Scientists discover mystery void within Great Pyramid
EGYPT: The pharaoh Khufu still has his secrets.
Deep within the Great Pyramid of Giza, above the passageways and chambers long ago plundered by grave robbers, particle physicists have found something those relic hunters missed: a ‘‘void’’ that has lain hidden for 4500 years. And no-one can say what it is.
The last human to see this cavity was the builder who placed the stones that covered it in 2500BC, as they completed the pharaoh’s tomb. The next humans to see it did so last year, thanks to subatomic particles.
The space they saw, revealed in a scientific paper yesterday, is 30 metres long and completely cut off from the network of tunnels already found inside the pyramid. Instead, it runs above, and parallel to, the Grand Gallery, a famous corridor linking two of the pyramid’s chambers.
‘‘This void was hidden, I think, since the construction of the pyramid. It was not accessible,’’ said Dr Mehdi Tayoubi, who is part of an academic collaboration called the Heritage Innovation Preservation Institute in Paris.
He said the researchers were ’’very confident’’ that the find was real. Now they want to explore it, possibly using drones.
Ironically, Tayoubi and his colleagues were brought in to solve a mystery, not create one. Even the most-studied archaeological site in the world has its controversies.
One of those is how it was built. How did Khufu, helped by thousands of slaves, create a building that for three millennia and more - until the construction of England’s Lincoln Cathedral in 1311 - was the tallest in the world? Written records are no help. The traveller and writer Herodotus described the construction process, but he was writing 2000 years later.
So instead, scientists are trying to see what clues are held in the pyramid’s internal structure.
Since 2015, Tayoubi and his colleagues have been scanning the pyramid by looking for muons, which are made by cosmic rays hitting the upper atmosphere. These fundamental particles travel at close to the speed of light, and while they can pass through solid material, the denser it is, the more of them will be stopped.
This means that, much like with X-rays, you can find out the properties of anything they pass through simply by counting the number of muons that make it. By doing this from two positions, you can build a three- dimensional picture. It was that picture that alerted the team to the existence of the void within the pyramid.
One clue to its nature is that it traces the route of the Grand Gallery. This implies the tantalising prospect that it may link other hidden chambers, or contain artefacts itself.
Zahi Hawass, a previous Egyptian antiquities minister, is vocal in his belief that the pyramid still contains the tomb of Khufu, unplundered. He thinks the chambers known about today are mere decoys.
‘‘I really believe that [Khufu’s] chamber is not discovered yet and all the three chambers were just to deceive the thieves, and the treasures of Khufu [are] still hidden inside the Great Pyramid,’’ he said before the latest revelations.
Most archaeologists believe it is more likely that the void is left over from the construction process - perhaps a second ramp used to haul up stone. But because it is completely sealed, they will all have to wait to find the truth.
Hany Helal, from Cairo University, said they were now appealing for Egyptologists to help them in interpreting the find, and developing a robotic device that could be sent in, possibly after drilling a small hole.
‘‘There is something there,’’ he said. ‘‘What is that something? We cannot say.’’ – The Times