The "vertical" well shaft of the great pyramid
The shaft of the thieves?
In the Great Pyramid there is a corridor, unfinished and almost vertical, that connects the beginning of the flat corridor leading to the Queen's chamber to the descending one that ends in the underground chamber.
Its functions have not been well understood so far. Some call it the "thieves's shaft", but this definition leaves me very puzzled.
First of all, this definition presupposes that there were thieves who dug an access to the upper chambers to avoid the huge stones blocking the ascending corridor. I wonder how they could have accessed the descending corridor, given that it too was blocked and that I am not aware of any trace of other entrances outside the one the Caliph had dug, which is still in use today and which, in any case, already bypasses the blockage and makes the digging of a further conduit totally unnecessary.
Moreover, given the near verticality of it, it seems to me unlikely, if not almost impossible, that it was dug from below. In this case, there would be the problem of excavation debris. Where are they? In the underground chamber there is, yes, a shaft, but its volume would certainly not have been sufficient to contain them all. Therefore, they were evidently taken outside, and here we return to the problem of access mentioned above.
I wonder, by the way, about this well, if there is not a bearing on funerary rites that involved the presence of water: see "tomb of Osiris" recently explored in the area and also the Osireion itself at Abydos. If so, this, in my opinion, could date this part of the Pyramid to a period significantly earlier than 2550 B.C.
Next, the stones blocking the ascending corridor because of their size could not, if placed from the outside, have been positioned as are now. Therefore, the only possible solution is that they were originally placed in the flat corridor leading to the Queen's chamber and then, from there, lowered in situ.
Consequently, the only hypothesis that in my opinion may have some validity is that the vertical shaft was dug from above, otherwise, how did they knew which direction to follow ? If thieves had dug it from below, not knowing the layout of the upper part of the pyramid since the access was blocked, how did they have reached it ?
In my opinion, it served as an exit route for the workers who, in order to arrange the blocking stones had remained inside the pyramid.
Later on, access to the descending corridor was also barred, this time from the outside of the pyramid. So, in my opinion, thieves had nothing to do with it at all!
