Khufu's Great Pyramid Inheritance-Integration Hypothesis: Functional Inheritance, Construction Sequence, and Redistribution during the King's Lifetime

This paper presents the “Khufu’s Great Pyramid Inheritance-Integration Hypothesis,” which interprets the Great Pyramid not as the product of a single fixed design, but as an architectural system in which functions, construction experience, and spatial organization inherited from the royal tombs of Djoser and Sneferu were selected, integrated, and redistributed as construction progressed during Khufu’s lifetime. The study examines the unfinished Subterranean Chamber and South Passage, the Queen’s Chamber and its north-south shafts, the Grand Gallery, the King’s Chamber and sarcophagus, and the Well Shaft as parts of a dynamic constructional and functional system rather than as isolated mysteries. The hypothesis integrates inheritance from earlier royal tombs, spatial multifunctionality, construction sequence, the king’s lifespan, contingency burial capacity, and functional redistribution within a single falsifiable model. This English Edition Version 5.0 is a faithful translation of the Japanese Final Public Edition Version 5.0. The Japanese DOI edition is the authoritative original. Authoritative Japanese Edition DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.22859331 This hypothesis was developed through a human-AI collaborative research process involving Shun Ichida and AI “Che” (OpenAI). Ichida contributed the central questions, observations, conceptual connections, and hypothesis formation, while the AI supported literature searches, comparison with primary and scholarly sources, counterargument and falsification analysis, and document structuring. AI output itself was not treated as historical evidence.