Ascending Passage

Length: 129 feet
Width: 3.5 feet
Height: 4 feet

For most visitors to the Great Pyramid, this is the beginning of the long and cramped journey up to the King's Chamber. Are you ready? Note: The 1908 edition of Baedeker's Egypt warns, “Travelers who are in the slightest degree predisposed to apoplectic or fainting fits, and ladies travelling alone, should not attempt to penetrate into these stifling recesses.” Consider yourself forewarned.

Okay, let’s begin. You must literally hunch over and scramble your way up this tight passageway, which has a steep 1:2 gradient—a 45° angle with the plateau. At the top of the passage, you'll arrive at the Grand Gallery.

Alternatively, if you dare, you can head down from the lower part of this passage into the Descending Passage and even deeper to the subterranean chamber. The Pyramid is yours to explore.

Grand Gallery (Lower)

Length: 154 feet
Width: 7 feet
Height: 29 feet

After crawling up the narrow confines of the Ascending Passage, you can finally stand up in the immense Grand Gallery, which continues upward at the same steep rate of incline all the way to the entrance of the King's Chamber. From here at the bottom of the gallery, you may also choose to visit the misnamed “Queen's Chamber,” which lies at the end of a long horizontal passage.

Grand Gallery (Upper)

Length: 154 feet
Width: 7 feet
Height: 29 feet

Here at the upper end of the Grand Gallery, you can clearly see that the gallery is not perfectly rectangular—the ceiling narrows to a roof that is corbelled, or roughly triangular-shaped. From here you can duck into the King’s Chamber or turn around and go back down to the bottom of the gallery. For a sense of scale, look for the visitor in both parts of the gallery.

King’s Chamber

Length: 35 feet
Width: 17 feet
Height: 19 feet

This is the chamber where King Khufu was ultimately buried. Unfortunately, all that remains in this sacred space is the king's sarcophagus made of large blocks of red granite. Khufu's body and his earthly possessions were looted long before archeologists arrived, probably before the end of the Old Kingdom in circa 2218 B.C. Some of the colossal granite ceiling stones for the King's Chamber are more than 18 feet long and weigh 25 to 40 tons. This chamber, which lies about 300 feet below the apex of the pyramid, is a remarkable space in which to stand, and some visitors come from points far and near to meditate here.

Ascending Passage

Length: 129 feet
Width: 3.5 feet
Height: 4 feet

For most visitors to the Great Pyramid, this is the beginning of the long and cramped journey up to the King's Chamber. Are you ready? Note: The 1908 edition of Baedeker's Egypt warns, “Travelers who are in the slightest degree predisposed to apoplectic or fainting fits, and ladies travelling alone, should not attempt to penetrate into these stifling recesses.” Consider yourself forewarned.

Okay, let’s begin. You must literally hunch over and scramble your way up this tight passageway, which has a steep 1:2 gradient—a 45° angle with the plateau. At the top of the passage, you'll arrive at the Grand Gallery.

Alternatively, if you dare, you can head down from the lower part of this passage into the Descending Passage and even deeper to the subterranean chamber. The Pyramid is yours to explore.

“Queen’s Chamber”

Length: 19 feet
Width: 17.5 feet
Height at center: 20 feet

Although it is called the Queen's Chamber, some Egyptologists think this space was meant to be the final resting place for King Khufu, until he changed his mind yet again and opted for a burial chamber even higher. Other scholars, including Mark Lehner, author of The Complete Pyramids, believe instead that it might have been a sealed room for a special statue of Khufu, as the 15-foot-high corbelled niche you can see here might suggest. The roof of the chamber is raised at its center. Can you find the two tiny openings to what may have been air shafts?

Descending Passage

Length: 192 feet
Width: 3.5 feet
Height: 4 feet

After ducking into the Great Pyramid at its entrance 55 feet up its northern face, you begin working your way carefully down the Descending Passage. Sloped an angle of 26°, this passage heads through about 90 feet of Pyramid masonry then another 100 feet of bedrock before reaching the Subterranean Chamber. The passage is so precisely designed that in that entire 192-foot length it never deviates more than half an inch in either angle or orientation. The general public is not allowed down this cramped passage, but we have recreated the experience for you. Caution: This is not a place for claustrophobics.

Subterranean Chamber

Length: 46 feet (planned)
Width: 24 feet (planned)
Height: 17.5 feet (planned)

This unfinished chamber, lying nearly 100 feet below the surface of the Giza Plateau, is closed to the public. Standing alone inside this oxygen-deficient space is quite an experience: Over two million blocks of stone collectively weighing six-and-a-half-million tons loom overhead. Ancient workers down here chipped away at the limestone bedrock to build what some scholars believe may have been the original burial chamber for King Khufu. These scholars think the room was never finished because Khufu suddenly decided he wanted his burial chamber higher in the structure and ordered the workers to stop. Khafre's Pyramid follows a similar pattern, with an unfinished burial chamber deep underground.

Do you see the small greated openig across the room from the entrance? scholars are puzzled by this. It opens on a cramped passage that end a short distance in. What was it meant to