820: The entrance to the Great Pyramid that tourists use today was first cut by treasure-seeking Arabs led by Caliph al-Ma’mun, roughly around AD 820. A “caliph” (Arabic khalifa, meaning “successor”) is a chief Islamic civil and religious ruler, regarded as the successor of Mohammed. The original entrance is just above al-Ma’mun’s forced entrance.
Dating the Great Pyramid
The longstanding date for the construction of the Great Pyramid is 2560 BC during the reign of Pharaoh Khufu (Cheops in Greek), but there is some controversy in this dating.
There is an Egyptian stela (a rectangular, vertical slab of stone that commemorates events and persons) titled the “Inventory Stela” that was found in 1858 in the ruins of the temple of Isis at the southeastern foot of the Great Pyramid by Auguste Mariette, an Egyptologist and founder of the Egyptian Museum. The stela is dated to the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty (685-525 BC) but reports on Pharaoh Khufu’s (Cheops in Greek) repairs to and construction of Giza plateau monuments that occurred between 2589 to 2566 BC in the Fourth Dynasty (subsequent generations often reproduced earlier artifacts for preservation and historical purposes, just as we do today). The reason this stela is important is because its inscription appears to indicate that the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx were already built when Khufu’s activities were recorded on the stela. Keep in mind that no one could interpret Egyptian hieroglyphs until 1822 when Jean-François Champollion published the translation of the Rosetta Stone. Here’s the translation of the Inventory Stela:
The place of the Sphinx of Harmakhis [Hr-m-y’ kw t, associated with the horizon and the sun; thus: Sphinx of the Rising Sun] is on the south of the house of Isis, Mistress of the Pyramid [it’s already there]; on the north of Osiris, Lord of Rosta [R3-st3 or RcsTcw, Rosta, or Restau, which means the “Mouth of the Passages,” which is the entrance to the land of the dead]. He [Khufu] restored the statue [the Sphinx], all covered in painting of the guardian of the atmosphere, who guides the winds with his gaze. He replaced the back part of the Nemes headdress, which was missing, with gilded stone. The figure of this god, cut in stone, is solid and will last to eternity, keeping its face looking always to the East [in the direction of the rising Sun, the Sphinx’s face looks East]. The writings of the goddess of Harmakhis [the rising Sun] were brought, in order to investigate. . . . may he grow; may he live forever and ever, looking toward the East.
Live Horus Medjer [another name for Khufu), King of Upper and Lower Egypt; Khufu, who is given life. For his mother Isis, the Divine Mother, Mistress of The Western Mountain of Hathor [goddess of the principles of love, beauty, music, joy, and motherhood], he [Khufu] made [this] writing on a stela. He gave [Isis] a new sacred offering. He built [Isis] a House of stone [a stone temple], renewed the gods that were found in her temple. He found the house of Isis, Mistress of the Pyramid, beside the house of the Sphinx of [there’s an unreadable word here] on the northwest of the house of Osiris, Lord of Rosta. He built his pyramid beside the temple of this goddess, and he built a pyramid for the king’s-daughter Henutsen beside this temple. (4, p. 85)
This record of Khufu’s activities can be interpreted to indicate that the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid were already built when he did some restoration, rebuilding, and new construction. Consider these lines: “He [Khufu] restored the statue [the Sphinx], all covered in painting of the guardian of the atmosphere, who guides the winds with his gaze. He replaced the back part of the Nemes headdress, which was missing, with gilded stone.” And consider this passage: “He found the house of Isis, Mistress of the Pyramid, beside the house of the Sphinx . . . ” Doesn’t this indicate that the Great Pyramid was already standing? Then the stela states that Khufu built himself a pyramid and one for his daughter. Should we believe that the Great Pyramid is casually mentioned along with a daughter’s pyramid, as if the two are in anyway equal? Nowhere on the stela is the grandeur and engineering of the Great Pyramid expressed.
Add to this that the only existing statue of Khufu, who is the supposed builder of the greatest monument in Egypt and one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, is a three-inch tall, poorly carved piece of ivory. This little statuette was found headless in Abydos by Petrie in 1903. He whose men could carve granite could not carve a statue of their pharaoh in some significant size and in stone? This is not likely. If Khufu were the builder of this edifice, wouldn’t there be statues and stelae everywhere proclaiming his greatness? But there is only this little ivory figurine.
Greek historian Herodotus (ca 484 BC-425 BC) wrote of Khufu (Cheops in Greek): “Cheops moreover came, they said, to such a pitch of wickedness, that being in want of money he caused his own daughter to sit in the stews [this means to prostitute herself], and ordered her to obtain from those who came a certain amount of money (how much it was, they did not tell me). And she not only obtained the sum appointed by her father, but also she formed a design for herself privately to leave behind her a memorial, and she requested each man who came in to give her one stone upon her building. And of these stones, they told me, the pyramid was built which stands in front of the great pyramid in the middle of the three, each side being one hundred and fifty feet in length.” [Its sides are actually 160 feet in length.] (22, p. 124) From this account it appears that Herodotus was told that Khufu’s daughter built the middle pyramid of the three so-called “Queens Pyramids” in front of the Great Pyramid for herself. However, archaeologists, particularly Drs. Lehner and Rainer Stadelmann consider it to belong to one of Khufu’s wives, Queen Meritites (also spelled Mertiotes or Meretites). Archaeologists rarely consider personal historical reports about the sites from indigenous or closely associated persons of the time period, probably because they are so steeped in the evolutionary theory that all historical accounts are from less evolved persons.
Are we to believe that the greatest monument in Egypt and one of the greatest of the ancient world was built by a king who prostituted his daughter in order to pay for it?
Khufu may actually have overseen repairs to the Great Pyramid, for there is evidence of repair work in the King’s Chamber and a relieving chamber above it. Whoever cut the passage that leads from the ceiling of the Grand Gallery to the lower relieving chamber, now called Davison’s Chamber, left a neat, square-cut breakthrough passage in the stone of the original builders. The repair team also plastered over the cracks in the granite blocks above the King’s Chamber. This work certainly appears to be that of a careful repair crew in antiquity, not treasure hunters.
Another key factor in dating the construction of the Great Pyramid is the intentional construction of the entrance and descending passageway to point like a telescope to the Earth’s pole star. Astronomers have shown that the entrance and descending passageway pointed to Thuban (Alpha Draconis, α Draconis, α Dra) in its lower culmination in the years 3350 BC (long before Khufu) and again in 2170 BC (long after Khufu). Thuban was the pole star in antiquity (more on this later). The astronomer Richard A. Proctor (1837-1888) wrote: “Either of these [dates] would correspond with the position of the descending passage in the Great Pyramid; but Egyptologists tell us there can absolutely be no doubt that the later epoch [2170 BC] is far too late . . . ” Proctor concludes: “If then we regard the slant passage as intended to bear on the Pole-star at its sub-polar passage, we get the date of the pyramid assigned as about 3350 years BC, with a probable limit of error of not more than 200 years either way, and perhaps of only fifty years.” (41, p. 7) Clearly this date is long before Khufu; and what is even more important is that this date is before the so-called “Fourth Dynasty Pyramid Builders,” dating from 2613–2498 BC, including “Khufu’s” pyramid at the proposed date of 2550 BC. There’s more evidence to support the idea that the Fourth Dynasty pharaohs were the mastaba builders (ancient Egyptian tomb in the form of a flat-roofed, rectangular structure) on the Giza Plateau rather than the pyramid builders.
Early in the career of the acclaimed Egyptologist Dr. Mark Lehner, who worked on the Giza Plateau most of his life, he carbon-dated
