The Great Pyramid may still contain Khufu's intact pharaonic tomb
Discovery of mysterious doors suggests possibility of hidden treasures

By Kyle Cassidy
Special to The Daily Star
Thursday, July 14, 2005

The Great Pyramid may still contain Khufu's intact pharaonic tomb

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.
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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.