ng. Climbing up they found themselves in a high-roofed, ascending passageway. This became known as the "Grand Gallery." At the top of the gallery was a low horizontal passage that led to a large room, some 34 feet long, 17 feet wide, and 19 feet high, the "King's Chamber." In the center was a huge granite sarcophagus without a lid. Otherwise the room was completely empty.The Arabs, as if in revenge for the missing treasure, stripped the pyramid of its fine white limestone casing and used it for building in Cairo. They even attempted to disassemble the great pyramid itself, but after removing the top 30 feet of stone, they gave up on this impossible task. So what happened to the treasure of King Khufu? Conventional wisdom says that, like so many other royal tombs, the pyramid was the victim of robbers in ancient times. If we believe the accounts of Manum's men, though, the granite plugs that blocked the passageways were still in place when they entered the tomb. How did the thieves get in and out? In 1638 an English mathematician, John Greaves, visited the pyramid. He discovered a narrow shaft, hidden in the wall that connected the Grand Gallery with the descending passage. Both ends were tightly sealed and the bottom was blocked with debris. Some archaeologists suggested this route was used by the last of the Pharaoh's men to exit the tomb, after the granite plugs had been put in place, and by the thieves to get inside. Given the small size of the passageway and the amount of debris it seems unlikely that the massive amount of treasure, including the huge missing sarcophagus lid, could have been removed this way. Some have suggested that the pyramid was never meant as a tomb, but as an astronomical observatory. The Roman author Proclus, in fact, states that before the pyramid was completed it did serve in this function. We can't put two much weight on Proclus words, though, remembering that when he advanced his theory the pyramid was al...
