ancient-architects 4 jaar geleden
Ancient Architects #History and Archaeology

New Hypothesis | The Great Pyramid Trial Passages

The Great Pyramid Trial Passages are a true mystery of the Giza Plateau, but a new paper may have solved the problem!

A new paper has been released by David Ian Lightbody in the Journal of Ancient Egyptian Architecture concerning the Trial Passages of Giza, long thought to be a test run for the building of the Great Pyramid.


The new hypothesis by Lightbody is a bright insight, giving a new purpose to the so-called Trial Passages, the chambers and corridors that were dug directly into the bedrock, just east of the Great Pyramid. Lightbody claims that they could, in actual fact be a place to observe the northern stars.


In this video, I won’t go into the detail that Lightbody has, but I’ll give you an outline of his arguments and findings. I’ve linked the full paper here: http://www.egyptian-architecture.com/...


So what exactly are these Trial Passages? For those that don’t know, I made a video about them two years ago - https://youtu.be/wcSsjBOL1fA - and experts believe they were built around the same time as the Great Pyramid. The inclinations and dimensions of the passages are extremely similar to those of the Great Pyramid, and all on a north-south alignment.


Flinders Petrie believed they were a replica or trial version of the internal passages of the Great Pyramid’s descending passageway, where it intersects with the ascending passage – a way to test to see if the plugging mechanism in the Great Pyramid would work.


But no granite plug blocks were found inside the Trial Passages and there is also the problem of a tall vertical shaft at the ascending passage and descending passage junction within the Trial Passages. Such a vertical shaft is apparently not there inside the Great Pyramid. So it is likely that the Trial Passages are not a replica of the Great Pyramid internal shafts, unless of course the pyramid architect changed his mind and decided not to incorporate the vertical shaft. Either that or the vertical shaft inside the Great Pyramid has still not been discovered.


Some say that the Trial Passages were part of a smaller pyramid structure on the Giza plateau, one that is no longer there, and as we have seen in previous videos, especially the writings of 18th century explorer Richard Pococke, there were more, smaller pyramids on the Giza plateau that are no longer there.


All the ideas about the Trial Passages do seem to fall down in the detail, but now there is a new hypothesis that the Trial Passages were actually built to observe the circumpolar stars, something originally mentioned by Glen Dash. Lightbody takes the idea a stage further and says that the Passages were designed and intended to be used to establish an accurate, astronomy-based north-south alignment for the construction of the Great Pyramid.


Watch this video to learn more about the new ancient astronomy hypothesis regarding the Great Pyramid's Trial Passages and don't forget to download the paper!


All images are taken from Google Images and from David Ian Lightbody's paper, which is linked above, for educational purposes only.

Matt Sibson
ancient-architects