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Egyptian Pyramid Mysteries to Be Explored Live
An anonymous reader noted that "National Geographics will probe the inside of a blocked shaft in the Great Pyramid of Giza, and will also open the oldest intact sarcophagus found in moder times." Since this
is the shaft where all the secret alien technology has been stored for the last few thousand years, and everyone knows that these "Sarcophagus" things are
what the Gou'ald use to regenerate, I think this whole thing will be interesting as hell. Awh who am I kidding- I'm just a junkie on watching those specials where they explore pyramids.
Why? Simple. Zahi Hawass wants to cash in.
A bit of history here...Rudolph Gantenbrink and his team discovered the door some years ago. Zahi responded by rushing them out of the country and making sure that they wouldn't be able to come back.
For years Zahi Hawass has claimed that there is "nothing" to see up the shafts, that there is no "door". Now, he's gone 180 degrees and claims there IS a door. The whole thing is a circus, and Zahi Hawass wants to be ringmaster. He also wants to lay claim to whatever is behind that door--they've completely locked Gantenbrink out of this whole procedure, hijacking what is rightfully his "claim".
Correct.
It's also noteworthy that the CNN article about this completely fails to acknowledge Gantenbrink's achievements and incorrectly states that the door was discovered in 1872.
A summary of Gantenbrink's work can be found at http://www.cheops.org
-I.
With a few minor exceptions, the four so-called "air shafts" of the Cheops Pyramid were constructed in accordance with one unvarying system. The shaft roof and both walls were cut from one block to form something like a stone canal. The floor was provided by a second block, effectively sealing the shaft from below. Thus, the joins connecting the upper blocks normally ran perpendicular to the floor of the shaft.
According to the UK site, there's going to be a live web cast.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Another article, with pictures of the pyramid rover, and also some background on the Rudolf Gantenbrink controversy. He's the robotics engineer who (some argued) was left uncredited and uninvolved (not even invited to the opening?). I don't know the whole story.
CNN blurb on this special (with video clip)
The ananova take on the special.
The Times (UK) take. Pretty good.
A little on Zahi Hawass
You can only carbon-date biological material.
There would be straw in the mortar, and they would carbon date that, to get a date for when the mortar was made.
section 107 of the copyright act designates 4 factors, two of which are important:
2)character of use: is it non-profit or education use?
4)effect on potential market: will this make the product less valuable?
you're correct, these aren't laws, they're guidelines.
Since it's entering from one market where it's given away freely(TV, commercials not withstanding), to another person(not market) where it cannot be obtained by any reasonable means, I do not see where the problem would be.
They only way I could see a problem with this is if it was being sold or otherwise exceeded the second guideline. it would also be a violation if it was given away enmasse to the public as a whole- however, since it's available on broadcast tv, that would not affect the market there either unless they later planned on broadcasting it to the unaffected region for profit(commercials). which would make it very difficult to exceed the 4th guideline.
btw, IANAL, I'm just an idiot trying to bring some sense to the world..
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. . . it was probably built between 5 000 BCE and 7 000 BCE. That date is before archeologists admit that homosapiens was running around on the planet.
I don't know what archaeologists you talk to, but I'm pretty sure that we'e been on the planet longer than 9000 years.
>A bit of history here...Rudolph Gantenbrink
:
>and his team discovered the door some years
>ago. Zahi responded by rushing them out of
>the country and making sure that they
>wouldn't be able to come back.
This is actually a VERY misleading statement. Gantenbrink, by way of Robert Bauval, let the word out on the findings of the 'door', whereas it is standard procedure for *everyone* who is doing research there to go thru the Council of Antiquities FIRST.
That Bauval was associated somehow with it is probably what tipped the balance (for fairness, you can read Bauval's account of the events in Secret Chamber by RB, chapter 9 I believe). The combination of having an "alternative" historian (that means one who cherry picks his 'evidences') together with the the breaking of the rules relating to announcement of discoveries is a big no no for egyptology, simply because these things get out of control, in terms of wild and completely unfounded speculation, REALLY quickly.
Many might not realize this, but there is a huge *industry* revolving around the "mysteries" of ancient egypt, where authors who know very little of (or chose to ignore) the HUGE coherent picture that egyptology is, ignoring montains of evidence supporting it and countless others that go against their own "brilliant" speculation, end up transforming a culture into a "legacy", heavily hinting at mythical places such as Atlantis (a spurious story already of which ONLY plato talks about, and in terms heavily metaphorical), and often sliping into concepts like "noble or higher race" and the like.
The world of "alternative egyptology" is fascinating at first glance, but is roten from the inside, trust me on this.
Another point is that the "door" hardly is a door, as it is located in a shaft that is 8x8 inches, unless someone has a book to write about little beings using this shaft as a corridor for their daily affairs (I suspect this would easily be linked to our alledged martian legacy in a sleight of hand). The two "handles" could be many things, but even if they are handle, that doesn't make the thing a door, it just makes it a plug, with handles.
The third thing i'd like to mention is the latent hatred of that "alternative research" community toward people like Zahi Hawass, who has, despite these people crave to dig everywhere, been dedicated to protecting and researching the Giza site for many decades. Granted Zahi has a big mouth, granted he doesn't know how to talk to journalists, but his dedication and honnesty are obvious to anybody who looks into the field (and no, reading Graham Hancock's 'work' does not qualify). Mark Lehner is in a somewhat similar yet different position, since as an ex-Cayce believer, he began his career with the goal of finding things like the "Hall of Records" (his academic training was financed by ARE, the Cayce fundation). Having learned a lot since his debuts, and having grown up, he is now bashed by his old buddies for being honnest. (don't you find it strange for instance that RB's "orion correlation theory" used to 'lock' giza to 10500BC, just as Cayce 'predicted' ? Thorough examination shows there is no such lock to such an epoch to be found, and the OCT has now been reduced to a "astetically pleasing representation" that lacks any form of precision, and hence any predictive power, rendering 10.5kBC completely and utterly arbitrary)
The way I see it, "alternadoxy" is jumping to the gun on this, let's just wait and see what they find, if they indeed find anything, because whatever is or isn't there, it'll be one hell of a special.
The alledged hijacking of Rudolf Gantenbrink's work is a straw man, Gantenbrink is refered to in all the papers you will find in academia relating to the exploration of the shafts. The nature of research dictates that one researcher follows another on a site, research is not for personal glory, it's about uncovering the truth. That Gantenbrink isn't always mentioned in the press is not the big deal that "alternadoxy" makes of it, after all, Dyxon isn't either and probed the shafts many decades before Gantenbrink (in his probings, he did find that the southern queen's chamber shaft seemed to be blocked at the height we know of today as the location of the plug). Also Gantenbrink has been associated with this special, if only in providing his experience to the i-robot team.
As for "why so long?", well the pyramids aren't going anywhere, these things always take time, specifically because we do NOT want to rush in. I think the REAL question to ask is
Why NOW ?
Well, think about it, it'll probably boost egyptian tourism by solving a mini-mystery. That tourism took a big blow after 9/11.
Now THAT qualifies as very good reason to be doing this now rather than later.