Great Pyramid Find: Two Mysterious Cavities With Unusual Features

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Saving Khufu’s second boat

A Japanese-Egyptian team is reconstructing Khufu’s second solar boat, 4,500 years after it was buried to ferry the pharaoh to eternity, writes Nevine El-Aref

The southern side of Khufu’s Great Pyramid on the Giza Plateau is a hive of activity these days. Dozens of workers, Egyptologists and restorers are removing piece by piece the wooden beams of the pharaoh’s second solar boat, which has remained in situ for 4,500 years after it was buried to ferry him to eternity.

Restorers are cleaning the timber, oars and beams, while Egyptologists are busy documenting them in the laboratory recently established at the site to rescue the different parts of the boat.

The boat was discovered along with the first one inside two pits neighbouring each other in 1954, when Egyptian archaeologists Kamal Al-Mallakh and Zaki Nour were carrying out routine cleaning on the southern side of the Great Pyramid.

The first pit was found under a roof of 41 limestone slabs, each weighing almost 20 tons, with the three westernmost slabs being much smaller than the others leading them to be interpreted as keystones. On removing one of the slabs, Al-Mallakh and Nour saw a cedar boat, completely dismantled but arranged in the semblance of its finished form, inside the pit. Also inside were layers of mats, ropes, instruments made of flint, and some small pieces of white plaster, along with 12 oars, 58 poles, three cylindrical columns and five doors.

The boat was removed piece by piece under the supervision of restorer Ahmed Youssef, who spent more than 20 years restoring and reassembling the boat. The task resembled the fitting together of a giant jigsaw puzzle, and the completed boat is now on display at Khufu’s Solar Boat Museum on the Giza Plateau.

What happened to the missing mummies of Egypt's lost queens?

Joann Fletcher ventures through the temples of Egypt to uncover the 'lost queens' of ancient times

By Joann Fletcher7:00AM BST 04 Sep 2014

On 2nd February 1925, the photographer from the Harvard-Boston archaeological expedition was setting up his camera tripod on the rocky plateau of Giza close to the base of the Great Pyramid. Having some degree of difficulty in his attempt to get the legs on an equal footing, he dislodged what he assumed was a small piece of limestone, but which closer inspection revealed to be a fragment of plaster, the kind of plaster traditionally used in ancient times to seal up the entrance of a tomb.

With the same archaeological team having already made a series of spectacular discoveries at Giza over the previous 20 years, most notably a large group of superb statues of King Menkaure, builder of Giza’s third pyramid, this new discovery was so unexpected the excavation’s director George Reisner was still in the US. So the task of opening the tomb fell to his British assistant Alan Rowe and his Egyptian head foreman Said Ahmed Said, whose removal of the plaster covering revealed a 100 foot vertical shaft cut down into the limestone bedrock, filled solid with limestone masonry and yet more plaster. Only after a month when this had all been removed was it then possible for the archaeologists to descend to the very bottom of the shaft to reach the doorway, marked with the official seal of King Khufu, builder of the Great Pyramid.

Although the rock-cut rectangular chamber which lay beyond was only 15 by 8 feet, the archaeologists could see ‘the dazzle of gold’ through a small gap at the top of the doorway. They could also see the chamber was crammed full with all manner of wonderful things whose inscriptions, initially read with the aid of binoculars and later at close quarters, revealed the contents had belonged to Khufu’s mother, Queen Hetepheres (c.2600 BC). With her status as queen mother making her ‘first lady’, at that time of greater importance than the king’s wife, she was certainly the most important woman to her son Khufu since the first tomb he built at Giza was for her, located “in the most important point in his own royal cemetery” noted Reisner’s colleague Noel Wheeler.

Restoration of Khufu’s boat

The third phase of the restoration of Khufu’s second solar boat has recently begun, reports Samia Fakhry

The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) invited a number of Egyptian and foreign journalists to a press conference last week in order to announce the beginning of the third phase of the restoration project on Khufu’s second solar boat and to raise awareness of the Japanese contribution to the preservation of Egypt’s archaeological heritage.

A tour of the labs of the planned Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) was also on the agenda, when those present were able to see the restoration work done on some of treasures found in the tomb of Tutankhamun that will be in the GEM collection.

In addition to the JICA’s work at the GEM and on Khufu’s solar boat, the Japanese government is also to establish a fourth phase of the Cairo underground, this time linking the capital to the Pyramids area and the GEM.

The story of Khufu’s solar boats started in 1954 when Egyptian archaeologist Kamal Al-Mallakh stumbled upon the two boat pits during routine cleaning on the southern side of the Great Pyramid of Khufu on the Giza Plateau. Working with conservator Ahmed Youssef, Al-Mallakh organised the removal and reconstruction of one of the boats.

The second remained buried in the sand until 1987 when the US National Geographic Society in association with the Egyptian authorities probed the pit through a hole bored into the limestone covering it, inserting a micro camera and measuring equipment. The temperature, humidity and preservation condition of the boat inside were all examined.

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.

Archaeologists Recover Ancient Boat Near Great Pyramid in Egypt

Wed, Sep 11, 2013

Team races time to uncover 4,500-year-old royal bark.

It was like looking at wood planks and timbers that were cut from their trees and shaped just a few decades ago. But these pieces were thousands of years old. About 4,500 years old, in fact. 

With a sense of urgency, a team donned in special white hazmat-like suites, gloves and face-masks, like surgeons, swiftly yet methodically removed, handled and examined scores of carefully and artfully cut pieces of wood. They were priceless, because these specimens were as old as the pyramids of Egypt and they were in danger of beginning to disappear before their excavator's eyes, like phantoms, if they weren't handled and processed appropriately. These were parts of Pharaoh Khufu's solar funerary vessel, anciently disassembled and packed meticulously into a stone pit grave beneath the sand at the foot of Khufu's great pyramid over 4,500 years ago. Khufu was ancient Egypt's Old Kingdom pharaoh at that time, or WAS before this boat was buried. But in 1987 the seal of the entombed boat had been breached and water, insects and fungi began to degrade the ancient, vulnerable wood. Severe damage had occurred as a result to some parts of the wood, and scientists found themselves in a race against time to recover the vessel before the outside world did more damage.

Excavation of 4,500-year-old boat at Giza pyramids begins

The first wooden beam of king Khufu's second boat is removed from the pit where it is buried in Giza

by Nevine El-Aref , Tuesday 25 Jun 2013

A joint Japanese and Egyptian team began on Tuesday the work of removing a 4,500 year old pharaonic boat from the pit on the Giza pyramid plateau where it is buried.

Restorers removed a wooden beam, part of a boat built for King Khufu which was buried in approximately 2,500 BC. The boat was discovered in 1954 along with another identical boat in a separate pit; the latter was removed and restored, and is now on display in a purpose-built museum on the site.

The beam is the first of several which will be removed for restoration.

Since 2009, the boat's wooden beams inside the pit have been subjected to laboratory analysis to determine the types of fungi, insects and viruses that are affecting the boat, as well as the amount of deterioration that has taken place, so that an appropriate method can be selected to restore it and place it on display beside the other boat, known as the Khufu ship.

"The lifting of the beams is the third phase of a long restoration project carried out by an Egyptian and Japanese scientific and archaeological team from Waseda University, in collaboration with the Japanese government," said Ahmed Eissa, minister of state for antiquities. 

The real boats of King Khufu

The world’s oldest port has been discovered near the Red Sea town of Zaafarana and, as Nevine El-Aref shows, it reveals that contrary to common belief the ancient Egyptians were accomplished sailors


The long-held supposition that the ancient Egyptians avoided travelling by sea and had poor naval technology can be laid to rest. Early this week archaeologists discovered a port dating from the reign of the Fourth Dynasty king Khufu, builder of the Great Pyramid and owner of the Solar Boats at Giza, in the Wadi Al-Jarf area south of Zaafarana on the Red Sea.
Little was known about the Pharaohs’ seafaring ways until 2001, when a joint Italian-American archaeological mission from the universities of Naples and Boston unearthed timbers, rigging and cedar planks in the ancient Red Sea harbour of Marsa Gawasis, 23 kilometres south of Port Safaga. The harbour was used during the 12th Dynasty to mount naval expeditions to the land of Punt (now in southern Sudan or the Eritrean region of Ethiopia) to obtain gold, ebony, ivory, leopard skins and the frankincense necessary for religious rituals.

The hides of giraffe, leopard and cheetah, which were worn by temple priests, were imported along with live exotic animals — either for the priests’ own menageries or as religious sacrifices — including the sacred cynocephalus or dog-faced baboon. Little wonder that Punt became known as the “Land of the Gods” and the personal pleasure garden of the great god Amun.

Egypt's King Khufu's harbour in Suez discovered

French-Egyptian archaeological mission discover the oldest commercial harbour from fourth dynasty Egyptian King Khufu at Wadi Al-Jarf area, 180 km south of Suez

by Nevine El-Aref , Thursday 11 Apr 2013

On the Red Sea shore at Wadi Al-Jarf area along the Suez-Zaafarana road, a French-Egyptian archaeological mission from the French Institute for Archaeological Studies (IFAO) stumbled upon what it believed to be the most ancient harbour ever found in Egypt.


The harbour goes back to the reign of the fourth dynasty King Khufu, the owner of the Great Pyramid in Giza Plateau. The harbour is considered one of the most important commercial harbours where trading trips to export copper and other minerals from Sinai were launched.

A collection of vessel anchors carved in stone was also discovered as well as the harbours different docks.

Minister of State for Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim announced that a collection of 40 papyri, showing details of daily life of ancient Egyptians during the 27th year of King Khufu’s reign, was also unearthed during excavation work carried out.

Photocredit: MSAA

“These are the oldest papyri ever found in Egypt,” asserted Ibrahim.

He also stated that these papyri are very important because it reveals more information on the ancient Egyptians’ daily life, as it includes monthly reports of the number of labours working in the harbour and details of their lives.

The papyri have been transferred to the Suez Museum for study and documentation.

French Egyptologist Pierre Tallet, director of the archaeological mission, pointed out that it is very important to carefully study the information in these papyri because it will introduce plenty of information about this period. The papyri will also show the nature of life that the ancient Egyptians once lived, their rights and duties, which we know little about, Tallet added.

The mission has also succeeded in discovering remains of workers’ houses, which reveals the importance of this harbour and area commercially whether among the different cities of Egypt or abroad, said Adel Hussein, head of the Ancient Egyptian Sector at the Ministry of State for Antiquities.

A collection of 30 caves were also discovered along with the stone blocks used to block their entrances, inscribed with King Khufu’s cartouche written in red ink. Ship ropes and stone tools used to cut ropes and wooden remains were discovered as well.

Source: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/9/40/69024/Heritage/Ancient-Egypt/Egypts-King-Khufus-harbour-in-Suez-discovered.aspx

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.

New tourist magnets

Khafre's Pyramid and several Old Kingdom tombs on the Giza Plateau are now officially open to the public, part of the effort to encourage tourists to return to Egypt, as Nevine El-Aref finds out

Six tombs in the vicinity of King Khufu's Great Pyramid, as well as the second pyramid, that of Khufu's son Khafre, have been reopened as part of the government's strategy to encourage tourists to come to Egypt in the wake of plummeting tourist numbers following the revolution in January last year.

Minister of State for Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim officially inaugurated the six royal and noblemen's tombs at a gala ceremony last Thursday morning at the foot of the Khafre Pyramid.

The tombs, which all date from the Old Kingdom, are located at the eastern and western cemeteries on the Giza plateau and have undergone extensive restoration.

Work on the second pyramid, which has been going on since 2009, was deemed necessary because the humidity rate inside soared to 80 per cent and salt encrustation was seen to be causing rapid deterioration.

Ali Al-Asfar, director-general of the Giza Plateau, explained that each visitor to the pyramid exhaled about 20 grammes of water vapour. The salt this contained accumulated and caused cracks in the pyramid's inner walls.

After a 10-year-break, Khafre's pyramid and 6 royal tombs open on Giza plateau

Following years of arduous efforts by scientists to rehabilitate Egypt's middle pyramid and tombs first discovered in 1927, people can dive into heart of Old Kingdom again

by Nevine El-Aref , Thursday 11 Oct 2012

Dozens of journalists, photographers, TV anchors as well as top government officials at the Ministry of State for Antiquities (MSA) gathered Thursday at a large tent erected at the void area in front of the Khafre pyramid in Giza to celebrate the official re-inauguration of Egypt's second largest pyramid and six Old Kingdom royal and noblemen tombs.

“I am very happy today to reopen these tombs which were closed for more than ten years due to restoration,” an ecstatic MSA chief Mohamed Ibrahim told reporters.

The restored historic site includes the tomb of King Khufu’s granddaughter, along with those of five Old Kingdom noblemen. 

The tombs, which were discovered in 1927 by American Egyptologist George Reinser, have been closed for restoration on more than one occasion in the past. In one of those endeavours, a site management plan was implemented at the Giza plateau the early 1990s to preserve these historic treasures.

The newly inaugurated tombs are located at the eastern and western side of Giza necropolis. They bear impressive facades, more like temples, and large chambers with rock-hewn pillars.

“Although these tombs may be sparse in decoration, they are rich in architectural features,” Ali El-Asfar, the director general of Giza antiquities department told Ahram online.

The first tomb, located at the eastern cemetery, which includes the Old Kingdom’s royal tombs, belongs to Princess Mersankh, the granddaughter of the builder of the Great Pyramid King Khufu. This tomb was originally intended for Mersankh's mother, Queen Hetepheres II, but was assigned to the daughter upon her sudden death. 

In Egypt, archaeologists re-open tombs to woo tourists

By Simon Denyer

GIZA, Egypt — More than 4,500 years since the paint was first applied, the reds, yellows and blues still stand out on the walls of the tomb of Queen Meresankh III.

A hunter throws a net to catch water birds, craftsmen make papyrus mats while a stream of people carry baskets filled with offerings for the afterlife.

Decorating the walls all around are paintings, reliefs and statues of Meresankh herself, draped in a leopard-skin cloak, standing beside her mother in a boat pulling papyrus stems through the water, or being entertained by musicians and singers.

Egypt’s tourism industry has been battered since last year’s revolution, but here, beside the pyramids of Giza, officials are trying to attract the visitors back.

The tomb of Meresankh, whose names means lover of life, will be opened to the public for the first time in nearly 25 years later this year, while five other tombs of high priests — buried under the desert sands for decades — will be thrown open.

“We want to give people a reason to come back, to give them something new,” said Ali Asfar, director general of archaeology on the Giza plateau.

Meresankh was a woman whose life was intimately bound up in the pharaoh’s incestuous rule. Her tomb lies a stone’s throw east of the Great Pyramid of her grandfather Khufu, better known as Cheops.

Six Old Kingdom tombs to be opened at Giza Plateau

The tomb of King Khufu’s granddaughter, along with those of five more Old Kingdom noblemen, is to be opened to the public soon

by Nevine El-Aref , Sunday 18 Mar 2012

At the Western Cemetery on the Giza Plateau are located six Old Kingdom tombs of nobles and top officials of the Fourth Dynasty, waiting for their official opening after restoration.

Although these tombs may be sparse in decoration, they are rich in architectural features. Discovered early in the last century, the tombs have impressive facades, more like temples, and large chambers with rock-hewn pillars.

The first one belongs to Princess Mersankh, the granddaughter of King Khufu. This tomb was originally built for her mother, Queen Hetepheres II, but on Mersankh's sudden death the tomb was donated to her. The tomb was discovered in 1927 by archaeologist George Reisner where a black granite sarcophagus was found along with a set of Canopic jars, and a limestone statue depicting Queen Hetepheres II embracing her daughter. The sarcophagus is now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo while the statue is in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

The second tomb belongs to Seshem-Nefer, the overseer of the two seats of the House of Life and keeper of the king's secrets. “It is one of the largest tombs on the Giza Plateau,” Ali El-Asfar, director general of archaeology on the plateau, told Ahram Online, adding that it contains funerary, hunting and offering scenes, as well as a depiction of the Seshem-Nefer's daily life.

The third tomb belongs to Senefru-Kha-Ef, the king's treasurer and priest of the god Apis. El-Asfar said that the tomb’s inner walls also reveal typical scenes of the dead official and his children.
The fourth tomb was constructed for Nefer, the overseer of the soul priests. Its walls are decorated with scenes showing the Nefer's daily life with his family and dog.

The fifth tomb belongs to Yassen, the overseer of the king’s farms. The sixth tomb was for Ka-Em-Ankh, overseer of the royal treasury.

According to Mohamed Ibrahim, minister of state for antiquities, the walls of the tombs have been cleaned and reinforced, graffiti left by visitors removed and inscriptions and paintings conserved. The walls are now protected by wood, and lighting and ventilation systems have been installed. A path linking the tombs to the Great Pyramid of Khufu was established in order to facilitate visits.
These tombs were previously opened 25 years ago, said Ibrahim, adding that they were closed for restoration according to the rotation system introduced at the Giza Plateau in the 1990s, under which some of the noblemen’s tombs will be closed for restoration each year.

“Regretfully they were never opened again,” El-Asfar said.

As they open now, others will close for restoration and preservation.

Source: http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/37069.aspx