Sorry — no alien symbols.
Turns out they are hieratic numbers. I’ve never had a class in hieratic (nor wanted to). It’s (crudely) like cursive hieroglyphs (if you’ve ever seen shorthand of English you get the idea). The numbers total 121 – the number of cubits of the shaft. No mystery (though I’m sure some will be manufactured).
Here’s an idea of what hieratic does to standard hieroglyphs:
Hi Michael,
I just want to add that the glyphs found inside the shaft and the small chamber behind the blocking slab (Gantenbrink’s Door) are in every way consistent with other marks within both the shaft and the chamber that are obviously mason’s marks. The same ochre-type ink, same rough utilitarian execution, nothing to suggest they are sacred, much less mysterious.
That is not to say there is not mystery to go along with it. Getting a better understanding of the marks can help us know more about the building techniques as well as what purpose the shafts may have served. Even for people who dig controversy, there is still plenty to indulge in without getting too far out there, and plenty of room for having an open mind.
For example, until very recently I thought that the idea of the shafts being “air ducts” was hogwash. While I didn’t think they had anything to do with alien technology, I did think that they probably served a sacred or ritual purpose. But my thinking is beginning to shift in favor of a more utilitarian explanation. At least for the King’s Chamber shafts, the combination of the sun heating one side of the pyramid while the other was in shade could create a “thermal pull” that might not keep the King’s Chamber refreshingly chilled, but it would expel the stale air.
The above theory has some controversy. For one, it challenges the notion of a strictly mythological explanation for the shafts (in the KC at least), which is a thoroughly entrenched theory. But it does not require us to presume the ancient Egyptians possessed some sort of technology or methodology that would be anachronistic.
Maybe most controversial of all is that it challenges the notion that those swarthy ancient Egyptians were too naive to come up with such concepts without the intervention of Atlanteans or Space Brothers..
We don’t need to gild the lilly, peoples! 🙂 The discovery of the working notes of masons or quarry workers who built this amazing structure 4,500 years ago is an amazing thing of itself, even if it was just some working stiff trying to calculate his overtime pay while on his coffee break. We don’t need to imagine an ancient electrical system to look at the copper pins and wonder what purpose they served. If you want controversy, just tell some Egyptologist that his idea that they were strictly symbolic in function is a load of crap, or the exact opposite, that the notion that they served some functional purpose is absurd.
You will get your fight, I promise. The difference is that whether you are right or wrong, scince will be advanced, not…. absurd crap.
Thanks for this and the other responses!