Cosmic-Ray Muons Reveal Hidden Void in the Great Pyramid

Cosmic rays have revealed a hidden void inside the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, scientists said Thursday. They don’t know what’s in it or what it was built for, but it does not look like a secret burial chamber.

It’s shaped more like a 30-yard-long gallery or corridor, the international team of researchers reported in the journal Nature.

“We open the question to Egyptologists, architects and archaeologists: what could it be?” Hany Helal of Cairo University told reporters on a telephone briefing.

“We don’t know for the moment if it’s horizontal or inclined if it is made from one structure or several successive structures,” Mehdi Tayoubi, president of France’s Heritage Innovation Presentation (HIP) Institute, added.

“What we do know is that this void is there, that it is impressive, that it was not expected by any kind of theory.”

Rumours have abounded for centuries about hidden rooms in the pyramids at Giza. But it’s hard to get through the tons of stone blocks used to make the 455-foot-high great pyramid of Khufu (or Cheops.) Radar can’t do it well.

“A lot of people tried to dig some tunnels looking for chambers,” Tayoubi said. Tourists get in through the “robbers’ tunnel,” dug out centuries ago.

Visitors looking for mummies or treasure have been disappointed. The 4,500-year-old tomb was robbed millennia ago.

Yet archaeologists have long believed there is more to the inside than the three chambers, corridors and air shafts that have been discovered.

The international ScanPyramids team used special film plates to catch, over a period of months, particles called muons that are created when high-energy cosmic rays hit the upper atmosphere.

They are few and far between — that’s why it took months — but they can pass through the stone and collect on the plates.

They produced a fuzzy image of some kind of open space above what’s known as the Grand Gallery of the pyramid.

“These results constitute a breakthrough for the understanding of Khufu’s Pyramid and its internal structure,” the researchers wrote. “While there is currently no information about the role of this void, these findings show how modern particle physics can shed new light on the world’s archaeological heritage.”

It’s the “first major inner structure found in the Great Pyramid since the 19th century,” the team added.

Muon imaging has also been used to peer inside Fukushima’s nuclear reactor, at archaeological sites near Rome and into the Teotihuacan Pyramid of the Sun in Mexico.

Now the question is how to get a better look at what’s in there, but that would require drilling.

Nonetheless, Jean-Baptiste Mouret of France’s national institute for computer science and applied mathematics is working to design a small drone that could explore the space if the team gets permission from the Egyptian government.

Last year, the same team used muon detection and infrared measurements to image some kind of corridor right above the entrance to the pyramid.

The cache of 13,000 Ancient Clay Texts Found in Sohag

A German-Egyptian mission at Al-Sheikh Hamad archaeological site in Tel Atribis in Sohag has unearthed a collection of 13,000 ostraca (clay vessel fragments) which bear engraved text in demotic, hieratic, Coptic, Greek and Arabic, the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities and Tourism said on Wednesday.

“This is a very important discovery because it sheds light on the economy and trade in Atribis throughout history.

The text reveals the financial transactions of the area’s inhabitants, who bought and sold provisions such as wheat and bread,” said Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the antiquities ministry’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.

Christian Latis, head of the German mission, explains that archaeologists are now studying the ostraca in order to learn more about the activities of the area’s past inhabitants.

Latis suggests that the text written on the ostraca indicates that the area may have housed a school for teaching demotic, hieratic, hieroglyphic and Greek writing.

Mohamed Abdel-Badia, head of the central department for Upper Egypt, revealed that the mission has also found a collection of ostraca that date back to the Roman or Byzantine eras.

Atribis was one of the ancient towns of the nine nomes of ancient Egypt. It is located on the west bank of the Nile southwest of Sohag city.

These mysterious Egyptian head cones actually existed, grave find reveals

Researchers have revealed details of mysterious cone-shaped headgear discovered at the ancient Egyptian city of Amarna.

“Ancient Egyptian art frequently depicted people wearing cone-shaped headgear, but none had ever been found,” the researchers explained in a statement emailed to Fox News.

Archaeologists from the Amarna project have been working with Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities to analyze the mysterious head cones. A head cone was discovered at a grave in Amarna in 2010 and another head cone was uncovered at the site five years later.

“This confirms the objects actually existed, which some researchers were sceptical of,” the researchers added in the statement. “Instead, they thought they were just artistic additions, like Christian halos.”

“It is unknown why these cones were included in the burials,” the experts continued. “They may have been thought to purify the wearer so they could engage with the rituals and deities of the afterlife. Alternatively, they could be connected with ideas of fertility and resurrection.”

A paper on the research is published in the journal Antiquity.

Egypt continues to reveal new details of its right history. Archaeologists, for example, recently discovered a long-lost 2,200-year-old ancient temple linked to Pharaoh Ptolemy IV.

In a separate project, an ancient fortress built by Pharaoh Ramses II is revealing its secrets. Archaeologists recently uncovered an ancient cemetery near the famous Giza pyramids just outside Cairo.

In another project, experts uncovered the 2,500-year-old remains of a powerful high priest in dramatic fashion.

The opening of the priest’s stone sarcophagus was broadcast by the Discovery Channel during “Expedition Unknown: Egypt Live,” a two-hour live event. Archaeologists discovered what they describe as an “exquisitely preserved” mummy inside the sealed sarcophagus, covered in gold banding.

The incredible find was made at Al-Ghorifa, a remote site about 165 miles south of Cairo. Located within the inner chambers of the burial site, experts accessed the sarcophagus via a network of ancient tunnels.

Elsewhere, archaeologists found a large ram-headed sphinx that is linked to King Tutankhamun’s grandfather. In other projects, a teenage girl’s skeleton was discovered in a mysterious grave near the Meidum pyramid, south of Cairo.

In April, experts announced the discovery of dozens of mummies in ancient desert burial chambers. Archaeologists also recently explained the strange brown spots on some of the paintings in King Tutankhamun’s tomb.

In January, archaeologists announced the discovery of ancient tombs in the Nile Delta north of Cairo. In a separate project, two ancient tombs dating back to the Roman period were uncovered in Egypt’s the Western Desert.

Archaeologists discovered a stunning sphinx statue at an ancient temple in southern Egypt in a separate project.

Last summer, experts unlocked the secrets of a mysterious ancient ‘cursed’ black granite sarcophagus. The massive coffin, which was excavated in the city of Alexandria, was found to contain three skeletons and gold sheets with the remains.

Archaeologists also found the oldest solid cheese in the tomb of Ptahmes, mayor of the ancient city of Memphis.

A mummy buried in southern Egypt more than 5,000 years ago has also revealed its grisly secrets, shedding new light on prehistoric embalming practices.

Human remains with golden tongues found in Egypt

Two golden tongues were found still inside the mouths of an ancient Egyptian man and woman who died over 2,500 years ago, the country’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced on Sunday.

The identities of those interred are unknown, but the stone sarcophaguses were placed alongside each other.

A University of Barcelona archaeological mission discovered the pair of tombs containing the golden prosthetics at Oxyrhynchus, modern-day El Bahnasa, which is located some 220 kilometres south of Cairo.

The tombs are believed to be from the Saite dynasty, a late period of ancient Egypt that ended in 525 BC.

According to the ministry, golden tongues were placed inside the mouths of the dead to enable them to speak with Osiris, the ancient Egyptian god of the underworld, who judged those on their way to the afterlife.

The male’s tomb was still sealed, an unusual find, keeping the mummy inside in a good state of preservation, according to Esther Pons Melado, co-director of the archaeological mission of Oxyrhynchus

“This is very important because it’s rare to find a tomb that is totally sealed,” she told the National News in a Monday report on the discovery.

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Along with the mummy, there were four canopic jars that were used to preserve the internal organs of the deceased. In addition, archaeologists found a scarab, other amulets, and about 400 funerary figurines made of faience, a tin-glazed earthenware.

The woman’s tomb appeared to have been opened in the past and the contents were not in a good condition, Melardo said.

An additional three golden tongues were also found outside the tombs, according to the Tourism and Antiquities Ministry. They were dated to the Roman period in Egypt that began in 30 BC.

The excavation team of 14 included members from Spain, Italy, France, the US and Egypt.

In February, archaeologists at the ancient Egyptian site of Taposiris Magna found over a dozen tombs, one of which contained a mummy with a similar golden tongue in the skull.

3600 Year Old Pits Full Of Giant Hands Discovered In Egypt Archaeologists Discovered

An astonishing discovery occurred in the fall of 2011 when a team of archaeologists working in the palace of ancient Avaris, Egypt, found the remains of 16 human hands in four graves in the compound.

Two of the pits, located in front of the throne room, contain one hand each. And the other two holes, located outside the palace, have the remaining 14.

The team of archaeologists who made the discovery determined that all the bones date to about 3,600 years ago, indicating that they all came from the same ceremony.

All the hands appear to be abnormally long or even more significant than usual. They were classified into four different graves within what scientists believe was the actual Hyksos complex.

The Austrian archaeologist, Manfred Bietak, in charge of the excavation of the ancient city of Avaris, explained to the Egyptian Archeology newspaper that the hands seem to support the stories found in the writings and art of ancient Egypt, this being the first physical evidence of that the soldiers cut off the right hands of their enemies to receive a reward of gold in return.

Besides cutting off the enemy’s hand being a symbolic means of removing the enemy’s force, the meaning of this ceremony would also be supernatural as this was done in a sacred place and temple as part of a ritual.

So far, there is no evidence to show what kind of people these hands belonged to. Whether the hands belong to Hyksos or Egyptians cannot yet be determined.

When Bietak was asked to explain why he believed this ritual might have been performed, he said: “You deprive him of his power forever. Our finding is the first and only physical evidence. Each moat represents a different ceremony.”

The two pits, each containing a hand, were placed directly in front of a throne room. This section of Egypt was once controlled by an occupying force that most historians believe were initially Canaanites, so there may be a connection to the invasion.

The other hands, which may have been buried at the same time or a later date, are found on the outer grounds of the palace.

These sacrifices are not surprising in an area that faced a foreign invasion.

Egyptians often called on their gods to punish invading armies with plagues, famine, or general misfortune. It is possible that these sacrifices were part of a curse against the invading armies.

Much more needs to be investigated, but many signs point to this being some ritual for a god or gods. It is not known to whom these hands belonged. But the fact that the hands were abnormally large indicates that these people were specially selected, which is more characteristic of a sacrifice than killing an invading army.

Two hands were buried separately may indicate that these offerings were intended to be incredibly satisfying to the gods. In addition, it could enter the theory of the Hyperborean civilization, where some ancient writings comment that this civilization was vast, that they came from Lemuria where the waters of the Indian Sea submerged that continent.

This find could reveal the true story of a civilization of enormous dimensions. The discovery of these giant hands could shed light on ancient previously discussed stories, which were only fables or inventions of conspiracy theorists.

Female pharaoh’s temple reveals teamwork of Egypt’s ‘ancient masters’

The artists and sculptors of ancient Egypt may not be household names like Michelangelo, Raphael, or Caravaggio, but a new study of a female pharaoh’s temple suggests they had a lot in common with their Renaissance brethren. Instead of being solo artisans, sculptors worked in teams, with talented masters overseeing large crews of rookie chiselers and other assistants.

Archaeologists say the study’s approach of scrutinizing the sculptors’ thousands of strokes is novel in Egyptology, which has long focused on interpreting written records. It reveals both the resources—and passion—ancient Egyptians poured into their art.

“The artists who created all this really flew below the Egyptological radar,” says Dimitri Laboury, an Egyptologist at the University of Liège who was not involved in the study. “But those artists were key figures in a society which invested so much in artistic production.”

For almost 2 centuries, researchers regarded tomb and temple decorations not as works of art in their own right, but as sources of information about ancient Egyptian religious beliefs. And artists in ancient Egypt didn’t sign their work, further pushing them into the background.

As a result, little is known about individual Egyptian artists and their methods, despite the key role paintings and reliefs played at a time when most people were illiterate.

Textual evidence hints at the presence of sculptors and painters but rarely the details of their work or who they were.

To better understand the work that went into decorating ancient temples, University of Warsaw archaeologist Anastasiia Stupko-Lubczynska and colleagues studied the temple of Hatshepsut, who ruled between 1478 B.C.E. and 1458 B.C.E. and was one of Egypt’s few female pharaohs. Her temple, which stretches 273 meters by 105 meters, was built almost 3500 years ago at Deir el-Bahari, near modern-day Luxor.

In a 70-square-meter room at the back known as the chapel of Hatshepsut, two 13-meter-long walls are carved with seemingly endless processions of men carrying offerings—sheaves of wheat, baskets of birds, and other goodies—to the seated Hatshepsut. The 200 figures occupy two-thirds of the room’s wall space.

Stupko-Lubczynska was there as part of a painstaking—and ongoing—effort by the University of Warsaw’s Polish-Egyptian expedition to clean and restore the temple’s damaged walls. Before conservationists cleaned the figures, Stupko-Lubczynska and a team of draftspeople spent hundreds of hours between 2006 and 2013 documenting the chapel walls by hand, copying the carvings on sheets of plastic film at a one-to-one scale. “We had to repeat the process done by the carvers, drawing all their lines, duplicating their steps,” she says.

In the process, the archaeologist identified tiny details in the soft limestone of the chapel, including clumsy chisel strokes and later corrections.

“Because we have so many figures with repetitive details, we can compare the details and workmanship,” Stupko-Lubczynska says. “If you look at enough of them, it’s easy to see when someone was doing it properly.”

Slowly, she and her colleagues began to see subtle variations in what had seemed like an army of cut-and-paste icons. And some figures were visibly worse—legs and torsos with sloppily chiseled edges, or multiple chisel blows to shape wig curls that only took two or three expert strokes elsewhere.

The analysis also showed the work was a team effort, done in phases by different artists, Stupko-Lubczynska reports today in Antiquity. “The wig can be awfully done, and in the same figure, the face is perfect,” she says.

“Maybe the master artisans came in at the end to finish the figure.” With no natural light in the cavernous, windowless hall, there must have also been assistants holding oil lamps crowding onto the scaffolds.

Laboury likens the effort to the busy workshops of Renaissance painters, where the master focused on the most challenging tasks while delegating backgrounds, supporting characters, and prep work to trainees.

Evidence that more skilled hands were correcting beginners’ mistakes suggests that even a pharaoh’s temple was seen as a place to school rookies. “You have more experienced hands next to less experienced hands,” Laboury says. “The master was training apprentices on the spot.”

“This study really adds to our understanding of craftsmanship and the way these ancient artists worked,” says Gabriele Pieke, an Egyptologist at the Reiss-Engelhorn Museum in Mannheim, Germany. She and others hope the look behind the scenes at Hatshepsut’s chapel will help raise the profile of the skilled artists responsible for so much of what we marvel at in ancient Egyptian tombs and temples.

After spending so much time tracing the work of long-gone artists, Stupko-Lubczynska says she began to feel a connection with—or at least empathy for—the long-suffering apprentices. “I like it more when somebody made a mistake or failed,” says. “You can feel that they were normal people like us, who could be tired or hungry or ill.”

Inscribed Temple Blocks Unearthed in Heliopolis

The Egyptian-German mission has uncovered a collection of decorated blocks and fragments from the King Nactanebo I temple at the Matariya archaeological site in Heliopolis.

The discovery was made several weeks ago during excavation work at the central area of the temple.

The blocks and fragments are made of basalt and belong to the western and northern façade.

A northern extension probably connected the sanctuary with the main axis of the precinct of the sun god.

Several blocks of the Lower Egyptian geographical procession were found, among them the scene with the Heliopolis Nome while others display the representation of the additional nomes of Lower Egypt.

Aymen Ashmawy, head of the ancient Egyptian antiquities sector and head of the mission from the Egyptian side, explains that the inscriptions mention the regnal years 13 and 14 (366/365 BCE) as well as the dimensions and the materials used in this sanctuary.

“Several blocks were unfinished too and no further decoration work seems to have been commissioned after the death of Nectanebo I in 363 BCE,” he said, adding that other architectural elements attest to the building projects of Ramesses II (1279-1213), Merenptah (1213-1201 BC) and Apries (589-570 BCE).

The activity of the Ramesside Period is also represented by an inlay for relief of the early 19th dynasty (c. 1300 BCE). A statue fragment of Seti II (1204-1198) adds to the evidence for this king of the late 19th Dynasty at Heliopolis.

Dietrich Raue, head of the German mission, pointed out that the main processional axis was investigated further west. Scattered fragments point to separate building units of the Middle Kingdom, the 22nd Dynasty (King Osorkon I, 925-890 BCE) and a sanctuary for Shu and Tefnut of King Psametik II (595-589 BCE).

READ ALSO: A MUMMY DISCOVERED IN A VAST BURIAL GROUND OF EGYPT’S PHARAOHS COULD CHANGE HOW ANCIENT HISTORY IS UNDERSTOOD

Raue said that some fragments of the statuary of King Ramesses II, a part of a baboon statue, a statue base and fragments of a quartzite obelisk of King Osorkon I and parts of cult installations such as an offering table of Thutmose III, 1479-1425 BCE were found.

These finds point to the continuous royal support and investment in the temple of the sun and creator god at Heliopolis and the excavation work provided additional evidence for the 30th Dynasty and the Ptolemaic Period in the precinct.

Dietrich Raue pointed out that sculptures and limestone casts for reliefs and moulds used in the production of faience ushebti (a type of funerary figurine) testify to the activity of workshops before all evidence of the temple functioning ceases during the Roman Era.

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A mummy discovered in a vast burial ground of Egypt’s pharaohs could change how ancient history is understood

A new analysis of an ancient Egyptian mummy suggests that advanced mummification techniques were used 1,000 years earlier than previously believed, rewriting the understood history of ancient Egyptian funerary practices.

The discovery centres around a mummy, known as Khuwy, believed to have been a high-ranking nobleman. He was excavated at the necropolis, a vast ancient burial ground of Egyptian pharaohs and royals near Cairo, in 2019.

Scientists now believe that Khuwy is much older than previously thought, dating back to Egypt’s Old Kingdom, which would make him one of the oldest Egyptian mummies ever to be discovered, The Observer reported.

The Old Kingdom spanned 2,700 to 2,200 B.C.E and was known as the “Age of the Pyramid Builders.”

Khuwy was embalmed using advanced techniques thought to have been developed much later. His skin was preserved using expensive resins made from tree sap, and his body was impregnated with resins and bound with high-quality linen dressings.

The new analysis suggests that ancient Egyptians living around 4,000 years ago were carrying out sophisticated burials.

“This would completely turn our understanding of the evolution of mummification on its head,” Professor Salima Ikram, head of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, told The Observer.

“If this is indeed an Old Kingdom mummy, all books about mummification and the history of the Old Kingdom will need to be revised.”

“Until now, we had thought that Old Kingdom mummification was relatively simple, with basic desiccation – not always successful – no removal of the brain, and only occasional removal of the internal organs,” Ikram told The Observer. Ikram was surprised by the amount of resin used to preserve the mummy, which is not often recorded in mummies from the Old Kingdom.

She added that typically more attention was paid to the exterior appearance of the deceased than the interior.

“This mummy is awash with resins and textiles and gives a completely different impression of mummification. In fact, it is more like mummies found 1,000 years later,” she said.

Ikram told The National that the resin used would have been imported from the Near East, most likely Lebanon, demonstrating that trade with neighbouring empires around that time was more extensive than previously thought.

The discovery has been documented in National Geographic’s new series, Lost Treasures of Egypt, which starts airing on 7 November. Tom Cook, who produced the series for Windfall Films, told The Observer that Ikram initially could not believe that Khuwy dated back to the Old Kingdom because of the advanced mummification techniques.

“They knew the pottery in the tomb was the Old Kingdom but [Ikram] didn’t think that the mummy was from [that period] because it was preserved too well,” Cook told the outlet.

“But over the course of the investigation, she started to come round [to the idea].”

Khuwy’s ornate tomb featured hieroglyphics that suggested the burial took place during the Fifth Dynasty period, spanning the early 25th to mid-24th century B.C.E, The Smithsonian said.

Archaeologists also found pottery and jars used to store body parts during the mummification process that dated back to that time.

Ikram’s team will conduct more tests to confirm that the remains do belong to Khuwy.

She told The National that one possibility was that another person could have been mummified and buried centuries later in a re-purposing of the tomb.

“I remain hesitant until we can conduct carbon-14 dating,” Ikram told the outlet, adding that it would likely take six to eight months.