Using various scanning technologies, researchers have found two inexplicable voids.
The Great Pyramid at Giza, Egypt, has long been rumored to contain hidden passageways leading to secret chambers. Now a team of researchers has confirmed the 4,500-year-old pharaonic mausoleum contains two unknown cavities, possibly hiding a corridor-like structure and more mysterious features.
The announcement by the ScanPyramids project comes at the end of a year-long effort to use various scanning technology on Old Kingdom pyramids, including the Great Pyramid, Khafre or Chephren at Giza, the Bent pyramid and the Red pyramid at Dahshur.
Carried out by a team from Cairo University's Faculty of Engineering and the Paris-based non-profit organization Heritage, Innovation and Preservation (HIP Institute) under the authority of the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities, the ScanPyramids project used three innovative techniques — muography, thermography and 3-D simulation — to deeply investigate the Great Pyramid of Giza.
An unknown cavity was detected at a height of about 345 feet from the ground on the northeastern edge of the monument, while a "void" was found behind the northern side at the upper part of the entrance gate.
"Such void is shaped like a corridor and could go up inside the pyramid," Mehdi Tayoubi, founder of the Paris-based Heritage Innovation Preservation Institute, told Seeker.
He added that no link can be made between the two cavities at the moment.
Showing posts with label Great Pyramid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Great Pyramid. Show all posts
Sunday, October 16, 2016
Sunday, September 4, 2016
Boat beam lifted
The wooden beam that may once have held the oars of the Pharaoh Khufu’s second boat was lifted yesterday from its pit on the Giza Plateau, Nevine El-Aref reports
History has a special scent and taste on the Giza Plateau, where an unsurpassed assembly of soaring pyramids, the awe-inspiring Sphinx, and splendid chapels and tombs reflects the great civilisation of ancient Egypt. Although most of the plateau has been thoroughly excavated, there are still secrets to be revealed.
The Japanese-Egyptian team as well as journalists and photographers, yesterday gathered around the pit of the Pharaoh Khufu’s second boat on the southern side of the Great Pyramid at Giza to watch minute by minute the lifting up of a boat beam that had recently been discovered, revealing a further such secret.
The beam is carved in wood with metal pieces in different shapes and sizes. The restorers had earlier removed other beams from the pit and covered them in situ with a special chemical solution to protect them from the atmosphere.
The present beam has now been taken to the laboratory on the plateau where restorers will first reduce its humidity until it has reached 55 per cent and then treat and consolidate it.
“This may be the beam that once held the oars of Khufu’s second boat,” Eissa Zidan, director of restoration at the project told Al-Ahram Weekly, adding that the beam had been found during excavations carried out inside the pit on the boat’s eighth layer.
History has a special scent and taste on the Giza Plateau, where an unsurpassed assembly of soaring pyramids, the awe-inspiring Sphinx, and splendid chapels and tombs reflects the great civilisation of ancient Egypt. Although most of the plateau has been thoroughly excavated, there are still secrets to be revealed.
The Japanese-Egyptian team as well as journalists and photographers, yesterday gathered around the pit of the Pharaoh Khufu’s second boat on the southern side of the Great Pyramid at Giza to watch minute by minute the lifting up of a boat beam that had recently been discovered, revealing a further such secret.
The beam is carved in wood with metal pieces in different shapes and sizes. The restorers had earlier removed other beams from the pit and covered them in situ with a special chemical solution to protect them from the atmosphere.
The present beam has now been taken to the laboratory on the plateau where restorers will first reduce its humidity until it has reached 55 per cent and then treat and consolidate it.
“This may be the beam that once held the oars of Khufu’s second boat,” Eissa Zidan, director of restoration at the project told Al-Ahram Weekly, adding that the beam had been found during excavations carried out inside the pit on the boat’s eighth layer.
Thursday, July 21, 2016
Ancient Logbook Documenting Great Pyramid's Construction Unveiled
By Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor | July 18, 2016
A logbook that contains records detailing the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza has been put on public display at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
The Great Pyramid of Giza was built in honor of the pharaoh Khufu (reign ca. 2551 B.C.-2528 B.C.) and is the largest of the three pyramids constructed on the Giza plateau in Egypt. Considered a "wonder of the world" by ancient writers, the Great Pyramid was 481 feet (146 meters) tall when it was first constructed. Today it stands 455 feet (138 meters) high.
The logbook was written in hieroglyphic letters on pieces of papyri. Its author was an inspector named Merer, who was "in charge of a team of about 200 men," archaeologists Pierre Tallet and Gregory Marouard wrote in an article published in 2014 in the journal Near Eastern Archaeology.
Tallet and Marouard are leaders of an archaeological team from France and Egypt that discovered the logbook at the Red Sea harbor of Wadi al-Jarfin 2013. It dates back about 4,500 years, making it the oldest papyrus document ever discovered in Egypt.
"Over a period of several months, [the logbook] reports — in [the] form of a timetable with two columns per day — many operations related to the construction of the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza and the work at the limestone quarries on the opposite bank of the Nile," Tallet and Marouard wrote.
A logbook that contains records detailing the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza has been put on public display at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
The Great Pyramid of Giza was built in honor of the pharaoh Khufu (reign ca. 2551 B.C.-2528 B.C.) and is the largest of the three pyramids constructed on the Giza plateau in Egypt. Considered a "wonder of the world" by ancient writers, the Great Pyramid was 481 feet (146 meters) tall when it was first constructed. Today it stands 455 feet (138 meters) high.
The logbook was written in hieroglyphic letters on pieces of papyri. Its author was an inspector named Merer, who was "in charge of a team of about 200 men," archaeologists Pierre Tallet and Gregory Marouard wrote in an article published in 2014 in the journal Near Eastern Archaeology.
Tallet and Marouard are leaders of an archaeological team from France and Egypt that discovered the logbook at the Red Sea harbor of Wadi al-Jarfin 2013. It dates back about 4,500 years, making it the oldest papyrus document ever discovered in Egypt.
"Over a period of several months, [the logbook] reports — in [the] form of a timetable with two columns per day — many operations related to the construction of the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza and the work at the limestone quarries on the opposite bank of the Nile," Tallet and Marouard wrote.
Wednesday, June 8, 2016
Great Pyramid of Giza Gets High-Tech Scan
Scientists have turned to subatomic particles known as muons to scan the 4,500-year-old pharaonic mausoleum.
By Rossella Lorenzi
For the past 23 years researchers have been trying to unlock the mysteries of the Great Pyramid in Giza using tomb-raiding robots. Now scientists have turned to subatomic particles known as muons to scan the 4,500-year-old pharaonic mausoleum. The aim is to detect voids that might point to hidden chambers and tunnels.
The full scan of the iconic monument is one of several ambitious steps of 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 (Hip Institute) under the authority of the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities.
In April the team was able to reveal for the first time the internal structure of the Bent pyramid at Dahshur, using cosmic particles.
In a statement released on Tuesday, the ScanPyramids team detailed three non-invasive techniques employed at Giza. The results of the survey will be shared with several committees representing different scientific disciplines. One of them will gather a number of Egyptologists led by the former minister of Antiquities Zahi Hawass.
"Our team is trying to get evidence from the field that some voids exists. Then it will be the role of historians, Egyptologists, architects, to tell why those voids are there," Mehdi Tayoubi, co-director of the ScanPyramids mission, told Discovery News.
By Rossella Lorenzi
For the past 23 years researchers have been trying to unlock the mysteries of the Great Pyramid in Giza using tomb-raiding robots. Now scientists have turned to subatomic particles known as muons to scan the 4,500-year-old pharaonic mausoleum. The aim is to detect voids that might point to hidden chambers and tunnels.
The full scan of the iconic monument is one of several ambitious steps of 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 (Hip Institute) under the authority of the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities.
In April the team was able to reveal for the first time the internal structure of the Bent pyramid at Dahshur, using cosmic particles.
In a statement released on Tuesday, the ScanPyramids team detailed three non-invasive techniques employed at Giza. The results of the survey will be shared with several committees representing different scientific disciplines. One of them will gather a number of Egyptologists led by the former minister of Antiquities Zahi Hawass.
"Our team is trying to get evidence from the field that some voids exists. Then it will be the role of historians, Egyptologists, architects, to tell why those voids are there," Mehdi Tayoubi, co-director of the ScanPyramids mission, told Discovery News.
Sunday, November 22, 2015
Secrets of the Great Pyramid
The recent announcement of important new discoveries made at the Great Pyramid raises questions about the proper use of modern investigative technology, writes Zahi Hawass
The Ministry of Antiquities announced important discoveries at a recent press conference, held on the eastern side of the Great Pyramid of Khufu on the Giza Plateau. It followed release of the preliminary results of the Scan Pyramids project. The project hopes to discover the secrets of the Pyramid of Khufu, including whether or not there are hidden rooms or tunnels.
The conference was attended by Minister of Antiquities Mamdouh Eldamaty and Hany Helal, the project’s general coordinator. The project is being carried out through cooperation between the Ministry of Antiquities, the Faculty of Engineering at Cairo University and the French Heritage, Innovation and Preservation (HIP) Institute.
The project team announced that it had found an anomaly in the temperature of three blocks at the base of the eastern side of the pyramid, facing the solar boat pit. Speculation was that that these three blocks hid a secret behind them, such as a hidden room or previoulsy unknown tunnel.
Using infrared thermography, the team noticed that the three blocks on the eastern side of the pyramid registered a higher temperature in comparison with the adjacent stones. These measurements, made at different times of day, showed the higher temperature of these blocks by about four to five degrees. The team announced that the results had been provided to archaeologists and Egyptologists for evaluation and were currently under review.
Saturday, November 14, 2015
Possible New Chambers in Pyramid Hold Hopes for Egypt's Tourism
Desperate to win back tourists, Egypt has ramped up efforts to solve the mysteries of the Great Pyramids of Giza.
By Peter Schwartzstein, National Geographic
PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 11, 2015
Pacing back and forth across the Giza plateau, Mamdouh El-Damaty, Egypt’s beleaguered minister of antiquities, could scarcely keep a smile from his face as he broke the news of a potentially ground-breaking discovery.
An international team of archaeologists and engineers has identified an “impressive anomaly” at the base of the Great Pyramid of Khufu, also called Cheops, Giza’s largest pyramid.
Temperature differences between stone blocks indicate that there may be hidden chambers or clues to the pyramid’s construction inside. (In recent weeks similar scanning by other researchers in the tomb of King Tut revealed the possibility of a hidden chamber as well.)
“The pyramids have lots of secrets,” Damaty said against a backdrop of enthusiastic applause and the flash of cameras. “And today, Cheops will give us one of his secrets.”
In ordinary circumstances, such a development would likely inspire serious excitement among historians, many of whom still puzzle over the 4,500-year-old structure’s precise composition. But for a country reeling from a weak economy and a barrage of negative publicity that has dissuaded many tourists from visiting, the possibility of unraveling the mystery behind a wonder of the world has taken on a broader significance.
By Peter Schwartzstein, National Geographic
PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 11, 2015
Pacing back and forth across the Giza plateau, Mamdouh El-Damaty, Egypt’s beleaguered minister of antiquities, could scarcely keep a smile from his face as he broke the news of a potentially ground-breaking discovery.
An international team of archaeologists and engineers has identified an “impressive anomaly” at the base of the Great Pyramid of Khufu, also called Cheops, Giza’s largest pyramid.
Temperature differences between stone blocks indicate that there may be hidden chambers or clues to the pyramid’s construction inside. (In recent weeks similar scanning by other researchers in the tomb of King Tut revealed the possibility of a hidden chamber as well.)
“The pyramids have lots of secrets,” Damaty said against a backdrop of enthusiastic applause and the flash of cameras. “And today, Cheops will give us one of his secrets.”
In ordinary circumstances, such a development would likely inspire serious excitement among historians, many of whom still puzzle over the 4,500-year-old structure’s precise composition. But for a country reeling from a weak economy and a barrage of negative publicity that has dissuaded many tourists from visiting, the possibility of unraveling the mystery behind a wonder of the world has taken on a broader significance.
Thursday, September 24, 2015
The World's Oldest Papyrus and What It Can Tell Us About the Great Pyramids
Ancient Egyptians leveraged a massive shipping, mining and farming economy to propel their civilization forward
By Alexander Stille for SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE
Following notes written by an English traveler in the early 19th century and two French pilots in the 1950s, Pierre Tallet made a stunning discovery: a set of 30 caves honeycombed into limestone hills but sealed up and hidden from view in a remote part of the Egyptian desert, a few miles inland from the Red Sea, far from any city, ancient or modern. During his first digging season, in 2011, he established that the caves had served as a kind of boat storage depot during the fourth dynasty of the Old Kingdom, about 4,600 years ago. Then, in 2013, during his third digging season, he came upon something quite unexpected: entire rolls of papyrus, some a few feet long and still relatively intact, written in hieroglyphics as well as hieratic, the cursive script the ancient Egyptians used for everyday communication. Tallet realized that he was dealing with the oldest known papyri in the world.
Astonishingly, the papyri were written by men who participated in the building of the Great Pyramid, the tomb of the Pharaoh Khufu, the first and largest of the three colossal pyramids at Giza just outside modern Cairo. Among the papyri was the journal of a previously unknown official named Merer, who led a crew of some 200 men who traveled from one end of Egypt to the other picking up and delivering goods of one kind or another. Merer, who accounted for his time in half-day increments, mentions stopping at Tura, a town along the Nile famous for its limestone quarry, filling his boat with stone and taking it up the Nile River to Giza. In fact, Merer mentions reporting to “the noble Ankh-haf,” who was known to be the half-brother of the Pharaoh Khufu and now, for the first time, was definitively identified as overseeing some of the construction of the Great Pyramid. And since the pharaohs used the Tura limestone for the pyramids’ outer casing, and Merer’s journal chronicles the last known year of Khufu’s reign, the entries provide a never-before-seen snapshot of the ancients putting finishing touches on the Great Pyramid.
By Alexander Stille for SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE
Following notes written by an English traveler in the early 19th century and two French pilots in the 1950s, Pierre Tallet made a stunning discovery: a set of 30 caves honeycombed into limestone hills but sealed up and hidden from view in a remote part of the Egyptian desert, a few miles inland from the Red Sea, far from any city, ancient or modern. During his first digging season, in 2011, he established that the caves had served as a kind of boat storage depot during the fourth dynasty of the Old Kingdom, about 4,600 years ago. Then, in 2013, during his third digging season, he came upon something quite unexpected: entire rolls of papyrus, some a few feet long and still relatively intact, written in hieroglyphics as well as hieratic, the cursive script the ancient Egyptians used for everyday communication. Tallet realized that he was dealing with the oldest known papyri in the world.
Astonishingly, the papyri were written by men who participated in the building of the Great Pyramid, the tomb of the Pharaoh Khufu, the first and largest of the three colossal pyramids at Giza just outside modern Cairo. Among the papyri was the journal of a previously unknown official named Merer, who led a crew of some 200 men who traveled from one end of Egypt to the other picking up and delivering goods of one kind or another. Merer, who accounted for his time in half-day increments, mentions stopping at Tura, a town along the Nile famous for its limestone quarry, filling his boat with stone and taking it up the Nile River to Giza. In fact, Merer mentions reporting to “the noble Ankh-haf,” who was known to be the half-brother of the Pharaoh Khufu and now, for the first time, was definitively identified as overseeing some of the construction of the Great Pyramid. And since the pharaohs used the Tura limestone for the pyramids’ outer casing, and Merer’s journal chronicles the last known year of Khufu’s reign, the entries provide a never-before-seen snapshot of the ancients putting finishing touches on the Great Pyramid.
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Egyptian archaeologists refute claims by German amateurs on Great Pyramid
Head of ancient Egyptian antiquities explains why he thinks claims by two German amateurs concerning the construction date of the Great Pyramid are wrong
by Nevine El-Aref , Wednesday 27 Nov 2013
In response to the alleged stealing of samples from the Great Pyramid by two German amateur archaeologists, Egypt's antiquities ministry issued a press release Wednesday discrediting all findings by the German pair.
The archaeologists took a piece of Khufu's cartouche from a small compartment above his burial chamber and smuggled it to Germany for study, the Ancient Egyptian section of the Ministry of State of Antiquities (MSA) reported.
The results announced by the two Germans cast doubt on the construction date of the Great Pyramid and consequently the Pharaoh for which it was built.
The results suggest that the pyramid was built in an era preceding Khufu's reign. It also suggests that the Pyramid is not the burial place for a king but a centre of power.
Mohamed Abdel Maqsoud, head of the ancient Egyptian department, asserted in a press release on Wednesday that a multitude of scientific research from the past two centuries shows that the Great Pyramid belongs to King Khufu, the second king of the fourth dynasty, and that it was built during his reign to be used as his royal burial place for eternity.
by Nevine El-Aref , Wednesday 27 Nov 2013
In response to the alleged stealing of samples from the Great Pyramid by two German amateur archaeologists, Egypt's antiquities ministry issued a press release Wednesday discrediting all findings by the German pair.
The archaeologists took a piece of Khufu's cartouche from a small compartment above his burial chamber and smuggled it to Germany for study, the Ancient Egyptian section of the Ministry of State of Antiquities (MSA) reported.
The results announced by the two Germans cast doubt on the construction date of the Great Pyramid and consequently the Pharaoh for which it was built.
The results suggest that the pyramid was built in an era preceding Khufu's reign. It also suggests that the Pyramid is not the burial place for a king but a centre of power.
Mohamed Abdel Maqsoud, head of the ancient Egyptian department, asserted in a press release on Wednesday that a multitude of scientific research from the past two centuries shows that the Great Pyramid belongs to King Khufu, the second king of the fourth dynasty, and that it was built during his reign to be used as his royal burial place for eternity.
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