Egypt will send a robot up narrow shafts in the Great Pyramid to try to solve one of the mysteries of the 4,500-year-old pharaonic mausoleum, Egypt's top archaeologist said on Monday.
Zahi
Hawass told Reuters he would this week inspect a robot designed to
climb the two narrow shafts which might lead to an undiscovered
burial chamber in the pyramid of Cheops at Giza, on the outskirts
of Cairo.
Hawass said the shafts and stone panels which block them could mark
the location of the burial chamber of Cheops, also known as
Khufu.
That would
mean none of the chambers already discovered in the pyramid were
the pharaoh's real tomb.
The shafts were last probed in September 2002, when a robot drilled
a hole through one of the stone panels to reveal a small empty
space at the end of which lay another panel, which appeared cracked
and fragile.
The new robot, designed by a university in Singapore over two
years, would drill through that panel and the stone slab blocking
the second shaft.
"It's very important to reveal the mystery of the pyramid. Science
in archaeology is very important. People all over the world are
waiting to solve this mystery," Hawass said.
"I believe that these doors are hiding something...It could be, and
this is a theory, that maybe Khufu's chamber is still hidden in the
pyramid," he said.
The two shafts, which rise from an unfinished chamber in the
pyramid, have puzzled archaeologists since they were first
discovered in 1872.
Some Egyptologists had said the shafts, which measure 20cm by 20cm
were built as vents. Others said they were passages for the king's
soul to ascend to the afterlife.
"I hope that we will do this work and in a few months from now we
will really know what's behind them," Hawass said.
The Cheops pyramid, which is 145 metres high, is the biggest of the
pyramids on the Giza plateau on the western edge of the Egyptian
capital.
