A hidden passage nine meters (30 feet) long has been discovered near the main entrance to the 4,500-year-old Great Pyramid of Giza, which could lead to more finds, Egyptian antiquities officials said on Thursday.
The discovery inside the pyramid, the last of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still standing, was made as part of the Scan Pyramids project, which since 2015 has used non-invasive technology including infrared thermography, 3D simulations and cosmic ray imaging to peer inside. structure.
A paper published Thursday in the journal Nature said the discovery could contribute to understanding the construction of the pyramid and the purpose of the pedimented limestone structure that sits in front of the passageway.
The Great Pyramid was built as a monumental tomb around 2560 BC during the reign of Pharaoh Khufu, or Cheops. Built to a height of 146 meters (479 ft), it now stands at 139 meters and was the tallest man-made structure until the Eiffel Tower in Paris in 1889.
The unfinished corridor was probably created to redistribute the weight of the pyramid either around the main entrance, now used by tourists, nearly seven meters away, or around another as yet undiscovered chamber or space, said Mostafa Waziri, head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.
“We’re going to continue scanning, so we’ll see what we can do … to see what we can find underneath it or just at the end of this corridor,” he told reporters after a news conference outside the pyramids.
The five rooms on top of the royal burial chamber in another part of the pyramid are believed to have been built to redistribute the weight of the massive structure. It was possible that the pharaoh had more than one burial chamber, Waziri added.
Scientists detected the passageway using cosmic ray muon radiography and then acquired images of it by bringing a 6mm-strong endoscope from Japan through a tiny joint in the pyramid’s stones.
In 2017, Scan Pyramids researchers announced the discovery of an empty space at least 30 meters long inside the Great Pyramid, the first large interior structure found since the 19th century.
