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OPERATIONS CARRIED ON AT GIZEII.

223

It is difficult to imagine that the Great Pyramid was
intended to be the tomb of more than one individual.
Indeed the whole structure seems built for the security
of the King's Chamber, and for the sarcophagus within
it; but if the dread of violation was as strongly felt as
antient authors seem to describe, it is possible that the
apartments and passages in the masonry were intended
as a blind, and that the tomb in this, as in all the other
pyramids at Gizeh, was an excavation in the rock at a
depth sufficient to elude discovery. Or, on the other
hand, if the testimony of Herodotus is to be refused on
this point (although it has been found correct in many
other instances), we must conclude that Cheops was ac-
tually buried in the King's Chamber, and not, according
to the usual manner, in an excavation ; and that the
unfinished subterraneous apartment was intended to de-
ceive, and to support the fictions of the priests, which
were communicated to Herodotus.0 It was my intention
to have blasted the rock to a considerable depth, in
search of a communication; the discovery of this fissure,
therefore, saved me a great deal of trouble and expense;
and as much interest was attached to this inquiry, I
directed, when I left Egypt in 1837, that a shaft should
be sunk in the floor of the subterraneous chamber, to the
depth of fifty feet. This operation was attended with

subterraneous chamber, which is now open, is above one hundred feet
below the base.

6 As Cheops and Chephrenes are stated to have been decidedly
hostile to the religious institutions of the country, it is not probable
that the priests would have felt any great interest in preventing the
violation of their tombs.
 
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