A Calling: Something Eerie in the King's Chamber

Despite how incredible the events of that story might sound to some, all the details surrounding this incident and reported here were experienced by myself. It is up to you to take my word for it or to regard it as a mere story of my creation, which it is surely not. There is only one other person who can corroborate it, that is the person that encountered this incident with me. You are free to interpret this text in whatever way that you may please, on the condition that we establish that it is a true account, of a sane person, that is by no means "religious" in a stereotypical manner that believes in fairies and the sort, "delusional," or under any kind of influence.

The incident takes place on Saturday the 21st of September 2013: inside the Great Pyramid of Giza. My friend Alena had just arrived in Cairo, and she was all excited about exploring the country, her enthusiasm got me right on my legs starting every day early in the morning, we would be out and about exploring the gems of Cairo. That particular day was reserved for Giza: we were going to visit the oldest and greatest work of human mastery of architecture and stonework: The Giza Pyramids. I had been visiting the Giza Plateau many times over the years, but every time it would feel like the first time. Standing at the foot of the pyramid adjacent to one of its sides and looking up, the feeling one experiences is that of awe and fascination. The pyramid appears as a massive wall, a mountain of neatly stacked humongous blocks of stone that stand firmly on the ground and slope upwards until they disappear at one point in heaven. The pyramids- we are told to believe- were burial structures of some sort, but I have always felt they must have been much more than that. The notion of investing such unimaginable resources, time, and effort, to construct a tomb, is surely an understatement of those incredible buildings. This conviction came during the course of my research work on the Giza plateau, which was the subject of my master's research I was carrying out t the time. I was studying the symbolic meanings coded in the architecture of Ancient History, with a focus on the astronomical alignments and their meanings. My research indicated that those buildings were charged with much more power and meaning than we attest to them today and that only by digging deep into our history and re-learning the fundamentals of the past, that we can truly start truly evolving as human consciousness.

This approach needs to avoid projecting our modern assumptions of what the past must have been like or should be to fit our narratives which reflects an underlying ignorance of the remains of this long history. However, while it may be necessary to use logical reasoning and all sorts of evidence to support certain assumptions that we use to fill the gaps in our knowledge of history, when it comes to the foundations of our history, much of it is brushed in doubt.

The quest for understanding our past is a continuous process, in which the human accounts of their past are constantly renegotiated to unfold in the many recent years many discoveries all over the world from Egypt to Turkey, in Gobekli-Tepi to the cities in the Amazon forest, and the pre-historic civilizations of the Americas. We are only learning today that we know so little of our own past, and what we are seeing today suggests that we have got our past so wrong and that history is indeed built on not-so-sound foundations. A central issue for instance, in understanding our past, is that we tend to project our modern thought structures and paradigms, over the past, and we read our history through the lenses of our own biases and assumptions. One of which, is a linear view of history, one which assumes that human evolution and the implied notion of human progress, tends to also inform our approach to assume simplistic interpretations of historic and pre-historic societies, their civilizations, and their buildings. One of such simplistic interpretations is to reduce the great pyramids to a purely utilitarian and functional purpose; as being a tomb to what must have been an incredibly ego-centric ruler. However, such a ruler somehow forgot to make a clear statement of his association with this tomb.



We arrived at Giza after a hectic drive through Haram Street, before the recent diversions were made, one could drive straight to the Pyramids if they just stayed on the long Haram Street. At the end of the street, there were often groups of men from the Nazlet El Semman settlement which stands at the foot of the plateau. Being well acquainted with the conventional norms, I slowly closed the windows, turned the music up, and told Alena to ignore the shouting when it starts. Soon after, they were all over the car screaming and shouting at me trying to get me to open the windows. They would typically spot cars with foreign-looking people in them, or well-off Egyptians and then try to get in the car with you and accompany you (by force) on your visit, to get you to pay them money for being your guide. Clearly, I was not interested and I just kept driving until we reached the Mina House, and eventually, after some haggling with security, we were able to reach the parking lot at the top of the hill by the entrance.

After paying for the tickets and going through security, we started walking slowly towards the plateau on which the Great Pyramid stands. It was an unusually quiet day, not that many people were there. It was also a transitional time in Egyptian politics and society, and tourism had dropped significantly due to security concerns.  Alena was in her element that day in a red dress, and a scarf, she hovered around the plateau and quickly found the steps leading to the carved entrance through which we enter the pyramid today, a few meters below the original entrance. We showed our tickets to the very shabby-looking security official who had been sleeping only to be awoken by us trying to walk in. He looked at the tickets, told us that pictures and cameras inside were not allowed and checked our luggage, and then let us in. We walked straight in then slowly turned left and then right into an ascending tunnel of maybe just over a meter in height, which meant that we had to crouch into a crawling position as we climbed up. The process of climbing inside the pyramid is quite intense and by no means is there any artistic aspect included giving it a more functional feeling. This is unlike many of the Ancient Egyptian burial tombs where passages may run deep and narrow into the rock, but the ceilings aren't remotely as short, and the walls are designed to be a spectacle; obviously not for the living's use, but for the dead. However, in the great pyramid: ascending and descending tunnels do not include any aesthetic dimension to it, and the necessary inscriptions needed by the dead to help them cross safely to the afterworld are equally lacking. This by no means makes them less awe-inspiring, but it instills a rather eerie sensation within the person who attempts to climb them and seems to lack a clear reference to their function or purpose. 

The journey within the pyramid for many people inflicts different sensations as my conversations with people have shown over the years. To some, it is an uncomfortable experience, to others it is compelling, to me, it's eerie and sensational to every degree. Knowing that this structure has stood there for at least four thousand years, one must only feel bewildered by all sorts of questions, but more importantly and at least for myself, instilled with a mystical feeling that I cannot seem to escape.

Eventually, after a few short minutes of slow and careful climbing, accompanied by the not-so-jolly feeling of suffocation and sweatiness, one bows through a narrow opening into the giant space known as the Grand Gallery, a spectacular hall with giant walls that lean in as they get higher in a stepping manner giving a telescopic effect. The grand gallery is, in fact, another eerie feeling space composed of two narrow ascending ramps at either side of the walls, both leading up onto a small landing. Another bow is necessarily leading into a small narrow space or anti-chamber with a short ceiling that leads through a small opening into the King's Chamber. Alena was ahead of me, and as soon as she attempted to enter the room, still, in her crouched position and myself behind her, we see someone's legs appear in front of us, big thick legs, rooted in the ground, and a cold voice echoing, "go away", Alena almost ignored the incident and pushed through, and I followed. We crawled into the room in a hurry, stood up, to a huge white man standing in front of us. 

The man looked like he was in his fifties, he was quite sturdy looking and big, with an imposing figure to say the least. He continued tackling us in a very strange way almost as though he was preventing us from seeing what was going on behind him. The man's voice, as loud as it was, was still huddled with an overwhelming echo of what sounded like a monotonous choir which gradually went up in frequency. I looked behind the guy who had moved to shout back at Alena to see what was happening, and their voices started to sink against this overwhelming echo coming from a group of adult European men and women standing around the massive granite box. I was curious about whether or not someone was lying inside, but I was irritated by the high echoing sound and the shouting which started to look like it was going to get aggressive. They had switched to speaking in German as she had quickly figured out he was, and I thought I understand her to say something along the lines of "You can't prevent us from being here, I know you're Germans, we have tickets, he's Egyptian." By that point in time, the echo had reached an alarmingly high pitch, I felt a strange electric buzz go through my spine, and as I started panicking, and trying to calm myself down I went into a mental recital of "ayat al kursy" verses in an instinctual manner. Odd as it may sound, the guy ceased arguing with Alena and turned abruptly to stare at me shouting "Shut Up!"... And I hadn't uttered a word loudly, and neither could anybody possibly hear me talking or whispering, with the monotonous choir hitting ultra-high pitches by that point. I continued reciting it in my head in panic and he continued screaming "Shut Up! I said shut up and leave now!" This was it for me. This electricity in my body did not go away it lingered, and a pounding headache got to me. 

I pulled Alena and told her we were leaving and hurryingly left this eerie scene. We walked down the grand gallery, with my head and heart both pounding almost in synch. I needed some fresh air, and it was damp and my clothes were soaked in sweat. We got to the gate, to find the same man still dosed off. As soon as I stepped out of the pyramid and took a breath in, the pain in my head and the scorching sun were making me feel sick. The whole experience was something I had obviously never encountered before. This is just ridiculous what happened in there, I needed to know more. Later that day, I called a professor of mine and told him what happened; he asked me what lunar day of the month it was, and then said in a re-assured tone, "Oh yes, it is probably one of those neo-Osirian cults doing their lunar rituals." And then he said he needed to go because he has a meeting to catch. I went online and tried to gather any information regarding this cult but nothing significant showed up.