret passage from the deep entails of the pyramid passing under the village to surface right next o the small tomb which rested his wife’s mummy. The discovery of this resting place was by accident when the camera of a photographer slid through and into the dirt and fell 20 feet below in an unknown chamber. Khufu ensured that his grave got fortified by impenetrable granite blocks in a clueless location.
The Egyptian museum in Cairo has a tiny statue of Khufu, brought from the temple of Osiris. These records are timeless and tell great details about the civilization. All the three pyramids at Giza were plastered with white limestone that glistened in the sun and was visible from miles away. It is said that it even sported a golden crown. However everything was chipped away some 2000 years later to build paces and mosques. There are over 110 similar structures all over the valley of Nile and all of them hold similar stories.