CAIRO, March 2 (Reuters) – A hidden passage nine meters (30 feet) long has been discovered near the main entrance of the 4,500-year-old Great Pyramid of Giza, Egyptian archaeological officials said, and it could lead to further discoveries. Thursday.
The pyramid, the last of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, was discovered under the Scan Pyramids project, which has been using non-invasive technology including infrared thermography, 3D simulations and cosmic-ray imaging since 2015. structure.
An article has been published In the journal Nature on Thursday, it said the discovery could contribute to knowledge about the pyramid’s construction and the purpose of a gabled limestone structure that sits in front of the porch.
The Great Pyramid was built around 2560 BC as a monumental tomb during the reign of Pharaoh Khufu or Chebs. Built at a height of 146 meters (479 ft), it currently stands at 139 meters and is the tallest man-made structure since the Eiffel Tower in Paris in 1889.
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[1/4] A hidden passageway inside the Great Pyramid of Giza discovered by researches of the Scan Pyramids Project for Egyptian Tourism Antiquities is seen on March 2, 2023 in Giza, Egypt.
The unfinished walkway was created to redistribute the pyramid’s weight around the main entrance used by tourists or around an as-yet-undiscovered room or space, about seven meters away, said Mustafa Waziri, head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.
“We’re going to continue our scanning, so we’ll see what we can do … find out what we can find underneath it or at the end of this corridor,” he told reporters after a press conference ahead. of the pyramid.
Five chambers above the king’s burial chamber in another part of the pyramid are thought to have been built to redistribute the weight of the massive structure. The pharaoh may have had more than one burial chamber, Waziri added.
The scientists located the corridor using cosmic-ray muon radiography before retrieving images of it by feeding a 6mm-thick endoscope from Japan through a small joint in the pyramid’s stones.
In 2017, Scan Pyramids announced that researchers had discovered a void at least 30 meters long inside the Great Pyramid, the first major internal structure discovered since the 19th century.
Report by Aidan Lewis; Editing by Mark Heinrich
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