The Purpose of Airshafts in the Pyramids at Giza
You might want to the read
pyramid node first as a
little background. There isn't much about airshafts but
it might prove helpful.
You might have seen
drawings of the
layout out of
the pyramids before but most of them are
inaccurate.
One
common mistake is that the airshafts lead into the
grand gallery when they really lead into the directly
into the king's tomb. The airshafts did have a
physically
practical purpose. They gave
air to the
workers that built the inner workings of the pyramid.
But the workers did have other air holes, such as the
entrance, the airshafts were
angled upwards
diagonally, and only into the king's tomb. He didn't
need much after he was mummified. Now that we've posed
the question, let's step back a bit now.
The king's death was a very public thing, at first. The
ancient Egyptians believed that the sun was
carried
across the sky in a specific type of
boat used on the
Nile, and the king used the same kind of boat to the
afterlife. The king would be in a reed-boat like those
when he was going to his pyramid/grave. There were many
steps involved after the king died: being taken to the
burial site,
mummified, various
rituals, etc. Each
step of the process would have less and less people
involved in it until the king was alone in his tomb.
The ancient Egyptians also believed that when the
pharaoh died, he was "merged" with the god of death and
the underworld, Osiris. Well it turns out that the
airshafts had more than one
purpose: the "air" one,
leaving a path for the king to merge with
Osiris, and
leaving a path for the pharaoh's ka to roam freely. One
has a "ba" and a "ka", the "ba" being your
physical
body and your "ka" the spiritual one. When your
ba
dies, your ka needs a place to go. So several "ka
images" are built such as paintings, carvings, and
sculptures that are supposed to be an image of the king
and a place where he can reside after his ba has died.
All the images were basically
identical and they did
not exactly represent the true image of the king, but
the ideal one. He is shown
eternally youthful,
unblemished, and
physically fit perfectly matching
the time's ideal of
masculine beauty;
broad
shoulders,
flat stomach, and
toned
muscles.
There were a
minimum of
28 images for a king. That's
the number king
Khafre had. There were so many
because, if one was broken or stolen then there was
another that fit the king and it was more likely that
the
king would last for
eternity. Now back to the
airshafts. Many ka images weren't even located inside
the pyramid, many for Khafre were out in the courtyard
of his palace or in one of his many valley temples. He
needed a path to get to these images after all the
entrances were sealed off! Remember, that they believed
gods could see through the eyes in their
ka images,
and Khafre oversaw all festivals after his
death.
All images had the pharaoh's name and title inscribed
upon them so the king could know for sure that he was
possessing the right image.
Now, the even more amazing purpose. If you look at the
pyramids of Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure (the three great
pyramids at Giza) you can see that they are in
descending order (
chronologically). There is nothing
that says the
Khufu was greater than either other king
or that
Menkaure was the weakest or poorest of the
three. But you can see that the diagonal angles of Khufu
and Khafre line up. Not only are all their sides
parallel but the two diagonals form one line. Menkaure
is not on this line and he is much smaller.
Remember that the ancient
Egyptians had a great
respect for the stars. People (at least the
commoners)
didn't have much entertainment so what could they do?
They would sit around and tell stories about and look in
awe at the stars. The
pharoah did the same, but he
gave them the impression that he caused all of it to
occur. The farmers that made the
majority of the
population relied on the stars to tell them the season
and the optimum time to plant and
collect and all
sorts of things. So the farmers were greatly in debt to
them.
Well, you can't see it to day, but the airshafts in the
pyramids of Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure all pointed to
the constellation of
Osiris at the time they were
built. Scientist have
recreated what the sky would
look like at the time. They didn't have a north star to
build or travel by, the used the
all-important
constellation of Osiris. Not only did they point to that
constellation, but if you look at other pyramids'
location all along the Nile, they actually form the
constellation of Osiris to make a big cosmic map! The
pharaohs were using there power to make a mirror image
of the heavens on earth. How many people can say they've
done that on such a great proportion.
Also, on the
equinoxes, the setting sun lines up the
corner of the pyramid
Khafre with the shoulder of the
Sphinx. It was supposedly built for him.
So anyway, it was originally thought that the
pyramids Khufu and Khafre were built the way they were
because there had been many accidents and cave-ins on
the pyramid of Khufu, trying to
perfect the
smooth-sided pyramid, and they didn't want to make the
same mistakes on Khafre. It would have been a very nice
template to follow. It's true that this
alignment may
have helped in the construction of Khafre, but it simply
isn't true that it's the reason why it was built the way
it was. The were
looking to the stars...