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Egyptian Pyramid Rover Finds... Another Door
JoeRobe writes "In what appears to be more evidence that ancient Egyptian architects had a sense of humor, MSNBC is reporting
that the pyramid rover has determined what was behind the door at the end of a mysterious shaft alluded to earlier - another door."
How is this different from a story posted two days ago?
This was tried several years ago. The robot they used did not have a fiber optic camera, and was unable to see past the door, however, it did have a laser on it, and they shined the laser through the cracks in the sides of the door and were unable to see the dot, so there is some evidence that there is a large room behind the door.
The new robot has a fiber optic camera, and some kind of device which will allow it to see through up to 3 feet of rock.
One thing that kind of pisses me off about the whole egyptology thing, is that the egyptian government is pretty strict on who they let come and do work like this over there. If they don't agree with some of your views on the history of the pyramids, good luck getting a permit to do anything there. The history of the pyramids is very sketchy, and how the traditional egyptologists think their theories are 100% correct is very arrogant.
The BEST place to get info about the shafts and the history is:
http://www.cheops.org/
It is a site constructed by Rudolph Gattenbrink and contains all of his findings in a very public way... AutoCAD drawings of how each block was cut to form the shaft, etc...
Zahi Hawass (The director of the Giza site) loves to take credit for anything and everything.. I true ego-maniac... I would love to see Rudolph Gattenbrink get the credit he deserves...
There is a petition located at:
http://www.dailygrail.com/petition/
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".
Another article, this time from the BBC
From one of the articles:
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
Short answer - RTFA!
Did you even see the show? The "door" is in an 8"x8" square shaft that entends up at about a 45 degree angle. I think the shaft was 200 ft long.
Over months, they built a special robot that chould get to the door, and it tried to move it. They used some kind of sonar to determine that the door was only 3" thick, so they tested out a device to drill a 3" hole in it, so they could insert a small camera and light.
So instead of thinking that you are so clever, maybe you should have watched the show, or at least read the article before going off on some pseudo tirade.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
go here for an in-depth look at the work preformed by the man who really discovered the door.
There is no spork.
Why would they need to do that? The Queen's chamber is built high in the body of the pyramid. It wasn't carved into the pyramid later. The architects could always measure its corners with reference to the corners of the pyramid itself.
I suspect that the larger pyramids were built in such a way that there would always by a pyramid when the king kicked the bucket. This would me adding layers over the existing one. If you start with a small one, the lowerest chamber would have be under part of the oldest structure in the early days. Latter the "queens" chamber was would have been the mid point and later the "kings" chamber would have been center point as more layers were put on the outside. If you go with that theory and figure in the likely times of death of a king vs relative power of the king and his ability to build large projects there is a strong correlation.
Sorry that doesn't work either. The Great Pyramid is clearly atypical in having three chambers. Most pyramids seem to have had one or two at most.
Almost all construction of the pyramid's interior would have been completed in the open air before succeeding layers were put into position. There is almost no decoration in any 3rd or 4th pyramids (a factor which has made their attribution very difficult).
The 5th and 6th Dynasty pyramids are much more richly decorated with the so-called Pyramid Texts; a set of magic spells intended to whisk Pharaoh to the afterlife.
Besides, the Great Pyramid is the only one with such shafts. Again it is fascinatingly atypical.
The first step pyramids grow outwards from a central core. Layers of core stone are laid in tilting rows at 90 degrees to the facets of the steps. The casing was then applied around the outside of the rough inner core.
However, the size of the pyramid was almost always determined in advance so as to allow the completion of the ancillary temples and service buildings which hunker up to the side of the pyramid. These are substantial constructions in their own right - the enclosure for the Step Pyramid is no less than 15 hectares of buildings and courtyards.
Geometrically true pyramids did not grow in accretion layers. Their inner cores are almost always very roughly cut local stone laid in horizontal layers. Only the casings were laid with any precision. (By later times the core was built of mud brick or even rubble with the casing holding the whole lot together.
Two pyramids come close to the method you are talking about. There is the first pyramid of all, the Step Pyramid of Zoser at Saqqara, which went through several phases of development, starting off as a flat bechlike structure known as a mastaba. This was gradually extended, then converted to a step pyramid and finally to the six step pyramid we see today. In each case the structure was more or less complete before the additions were made. It does seem that the Egyptians were really groping in the dark when they worked on Zoser's pyramid.
The second, which is much more interesting is the Pyramid at Meidum. We believe this was started by the Pharaoh Huni of which we know very little indeed and rose originally as a seven step pyramid which was more or less completely cased. It is possible that Huni was buried in the pyramid, but at some later date, probably during the reign of Snofru, the pyramid was dramatically altered. The gaps between the steps were filled with relatively loose stones and a pyramidal casing placed around the structure. This collapsed in much later times leaving the pyramid as a complete ruin.
We have several abandoned pyramids in various states of construction that show how they were designed. The most famous is the Blind Pyramid at Saqqara, ascribed to Sekhemkhet, successor to Zoser. The structure was never finished and never assumed a pyramidal form. It was used however, a sarcophagus, sealed, was found when the pyramid was excaveated. But it was empty... No one knows why the pyramid was raised or if it ever held more than one burial. Certainly other Pharaohs, Snofru and Amenemhet III had more than one.
Likewise the smallest of the three great pyramids, that of Menkaure is clearly unfinished. The inner core was completed from local stone, and all of the casing stones were put into place - the top being Tura limestone (a lovely creamy white fine limestone from the East bank of the Nile), the lower stones being Aswan red granite. But the casing was not cut to its final shape, leaving the bottom very rough.
Best wishes,
Mike.
The book first juxtaposes our view of the sky with the map of Egypt, positioning the Milky Way over the river Nile. Interesting to see is that the three great pyramids coincide with the three stars in the "belt" in the Orion - remember how the two pyramids are aligned but the third is slightly off? Well, so are the stars in Orion's Belt. Another interesting point is that how so many of the pyramids (you know there are MANY of them) coincide with the stars on the map.
So it seems that the Egyptians positioned the pyramids to represent stars in the night sky.
Now the shafts - If we look at a cross-section of the pyramids at the shafts, they originate at the pharoah's chamber and go out towards the sky. The book goes on to show the studies that suggest that at the time when those pyramids and hence the shafts were constructed, the Orion constellation was at that angle.
If this theory is correct, than it seems the shafts in the pyramids are meant to give way to the soul of the deceased towards the Orion constellation.
The book was titled "The Orion Mystery" and the author is Robert Bauval. Neither this book nor I intend to make any alien connection. Maybe the Egyptians liked the Orion constellation for no good reason. Maybe the shafts in the Great Pyramids point towards the Orion Constellation (whose Belt they represent) and the other shafts in the other pyramids (if they exist) point towards the respective stars they represented in the night sky. In any case, it is the best theory I heard so far regarding the shafts and the reason they were built into the pyramids.
Userfriendly.org comic explains it all. Check it out.
The Middle-East is not a continent. Africa is a continent. Egypt is on the African continent.
What?