What room was found in the Cheops pyramid? Scientists have found a secret room inside the Cheops pyramid. How the cache was discovered

MOSCOW, November 2 – RIA Novosti. Physicists have found a previously unknown void area in the Cheops pyramid that may be a secret tomb or a passage into it, according to a paper published in the journal Nature.

“When we saw this area of emptiness, we realized that we had come across something very interesting and big, we abandoned all other projects and concentrated on studying this area, located directly above the corridor to the tomb of Cheops. Now we are sure that it really exists, and this "This is the first discovery of its kind in the Cheops pyramid since the Middle Ages, when it was opened by Caliph Al-Mamun in the 9th century," said Mehdi Tayoubi from the HIP Institute in Paris (France).

Physicists have found two “unknown voids” in the Cheops pyramidArchaeologists and physicists have discovered two, as they put it, “previously unknown voids” inside the Cheops pyramid, which may be secret rooms where the remains of Pharaoh Khufu rest.

Secrets of the Pharaohs

The Pyramid of Cheops, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, was built in the middle of the third millennium BC, during the time of Pharaoh Khufu (Cheops), a representative of the fourth dynasty of the Old Kingdom, at the same time as all the “great pyramids” of Ancient Egypt. This structure, 145 meters high and 230 meters wide and long, remains one of the tallest and largest buildings ever created by mankind.

Over the past two centuries, scientists have discovered three rooms in the pyramid, in one of which the pharaoh himself was supposedly buried, in the other his wife, and the third was considered a bait or trap for robbers. In the walls of the corridors that lead to Khufu's tomb, unusual channels and structures were found, which scientists believe are elements of the “security system” that protected the pharaoh from defilers.

The mummies of the pharaoh and his wife were never discovered, which is why many archaeologists believe that in fact their tombs are still hidden in the thickness of the pyramid. Two years ago, scientists from the universities of Nagoya, Paris and Cairo began searching for these secret rooms, studying the pyramid using cosmic particle detectors and telescopes as part of the ScanPyramids project.

Breath of space

Every second, millions of muons are formed in the upper layers of the Earth's atmosphere - charged particles resulting from the collision of cosmic rays with gas molecules in the air. These collisions accelerate muons to near-light speeds, thanks to which they penetrate tens and hundreds of meters deep into the surface of the planet. Scientists' measurements show that every square meter of the Earth's surface absorbs about 10 thousand of these particles.

French archaeologists and physicists, together with Japanese scientists, have adapted telescopes that can “see” muons to search for voids and hidden rooms in ancient architectural monuments.

This technique works very simply - the flux of muons decreases in the air and in empty space much more slowly than when passing through rock or earth, which makes it possible to search for secret rooms by bursts in the muon background.

In October last year, participants in the ScanPyramids project announced a sensational discovery - they managed to find several previously unknown voids in the pyramid, which could be the secret tombs of the “lord of two houses” and his wife. This discovery caused sharp rejection among archaeologists and Egyptologists, who accused physicists of incorrectly interpreting the data obtained.

Physics and lyrics

These accusations forced scientists to take repeated measurements using three different muon telescopes. This time, as Tayoubi emphasized, the observations were carried out according to the same rules and principles by which the Higgs boson and other particles unknown to science were searched for at the LHC and other accelerators.

“Our measurements absolutely rule out that this void area could have arisen due to differences in the properties of the stones or due to errors in construction,” says Zahi Hawass. Voids of this size and configuration could not have appeared between the blocks by chance, neither with engineering nor any other technology. "The Egyptians were too good builders to screw up the pyramid, leave a hole in it and create a room or corridor somewhere else," said Hany Helal of Cairo University.

Checking whether this is true or not, scientists installed a set of films sensitive to the action of muons in the supposed tomb of Cheops’s wife, and placed semiconductor particle detectors at the bottom of the pyramid. After a few months, they collected the data, processed it and compared it with how muons should move through the pyramid if there were no other voids in it, except for the already known corridors and rooms.

If the initial results of scanning the Cheops pyramid were erroneous, then, as Elal notes, the “pictures” obtained by different muon telescopes would not match. In fact, they turned out to be the same, which confirmed the assumptions of physicists and refuted the insinuations of archaeologists.

The images showed that above the main corridor of the pyramid there is a zone of emptiness thirty meters long, eight meters high and about two meters wide. As Tayubi noted, it can be either a solid corridor running parallel to the ground, up or down, or a suite of rooms. So far, physicists do not have enough data to rule out the first or second option.

Scientists emphasize that they are not interpreting their discovery in any way and do not claim that they managed to find a secret room - this task, according to them, should be carried out by Egyptologists.

Jean-Baptiste Mouret, a physicist at the University of Paris, hopes his team's discovery will convince Egyptian historians that they were wrong in their assessments and will open the door to debate whether it is worth trying to penetrate this void zone. if yes, how to do it.

A new round of history

In the near future, as scientists noted, they plan to continue studying the void zone, as well as other sections of the Cheops pyramid, including the tomb of the pharaoh himself, and will begin to scan other pyramids that may hide secret rooms and unknown voids.

These data, physicists hope, will help us understand exactly how the pyramids were built and whether we can trust the descriptions of their construction, which have come down to our time in the works of Herodotus.

At the same time, as scientists noted, muon scanners can not reveal all the secrets of ancient history. For example, according to Tayubi, they cannot be used to search for the secret tomb of Nefertiti in the tomb of Tutankhamun, the existence of which was recently announced by the famous British Egyptologist Nicholas Reeves.

“Muon scanners cannot be used to study the tomb of Tutankhamun and other burials in the Valley of the Kings for the reason that we do not know how the voids are distributed in the rocks located above them,” the scientist explained, answering a question from RIA Novosti.

Such research, added Sebastien Procureur, a colleague of Moret, is further complicated by the fact that man-made particle accelerators cannot be used to scan pyramids and other ancient buildings, since delivering them to Giza or the Valley of the Kings would entail unacceptably high costs.

“In short, this is simply not feasible. Muons cannot be created directly - they arise from the decays of kaons and pions, and there are too few particle accelerators in the world capable of accelerating them to the required speeds. In addition, they are all very large - at least 700 meters in length. It would be easier for us to transport the pyramid to such an installation than to try to build it in Giza or other parts of Egypt. Therefore, we have to rely on space in such observations,” the agency’s interlocutor concluded.

A secret room discovered in the Cheops pyramid in early November last year may contain a throne made from meteorite iron. This hypothesis was put forward by Italian astrophysicist Giulio Magli. The scientist’s findings are published by Eurekalert, RIA Novosti reports.

The researchers found the 30-meter-long cavity using muon scanning. The room is located above a large gallery. It is sealed, and its purpose is still a mystery.

Despite the fact that some Egyptologists reacted to the discovery with obvious skepticism, Magli believes that the found voids are unlikely to have been a mistake made during construction, or to have any architectural function, such as reducing the load on the main corridor of the pyramid.

According to the astrophysicist, the ancient builders must have had a good reason for constructing such a room. And he suggested that in the secret room there was a “portal” for sending the pharaoh to the afterlife. He recalled that one of the Egyptian funeral scrolls says that after death the pharaoh must “sit on the iron throne,” then “pass through the gates of heaven” and “ascend to the stars in the north.”

The scientist notes that there are four “air ducts” in the pyramid through which the spirit of the deceased ruler could “get out,” while the passage leading to the north ends in a sealed door. It is behind it, according to Magli, that the voids found are located, which most likely represent a chamber with a throne.

The Pyramid of Cheops was built in the middle of the third millennium BC, during the time of Pharaoh Khufu (Cheops). This structure, 145 meters high and 230 meters wide and long, remains one of the tallest and largest structures ever created by mankind. Wikipedia

Inside the Cheops pyramid there are three burial chambers and several passages. The largest of them - the Great Gallery - is 47 meters long and eight meters high. ScanPyramids

In the Cheops pyramid, experts discovered a previously unknown room, which may turn out to be a secret treasure storage or tomb. The room is located next to the tomb of the pharaoh and the main corridor of the pyramid.

When we saw this area of emptiness, we realized that we had come across something very interesting and big, we abandoned all other projects and concentrated on studying this area, located directly above the corridor to the tomb of Cheops, the archaeologists said.

Over the past 200 years, scientists have been able to discover only three rooms in the great pyramid, in one of which the pharaoh himself was supposedly buried, in the other his wife, and the third was considered a bait or trap for robbers.

But the mummies were never found, giving archaeologists hope that the remains might be hidden in hidden chambers of the pyramid. Scientists have been searching for these premises for a long time, and two years ago they were joined by physicists from the universities of Nagoya, Paris and Cairo.

Experts studied the structure of the pyramid using non-standard methods, namely space telescopes as part of the ScanPyramids project. Archaeologists have adapted telescopes to find voids and hidden rooms in ancient architectural monuments.

The operating principle of such a detector is very simple: it looks for flows of muons (charged particles) and determines the size of the space in which they are located. It is believed that millions of muons are formed every second in the upper layers of the Earth's atmosphere. They arise from the collision of cosmic rays with gas molecules in the air.

These collisions accelerate muons to near-light speeds, thanks to which they penetrate tens and hundreds of meters deep into the surface of the planet. Scientists' measurements show that every square meter of the Earth's surface absorbs about 10 thousand of these particles.

Thus, the flux of muons decreases in empty space much more slowly than when passing through rock or earth. Using a telescope like this, you can determine where empty rooms are in an object.

Last October, a detector found several voids inside the Cheops pyramid that could be hidden rooms.

Our measurements absolutely rule out that this void area could have arisen due to differences in the properties of the stones or due to errors in construction, as Zahi Hawass claims. Voids of this size and configuration could not have accidentally appeared between the blocks, either from an engineering or any other point of view. The Egyptians were too good builders to make a mistake when building a pyramid, leaving a “hole” in it and creating a room or corridor somewhere else, said Hani Elal from Cairo University.

But this discovery caused a lot of suspicion and mistrust, so it was decided to continue the observations. Repeated research confirmed the scientists' guesses that above the main corridor of the pyramid there is a void zone 30 meters long, 8 meters high and approximately 2 meters wide.

However, experts are not yet sure what kind of space this is, since it could be either a corridor or a series of rooms. A team of Egyptologists is now being formed to further study the Pyramid of Cheops and other structures of Giza.

A new way of studying buildings using a telescope has inspired scientists, as it can provide more information about the structure of ancient pyramids.

This year, the Cheops pyramid is revealing more and more mysteries. Thus, the secret of the construction of the Great Pyramid recently became known. Scientists learned about this thanks to the papyrus they found: its text was written by an Egyptian overseer of 40 slaves who were constructing the building.

Having deciphered the text, archaeologists learned that the Egyptians diverted water from the Nile and laid artificial canals across the Giza plateau, along which boats loaded with blocks moved.

Scientists have discovered a long, hidden, narrow void in the Great Pyramid, helping to finally unlock the secrets of a 4,500-year-old wonder of the world. The latest technology has been used to investigate the mystery, and we are once again getting closer to solving the mystery of the Great Pyramid!

The Great Pyramid was the tallest man-made structure in the world for thousands of years. The Pyramid of Khufu is the only Wonder of the World that has survived to this day. Scientists around the world have been trying to solve the mystery of the pyramid for hundreds of years, and now this has become possible thanks to the latest technologies.

Scientists have made a grand discovery using particles that penetrate rock. Detectors installed throughout the pyramid, including the Royal Chamber. discovered an empty space called the ScanPyramids Big Void.

"The ScanPyramids Big Void is not a room or a chamber—we don't know whether it's horizontal or vertical, whether it's made of one or more sequential structures, but it's big," says author Mehdi Tayoubi, president and co-founder of the HIP Institute

The find is located above the Great Gallery, which connects two chambers of the pyramid. Although the exact name is not known, this is the biggest discovery since the 19th century.

The space may be on a slope, meaning it could have been used to transport huge blocks to the center of the pyramid, experts say.

Three methods were used for the study:

Infrared thermography
3D scanning using lasers.
Cosmic ray detectors.

It was cosmic ray detectors that helped obtain an overall picture of the mysterious cavity

Muons are created when the atmosphere reacts with cosmic rays, creating a stream of particles, some of which decay into muons. Elementary particles, which weigh 200 times more than electrons, can very easily pass through any structure, even large and thick rocks such as mountains

Researchers from the scientific committee of the Ministry of Ancient Egyptians suggest that this may be a "construction gap" - part of a trench that allowed workers to access the Grand Gallery and the Royal Chamber while the rest of the pyramid was built.

This find may finally explain how this pyramid was built. Scientists are confident that modern particle physics can shed light on the archaeological heritage of the world

After examining the pyramid, scientists, using computer technology, tried to recreate the appearance of this room.

MOSCOW, November 3 – RIA Novosti. Physicists have found a previously unknown void area in the Cheops pyramid that may be a secret tomb or a passage into it, according to a paper published in the journal Nature.

How did you search?

French archaeologists and physicists, together with Japanese scientists, have adapted telescopes that can “see” muons to search for voids and hidden rooms in ancient architectural monuments.

"Previously Unknown Voids"

At the end of October, it reported that archaeologists and physicists had discovered inside the Cheops pyramid two, as they put it, “previously unknown voids,” which could be secret rooms where the remains of Pharaoh Khufu rest.

“Having successfully tested the muon scanner on the Sneferu pyramid, we used it to check two suspicious zigzag masonry on the slopes of the Cheops pyramid. In June 2016, we installed plates with photographic emulsion in the corridor under these “chevrons” and 67 days later we sent them for analysis to Nagoya University ", say archaeologists.

Both suspicious structures in the Cheops pyramid, as shown by analysis of photographic plates, contain significant voids that are clearly visible in muon “photographs”, and there is no doubt about their existence. One of these "previously unknown voids" is located on the northern wall of the pyramid, and it, according to archaeologists, may be a corridor that goes deeper into the pyramid. The second, smaller void is located in the northeastern part of the pyramid.

Protection from robbers from the Cheops pyramid

Egyptologists from the AERA collaboration previously found out how the passages in the Cheops pyramid were arranged and restored the security system that protected the pharaoh's tomb from tomb robbers, Live Science reported in July.

According to scientists, the tomb of Cheops was protected from robbers by two levels of protection. The first of them was located at the entrance to the pharaoh’s tomb itself - it was closed by three monolithic stone slabs, which were raised above its entrance using systems of grooves and blocks, and were probably held in place by some kind of supports.

The second obstacle for thieves was installed in the so-called inner sanctuary, inside which was the entrance to the tomb of Cheops. The entrance to it was closed in a similar way, using stone slabs that were lowered down through grooves and channels in the walls of the pyramid.

Previously unknown ancient Egyptian tomb

Egyptian archaeologists in early October began clearing the entrance to a previously unknown tomb, which was discovered on the west bank of the Nile near the city of Luxor, the Youm 7 news portal reported, citing the words of the head of the department of antiquities of Luxor, Talaat Abdel Aziz.

“The front door has been damaged by time and work is underway to clear the entrance to get into the tomb to determine its age and the name of the person for whom it was built,” he said.

Some time ago, scientists discovered in the same area the tomb of an ancient Egyptian gold merchant, which is about 3.5 thousand years old, as well as a mass grave of the poor from the era of Ancient Egypt.

Ancient monastic city

Scientists at the end of August discovered a huge monastic complex near the city of El Minya; the find dates back to the 5th century AD, reports Ahram Online.

Archaeologists have found many burial chambers, the total area of which is 3,500 square meters. In addition, scientists have excavated the remains of monastic houses made of clay.

“This fact suggests that the archaeological site next to the (monastic) necropolis of Al-Nassar was a complex of monks,” said Gamal El-Semestwy, head of the Egyptian Antiquities Authority.

It is believed that Christian monasticism appeared in Egypt around the beginning of the 4th century AD. The Church recognizes him as the ancestor of St. Anthony the Great.