The Great Pyramid of Giza could be about to give up a secret it has been hiding for more than 4,000 years.
Experts think they’re on the verge of solving a mystery about this awe-inspiring wonder of the ancient world.
Scientists believe there is a hidden “recess” lurking within the Great Pyramid — and they could be about to pinpoint exactly where it is.
Also known as the Khufu Pyramid, this gigantic structure was completed in around 2,560 BC and stood about 479-feet high — making it the tallest man-made structure in the world for more than 3,800 years.
Now a team working on a project called ScanPyramids is about to use two techniques known as infrared thermography and muography in an attempt to uncover the secrets of this hidden chamber
Thermography is a scanning technique that detects the heat given off by objects, while muography picks up particles called “muons” that are produced when cosmic rays smash into the Earth’s atmosphere.
Muography was used to find hidden tunnels inside the Bent Pyramid, which was given its name due to the wonky shape of its structure.
“All the devices we put in place are designed to find where the cavity is located. We know there is one, but we’re trying to find out where,” said Mehdi Tayoubi, president of the HIP Institute, which is heading the ScanPyramids project.
In the 200 years since Napoleon Bonaparte landed in Egypt with a retinue of scholars – who laid the groundwork for modern Egyptology – experts have used science to unlock the secrets of the country’s ancient treasures.
In the 21st century, the scientists have been using electronic devices and chemical testing to date artifacts.
Chemical testing still requires small samples, but advanced techniques coming into use are meant to be non-invasive so as not to damage the ancient relics.
ScanPyramids is among the most ambitious of the projects to demystify the Khufu Pyramid near Cairo, the only surviving monument from the ancient Seven Wonders of the World.
The project had announced last October that the massive pyramid may contain undiscovered recesses.
It is not clear what these recesses contain — if anything at all — but the technology being used could mean that archaeologists will soon be peering inside an ancient Egyptian time capsule in the not too distant future.
“All the devices we put in place are designed to find where the cavity is located. We know there is one, but we’re trying to find out where,” said Mehdi Tayoubi, president of the HIP Institute heading the ScanPyramids project.
The results will then be compared with infrared and 3D images.
Some archaeologists have pinned hopes on the sophisticated technology to locate the burial place of the legendary queen Nefertiti.
The wife of King Akhenaten, who initiated a monotheistic cult in ancient Egypt, Nefertiti remains an enigma, best known for a bust depicting her that is now on exhibition in Berlin’s Neues Museum.
A British Egyptologist, Nicholas Reeves, believed her remains were hidden in a secret chamber in the tomb of Tutankhamun, in the southern Valley of the Kings.
In 2015, archaeologists scanned the tomb with radar hoping for clues.
Both Reeves’s theory and the inconclusive results have been dismissed by other Egyptologists.
One of them, former antiquities minister Zahi Hawass, said that an adept of the sun god Aton would never have been allowed to be buried in the Valley of the Kings.
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