The way was narrow, not more than six feet broad anywhere, and contracted to three feet at the floor, but twenty feet high, and of polished marble-like stone throughout. Ascending at an angle of 26°, these men had to push their dangerous and slippery way for about a hundred feet still further; then an obstructing three-foot step to climb over; next a low doorway; then a hanging portcullis to pass, almost to creep under; and then another low doorway, with awful blocks of red granite on either side, above, and below. After this they leaped without further obstruction at once into the grand chamber, a right noble apartment now called the King’s Chamber, about thirty-four feet long, seventeen broad, and nineteen high, of polished red granite throughout, in blocks squared and put together with exquisite skill. In this apartment they found—nothing, except an empty stone chest or box or coffer without a lid![22] The Caliph Al Mamoun was amazed, for he had arrived at the very furthest part of the interior of the Great Pyramid he had so long desired to take possession of, and had now found absolutely nothing that he could make any use of, or saw the smallest value in. He returned to El Fostat greatly disappointed, and the Grand Gallery, the King’s Chamber, and the stone coffer without a lid were troubled by him no more; for after this he left Egypt and returned to his imperial residence in Bagdad, where he died in A.D. 842. The entrance into the Great Pyramid in use in our time is the one thus made by this prince. The granite chest or coffer without a lid, found in the King’s Chamber above-mentioned, was not a sarcophagus, or a coffin, but simply a corn measure, and nothing else, which holds about four English quarters. It was placed in that chamber by the inspired builder Joseph, the great-grandson of Abraham the Hebrew, the friend of God; the Pyramid being a gigantic granary holding corn, and this the measure by which he ascertained the quantity stored in it. The passages in the walls, called air-channels by Egyptologists, were apertures through which the corn was thrown from without into the chamber, and thence into the vast receptacles below. The grain was brought from the fields to the apertures up the steps, before the casing-stones were fitted to the whole edifice, which, being afterwards polished, kept the contents secure from moth and mildew.