The great pyramid passages and chambers

the evening. Thus they work for nine and a half hours per day, for which they are paid the sum of six piastres, or one shilling and three pence (30 cents). This is a good wage according to the scale in Egypt. I understand that a common wage for unskilled labour such as this is four to five piastres per day. To Judah I give ten piastres, or two shillings and a penny (fifty cents), though he only asked for seven. Seventy-two years ago Col. Howard Vyse paid his men only one piastre per day, and the overseers only two!

241 In very early times, the Descending Passage appears to have been sufficiently clear to allow of venturesome travellers making occasional visits to the Subterranean Chamber; but in 1763 A.D., 'Davison, when describing the Descending Passage, wrote: ‘At the end of one hundred and thirty-one feet [from the junction of the First Ascending Passage] I found it so filled up with earth, that there was no possibility of proceeding.” It remained in this condition until the year 1817, when, by the efforts of M, Caviglia, access to the Subterranean Chamber was restored; and at the same time the whole length of the Well-shaft was cleared. M. Caviglia was afterward for a short time in the employment of Col. Howard Vyse.

242 Evidently, however, M. Caviglia did not completely clear ont the Descending Passage, for, twenty years afterward (in 1837), Col. Howard Vyse, in his description of the state in which he found the Great Pyramid previous to commencing his extensive operations on it and the other Pyramids of Gizeh, wrote that, though open, it was “much encumbered with stones and rubbish.” This no doubt explains why he measured this passage along the roof line, and not along the floor. When Professor C. Piazzi Smyth visited the Pyramid in 1865, the passage below its juncture with the First Ascending Passage, appears to have again become so blocked with sand and large stones, that he did not visit the lower parts of the Pyramid at all. The description and measurements of these parts given in his published works were derived from Col. Howard Vyse’s book.

243 In 1881, Professor Flinders Petrie caused the obstructing rubbish to be removed sufficiently for him to descend. It was during these operations that he discovered the large granite stone which lies on the floor opposite the entrance to the First Ascending Passage. He did not disturb it. The parts which he found most blocked were the upper portion at and below the granite block, and the lowermost thirty feet of the slope to which part the rains had washed down large quantities of rubbish. He did not have this material carried out, but instructed his men to distribute it throughout the passage. Thus we see that the floor of this Descending Passage has never been so thoroughly cleared, at least in modern times, as it now is. That the debris which my men carried out is part of the very ancient rubbish, is proved by the fact that they found embedded in it several small fragments of green idols.

244 When my brother, the doctor, joims me, we shall measure the Descending Passage very carefully. This will be the first accurate measurement of this long passage, and to obtain this constitutes one of the chief purposes of our visit to the Great Pyramid. As the Great Pyramid is God's Stone Witness in Egypt, in which he has outlined by its passages and chambers his glorious plan of salvation, and as the

'It was Davison who discovered the lowest of the five hollows or “Chambers of Construction” above the King’s Chamber, Col. Howard Vyse discovered the other four—Pars, 110-112.

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