In our next spectacular, our-group-only, Ruth Shilling experience, we spent two hours inside the Great Pyramid!

The entire rest of the group wanted to explore the “pit”, so they went first, down the descending passage, into the “chambers of the sub-conscious.”

This allowed Janice and I a unique and privileged experience of sounding in the “queens” chamber, by ourselves for quite a while. The “pit crew” said that they could hear us all the way down at the bottom of the pyramid.

We then made our way up the Grand Gallery to the “kings” chamber.

There, I promptly found the middle of the south wall and laid flat on the floor with my head near the wall and felt in as much as possible to the entire experience.

Every tiny sound seemed amplified 1000 times. Someone rustled their coat and it sounded huge... Someone sneezed! It was an explosion!

At some point, someone started sounding and more of us joined in. It was glorious!!!

Hear Our Group Toning in the King's Chamber

We had the option of having the lights turned off for 15 minutes near the end of our time in the pyramid. I think everyone stayed (I still had not opened my eyes) and the lights went off a bit later.

One of the guards with a flashlight came up to the chamber and asked if anyone wanted to leave. I thought it was odd, since we asked for this...

The lights went on a bit later, then after 10 or so minutes that went out again...

Come to find out, the electricity in the entire Giza area went out in the first blackout and then they gave us our actual black time...

WE LOVED IT ALL!

The casing stones of the Great Pyramid and Khafre's Pyramid (constructed directly beside it) were cut to such optical precision as to be off true plane over their entire surface area by only 0.5 mm. They were fitted together so perfectly that the tip of a knife cannot be inserted between the joints even to this day.

It's 756 feet long on each side, 450 high and is composed of 2,300,000 blocks of stone, each averaging 2 1/2 tons in weight. No side is more than 8 inches different in length than another, and the whole structure is perfectly oriented to the points of the compass.

"Khufu, who may have been a megalomaniac, could never, during a reign of about twenty-three years, have erected a building of the size and durability of the Great Pyramid, if technical advances had not enabled his masons to handle stones of very considerable weight and dimensions"

—Dr. I.E.S. Edwards, former Keeper of Antiquities in the British Museum, from his book The Pyramids of Egypt

The sarcophagus of the King's chamber was hollowed out of a single piece of Red Aswan granite and has been found to be too large to fit through the passageway leading to the King's chamber. Whether the sarcophagus was ever intended to house a body is unknown, but it is too short to accommodate a medium height individual without the bending of the knees (a technique not practiced in Egyptian burial) and no lid was ever found.

Utilizing the entire Indiana Limestone industry's facilities as they now stand [for 33 quarries], and figuring on tripling present average production, it would take approximately 27 years to quarry, fabricate and ship the total requirements.