The Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities has recently reported the presence of two cavities inside the Great Pyramid of Cheops, built on the Giza plateau. These have been found thanks to the technology used by the international mission ScanPyramids, launched a year ago to study the interior of these immense funerary monuments with non-destructive methods . The University of Cairo and the French Institute for Innovation and Preservation of Heritage (HIP) are behind this project.
One of these cavities has been detected in the upper area of the door that leads to the pyramidal mausoleum and another in the northeast face of the pyramid. It is still unknown what these two cavities could be used for, as well as their exact dimensions, shape and position . In the coming months, new studies will be carried out in order to determine their nature and learn more about them.
But how has this discovery been made? The latest technologies are those that are allowing us to discover secrets that are thousands of years old – the construction of the Pyramid of Cheops took place about 4,500 years ago. On this occasion, they have been infrared thermography, photogrammetry – a technique to determine the dimensions and positions of objects from photographs – and especially the muon scanner – elementary particles capable of passing through all kinds of solid bodies and that, in doing so , distinguish dense areas from those that are empty – the ones that have helped scientists detect these cavities or anomalies.
Zahi Hawass, former Minister of Antiquities and one of the most famous , controversial and media Egyptologists in the world, leads the committee that is supervising the work of ScanPyramids, and “in principle” gave the approval to its first conclusions.
At the end of 2015, this group of international scientists who scan the pyramids announced that they had found temperature differences in various blocks of the tomb of Cheops that suggested that there was “something behind”, as they explained.
Image: HIP.institute
