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.

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.

Ruins of Bustling Port Unearthed at Egypt's Giza Pyramids

By Owen Jarus, LiveScience Contributor   |   January 28, 2014

TORONTO — The remains of a bustling port and barracks for sailors or military troops have been discovered near the Giza Pyramids. They were in use while the pyramids were being built about 4,500 years ago.

The archaeologists have been excavating a city near the Giza Pyramids that dates mainly to the reign of the pharaoh Menkaure, who built the last pyramid at Giza. Also near the pyramids they have been  excavating a town, located close to a monument dedicated to Queen Khentkawes, possibly a daughter of Menkaure. The barracks are located at the city, while a newly discovered basin, that may be part of a harbor, is located by the Khentkawes town.

Several discoveries at the city and Khentkawes town suggest Giza was a thriving port, said archaeologist Mark Lehner, the director of Ancient Egypt Research Associates. For instance, Lehner's team discovered a basin beside the Khentkawes town just 1 kilometer (0.62 miles) from the nearest Nile River channel.

This basin may be "an extension of a harbor or waterfront," Lehner said at a recent symposium held here by the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities. Lehner said his team also found at Giza charcoal remains of cedar, juniper, pine and oak, all trees that grew in a part of the eastern Mediterranean called the Levant, along with more than 50 examples of combed ware jars, a style of pottery from that region. Additionally, large amounts of granite from Aswan, located on ancient Egypt's southern border, have long been known to be at Giza, and these could have been brought down the Nile River to Giza's port.

"Giza was the central port then for three generations, Khufu, Khafre, Menkaure," said Lehner in his presentation, referring to the three pharaohs who built pyramids at Giza.

Heritage: Hampstead resident Sir Flinders Petrie measured the pyramids of Giza and laid the foundations of Egyptology

by Tom Marshall

Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie was a Victorian explorer who measured the Pyramids at Giza, laid the foundations for Egyptology – the study of ancient Egypt – and was the first biblical archaeologist in Palestine.

His insatiable curiosity led him to unearth how ancient civilization lived, worked and functioned. He discovered the world’s oldest portraits and evidence – through inscriptions – of written communication between Egyptian hieroglyphics and the Semitic alphabet. Another find was Kahun Gynaecological Papyrus, the oldest known medical text. He once stumbled across a stone slab with what is believed to be the earliest Egyptian reference to Israel.

His sense of precision was top drawer. Aged 19 he measured Stonehenge with 100 per cent accuracy and was said to know the exact distance between his eye and the tip of his finger.

In the field he was remembered as an eccentric and would dig in the nude, but dress suitably for formal luncheon in his tent. In order to maximise efficiency – on location – he often drew his findings with both hands at the same time, wielding a pencil in each. A forward thinker, he established archaeology as a science by painstakingly documenting his findings. He built a camera from scratch, a contraption that would become famous as the “biscuit-tin camera” and probably took the earliest extant group of pinhole photographs.

At home in Hampstead he would discuss and develop his beliefs in eugenics with his good friend and neighbour, the statistician Karl Pearson (1857–1936). His mission was to preserve and understand artefacts rather than simply pilfer, purloin and profit and once wrote that, “spoiling the past has an acute moral wrong in it”.

Egypt's city of bean counters suffered flash floods

05 June 2013 by Michael Marshall

IT'S the admin centre of the ancient world. The workers who built the pyramids of Giza and the accountants and managers who organised them achieved architectural immortality – but you wouldn't know it from where they lived. Built in a flood zone, their town was repeatedly destroyed by flash floods. Bizarrely, the Egyptians kept rebuilding in the same place despite the continual devastation.

During the reign of the pharaoh Menkaure, thought to be between 2532 and 2503 BC, Egypt was run from a city on low ground near the Giza plateau. Known as Heit el-Ghurab, this was a large administrative centre surrounded by houses, workshops and bread ovens. After decades of occupation, it was abandoned and buried under tens of metres of sand.

Karl Butzer of the University of Texas at Austin and colleagues have been excavating Heit el-Ghurab since 2001. They discovered layers of muds and sands, which they dated by identifying the relics in them, as well as radiocarbon dating.

The team found that the site was hit by three floods in 26 years during the reign of the previous pharaoh, Khafre. The first destroyed the town, while the others caused widespread damage. But under Menkaure the devastation multiplied.

Giza Secret Revealed: How 10,000 Pyramid Builders Got Fed

by Owen Jarus, LiveScience ContributorDate: 23 April 2013


The builders of the famous Giza pyramids in Egypt feasted on food from a massive catering-type operation, the remains of which scientists have discovered at a workers' town near the pyramids.

The workers' town is located about 1,300 feet (400 meters) south of the Sphinx, and was used to house workers building the pyramid of pharaoh Menkaure, the third and last pyramid on the Giza plateau. The site is also known by its Arabic name, Heit el-Ghurab, and is sometimes called "the Lost City of the Pyramid Builders."

So far, researchers have discovered a nearby cemetery with bodies of pyramid builders; a corral with possible slaughter areas on the southern edge of workers' town; and piles of animal bones.


Based on animal bone findings, nutritional data, and other discoveries at this workers' town site, the archaeologists estimate that more than 4,000 pounds of meat — from cattle, sheep and goats — were slaughtered every day, on average, to feed the pyramid builders.

This meat-rich diet, along with the availability of medical care (the skeletons of some workers show healed bones), would have been an additional lure for ancient Egyptians to work on the pyramids.

"People were taken care of, and they were well fed when they were down there working, so there would have been an attractiveness to that," said Richard Redding, chief research officer at Ancient Egypt Research Associates (AERA), a group that has been excavating and studying the workers' town site for about 25 years.

"They probably got a much better diet than they got in their village," Redding told LiveScience.

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.

Pharaoh's playground revealed by missing fractals

20 July 2012 by Colin Barras

THE Dahshur royal necropolis in Egypt was once a dazzling sight. Some 30 kilometres south of Cairo, it provided King Sneferu with a playground to hone his pyramid-building skills - expertise that helped his son, Khufu, build the Great Pyramid of Giza. But most signs of what went on around Dahshur have been wiped away by 4500 years of neglect and decay. To help work out what has been lost, archaeologists have turned to fractals.

All around the world, river networks carve fractal patterns in the land that persist long after the rivers have moved on (see picture). "You can zoom in as much as you like, at each magnification the [natural fractals] would look the same," says Arne Ramisch at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Potsdam, Germany. This should be the case around Dahshur, because it sits on the fringes of the Western desert, where river channels drain into the floodplain of the Nile - but it isn't.

Ramisch and his team generated a digital model of the topography around Dahshur and assessed its fractal geometry as part of their archaeological investigations. They found a surprisingly large area around the pyramids - at least 6 square kilometres - where the natural fractal geometry was absent. The find suggests that the entire area was once modified, probably under the orders of Sneferu and other pharaohs of the Old Kingdom.

"The modification is hard to spot, especially if your eyes are untrained," says Ramisch. "Even with trained eyes, it is difficult to believe the gigantic footprint the Egyptians have left."

The disturbance to the natural fractals can even give a sense of what occupied the site. In this case, says Ramisch, it was probably broad terraces several kilometres long, which would have "increased the sense of monumentality of the pyramids".

"It's a new approach," says Keith Challis at the University of Birmingham, UK. There is a well-established link between human activity and landscape modification, he says. "This provides an interesting new way of identifying such modification."

Source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528743.500-pharaohs-playground-revealed-by-missing-fractals.html

Egypt's Sphinx, Pyramids threatened by groundwater, hydrologists warn

New water pumping system at Giza Plateau has ecologists worried about possible damage to Egypt's best-known historical monuments

Nevine El-Aref , Thursday 5 Jul 2012

One month ago, Giza's antiquities inspectorate installed a new system to pump subterranean water out from under Egypt's historical Sphinx monument and the underlying bedrock.

Subterranean water levels at the Giza Plateau, especially the area under the valley temples and Sphinx, have recently increased due to a new drainage system installed in the neighbouring village of Nazlet Al-Seman and the irrigation techniques used to cultivate the nearby residential area of Hadaeq Al-Ahram.

The system involves 18 state-of-the-art water pumps capable of pumping 26,000 cubic metres of water daily.

The project, which cost some LE22 million and is financed by USAID, has raised fears among some hydrologists and ecologists that it could erode the bedrock under the Sphinx and lead to the historic monument's collapse.

Kamal Oda, professor of hydrology at Suez Canal University, told Ahram Online that, according to a report by Egypt's Ministry of State for Antiquities, the machines will pump some 9.6 million cubic metres a year of water at a depth of 100 metres beneath the Sphinx. This, he warned, could cause a drop in the ground level and increase the risk of erosion and collapse of both the Sphinx and the nearby great Pyramids of Giza.

Ali El-Asfar, director of Giza Plateau antiquities, for his part, challenged Oda’s assertion. He said that the pumping machines would stop automatically when subterranean water levels reached 15.5 metres above sea level.

El-Asfar told Ahram Online that the Sphinx, the Great Pyramids and the plateau's valley temples were "completely safe," since water levels underneath them had reached 4.6 metres below ground level – the same levels seen in ancient times.

"Such levels are natural," said Minister of State for Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim. He went on to point out that the Nile River had once reached the plateau, where a harbour had been dug for the boats transporting stone blocks for the as-yet-unbuilt pyramids from faraway quarries in Aswan and Tora.

Source: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/9/40/46972/Heritage/Ancient-Egypt/Egypts-Sphinx,-Pyramids-threatened-by-groundwater,.aspx

A Girl and Her Goddess

By Marie-Astrid Calmettes, Egyptologist
Jessica Kaiser, Osteologist
and Brian V. Hunt

More than 2,500 years ago, a very ill young woman died and was buried at the already long-abandoned site of the city of the pyramid builders at Giza. Her grave goods included an amulet of an obscure goddess that suggests the woman may not have been from the Giza area.

Not only that, but she may not have been of Egyptian descent.

GPMP’s primary investigation at Giza is the 4th dynasty settlement of the pyramid builders. In one quarter of our dig site, however, we’re faced with the reality that hundreds of Late Period (747-525 BC) burials and a few Old Kingdom (2575-2134 BC) burials cover the site above the 4th dynasty levels. We cannot investigate the older levels without first carefully excavating, recording, and removing the Late Period burials.

At the end of the 4th Dynasty, the pyramid builders abandoned their city to the desert sands, as the 5th Dynasty kings moved the workers to Abusir and Saqqara. Two millennia later, the ancient Egyptians began using the site of the former Giza workmen’s village to bury their dead. The first of these were interred on a slope along the western edge of our dig site.

Big Question for 2012: The Great Pyramid's Secret Doors

By Rossella Lorenzi

Will the mystery over the Great Pyramid's secret doors be solved in 2012?

I dare say yes. After almost two decades of failed attempts, chances are now strong that researchers will reveal next year what lies behind the secret doors at the heart of Egypt's most magnificent pyramid.

New revelations on the enduring mystery were already expected this year, following a robot exploration of the 4,500-year-old pharaonic mausoleum.

But unrest in Egypt froze the project at its most promising stage, after it produced the first ever images behind one of the Great Pyramid's mysterious doors.

Now the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), once led by the controversial yet charismatic Zahi Hawass, is slowly returning to granting permits for excavations and archaeological research.

"As with other missions, we have had to resubmit our application to be allowed to continue. We are currently waiting for the various committees to formalise the approval," project mission manager Shaun Whitehead, of the exploration company Scoutek UK, told Discovery News.

"Once we're allowed to continue, I have no doubt that we can complete our work in 2012," he added.

Built for the pharaoh Cheops, also known as Khufu, the Great Pyramid is the last remaining wonder of the ancient world.

Great Pyramid shut to avoid 11/11/11 rituals

EGYPT will close the Great Pyramid of Giza later today to avoid any rituals by a group rumoured to have plans to mark the date of 11/11/11 at the site, an official said.

The decision came "after much pressure" from Egyptian Internet users saying strange rituals were going to be held "within the walls of the pyramid on November 11, 2011", said Atef Abu Zahab, head of the Department of Pharaonic Archaeology.

The Supreme Council of Antiquities confirmed the closure of the tourist site in a statement that only referred to the need for maintenance following a busy period during Muslim holidays.

The Pyramid of Cheops is the biggest and most famous of the three Giza pyramids. It houses the tomb of Pharaoh Khufu, and is one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

Numerologists are anxiously awaiting today, when the digital alignment of ones occurs at 11.11 am, which some believe will lead to unusual events.

Thousands of people plan to meet at the time around the world for ceremonial dances, and several pages devoted to the date have appeared on social networking website Facebook.

Source:
http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/great-pyramid-shut-to-avoid-111111-rituals/story-e6frfku0-1226192063707

The mysteries of the pyramids

by Anwaar Abdalla

Cairo, 14 September 2011 - The Giza Pyramids are among the most famous monuments in the world. They also raise endless questions by their visitors. Part of their mystery is the fact that there are no definite answers to questions such as: Why they were built? How they were built? Who built them? What do they symbolize? In our attempt to find answers, we find many theories.

Approximately 90 percent of the theories in Egyptology are based on hypothesis, and only 10 percent are proven ones. Bearing in mind that there are 3 mysteries connected to the pyramids, namely the mystery of the tools used, the mystery of the colors and the mystery of mummification, the pyramids are a challenge to all the technologies that we have in the 21^st century.

Even the name ‘Pyramid’ is a mystery. Historians believe the word is derived from the Greek word ‘pyramos’-which means a type of bread that takes the shape of a triangle. Interestingly enough, the original hieroglyphic “MER”, which means an instrument used to ascend to the sun, has no connection with the Greek word that might help answer the question about the pyramid. Several researchers reject the traditional theory that a pyramid is a tomb for a king.

K .Mendelssohn believes that, ”While the funerary function of the pyramids cannot be doubted, it is rather more difficult to prove that the pharaohs were ever buried inside them...”. In fact, more than 118 pyramids in Egypt were found empty! A possible answer to this particular puzzle could be that grave robbers who plundered the pyramids a long time ago removed the mummified remains of kings.