Egypt

Secret chambers at Great Pyramid proposed

Discovery News (Rossella Lorenzi)

A French architect campaigning for a new exploration of the 4,500-year-old Great Pyramid of Giza said on Thursday that the edifice may contain two chambers housing funereal furniture.

Jean-Pierre Houdin -- who was rebuffed three years ago by Egypt in his appeal for a probe into how the Pyramid was built -- said 3-D simulation and data from a U.S. egyptologist, Bob Brier, pointed to two secret chambers in the heart of the structure.

The rooms would have housed furniture for use in the afterlife by the pharaoh Khufu, also known as Cheops in Greek, he told a press conference.

Google/AFP

A French architect campaigning for a new exploration of the 4,500-year-old Great Pyramid of Giza said on Thursday that the edifice may contain two chambers housing funereal furniture.

Jean-Pierre Houdin -- who was rebuffed three years ago by Egypt in his appeal for a probe into how the Pyramid was built -- said 3-D simulation and data from a US egyptologist, Bob Brier, pointed to two secret chambers in the heart of the structure.

The rooms would have housed furniture for use in the afterlife by the pharaoh Khufu, also known as Cheops in Greek, he told a press conference.

"I am convinced there are antechambers in this pyramid. What I want is to find them," he said.

In March 2007, Houdin advanced the theory that the Great Pyramid had been built inside-out using an internal spiral ramp, as opposed to an external ramp as had long been suggested.

He proposed mounting a joint expedition of Egyptian antiquities experts and French engineers, using infrared, radar and other non-invasive methods to check out the hypothesis.

MSNBC

A French architect says he has cracked a 4,500-year-old mystery surrounding Egypt’s Great Pyramid, claiming that it was built from the inside out.

Scientists have long wondered how the Egyptians placed the Great Pyramid's 3 million stone blocks, which each weigh about 2.5 tons. Previous theories have suggested that the tomb of Pharaoh Cheops (Khufu), the last surviving example of the seven great wonders of antiquity, was built using either a vast frontal ramp or a ramp in a corkscrew shape around the exterior to haul up the stonework.

But flouting previous wisdom, Jean-Pierre Houdin said advanced 3-D technology has shown that the main ramp used to haul the massive stones to the apex was contained 30 to 50 feet (10 to 15 meters) beneath the outer skin, tracing a pyramid within a pyramid.

Cosmic Log on MSNBC

With video of parts of the presentation.

- Hemienu To Houdin
Em Hotep (Keith Payne) Another excellent piece from Keith Payne, stuffed full of diagrams and photographs. Most theories of how the Great Pyramid of Khufu was built agree that some sort of external ramp was required, even if an external ramp alone would...

- More Evidence Of Secret Passages In The Great Pyramid
Talking Pyramids (Vincent Brown) Vincent has picked up on a video on the National Geographic website: National Geographic has posted a video to their YouTube channel today that presents supporting evidence of Jean Pierre Houdin’s internal spiral ramp...

- Book Review: The Secret Of The Great Pyramid
Publishers Weekly The Secret of the Great Pyramid: How One Man’s Obsession Led to the Solution of Ancient Egypt’s Greatest Mystery by Bob Brier and Jean-Pierre Houdin. Collins/ Smithsonian Since its construction 4,500 years ago for Pharaoh Khufu,...

- Bob Brier On Pyramid Construction
http://www.archaeology.org/0705/etc/pyramid.htmlThis is the best summary so far of old and new theories of pyramid construction possibilities, by Egyptologists Bob Brier, on the Archaeology magazine website. It includes helpful diagrams to accompany detailed...

- New Theory Re Construction Of Great Pyramid
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/article2405133.ece"It was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and the only one of them to remain standing today. Yet the story of how the Great Pyramid of Giza was actually built has remained...

Egypt