Scanning and sensing technologies are likely to be the main tools for pyramid investigators in years to come. Infrared analysis from satellites in orbit around the earth has even helped locate buried pyramids, so there are plenty of examples now of how such technologies can enhance our understanding of these enigmatic structures.
But we might also be helped by robots. One chamber in the Great Pyramid not accessible by humans was, four years ago, explored with machines. Researchers wait next to the great pyramids of Giza during an infrared thermography experiment to map the thermal footprint of the walls Credit: Getty Images. Even this high-tech expedition provided just a tantalising glimpse of what is in this long-lost chamber of the Great Pyramid. Until the scientific evidence can enlighten us, we will remain in the dark about what other rooms might or might not be inside the pyramids of Egypt.
The Secret World Of Share using Email. By Chris Baraniuk 13th November Experts are thrilled by this trove of papyri. Mark Lehner, the head of Ancient Egypt Research Associates, who has worked on the pyramids and the Sphinx for 40 years, has said it may be as close as he is likely to get to time-traveling back to the age of the pyramid builders.
Tallet himself is careful to speak in more measured terms. Tallet has been toiling quietly on the periphery of the ancient Egyptian Empire—from the Libyan Desert to the Sinai and the Red Sea—for more than 20 years without attracting much notice, until now.
He finds it both amusing and mildly annoying that his discoveries are suddenly attracting attention in the scholarly press and popular media. We are standing in an encampment in a desert valley a couple of hundred yards from the Red Sea near the modern Egyptian resort town called Ayn Soukhna. Tallet and his crew—part French, part Egyptian—sleep in rows of tents set up near the archaeological site. Above the tents is a steep sandstone hillside into which the ancient Egyptians carved deep caves, or galleries, in which they stored their boats.
Tallet leads us up the hillside and clambers on a rocky trail along the cliff face. You can see the outlines of a set of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs carved delicately into the stone. There is the royal seal of Mentuhotep IV, a little-known pharaoh who ruled for just two years in about 2, B. On a clear day you can see the Sinai Desert about 40 miles away across the Red Sea from where we stand.
Before these recent excavations, the ancient Egyptians were not widely known to be notable sea travelers, and were thought to confine themselves to moving up and down the Nile or hugging the Mediterranean coast. The work that Tallet and others have done in the last two decades has shown that the ancient Egyptian Empire was as ambitious in its outward reach as it was in building upward in its colossal monuments at Giza.
Tallet, a short, almost bald man of 49, wears wire-rimmed glasses and, on this day, a tan wool sweater vest. He looks like someone you would be more likely to encounter in a Paris library or office than in a desert camp.
I like natural landscapes. Tallet grew up in Bordeaux, the son of a high-school French teacher his father and a professor of English literature his mother. He scoured the edges of the Egyptian world—the Libyan desert on one end, the Sinai Desert on the other—looking for, and finding, previously unknown Egyptian rock inscriptions. In the Sinai he also found abundant evidence that the ancient Egyptians mined turquoise and copper, the latter essential for making weapons as well as tools.
This, in turn, fit with his discovery of the harbor at Ayn Soukhna that the Egyptians would have used to reach the Sinai. The area was not recognized as an ancient Egyptian site until when the cliffside hieroglyphs were noted by an Egyptian archaeologist.
Ayn Soukhna has gradually become a popular weekend destination, and since the construction of a larger, faster highway about ten years ago, it is now only about a two-hour drive from Cairo. They are finding the remains of ovens for smelting copper and preparing food as well as quotidian objects such as mats and storage pots.
Among the only landmarks in the vicinity is the Monastery of Saint Paul the Anchorite, a Coptic Orthodox outpost founded in the fifth century near the cave, which had been inhabited by their hermitic patron saint. The area is almost the definition of the middle of nowhere, which is probably why it long failed to attract the attention of either archaeologists or looters.
The remoteness also helps explain why the papyri left in the desert there survived for thousands of years. Precisely because administrative centers like Memphis and Giza were occupied and reused for centuries—and then picked over or looted repeatedly in the intervening millennia—the survival rate of fragile papyri from the early dynasties there has been close to zero. We went into those where the doors were the least obstructed by the sand or decayed rock, and found them to be catacombs; they are well cut and vary from about 80 to 24 feet, by 5; their height may be from 6 to 8 feet.
When the whole event reached the press, archaeologists denied basically the whole experiment and even worse discredited Gantenbrink of his brilliant discovery. Since then nothing, known to the public, has been done to open this door. With modern technology it would be absolutely no problem to open this door, what are they trying to hide from us or what are they afraid of? After all, they are funded with pubic funds and tax money; they owe to inform the public of their finds.
I asked Dr. Zahi Hawass this question personally when I had the rare chance to interview him. A bit surprised about my knowledge he said that they are planning to open this door probably next year.
Meanwhile I found out why he might not be in a hurry with revealing his recent excavations. His boss the minister of archaeology will resign later on this year, chances are that Hawass will fill his position and would consequently be credited with all the discoveries then.
Hopefully this will change their system a bit, but there are many other and more important and lucrative reasons for the Egyptologist to hold back with their information. Many ancient reports and legends talk about secret chambers and treasures which content will be much more valuable than the face value of the expected gold.
Ancient maps of secret chambers exist and plenty of weird things have happened around the pyramids. Many technological machines have unexplainably failed when operating or conducting tests near or inside the pyramids. These Egyptologists know exactly what they are doing, they know how to play the game and they know how to answer critical questions.
When I asked Dr. Hawass if we could get permission to go inside this Chamber he generously granted permission in front of the rolling cameras saying that his assistant would take us there. I stayed persistent saying that it would be no problem and that I could return some other day. Happily they agreed that we could do it tomorrow. The next day when I got there, I was told that Dr. The following day was Sunday and we had to leave for the Sinai Desert.
We planned on stopping by the Pyramids on the way back one week later, and the tourism board even planned a press conference with us at the Pyramids the press conference was supposed to be about my biking adventure, it had nothing to do with the Pyramids.
We never got to go inside the Unfinished Chamber, not that I expected that Dr. Hawass would tell me, a bike rider, his deepest secrets and his knowledge about the Pyramids, but just the attempt to find out anything proofed to be very interesting. If he would have known my personal interest in this matter he would have probably never even granted me the interview.
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