The quarry marks inside the Great Pyramid could have been forged
Above the so-called King's Chamber in the Great Pyramid is a series of five compartments:
Their function seems to be to protect the roof of the King's Chamber from the pressure exerted by the overlying core masonry. The first of these `relieving chambers' was discovered by Nathaniel Davison in 1765. The narrow passage from the top of the Grand Gallery to Davison's Chamber already existed; its origin is unknown.
The four remaining compartments were discovered by Colonel Howard Vyse, and his assistants (John Shae Perring, J. R. Hill, Henry Raven) in 1837; the diagram includes the names he assigned to them. Having a purely structural function, they had been sealed since the pyramid was built, and were reached only by tunnelling; this was done by hired quarrymen, using gunpowder.
Inside the chambers, on undressed limestone surfaces, were quarry marks or mason's marks, painted in red ochre. The marks include royal names, written in cursive hieroglyphics; one of these names is `Khufu':
Note especially how the `kh' (of `Khufu') is rendered:
With edge detection and negation:
The discoverers made two main sets of drawings of the marks - including this facsimile copy, by J. R. Hill, made on May 30, 1837:
Similar inscriptions have been seen elsewhere on the pyramid.
Zecharia Sitchin - a writer in the `Ancient Astronaut' genre - is by no means the first to see the problem these marks pose for `alternative' accounts of the Great Pyramid. They show that the pyramid was built by Ancient Egyptians, for the Pharaoh Khufu. It was not built by aliens . . .
This is the real logic of Sitchin's position: the quarry marks refute his pet theory; to save that theory, he has to discredit the quarry marks.
Sitchin's second book, The Stairway to Heaven, was published in 1980 by St. Martin's Press. In a chapter entitled Forging the Pharaoh's Name he set out the `perfect' solution to his problem: the quarry marks were forged by J. R. Hill, one of the Colonel's assistants.
(Several other authors - including Graham Hancock and Erich von Däniken - have adopted Sitchin's forgery claim, using it to immunise their own pyramid theories. Hancock now rejects the forgery theory - see his Position Statement ... )
For negative comments on the quarry marks, Sitchin relies heavily on a contemporary report by Samuel Birch. Birch had a long career at the British Museum; when first appointed, in 1836, he was just 23 years old. Sitchin doesn't tell us where he found Birch's report, but Howard Vyse, and one of his assistants, John Shae Perring, both reproduced it in their respective publications:
Howard Vyse, R. W. H.
Operations Carried on at the Pyramids of Gizeh in 1837.
James Fraser, London, 1840-1842.Perring, J. S.
The Pyramids of Gizeh, by Actual Survey and Admeasurement.
James Fraser, London, 1839-1842.
This would seem an odd thing to do, if Birch's report even resembled the damning critique alleged by Sitchin. Sitchin misrepresents Birch. He quotes isolated phrases which, taken out of context, can be made to suggest an unfavourable opinion. On reading the report itself, it becomes clear that Birch expressed no doubts about the authenticity of the quarry marks.
Note that Sitchin isn't challenging Birch. His argument presupposes Birch's authority.
This in itself is odd. Sitchin treats a report written in the 1830s as if it were the last word on the topic.
Birch himself was more cautious. In his concluding paragraph he stated that Hieroglyphics are at present so imperfectly understood, that it is difficult to give an explanation of the whole of these signs, many of which may after all have been merely appropriate to masonry; . . .
Sitchin is otherwise keen to emphasise that
. . . in the 1830s, Egyptology was still in its infancy; . . . [The Stairway to Heaven, p.271]
In fact, the most important analysis of these quarry marks was done nearly a hundred years later, and is reported in a work which Sitchin himself cites: Reisner's Mycerinus. Many quarry marks (including the name `Menkaure') were discovered in the temples of the Third Pyramid at Giza. Reisner's assistant Alan Rowe analysed them in parallel with the quarry marks in the Great Pyramid. (See Appendix E of Mycerinus).
A careful study of Birch's report reveals something far more important than Sitchin's mere misrepresentation of it. In 1837, even Samuel Birch couldn't have faked the quarry marks. They have features which even experts didn't understand, but which have become clear since. In fact they fit in perfectly with later discoveries and later analyses.
A simple example: the chambers contain not two but three names of Khufu. (The Pharaoh usually had five names in all.)
Birch thought that a Pharaonic name could only appear in a cartouche. This doesn't apply to the so-called Horus name. The name `Horus Medjedu' (or `Medjeru') appears in the same chambers as the name `Khnum-khufu'; other inscriptions show it to be the Horus name of Khufu.
Whoever wrote the quarry marks had a very good knowledge of what they were doing. The only serious candidates (I suggest) are the Ancient Egyptians themselves. Sitchin claims that a man with no knowledge of hieroglyphics was responsible.
In 1983, The Stairway to Heaven was published by Avon Books. In the same year, a reader of that book wrote to Sitchin, claiming that his great-grandfather was a witness to the forgery.
Other quarry marks on Khufu's pyramid
Howard Vyse states that quarry-marks in red paint were also found on the backing or core blocks of Khufu's pyramid, during excavation; he provides this sketch (Operations, vol. I, p. 226):
There's no indication that Vyse found any royal names on these stones. The conspiracy theorists will, of course, ask for corroboration from some other source.
Until recently, the only other published description I could find of quarry-marks on the backing stones of the Great Pyramid was that by L. V. Grinsell, in his Egyptian Pyramids (1947):
Nearly all the masonry now visible on the exterior of the pyramid consists of backing stones. On some of the the backing stones of the first 5 or 6 courses, on the south, east and west sides, there are builder's inscriptions and marks mostly in red but occasionally in black. Two of them contain the name Khnmw-khuf, and two others the name Medjedu, both of which are names belonging to Kheops. Other markings denote the names of gangs of workmen, and certain vertical and horizontal lines with triangles extending from them are architects measuring lines. [reference: `4. To be published shortly by the writer.'] . . .
The problem is that Grinsell's projected article seems not to have been published. There's no mention of it in the list of publications in Grinsell's An Archaeological Autobiography (1989), but he does make these general remarks on the topic:
I made a detailed study of the builder's inscriptions in hieroglyphs on the exposed backing stones of the Giza and other pyramids, from which the casing had been removed in the middle ages to build some of the mosques of Old Cairo. The best time to see these inscriptions (all painted in red ochre which has faded with the passage of time) is in the very early morning. When staying at the Mena House Hotel I would go out at first light before breakfast with sunglasses and search the west face of each pyramid (then of course in shade) when these inscriptions can be clearly seen. They include phrases such as `this side up' (important as sedimentary rock has to be used in a building the same way up as the position it occupied in its original stratum). Other inscriptions indicate the height of the masonry (in Egyptian cubits of around 20.61 inches) above the base-line at a given date. A typical example, on the pyramid of Queen Neit, a wife of Pepy II at South Saqqara, reads `Second month of winter, day 14 . . . work on the building, on the west side'. I found that the west side of each pyramid was where these inscriptions are the best preserved. The winds (Khamseens) from the Western Desert every spring bring sand which accumulates on this side of each pyramid and helps to preserve these inscriptions; but at intervals of every few years (or longer) this accumulation of sand is removed from the west face of each pyramid as part of the pyramid maintenance programme of the Service of Antiquities: and then is the time for studying these inscriptions. These and other relevant matters formed the subject of chapter 4 (construction) of my book Egyptian Pyramids (1947).
Grinsell died recently, so we can't ask him for any more information. The non-appearance of his projected article is much to be regretted. Clearly we'd like to see at least one illustration of the marks on the Great Pyramid.
Following up a hunch, I looked at a relatively obscure book by Georges Goyon, Les Inscriptions et Graffiti des Voyageurs sur la Grande Pyramide (1944), which deals primarily with the many tourist graffiti to be found on the pyramid. However, it does describe and illustrate one of the quarry-marks found on the backing stones, a mark including the cartouche of Khnum-khufu. The illustration is a drawing (which won't satisfy the conspiracy theorists, but then corroboration of these marks is the last thing they want):
The illustration is captioned (my translation):
4th course, west face, 71st stone on leaving the north angle. Inscription drawn in red paint and positioned upside down.
Note the very specific details given. Goyon comments (again, my translation) that
The most ancient inscription collected by us on the blocks of the Pyramid is that of king Cheops, written before the construction of the monument. In fact, the name drawn in semi-hieratic characters was no doubt put there by the workers of the quarry from which the stones where extracted. This inscription is found upside down on a block which remained for a long time hidden in the masonry.
And, as a footnote:
This discovery would have been sensational if it had been made before the opening of the relieving chambers effected by Vyse in 1837, where he found the only inscriptions in the name of the constructor of the Pyramid. The presence of these names confirmed tradition and the classical authors who attributed to Cheops the construction of the monument. These inscriptions, similar to ours, had been published by H. VYSE, Operations carried on at the pyramids of Gizeh in 1837, London, 1840, published also by LEPSIUS, Denk., Abth. II, Bl. I.
