Pyramid Interior Revealed Using Cosmic Rays

APR 27, 2016 06:00 AM ET // BY ROSSELLA LORENZI

Photocredit: EGYPTIAN MINISTRY OF ANTIQUITIES, HIP INSTITUTE AND THE FACULTY OF ENGINEERING (CAIRO UNIVERSITY)

The internal structure of an ancient Egyptian pyramid was revealed for the first time using cosmic particles, a team of international researchers reports.

The innovative technology was applied to the Bent Pyramid, a 4,500-year-old monument so named because of its sloping upper half.

According to the researchers, who presented their results in Cairo on Tuesday to Khaled El-Enany, minister of Antiquities and the former minister Mamdouh El-Damaty, the outcome was “excellent” as it showed the inside of the monument as with an X-ray.

The technology relies on muons, cosmic particles that permanently and naturally rain on Earth, which are able to penetrate any material very deeply.

This is the first of four pyramids to be investigated within the ScanPyramids, a project carried out by a team from Cairo University’s Faculty of Engineering and the Paris-based non-profit organization Heritage, Innovation and Preservation under the authority of the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities. The others are the Great Pyramid, Khafre or Chephren at Giza, and the Red pyramid at Dahshur.

Scheduled to last a year, the project uses a mix of innovative technologies such as infrared thermography, muon radiography, and 3-D reconstruction to better understand the monument and possibly identify the presence of unknown internal structures and cavities.

Second phase of #ScanPyramid project begins

Scanners are being used to search for possible hidden chambers within Egyptian pyramids without compromising their infrastructure

By Nevine El-Aref , Thursday 17 Dec 2015

Muon radiography survey begins on King Snefru’s Bent Pyramid at Dahshour necropolis

A team of experts is beginning a scanning survey of the Bent Pyramid of ancient Egyptian King Snefru in Giza using scanning technology which uses non-invasive Muon particles. The scanners are being used to search for possible hidden chambers within the pyramid without compromising its infrastructure.

Following test sessions in November that allowed the #ScanPyramids team to calibrate the sensitivity of Muon emulsion films to the local environment (temperature and humidity) inside King Snefru’s Bent Pyramid, Kunihiro Morishima and his team from Nagoya University have just completed the installation of the Muon detector plates in the pyramid’s lower chamber.

Morishima explains that the films are composed of 40 “regular” plates representing a surface of 3m2 containing two emulsion films that are sensitive to Muons. These emulsion films will allow the detection of various types of Muons naturally penetrating the pyramid.

Minister of Antiquities Mamdouh Eldamaty told Ahram Online that the #ScanPyramids team has also installed a “regular” plate sample in the Queen Chamber of Khufu’s Pyramid in order to find out the best chemical formula of the emulsion films suitable for the local environment inside the Pyramid, as has been done inside the Bent Pyramid.

Scanning the Pyramids

Could the ScanPyramids Project unlock the secrets of Egypt’s Wonders of the Ancient World, asks Nevine El-Aref

Four millennia after their construction, the ancient Egyptian Pyramids at Giza still conceal their secrets. Although research has been carried out on them throughout history, many questions remained unanswered. How were the pyramids built? Why do they have different shapes? How could they have lasted for 4,500 years without collapsing? Why do the inner structures of the pyramids have such inexplicable anomalies? These are just a few of the unanswered questions that are still puzzling today’s archaeologists.

However, with the help of modern non-invasive technology many of these questions may now be finally resolved. Under the motto “Just because a mystery is 4,500 years old doesn’t mean it can’t be solved,” the Ministry of Antiquities has initiated the ScanPyramids Project in collaboration with the Faculty of Engineering at Cairo University and the French Heritage Innovation and Preservation (HIP) Institute.

The project aims at probing the heart of Egypt’s pyramids from afar without touching or drilling into them. This would be achieved through the use of radioactive muons, or cosmic particles, infrared thermography, photogrammetry, scanning and 3D reconstruction by international researchers from three major universities: the Faculty of Engineering at Cairo University, the Université Laval in Quebec and the Nagoya University in Japan.

 “The scientific ScanPyramids Project is an unprecedented, large-scale project and will begin early in November,” Minister of Antiquities Mamdouh Eldamaty told Al-Ahram Weekly on the fringes of a press conference held on Sunday in Cairo. He explained that the first phase of the project would focus on four pyramids from the Fourth Dynasty: the Bent and Red Pyramids of Snefru at the Dahshur Necropolis and the Khufu and Khafre Pyramids on the Giza Plateau.

All change at the Valley Temple

A garden and a brick structure uncovered at the Dahshour Necropolis have changed views of the functions of a pyramid complex, writes Nevine El-Aref

In the parched desert of the Dahshour Royal Necropolis, the southernmost area of the Memphis Necropolis, a number of pyramids are revealing the changes in ancient Egyptian architecture that occurred during the Third and Fourth Dynasties, with step pyramids giving way to the first true pyramids.

There is the Bent Pyramid, the first attempt at building a complete pyramid carried out by the Fourth Dynasty king Senefru, who took pyramid construction to a new level. There is also the Red Pyramid, the first truly smooth-sided pyramid.

 Several kings of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Dynasties also built pyramids at Dahshour, among them Amenemhat II, Sesostris III, and Amenemhat III, who built a pyramid encased in black stone.

A military zone until 1996, the site remained untouched for many years, except for excavations carried out by Egyptologist Ahmed Fakhri in the 1950s, and later by German Egyptologist Reiner Stadelmann. Although several tombs and funerary structures were unearthed, Dahshour still retains many of the secrets of the ancient Egyptians.

The site recently attracted the attention of a mission from the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo, which started comprehensive excavation work in 2010. The work was concentrated in the area north of the Valley Temple of the Bent Pyramid, previously explored by Fakhri, who stumbled upon a brick building that he dated to the Middle Kingdom.

New Theory on Egypt’s Collapsing Pyramids

by Peter James


The author’s first introduction to working in Egypt was a project in Cairo’s historic old quarter following the 1992 earthquake that caused widespread and devastating damage. Cintec International began working on a contract to repair and reinforce a number of badly affected structures, including some 15 notable mosques and maqaads, which were strengthened using the firm’s patented anchoring systems. Following success in the old quarter, the focus moved to the internal reinforcement of the Temple of Hibis in the El-Kharga Oasis, 700 kilometres (434 miles) due south of Cairo. Construction on the Temple began in 672 BC, but unlike most other comparable structures, it had differential settlement problems due to poor soil conditions. Work on these buildings was completed with no damage to the splendor and history of the monuments.


Soon afterwards, Cintec undertook its first pyramid restoration projects. These involved strengthening the connecting burial chamber corridors and ceilings of Egypt’s Red and Step Pyramids. The Red Pyramid is the third-largest of Egypt’s pyramids and was the first "true" pyramid built by Pharaoh Sneferu. Sneferu had built two previous pyramids, but these were not of a true triangular shape, and for structural reasons were not chosen by the Pharaoh as his final resting place.


While work on the Red Pyramid was confined to strengthening the granite slabs immediately above the burial chamber’s corridor, Cintec’s next project, the Step Pyramid required more careful planning and execution due to the very dangerous condition of the burial chamber ceiling. A large portion had collapsed during the 1992 earthquake, and what remained -- a ragged, hanging, inverted group of large and small stones set in mud -- was liable to collapse at any time. Cintec used its unique WaterWall airbags to support the ceiling temporarily without provoking further stone fall, before beginning work on final anchoring processes which are now halfway to completion. These ongoing projects offered insight into the nature of the pyramids’ structural deterioration.


Dynasties Of Egypt Part II: Old Kingdom and First Intermediate Period

The Old Kingdom is the name commonly given to the period in the 3rd millennium BC when Egypt attained its first continuous peak of civilization in complexity and achievement – the first of three so-called "Kingdom" periods, which mark the high points of civilization in the lower Nile Valley (the others being Middle Kingdom and the New Kingdom).

The term Old Kingdom, coined during the nineteenth century, is somewhat arbitrary. Egyptians at that time would have seen no distinction between the Old Kingdom and the preceding Early Dynastic Period, since the last Early Dynastic king was related by blood to the first two kings of the Old Kingdom, and the Early Dynastic royal residence at Ineb-Hedj (translated as "The White Walls" for its majestic fortifications) remained unchanged except for the name. During the Old Kingdom, the capital was renamed Memphis. 

The basic justification for a separation between the Early Dynastic Period and the Old Kingdom is the revolutionary change in architecture accompanied and the effects that large-scale building projects had on Egyptian society and economy..

The Old Kingdom spanned the period from the Third Dynasty to the Sixth Dynasty (2,686 BC – 2,134 BC). Many Egyptologists also include the Memphite Seventh and Eighth Dynasties in the Old Kingdom as a continuation of the administration that had been firmly established at Memphis. Thereafter, the Old Kingdom was followed by a period of disunity and relative cultural decline (a "dark period that spanned the Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, and part of the Eleventh Dynasties) referred to by Egyptologists as the First Intermediate Period.

Heb Sed, The Ritual Jubilee

Introduction

Off all the many ancient Egyptian festivals, local as well as nationwide, there was one which differed quite a bit from the rest. While they all were aimed at the relationship between the gods, the king and the people, the Heb Sed was more directly focussed around the kingship as such and its complete renewal.

The name Heb Sed, also known as The Sed festival or Feast of the Tail, derives from the name of an Egyptian wolf god, one of whose names was Wepwawet or Sed. The less formal feast name, the Feast of the Tail, is derived from the name of the animal's tail that typically was attached to the back of the pharaoh's garment in the early periods of Egyptian history. This suggests that the tail was the vestige of a previous ceremonial robe made out of a complete animal skin.

A Heb Sed was first held during the 30th regnal year of a pharaoh, and from then on, every three years, but several pharaohs however, held their first Heb Sed at a much earlier date: Hatshepsut held her first jubilee during her 16th regnal year, while Amenhotep IV/Akhenaten chose to dedicate his festival to his solar-god Aten at the early beginnings of his reign. Ramesses II often left two instead of three years between his Heb Seds, he was able to celebrate 14 such jubilees during his 67 years of reign.