Analyzing the North Face Corridor of the Great Pyramid

Welcome to History for Granite. Join me to explore ancient Egypt. Together, we'll uncover secrets that only stones from antiquity can reveal. Please subscribe to the channel to get notified when new videos are published, and thank you so much for growing the channel. There's an old saying in Egypt that man fears time, but time fears the pyramids. I can't believe it's been over five years since the Skan Pyramids mission announced the discovery of the Big Void and North Face Corridor within the Great Pyramid. Those discoveries were incredibly exciting, but at the time I was shocked how some Egyptologists were unenthusiastic about the findings. What they have been announcing today is not a discovery. But as it turned out, I was right to be excited, because as this Egyptologist who would never exaggerate will tell you, this discovery, in my opinion, is the most important discovery in the 21st century. But theatrics aside, the announcement of the Skan Pyramids team threading an endoscopic camera into the North Face Corridor of the Great Pyramid is truly a wonderful success story. In this video, we'll be examining the visual evidence and see if we can prove how much more there is to learn about the Great Pyramid from a few grainy images. But first, let's congratulate the scientists and engineers behind this project that deserve the highest praise for their commitment to exploration and fact-based inquiry of our ancient history. Let's give them some recognition and talk briefly about what got us here. In 2020, when the worldwide pandemic struck, it was unclear if the Skan Pyramids mission would be able to continue and if there was any hope of additional discoveries. But sure enough, I kept seeing images of their equipment inside the Great Pyramid, so at least progress was being made, no matter how slow that might be. As it turned out, they had 10 Muon detectors all focused on the North Face Corridor, attempting to finalize its location and size. As the now-published scientific paper shows, this additional data was sufficient to get a very high confidence of the corridor dimensions. But evidently, Muon detection remained either insufficient or unsatisfactory for the Ministry of Antiquities to allow an invasive borehole for visual inspection. Therefore, the more traditional scanning techniques of ground-penetrating radar and ultrasonic testing were employed in the past few years. With all the controversy surrounding ground-penetrating radar in Egyptology, this was more than a little ironic. It should also be mentioned that radar, and particularly ultrasonic testing, could only be used for the North Face Corridor because of its auspicious location, 80 centimeters from the exterior. Neither of these techniques are likely to be helpful for the Skan Pyramids Big Void or other hidden spaces deep within the monument. It's amazing how carefully these instruments must be calibrated to produce good data, and the irregular density of the pyramid core contains many unknown variables that can cause problems for non-muography scanning. Nevertheless, a win is a win, and the two additional scanning techniques confirmed the muography data, and thus an endoscopic camera was introduced into the hidden corridor to show the whole world a space unseen for thousands of years. And as it turns out, drilling may not even have occurred. A press image said no borehole was needed, and so the masonry joint must have been wide enough to push the endoscope through. A year ago, I made a video about the North Face Corridor and its relationship to the mostly demolished structure in front of it, which I named the Entrance Vault. If you haven't seen it yet, I recommend watching for the full context of how ancient Egyptians engineered their ceilings within pyramids. My hypothesis was the Skan Pyramids North Face Corridor was an access point to inspect how the Entrance Vault performed under the weight of the pyramid to help the builders understand this architecture, which was being used for the very first time. I pointed out the commonly proposed explanation of a weight-relieving space didn't make sense from a logical perspective. My evidence was the known weight-relieving areas in the Great Pyramid and Medun Pyramid were directly above the structures they were protecting. Furthermore, these weight-relieving chambers were only found in the center of pyramids, where the strongest pressure would occur. And lastly, pyramid corridors just over one meter in width were proven not to require such reinforcement in earlier pyramids. In proposing a non-weight-relieving explanation, I laid out some variables that we can now identify. The first and most important variable was the ceiling of the North Face Corridor, and we now know it is a gabled saddle-vault design. The saddle-vault is what redirects pressure from above laterally, and so many researchers immediately concluded the corridor is a weight-relieving chamber. But the Great Pyramid has a way of confounding expectations, and I'm not ready to conclude it was simply a space to protect the descending corridor, which is a good 8 to 12 meters below this vacuum. Another variable was where the North Face Corridor would intersect the entrance vault, and my prediction was accurate with the passage floor aligned very close to the two blocks above the tympanum, which could conceal an access point. Finally, the North Face Corridor proved to be 2.3 meters high in the center, which is a space suitable for workers and taller than necessary to make a weight-relieving ceiling. How cliche of the Great Pyramid to once again give us an enigmatic design. But we now have a picture worth 116 million muons, so more details can be analyzed to test ideas. Let's take a closer look at what is hiding in this image. The first detail that jumps out is the floor. Although it is covered in debris, a line that defines an edge runs through the center and appears to be a joint that spans more than one block traveling south. A joint in the center of a relieving chamber? That's not what we see replicated above the King's Chamber, where large beams span the entire width. I believe the two floor stones on the north side are the same blocks you see above the tympanum from the outside. Thus, the floor of the North Face Corridor is approximately in this location, as shown by the newest scan data. Next, we notice the joints for chevron blocks that make up the ceiling align in perfectly matched pairs. This was another anomaly about the entrance vault, which indicated to me it wasn't designed to be a weight-relieving space. Every other pyramid chamber with a saddle vault ceiling staggers the chevrons so that if one fails, it won't automatically cause the opposing ceiling block to fail as well. The Queen's Chamber ceiling is approximately the same elevation as the North Face Corridor ceiling, and it uses staggered chevron blocks. And what about the step up towards the back of the corridor? Did the builders just happen to have an extra oversized block to elevate the floor? That big guy must have taken some extra work. It's not unreasonable to interpret all the undressed stone and apparently haphazard construction techniques as an indication this corridor wasn't important to the builders. That may be the safest explanation, and it does align with a weight-relieving purpose. But it's the vaulted ceiling that gives me pause, because there's something else about it that's just not right. It's hard to see if you don't know what you're looking for, because the mess of the chamber camouflages an important pattern. Sadly, we have only been presented what must be a fraction of the original imagery, and this practice of withholding information frustrates me to no end. Even the disclaimer at the bottom of the footage is ridiculous, as if the public is unable to handle the weight of an unedited video. At the press conference announcing the North Face Corridor, a slightly less edited video clip was projected during the presentation. In this clip, which is only available from the press corps, a few more frames are seen right as the endoscope enters the corridor. Endoscope cameras are almost never oriented properly, as they must twist and turn to reach their destination. Thus, the first imagery is of the west wall and ceiling, along with inaccurate color balance. But in these precious frames, we can see the nearest chevrons to the north wall, one of which contains a large round cavity right in the middle. With that reference point, it becomes easier to spot that many other chevron blocks have one or more of these cavities as well. And let me tell you, pyramid chamber saddle vaults do not contain large holes in their ceilings. As someone with a keen personal interest in the construction of saddle vaults, I can tell you that these holes might be carved for wooden beams that would act as supports while the chevrons were set in place. You can see how the majority of notches are on one side of the chamber, because the opposing chevron would be supported by the block already set into place. An interesting connection to these notches is that similar ones are found on granite beams that make up the floor of Campbell's chamber, the uppermost and only true relieving chamber above the king's chamber. The saddle vault of Campbell's chamber has its limestone ceiling dressed smooth without imperfections, and thus wooden supports were instead embedded into the granite floor, with grooves that slope perpendicular to the ceiling. There's also a notch cut into the western wall beneath the southern chevron beams, which would add some support as well. These details add weight to my hypothesis that the notched tympanum at the entrance vault held horizontal beams which would support the various orientations of the chevrons angling inward. It's difficult to get imagery of Campbell's chamber, but the four large notches I have seen are all on the north side of the room, thus working in conjunction with the notch on the west wall to set the southern chevrons in place. It's well established that carving into granite is much more labor-intensive than limestone, and so Campbell's chamber gives us another key reference to understanding the north face corridor. An obvious reason why the builders would carve support notches into the harder granite of Campbell's chamber is they didn't want to weaken the structural integrity of the chevron ceiling by carving large holes into it. In contrast, the north face corridor has holes carved in the ceiling for wooden supports, and thus we can be confident the builders did not believe it to be an important weight-relieving space. This empty space now has three strikes against it for being a weight-relieving chamber. Number one, the north face corridor is overly high above the descending passage and doesn't follow its inclination. Number two, the ceiling chevrons are aligned in perfectly matched pairs. And number three, the ceiling chevrons are further weakened by the addition of large holes cut into their faces. But before dismissing the weight-relieving hypothesis, let me quickly steelman the argument for it. I suppose one could argue the bent pyramid, suffering from slippage in its outer mantle, might have made the ancient Egyptians paranoid. They could have misinterpreted that failure as some sliding force near the face of the pyramid that needed extra protection. But following this narrative would require the Red Pyramid to have a similarly undiscovered relieving space up high above the descending corridor. My biggest objection to such arguments is it means the builders of the Great Pyramid just didn't know what they were doing. This is not a position I feel comfortable advocating for, although I'm sure this will be the position of many Egyptologists. They were over-engineering because they had never really done this before. But if this apparently dead-end corridor isn't a weight-relieving space, what is it doing there? If the North Face Corridor was disconnected from other structures in the Great Pyramid, there might be no other conclusion to draw. But we now know the North Face Corridor is a continuation of the Entrance Vault, and thus the two structures must be understood contextually. A huge problem is that ScanPyramids and other researchers still haven't fixed their Entrance Vault model to reflect what the space must have looked like. The problem spread from Gilles Dormian, who in 1987 speculated the oversized flat lintels above the descending corridor were movable stones that concealed a hidden passage behind them. In his reconstruction, he fails to notice evidence cited by Flinders-Petrie and others that the Entrance Vault had its chevron beams leaning inward. Dormian may have also copied his Saddle Vault model from a book by Julian Bruchet, published in 1965. This inaccurate model has been replicated many times, most persistently by architect-researcher Frank Monnier. In response to the North Face Corridor discovery, Monnier delighted in disparaging so-called amateurs having ideas about it. He still models the missing chevrons inaccurately, despite the plainly visible evidence which contradicts it. He also attacked my channel for not using his research. Well, there you go Frank, consider yourself cited. A huge problem in Egyptology is that self-proclaimed authority figures refuse to admit when they are wrong. This is why Zahi Hawass still calls the core masonry at the end of the Queen's Chamber shafts a hidden door, and Monnier won't fix his Entrance Vault model, which then gets copied by ScanPyramids, and so on. I hate to belabor the point, but we're never going to solve mysteries of the Great Pyramid if its structures are modeled incorrectly. And if anyone wants to prove me or Flinders Petrie wrong, I need an explanation as to why this chevron fragment is cut at an angle, and why the center notch of the tympanum is lower than what would support chevrons extending parallel to the existing stones. The Entrance Vault leaning inward is a great clue the builders weren't concerned about its vertical load. This adds to the evidence the North Face Corridor wasn't designed only for the purpose of reducing weight on the descending passage far below. So what other explanations are there? When looking at the entire structure, this is the pattern I see. The North Face Corridor is located at a slightly higher elevation than the Entrance Vault, which angles downward toward the pyramid entrance. Within the North Face Corridor, another increase in elevation occurs, with the large step up on its southern side. At this higher elevation, we are approximately level with the Queen's Chamber deep within the pyramid. Now, it might seem like a stretch to say the builders needed a secondary access point to the Queen's Chamber area of the Great Pyramid. Except we know for certain that this is true, because they already built one. The well shaft in the Great Pyramid also has a termination point exactly in this location, leading from the bottom of the Grand Gallery to the descending corridor underground. There's no disputing the ancient Egyptians were concerned about accessibility in this location. The largest problem now presented is the Scanned Pyramid's muography has not detected more empty space beyond the southern wall of the North Face Corridor. Their new paper in Nature Communications is confident no empty space larger than one square meter can be found beyond this wall. But one square meter is very close to the dimensions of a standard 4th Dynasty pyramid corridor. They are all about 105 cm wide and 120 cm tall. Also, any backfilling of a passage with small masonry or sand would render it undetectable by the muon sample size Scanned Pyramids is able to capture. Notably, a cavity Gilles Dormian drilled for near the Queen's Chamber in 1987 was found to contain sand. If a smaller passage once connected the North Face Corridor, that would support my earlier hypothesis the chevron beams in the entrance vault were built to test the weight tolerance of a saddle vault design. The intentionally weaker ceiling design of the North Face Corridor chevrons could also serve that purpose. The main reason I still propose this explanation is that the areas where the North Face Corridor might have once connected to the entrance vault or an undiscovered passage beyond are conspicuously small. The North Face Corridor is exactly twice as wide and tall as a standard pyramid passage. One might interpret this extra space as being essential for the transportation of men and materials during pyramid construction or even perhaps the funeral of a pharaoh. But the choke points connecting the North Face Corridor would prohibit the movement of large objects. That's a good segue to mention architect Jean-Pierre Houdin's prediction about this space. Now full credit to Houdin, his prediction about what the North Face Corridor would look like is the most accurate. He also made this prediction before any scanning suggested this space ever existed. It's remarkable that the North Face Corridor has a step up in the back, similar to how Houdin modeled access to this space would come from an elevated point on the southern wall. Houdin thought the notched tympanum was a movable stone, such that this entire triangular space would be accessible. But the apparent joints in the floor seem more conducive for a narrow access point, most likely the smallest floor block which, if removed, would allow a person to slip through. In that context, the smallest block on the southern wall would be the obvious choice for access to a hidden space beyond. But since there isn't enough information to be confident with any explanation, let's talk about what could come next. My biggest fear is that the powers that be will say the North Face Corridor is nothing more than an unneeded weight-relieving chamber, and therefore the big void is more or less the same thing, and therefore we don't need more serious investigation. I know that sounds pessimistic, but it's not an unlikely outcome. But most likely, it's dead space that they framed in to relieve the weight of the pyramid on the roof of the Grand Gallery. Fortunately, Zahi Hawass has embraced the publicity angle of seeing new spaces in the Great Pyramid and is already spinning fables about the hidden burial chamber of Khufu. The hidden burial chamber of Khufu should be underneath that tunnel. It's going to take some courage for more exploration to occur, because radar and ultrasonic testing can't be relied upon without human access to the North Face Corridor. I'd be thrilled if Egypt or a science grant would fund the Exploring the Great Pyramid mission, which might gather enough muon data to resolve all questions about hidden chambers within the pyramids. But nothing quite compares to visual confirmation, and so a small excavation might be necessary to explore further. Rainer Stadelmann was one of the Egyptologists originally overseeing the Skan Pyramids results in the early days of the mission. He passed away in 2019 and thus never got to see the North Face Corridor. I disagree with many of his ideas, but it still would have been nice to get his opinion on the discovery. If there was already a hole large enough for an endoscopic camera to fit under the chevrons, was it really necessary to wait so many years to proceed with that investigation? There are always opportunity costs with delays, and I hope this will occur to Hawass when thinking about what comes next. If I were to enter the North Face Corridor, these are the steps I would take. First you insert an articulating endoscope to look at the north wall and floor of the passage to make sure there's nothing important where you might gain access. Then you send in a bit of compressed air to clean up the area and ensure you haven't missed anything. If the floor joints are as they appear here, you would excavate a section of the western floor block so as not to disturb the eastern one, which is a more likely original access point. Following these basic steps would allow access while minimizing the risk of destroying evidence. I'm sure some uninformed individuals will say excavation at the Great Pyramid should never occur and only non-invasive scanning can take place. Objections to probing the Great Pyramid took hold when Gilles Dormian only found sand with his drill cores in 1987. But actually the sand Dormian found is very interesting, and I'll be talking about it in a future video. Imagine if Howard Weiss had never blasted his way into the spaces above the King's Chamber. We'd have no framework for understanding many things about the Great Pyramid, and that location is the riskiest place to start digging holes. Ironically, more serious damage has been done to the Great Pyramid with cosmetic restorations than any evidence lost by Howard Weiss's dynamite. The Great Pyramid is 2.6 million cubic meters of stone. It can handle a few dozen centimeters of well-informed drilling. Let's not let fear get in the way of achieving great things. The North Face Corridor is a great place to start because the big void above the Grand Gallery is much more difficult to access. I have no idea what comes next for the North Face Corridor, but understand the Ministry of Antiquities and Tourism places a high value on public interest. Let's all work together to let Egypt know we want exploration to continue. Not because we're looking for hidden burials or golden treasure, but because we all admire the incredible achievement of the Great Pyramid and wish to understand how brilliant the ancient Egyptians really were. Thanks to everyone who watched this video to the end. Please subscribe to the channel to see more of this content. Give a like or comment as you see fit. And above all, remember to ask your friends if they take their history for granted.