The Great Pyramid May Contain Khufu's Intact Pharaonic Tomb

[prezhorusin04]

I know Hawass is a mouthpiece for the NWO, but this might prove to be insightful..
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The Great Pyramid may still contain Khufu's intact pharaonic tomb
Discovery of mysterious doors suggests possibility of hidden treasures
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=4&article_id=16740
By Kyle Cassidy
Special to The Daily Star
Thursday, July 14, 2005

For years scholars have believed that the pyramid of King Khufu, largest of the three "great" pyramids at Giza, had been plundered in antiquity and everything of value, including the body of Khufu himself, had been removed.

Now, Zahi Hawass, the secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities and director of the Giza Plateau, suspects that might not be the case.

"I really personally believe," he recently told a sold-out lecture hall in the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Philadelphia, "that the secret chamber of Khufu is hidden inside the pyramid."

What changed his mind was the discovery of a set of previously unknown doors, hidden in the shafts of the so-called "queen's chamber" of the Great Pyramid. Located beneath the "grand gallery," the queen's chamber never housed a queen, and in fact, its exact purpose remains unknown. There is some speculation that it was an abandoned burial chamber, or possibly held offerings for the deceased.

In 1872 an archaeologist named Waynmann Dixon discovered a pair of what were thought to be ventilation shafts in this chamber hidden behind concealed stones. They were about 20 centimeters square and remained largely unexplored until 1993 when Rudolf Gantenbrink, an archaeologist with the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo, sent a robot up the south shaft.

The robot was stopped after 64 meters by what appeared to be a sold block of stone with copper handles. However, Hawass became intrigued when sonar readings showed that the "block" was only 7.6 centimeters thick. In 2002, Hawass and a team of archaeologists drilled through the door during a live broadcast sponsored by the National Geographic Association.

"We did it [live] because we wanted to show that we had nothing to hide," said Hawass. In the past, although he regularly invited people to test out their bizarre theories, pseudo-scientists have accused Hawass of hiding or covering up secrets of the pyramids, of even building a secret passage from his office bathroom to the Great Pyramid.

Behind the door, Hawass and a live global audience found not answers, but more mystery: a second door only 24 centimeters beyond the first, which once again blocked the way.

The next day, off camera, Hawass and the team sent the robot up the northern shaft. This shaft made a series of abrupt bends, left, and right, and left again, before running into a third door also with two copper handles.

Both shafts terminate somewhere within the structure as there are no holes in the outside of the pyramid. In the past, scholars have speculated that because of their alignment with the North Star and constellation Orion, these shafts could be symbolic exits for King Khufu's ka, or soul. Many archaeologists today find this unlikely because these small openings are unique to this pyramid. At the time of Khufu's reign, false doors served as symbolic gateways to the afterlife. As to whether the shafts terminate in larger rooms or not are still anybody's guess.

The doors' copper handles are of much interest to scholars. "If you go to the Cairo museum," points out Hawass, "you'll find the canopic jars of King Tutankhamen, they have two copper handles - just like these. Those are for ropes, so the jars could be pulled. Maybe these doors were pulled into place."

In October 2005, a robot built by the University of Singapore will return to the queen's chamber to see what lies behind the second and third doors. This drilling, Hawass says, will not be broadcast live, but rather the results will be announced afterwards in a press release.

"If something interesting is discovered," Hawass says, "we're going to show it to people all over the world."

At the same time, a team from Birmingham in the United Kingdom will perform non-intrusive radar mapping on areas in and around the pyramids.

While it is possible these shafts actually lead to an undiscovered burial chamber, Hawass will not be upset or surprised if they turn out to lead nowhere.

"There may be nothing inside the pyramid. What's important is the adventure of archaeology, and to show this adventure to the people," he says

One thing is certain: There will be answers - and more questions - in Cairo come October.

Kyle Cassidy is a scholar affiliated with the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR). This article is published with the cooperation of ASOR.