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."

Comments

Enter from the outside...

[Hates]

From the looks of the all the diagrams showing the location of the so called "hidden" chamber,
why don't they just carefully excavate into it from the outside, instead of going to all the touble of sending these robots in etc...

One thing is for sure though, the discovery of the second door allivates fears that the Egyptian goverment had already opened the outer door and explored the secret chamber.

Re:Enter from the outside...

[Yazeran]

And another problem: Sonar work so well in water because water is an almost continuos medium (no cracks or air bubbles). Cracks and other changes in medium density interfeers with sonar performance, and in fact air bubbles are used in countermeasures fired by submarines to fool incomming homing torpedoes.
A pyramid consists of huge blocks with cracks and small amount of air between the blocks. Although the pyramids are very well engineered, there will always be small amount of air between two piees of stone. This renders sonar useless below the first layer of stone.
One can measure the depth of the first stone layer with soner (assuming that the outer stones do not have too many cracks), but beyond that, no information wuld be obtained.

Yours Yazeran

Plan: to go to Mars one day with a hammer

Re:Enter from the outside...

[AJWM]

A more reasonable (if less "interesting") theory is that after the rough surfaces of two stones were abutted, the gap was sawn/planed with a metal tool to smooth the surfaces between them, and then they were shoved the last 1/4 inch or so together. The fact that saw-grooves from such a process can be found on stones underlying the joints is an additional niggling detail that isn't really "interesting".

ok

[Apreche]

So can someone explain to me why they didn't open the door? I mean seriously. If there is a big secret that nobody knows wouldn't you want to find out immediately? How can you possibly resist opening the door? What kind of idiot finds a new door and doesn't open it? I mean isn't that what video games teach us, open every door as soon as you find it!
And don't they have sonar? They should use it to "see" what is behind the door. Whether it's an empty room or a treasure hoarde with a curse I doubt anything bad can come of opening a door. That is I don't believe in the supernatural. I'm sure the archaelogists don't either.

Why open the over-seers coffin at the same time?

[geoswan]

Because they strongly suspected piercing the door would be a disappointment?

This show bugged me because they dole out hard information so sparingly. Who cares whether Ms and Mr Brit announcer are short of breath. Why make us wait so long to see the CGI tour of the pyramids?

If this thing wasn't broadcast live, if they had cut back on the breathless chatter from the announcers, the informational part of this broadcast could have fit in half an hour.

A Pathetic Excuse for Science

[Anonymous Coward]

This entire thing was an exercise in what I would hesitate even to dignify as psuedo science. Egyptology is not science in the first place; not any more than astrology is. But this was even shy of real egyptology.

The entire show consisted of outright lies and wild speculation presented as fact. For example, the statement that 'the people who lived here could not have been slaves because they were 50% male rather than a majority.' Huh? How does that make the slightest bit of sense? The Egyptians took slaves of any gender. I do not happen to think that most of the pyramid labor was slave, but that was hardly a supporting arguement.

The director of anitquities made quite a show of concern for good science and taking proper care of the sites explored. But in the end, he essentially attacked that tomb with a chisel and a crowbar for no apparant reason. All he had to do was place a hydraulic jack under each corner and lift. But he damaged the sarcophagus to look like Indiana Jones and was shocked to find... a skeleton! Inside a grave- imagine! He pretended to read a 'curse' on the side of a tomb, despite the fact that he was tracing the characters in the wrong direction (across 2 seperate lines) and the fact that no inscription resembling a curse has ever been found on an Egyptian tomb. Ever. It was a myth invented before the Rosetta stone was found.

It would have been nice if they had mentioned the fact that not a single set of human remains has ever been found in an Egyptian pyramid. The theory that these were built as literal tombs is yet unproven.

Perhaps they might have incorporated the opinions of geologists, climatologists and other actual scientists in the course of this 'documentary.' But that surely would have ruffled the feathers of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, which apparantly exists for the purpose of justifying conclusions that were reached 100 years ago by untrained, British treasure seekers.

I also took issue with the computerized recreations of the building of the pyramids. National Geographic completely ignored the fact that 4,000 years ago that area was a very temperate climate. No desert, no sand. A lush, green paradise that looked nothing like it does today. This fact was completely ignored throughout all the reenactments- even those that were clearly staged in the US with caucasian actors. Why go to all that trouble of staging a desert unless you really just don't know a damn thing about ancient Egypt?

The truely embarrasing element of all this is that National Geographic was responsible. I expect better from them. This wasn't even pop science- just a big, fake exercise in tomb raiding and lies for the entertainment value. Cancel my membership, please.

Re:A Pathetic Excuse for Science

[Krieger]

The program really was a travesty. It seemed entirely like a vehicle for Hawass to try and discredit the "Pyramidiots".

As much as some of the pyramidiots are way out there. Many of them seem to raise some very legitimate and troubling questions about Egyptology. They in fact made me just interested enough to start reading academic texts about Egyptology and it does appear that some of the so called discoveries that have been found throughout the exploration of the pyramids have been fake. The "gang" graffiti of heiroglyphics that Hawass showed is in fact the only writing found in the pyramids. And it is possible that it was done by Egyptologist that got to that level to justify the expense of his expedition.

I still find many of the current arguments about the construction of the pyramids to be unconvincing. At a minimum the timing still seems wrong. The other pyramids in the country seem to be proof. They have the step pyramids and then they have the pyramids at Dashour. The strange upsurge of amazingly well architected and built pyramids in the middle of a dynasty only to relapse into horrible pyramid building less then a few centuries later. And most of all without any evidence of civil unrest, war, or other catastrophe to explain the sudden loss of technology.

So as much as the Pyramidiots are out there it would be interesting to see the Egyptologists take them seriously just long enough to convinvingly refute (or attempt to) their claims. It would certainly go a long way to discredit them. Because it seems that the Pyramidiots have managed to make some decent discoveries themselves, or at least ask questions that caused the exploration of the new ideas.

Re:Egyptian Engineers:

[FortKnox]

Egyptian Engineer 2: "Man, this is like your idea to draw aliens on hieroglyphs! Its not like anyone is ever going to /see/ these things!"

Seriously, doesn't this make you wonder if satire existed in ancient times? We take everything as truth. What if the ancient egyptians were grand pranksters?

Link For FOX's 18-35 Male Demographic

[LittleGuy]

She's BBC News Commentator Laura Greene.

Re:VERY MISLEADING

[lemox]

Is this some kind of archeology FUD-bot?

Both this comment and its parent appear in the previous story ("Egyptian Pyramid Mysteries to be Explored Live") just take a look at the title of each page.

Food for thought

[Mazzaroth]

What were the utility of the two sealed copper handles we saw on the first door? The two copper handles were well centered on the door as viewed from within the shaft. They're clearly not for pulling since they were seen from under. Why a seals since there is another door behind? Maybe the copper handles and the seals were supposed to be seen from the other way around... leading to the Queen's chamber.

The builders put a great deal of effort on these shafts. They were not added a posteriori, as an after thought. They were part of the original design. But, as far as I remember, no other (previous or later) pyramids present these features (correct me if I am wrong). So if these shafts were necessary for the Egyptian mythology, why are they only in Khufu? If they were not important for the mythology, why putting such an effort on their construction? Maybe there were "sects" within the egyptian mythology - and Khufu's builders were not following the mainstream beliefs. Consider that Khufu's is the only 'suspended' burial chamber discovered; all others were dug below the ground or placed at ground level, with the rest of the pyramid built above them.

There are scientific evidences that there are more hidden chambers within the great pyramid. A team of japanese egyptologists conclude (in this report): For instance, the electromagnetic wave radar exploration system is capable of exploring the internal space and of detecting any foreign material within the stone structure by the abnormal reflections from inside the stonework using radar. Appling this method, fruitful results have so far been obtained, including some unusual radar reactions, which suggest the existence of some inner space at the locations as the north side of the Queen's Chamber within the pyramid, and the south side of the Great Pyramid and the north side of the Great Sphinx. I remember reading that the Japanese team estimated that over 3% of the pyramid is free space. A french team estimated the empty space being around 10%. I am trying to locate the references of these numbers - if you have hints... Anyway, this is a lot more that what we currently discovered.

for now... :-)

Re:A bit of history here

[monkeydo]

Right. His hand was injured and amputated with a hot peice of metal. The was evidence that the owner of that arm continued to engage in hard lobor for "many years" after the amputation. That doesn't really sound to me like he was a volunteer. You wouldn't kill a slave who was injured but could still work. You cut off his arm and put him back to work. If he dies of infection, who cares.

They went on to claim that the term "back-breaking labor" may have orginated among those building the pyramids because their bones were so racked and broken. I wonder, what would the bones look like if they were slaves?

The stupid assertion that the population of the camp was split among men and women is also stupid. Even the dumbest tyrant knows that an all male slave army only last one generation.

Re:Digging the Weans

[Reziac]

I'd guess because the entire shaft wasn't built at once, and plugs (doors, whatever) were placed on an as-needed basis, depending on where the associated layer of construction stopped.

And the plugs could be simply to keep out rats once the project was finalized.

Something else to remember -- the Egyptians were damned good engineers, but until relatively recent times (mid-1900s or thereabouts) stress force math wasn't sufficiently understood. That's why so many ancient and medieval structures are still standing -- they were construction overkill (ie. built a lot stronger and heavier than was actually required for the building to hold up to everyday use). Also sometimes an engineer died and no one had any clue how he meant to finish something, so it gets truncated and then you have doors to nowhere.

Good example of construction overkill: Paris Gibson Jr. High School in Great Falls, MT. The old part of the building, from ca. 1920, is built to "ancient" standards -- it looks like this wall needs to be thick, so it IS thick. WAY thicker and stronger than necessary. The new part of the building (ca. 1950) was built more in line with modern construction -- sufficient to the project. Along comes the big Yellowstone earthquake.. the 1920s section was undamaged; the 1950s section wound up condemned. (You can see it being blown to bits in the opening sequence of the film "Telethon".)

Stuctural overkill is why we have still pyramids to argue about today. :)

Re:My favorite part . . .

[spudnic]

Yeah, why did they do it in the very last minutes of the show? I understand they had to keep you in anticipation as long as possible, but what if they had found something? Would they have extended the show? My Tivo would have missed it. Surely they wouldn't say, "We just discovered an alian spacecraft behind the door, but that's all the time we have so we better say goodnight."