The Osiris Shaft at Giza as an Engineering System: A Temporally Neutral Feasibility Analysis from Construction to Sarcophagus Placement

This study examines the Osiris Shaft at Giza as an integrated engineering system and asks whether its documented geometry, known technological methods, and necessary construction and transport operations can be combined into a physically and operationally feasible end-to-end technological process, from construction of the complex to final placement of the third-level basalt sarcophagus. The analysis is temporally neutral: it does not assume in advance the technology of a particular historical period. Instead, it evaluates the compatibility of geometry, mechanics, material properties, workspace, human work capacity, underground environmental conditions, rigging, load transfer, motion control, and the sequential dependencies between mandatory operations. The study distinguishes the local admissibility of individual operations from the existence of a coherent system-level process and uses sequential constraint testing, including an adaptation of the Theory of Constraints, to examine surviving technological alternatives. Several locally admissible solutions are identified during the analysis, including rolling transport as an alternative to sliding. However, subsequent testing of the Shaft C → Chamber I transition shows that the remaining single-line and multi-rope support-friction architectures do not provide a physically realizable continuation under the combined geometric, mechanical, ergonomic, physiological, environmental, and control requirements of the operation. No feasible end-to-end technological process remains within the explored space of documented and physically admissible architectures. The result does not imply that no historical process existed: the complex and the sarcophagus are observed facts. Rather, the actual technological process by which the present configuration was produced remains undetermined. More generally, the study presents the Osiris Shaft as a case study in system-level feasibility assessment of reconstructed historical technological processes. Research line: Systems Feasibility Studies of Historical and Archaeological Reconstructions.