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Comment by nosianu | Hacker News Reader

> it doesn't not feel like that was an intended entrance path

The accompanying text says the entrance was made by robbers forcefully breaking through some random section because they did not find the true entrance. So they dug until they hit the existing tunnels.

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The floor of the entrance is exactly at the right height, a little to the right of a crucial element to get access to the upper chambers: The crossing between the ascending and descending passage. This is where the ascending passage was blocked - you can see one of the large granite blocks still in place today. The (presumably) robbers goal was to get behind those granite blocks. This passage leads straight on to the crossing, then taking a sharp left turn just right behind the blocking. Whoever built this path must have known where it should lead to. That makes the story that Al Mamun did it so unlikely. He might have enhanced an existing tunnel, but there is no conceivable reason why he should have built it in the first place. Here is a rough illustration, the dark brown being the robbers tunnel: http://www.benben.de/Architektur/Cheops/Grafik/Mamun3.jpg

My first reaction was one of astonishment that the robbers tunnel is so close to the actual entrance and tunnel. If just some random location was chosen that was quite lucky. After some googling I guess there's still a lot of uncertainty.

Here's an interesting article:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/inside-the-great-pyram...

Damn even after thousands of years the pyramids keep getting interesting!

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