Archaeologists have long known the three main rooms inside the pyramid of Cheops - the tomb of the pharaoh, the chamber of his wife and the underground burial room. Connects the interior of the Main Gallery - a 47-meter corridor with a steep slope.
However, now an unknown room has been added to their number, the entrance to which is walled up. The hidden void, 8 meters long and 30 meters high, is located directly above the main gallery. Scientists do not yet know what the secret room hides.
Maybe it's a treasure chest. Or this room was included in the layout of the building for architectural purposes. Keith Spence, an Egyptologist at the University of Cambridge, believes that the latter assumption is the most correct. “If you look at the cross-section of the pyramid, you will see that above the pharaoh's chamber there is a series of small rooms necessary for the builders to roof with incredibly heavy granite blocks. I suspect that the secret room found is the same vestige of a constructive ramp that was required to make it easier for the builders to work.
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How was the cache discovered?
The interdisciplinary project ScanPyramids was launched in October 2015 under the supervision of the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities. The team of scientists studied the internal structure of the burial structures using cosmic radiation. The fact is that the Earth is daily bombarded by particles of outer space. These particles - muons - are able to pass through rather dense objects, such as a stone, but when they cross voids, their trajectory changes. By tracking the trajectory of the muons, scientists can create a 3D model of the internal structure of the pyramids.
So, already known voids (the chambers of the pharaoh and his wife), as well as a room hidden from view, appeared on the computer screen.
Room found. What's next?
The scientists said that the chamber of secrets should be explored further to understand its inner form. So far, only the location of the hidden void is known, but it is not clear whether it is one room or several adjacent rooms, whether it is inclined or curved, as well as the purpose of the room.
At a press conference, the team stated that such a study is physically possible, but it requires special permission from the competent authorities. New technologies allow today to explore the room as carefully as possible. It is enough to drill a small hole and fly a tiny drone into it to get all the answers.
How was the pyramid at Giza built?
This is one of the biggest archaeological mysteries in history. Most of the buildings have modern counterparts - but not the Egyptian pyramids. describes only the logistics of construction: how huge blocks were delivered to the Giza desert. But how the Great Pyramid itself was built is still a mystery. If it is confirmed that the hidden room was needed for construction, scientists will have a clue.
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Publication date: 11/24/2017
There are many theories about what might be in the pyramids: from objects of worship to treasures or scrolls with ancient knowledge.
The controversy escalated after, in the 90s, a robot lowered into one of the shafts stumbled upon mysterious "doors". Did the ancient Egyptians want to hide something from us?
Already for the ancient Greeks and Romans, the pyramids - especially from Giza - seemed to be something very old and inspiring respect because of the skill of the builders. Plato (5th-4th century BC) in the Timaeus dialogue, in which he, among other things, speaks of Atlantis, puts the following words into the mouth of the priest Sonchis Sais:
Greek civilization against the background of much older and more developed cultures, the knowledge of which was kept by the Egyptian priests, seems like a child.
The first search for secret rooms
For centuries, the Egyptian pyramids have excited the minds and aroused great curiosity about what they were hiding. This riddle especially attracted the attention of the Arabs, who, when the land above the Nile came under their control, literally began to “demolish” the pyramids.
In the first decades of the 9th century, Caliph Al-Mamun (d. 883), who, according to legend, believed that records containing the knowledge of the ancients would be found inside the pyramid of Cheops, mobilized people to make a hole in it. It cost a lot of effort, but in the end we managed to find an ascending corridor.
Photo: pravda-tv.ru Medieval Arab historians and chroniclers (such as Al-Masudi or Al-Idrisi) wrote about miracles, gold, and mummies that the caliph probably found in the pyramid. Today, Egyptologists cast doubt on the legend of the curious Al-Mamun, who, according to available data, himself had to explore the dark and stuffy interior of the pyramids. It is difficult to imagine Arab masons working "blindly".
Probably, it has long been known that in the monument, in addition to the system of lower corridors, there is another unique system cameras and passages located above.
Questions Specialist ancient egypt archaeologist Mark Lenner added that the Great Pyramid had been breached much earlier. Already in the period of the Sais dynasty (7-6 century BC), the priests had to restore the damage caused by thieves who were looking for gold, and not scrolls with wisdom.
The traces of mortar from various repairs were probably recognizable, and hundreds of years later the caliph cleared the existing tunnel, which - interestingly - lay just below the original entrance to the structure, hidden and sealed by its creators.
The Pyramid of Menkaure has a "split" in the middle, at first glance it looks like a giant keyhole. This is a trace of the idea of the 12th century Egyptian caliph Al-Aziz Utman (son of Saladin), who decided that the pyramids, as relics of the pagan past, should be destroyed, and at the same time check what is hidden inside.
Photo: galleryhip.com Al-Aziz Uthman began the demolition of the smallest pyramid in Giza, but soon the dismantling work was stopped.
His team worked for several months, after which it was decided that the "dismantling" was not worth the effort, because the structure was too strong.
Using robots to find secret cavities
Controversy was also caused by the discovery of the German engineer Rudolf Gantenbrink. In 1992-1993, he launched into narrow mines Great Pyramid, considered ventilation ducts, the robot he designed. During the last test, he overcame 65 meters of the southern channel, after which his cameras registered a stone "door" with two copper handles.
Photo: Rudolf Gantenbrink This discovery has fired the imagination of millions of people and raised questions about what lies behind the stone barrier. Less public were the further stages of research on the “Gantenbrink doors”. In 2002, a robot was launched into the canal, which managed to overcome the "barrier", behind which, as it turned out, there was another very similar one.
It wasn't until 2011 that Judy's robot, designed by Robert Richardson of the University of Leeds, was able to detect with its small, endoscope-like camera a small space covered with lines and hieroglyphs that were painted in red paint.
Photo: .ice-nut.ru Zaki Hawass himself, then the Minister of Antiquities, said that such discoveries indicate that unknown chambers may be hiding the pyramids.
It is worth noting that the Judy robot also had its drawbacks, so work on improving the robot was continued. And in 2015, a new improved version of the robot began to work in the monuments, an interesting story about new version Jedi was filmed by NTD.
Video: NTD
Secret rooms in the pyramid of Cheops
In recent decades, attempts have been made to determine whether other non-open spaces exist in the pyramids or in their vicinity. It is worth noting that some studies have led to the application of new cavities to the scheme of the pyramid, so the assumptions about the presence of other cavities in the pyramids may be quite reasonable.
Examined cavities on Cheops pyramid scheme | A previously unknown region of emptiness was discovered during physics research from the HIP Institute in Paris. Presumably, this may be a secret tomb or a passage into it.
In an article published in the journal Scientific Reports, scientists say that when they discovered this empty zone, they realized that something interesting and unusual was in front of them. Therefore, they concentrated on studying this area, located directly above the corridor to the tomb of Cheops.
“Now we are sure that it really exists, and it was the first find of its kind in the pyramid of Cheops since the Middle Ages, when it was opened by Caliph Al-Mamun in the 9th century AD,” said one of the researchers, Mehdi Tayubi.
One of the seven wonders of the world - the Pyramid of Cheops, 145 meters high and 230 meters wide - was built in the middle of the third millennium BC by Pharaoh Khufu (Cheops), a representative of the fourth dynasty ancient kingdom, during which all the "great pyramids" of Ancient Egypt were built. This structure is considered the tallest and largest of all ever created by mankind.
For the past two centuries, scientists have intensively explored the pyramid. During this time, three rooms were discovered, in one of which the pharaoh himself was supposedly buried, in the other his wife, and the third was considered a bait or a trap for robbers. In the walls of the corridors that lead to the tomb of Khufu, unusual channels and structures were found, which today scientists consider to be elements of a "security system" that protected the pharaoh from defilers.
Despite such a long study of the pyramid, many scientists are sure that the real tomb has not yet been discovered, but is hidden somewhere in the thickness of the structure, because the mummies of the pharaoh and his wife were never found
Two years ago, physicists from the University of Nagoya, Paris and Cairo began searching for these secret rooms, studying the pyramid with cosmic particle detectors and space telescopes as part of the ScanPyramids project.
French archaeologists and physicists, together with Japanese scientists, have adapted telescopes capable of "seeing" muons - charged particles resulting from the collision of cosmic rays with gas molecules in the air - to search for voids and hidden spaces in ancient architectural monuments.
This technique works very simply: the muon flux decreases in air and in empty space much more slowly than when passing through the thickness of rocks or the earth, which makes it possible to search for secret rooms by bursts in the muon background.
Participants of the ScanPyramids project last year announced a sensational discovery - they managed to find several previously unknown voids inside the pyramid, which may be the secret tombs of the "master of two houses" and his wife.
Despite criticism from archaeologists and Egyptologists who accused physicists of misinterpreting the data, scientists are confident that their measurements are absolutely accurate, and the void area could not have arisen due to differences in the properties of stones or due to construction errors.
Voids of such size and configuration could not have accidentally appeared between the blocks, either from an engineering or any other point of view.
"The Egyptians were too good builders to mess up the construction of the pyramid, leave a "hole" in it and create a room or corridor somewhere else," said Hani Elal from the University of Cairo (Egypt).
The physicists rechecked the obtained data again, and again found out that there are no other voids in the pyramid, except for the already known corridors and rooms. If their previous measurements were erroneous, the pictures obtained by different muon telescopes would not match.
All these images showed that above the main corridor of the pyramid there is a zone of emptiness 30 meters long, 8 meters high and about 2 meters wide. This zone can be either a "solid" corridor, running parallel to the ground or up or down, or a set of rooms. So far, physicists do not have enough data to exclude either the first or the second option.
Scientists do not yet interpret their discovery in any way and do not declare that they managed to find a secret room - this task, according to them, should be dealt with by Egyptologists. However, physicists hope that it will serve as a start for a discussion about whether it is worth trying to penetrate this void zone and, if so, how it should be done.
In the near future, as the scientists noted, they plan to continue studying this void zone, as well as other regions of the Cheops pyramid, including the tombs of the pharaoh himself, and will begin to scan other pyramids that may hide secret rooms and voids unknown to us.
Scientists expect that new research will help to understand exactly how the pyramids were built and whether it is possible to trust those descriptions of the process of their construction that have come down to our time in the writings of Herodotus.
However, the method used by physicists in the Cheops pyramid can not be used everywhere. Muon scanners, for example, will not help to find the secret tomb of Nefertiti: it is not known how voids are distributed in the rocks located above them.
In addition, “scanning” by peers turns out to be long, and parts cannot be delivered to Giza or the Valley of the Kings to speed up the process with the help of man-made accelerators - it is too expensive, and these devices themselves are huge in size. It is impossible to create muons directly, because they arise from the decay of kaons and pions.
TBILISI, November 3 - Sputnik. Physicists from Japan, Egypt and France have found a previously unknown area of emptiness in the pyramid of Cheops, which may be a secret tomb or a passage to it, according to an article published in the journal Nature.
As part of the ScanPyramids project, scientists scanned ancient structures with a special apparatus, as a result of which a previously unknown space was discovered.
As stated Researcher the Paris Institute of Heritage, Innovation and Conservation Mehdi Tayubi, has not yet been established what the discovered room could be used for.
"When we saw this area of emptiness, we realized that we had stumbled upon something very interesting and big, abandoned all other projects and concentrated on studying this area, located right above the corridor to the tomb of Cheops. Now we are sure that it really exists, and this the first find of this kind in the pyramid of Cheops since the Middle Ages," Tayubi said.
Skeptics
Meanwhile, the famous Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass believes that the "emptiness" in the pyramid of Cheops is not new - historians have known about the existence of such spaces for a long time, writes Ahram Online.
Hawass, who is also former minister on affairs of antiquities of Egypt, doubts in existence of any secret rooms in a pyramid.
"The stone blocks inside the pyramid itself, unlike its outer blocks, do not have the same shape and can vary greatly in size. The presence of some area of emptiness in the pyramid does not mean that there is some kind of room. ScanPyramids members are better do science, not create sensations, like those people who claimed that the pyramids were built by aliens. I call such unfortunate scientists pyramidiots, "said Hawass.
The pyramid of Cheops, one of the seven wonders of the world, was built in the middle of the third millennium BC, during the time of Pharaoh Khufu (Cheops), a representative of the fourth dynasty of the Old Kingdom, at the same time as all the "great pyramids" of Ancient Egypt. With a height of 145 meters and a width and length of 230 meters, this structure remains one of the tallest and largest structures ever created by mankind.
Japanese physicists have discovered a giant cavity in the pyramid of Cheops using muon scanning. They reported the discovery in a magazine. Nature .
The Pyramid of Cheops was built about 4500 years ago and is the largest of the Egyptian pyramids. Its height is 139 m. Unlike most of the pyramids of that time, which were built over the tombs, there are several rooms in the pyramid of Cheops. The Chambers of the Pharaoh, the Chambers of the Queen and the Great Gallery were discovered as early as the 9th century and studied in detail in the 19th.
However, the question of whether there are other rooms in the pyramid and whether the tomb of the pharaoh is located in one of them, still occupies scientists and enthusiasts.
Nature/nature.com
The scan was part of the project ScanPyramids launched in October 2015. The goal of the scientists was to discover the premises inside the pyramids of Cheops and Khafre in Giza, as well as the Bent and Pink Pyramids in Dahshur. The project uses infrared thermography, muon radiography and 3D reconstruction.
Cosmic rays coming from the Sun and beyond solar system, are mostly made up of protons. When a high-energy particle enters the Earth's atmosphere, it creates a flurry of particles, mostly pions and muons, which themselves create other particles. Negatively charged muons appear for millionths of a second, moving at almost the speed of light and causing no harm to objects on the surface of the Earth.
So, according to statistics, several hundred muons fly through a person's head per minute.
However, flying through dense objects, muons lose some of their energy, so with the help of special sensors, physicists have already learned to find secret voids behind stone walls, inside volcanoes, in the Mayan and Egyptian pyramids.
“If you're looking for voids, you have to look for an excess of muons in a certain direction,” explains Arturo Menjasa-Roja, a physicist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico City who uses the method to study the Mexican pyramids. -
Muon tracking allows you to localize and evaluate the shape of the cavities.”
“The beautiful thing is that muons lose enough energy to fix them, but not enough to be completely absorbed by the target. This is truly a fabulous gift from nature, adds particle physicist Roy Schwitters of the University of Austin, who was not involved in the project. “Scientists have indeed found a goldmine.”
Japanese physicists from Nagoya University placed muon detectors in the chambers of the Queen - the stone absorbs these particles, and if there is a cavity near the sensor, it will catch more muons. Two more groups of researchers joined the verification of the data obtained.
All three teams agreed that the results indicated a large room above the Grand Gallery.
ScanPyramids
The length of the discovered cavity is 30 meters. It can be located both parallel to the ground and at an angle, the researchers note. Perhaps it is actually divided into several smaller rooms. The purpose of the room is still unknown, but its size indicates that it clearly played a significant role in the tomb of the pharaoh.
"The chances of finding a hidden tomb are zero,"
- says Egyptologist Aidan Dodson. However, experts hope that the find will reveal much more about how the pyramid was built.
Perhaps, Dodson suggests, the ancient Egyptian builders wanted to reduce the load of masonry on the ceiling of the Great Gallery with the help of the room. Similar solutions were used, for example, in the pyramid of Pharaoh Snefru, the father of Cheops.
But geologist and engineer Colin Reader believes that the new room was too far from the Grand Gallery to have such a purpose.
According to him, it may lead to another room, just as the Great Gallery leads to the chambers of the Pharaoh.
The third theory is advanced by the Egyptologist Bob Brier. He had previously suggested that the Grand Gallery was part of a system of counterweights by which the pyramid builders moved the granite blocks in the construction of the Pharaoh's chambers. It is possible that the new premises had a similar purpose, he said.
Researchers have discovered two previously unknown voids in the Cheops pyramid. One of them is located in the northern part of the pyramid, the other - in the northeast. Both resemble corridors. It is not yet possible to say whether they are related.
