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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."
Am I the only one who fears that the door, currently very hard to get to because it is at the end of a long narrow passage, might soon be the door, extremely hard to get to because it is at the end of a long narrow passage with a broken robot jammed in it.
How is this different from a story posted two days ago?
How can it be live when the webpage says:
The National Geographic Channel special Pyramids Live: Secret Chambers Revealed airs in the United States on Fox Television on Monday, September 16, at 8 p.m. ET/PT.
The only way I know to air a show at 8pm Eastern and Pacific is to have it recorded! So now, is it live? Or is it recorded?
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.
You gotta love America, "Tonight we break in to ancient burial sites LIVE!" Will it have musical performances? What about cheesy hosts who do mummy jokes every 5 mins.?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Pretty crafty letting a robot take the blame. I can hear the stories years from now...
"And the next morning, the robot failed to come out of its tent. When they went in to check, they found the robot frozen in horror, its monitor displaying The Blue Screen of Death!"
If someone's planning on making a DivX of this, I'd really love to see it.
(I'm in Japan and don't these channels.)
I feel a bit guilty for asking, so feel free to leave in the commercials - I'll watch them as my penance.
Cheers,
Jim
(jim at mmdc dot net)
-- My Weblog.
I watch Shaft exploring programs almost every night, just need to get the right cable channels.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a brutal anal raping at airport security
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/
yes this is off topic, and yes I will get modded down as such.
man, if I had cable, I'd LOVE to give you a divx of it. hell, I'd even mail you a copy of the cd. Why?
Because it's frickin fair use!
If you can't watch a show, it is within your FAIR USE to have someone to record it at a later time.
My parents would always do that for me when I'd miss saturday moring cartoons to go to my sanchin ryu classes. that was fair use... that's the DEFINITION of fair use.
So why is this different? because it's Divx? because he asked on an open forum? if that's the case, would it be illegal to ask your bowling buddies if they could tape a show for you?
he said he'd be willing to watch the commercials, which he probably wouldn't anyways if he was watching it live(channel surf, bathroom, etc).
This is the kinda shit that makes me sick. that someone automatically thought it was in bad taste because he was excersizing his fair use rights.
To the parent poster, as I said, I don't have cable either. If someone does score you a divx of it, let me know.I doubt they'll ever release this bad boy to dvd.
as for the moderators who are gonna mod me as flamebait or a troll, blow me. I have promise you I have more karma than you have mod points(unless it's an ed.).
Looking for Book Reviews? Check out Literary Escapism.
Let's hope they don't find an empty Coke bottle, too.
There they were, sitting in the van with all those dials, and the cat was dead. -V. Marchetti, CIA
a hieroglyph that roughly translates to "Ha-Ha"
It seems obvious to me what this shaft is. It leads directly into the Queen's chamber so it must be a laundry shoot. Unfortunately, Khufu's dirty Sun God Underoo's must have been stolen 1000's of years ago.
Egyptian Engineer 1: "Hey Ahumhuphet!" /see/ these things!"
Egyptian Engineer 2: "Yo!"
Egyptian Engineer 1: "Check it out, I designed this really long, small passage that leads to a door, then it goes on, and leads to another door!"
Egyptian Engineer 2: "Why?"
Egyptian Engineer 1: "...dunno... thought it would be cool"
Egyptian Engineer 2: "Man, this is like your idea to draw aliens on hieroglyphs! Its not like anyone is ever going to
Objects in the blog are closer then they ap
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...
Let me get this straight. You want to explore one of the wonders of the world, by cutting fucking great holes in it?! Please tell me you're not a brain surgeon.
... and I only watched the last 5 minutes or so . . .
Robot proceeds forward through hole in door . . .
Excited Host Lady: Describe what's happening now for us!
Expert: The robot is proceeding forward through the hole in the door.
Excited Host Lady: Oooooo! Those look like hieroglyphics! Writing on the wall!
Expert: Cracks. Those are cracks.
They might find more information about the ancient race of skeleton people.
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
I can't believe I watched this. I knew it was going to be the worst 2hours of television I've ever seen, but still I was sucked in.
How come they didn't take the camera rover out and put the one with the drill in there to drill a hole through the new found door?
I thought they had xrayed the door already, did they know that the new door was there?
How many doors and how many specials will it take to reach the secret chamber?
Who was that British-accent babe commentator? Did any other guys here want to drive their rover up her secret chamber?
--
Does anyone remember
... what's behind the *other* door?
ANOTHER DOOR! AND ANOTHER!! AND ANOTHER AND ANOTHER AND ANOTHER!!!!
I'm sure of it.
We've finally discovered the hole in the universe that will revolutionize our perception of reality: behind every opened door is another door!
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
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.
It's another door.
Somewhere from the great beyond some dead Pharoh is laughing his ass off.
After watching the show last night, why do I suddenly think of Yosimite Sam opening door after door, while Bugs nails up new doors on the other end?
-Ed
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Here are more beer pots... They must of contained beer...
And, look at the fingerprints... Surely Eygptians built this... My question is, wouldn't they have done their best to make sure flat surfaces were just that, flat, and free of fingerprints, because I would think fingerprints would make the thing look ugly.
Next point which really got to me was the fact that NO SLAVES were used and that it was a labor of love... That's such BULLSHIT. The evidence presented allows one to conclude several facts.
1) There was good food... Meats, fish, probably fruit. BUT was there enough for all? This I doubt. The better food was either a reward for the most productive teams OR for the skilled workers.
2) There were dorms... But only for about 2,000... This would mean an estimated 23,000 had to sleep elsewhere... Again leading to a conclusion of two or three possible workforces.
3) "Advanced" medical surgery was available... BUT for who? The skilled workers or the slave mules?
My conclusions...
1) There were slaves, used as mules to get the stones into near position.
2) Skilled workers positioned blocks accurately, these would receive the medical treatment and better accomodations.
3) Managers... All factories have them, why wouldn't the "advanced" Eygptians... Of course managers and overseers would be taken care of.
Better food was used for feeding the skilled and managers, and used as a reward for top performing slaves...
Tournament Management Online &
Because they now need to explore the opposite shaft (which has never been fully explored) to get the red key and then return to the orginal shaft and open the second door.
The Egyptians had it right... using the pyramids to secretly and safely store all their MP3 collections.
they find a priceless gold sarcophagus of unimaginable scientific value - how the f*ck do they intend to get it out?
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
>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.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike, and all blocked by really heavy stone doors.
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
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.
Now we'll have to wait a year for the sequel: Door: The Return.
(in all caps, stupid /. filter)
Kuni : Naaaaatthing! Absolutely naaaaaaathing! stoooooooopad !!!! You're so stoooooopad!!!!!
(/Weird Al UHF reference)
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
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.
She's BBC News Commentator Laura Greene.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
the world's first advent calendar.
Remember: don't open that last door before the 24th.
Alex
Heisenberg may have been here
Because the hyroglyphs on the second door said:
"By breaking this seal you agree to the terms of the license contained herein.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
According to Zahi, I learned a few new things:
1. Not a single slave helped build the pyramids.
2. Using a crowbar to chip into a 4000 year old sarcophogas is just fine, rather than using more delicate means (did you see the huge chunk of the lid flake off as he got a little too excited?).
3. Zahi thinks the rest of the world with theories opposed to his "kind and loving egyptians built the pyramids" are idiots because of a thumbprint on the sarcophogas lid. (!?)
4. Zahi's bone specialist confirms: no slaves here, we have 50% men and 50% women in our findings (as if slavery was something only men had to endure).
5. Robots aren't as snazzy as portrayed in the movies. Most movie robots would have been at least able to MacGuyver their way through the second door.
It may be Gantenbrink's "claim," but it is Zahi Hawass' responsibility and job to promote, protect, and preserve Egyptian heritage. If that means he "bullies" some archelogists; so be it.
Again, I say if the pyramids were in America, only American archeolgists would be "permitted" to study them. Same goes for just any other nation of the world (especially China).
Is there something behind the second door? We'll find out soon enough... but I think it's great that after 3000 years the pyramids still have not surrendered all of their secrets. Even in the technology age, the pyramids hold tight their secrets! I would have said their "last remaining" secrets, but who knows 10 years from now maybe some young Egyptian student will find something else to intrigue us all.
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.
Hey. I'll give you a big pile of gold if you'll make a room that's impossible to get into in this pyramid. Say, up a narrow shaft, behind a couple doors. And throw in a trap that will crush a small robot.
Robot?
It's like a cat, but not holy.
Oh. Ok. Sure. Why not?
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
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.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
Due to lack of funding, and the need to get through the second door, the next robot is going to be a LEGO cart with TNT strapped to it.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
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
Anyone who still believes that every ancient artifact or construction must have been of great religious significance, or due to aliens, or whatever mysterious force, needs to read "Digging the Weans" by Robert Nathan. It's a parody on the archeological mythologies that have developed from the natural human tendency to believe that anything remote in time or distance is automagically beyond human understanding. "Here be dragons."
As to this 8"x8" shaft with two doors... my guess is that it was either an air shaft or a communication shaft (much akin to the speaking tubes used on board large ships, before the advent of modern electronics). Which is just common sense architecture in a project that large. Why go way the hell outside to communicate with your supervisor when you can just shout up the handy tube?? Not to mention that it's kinda hard to work if everyone has breathed all the oxygen out of the air supply already.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
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".
-- Alastair
> East
You open this door, and there is a long passageway to another door. A NASTY DWARF THROWS AN AXE AT YOU!
> OPEN DOOR
You open the door, and there is a black sceptre and a bird cage on the floor. "XYZZY" is written on the door.
> XYZZY
You are in a well house.....
[Connection closed by foreign host]
You perves are slashdotting NationalGeographic.
I was just there to get directions on how to get away from there.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch