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'Discovery of the Century': Mysterious Void Discovered In Egypt's Great Pyramid (nationalgeographic.com)
New submitter klgds writes: The cavity is the first major inner structure discovered in the pyramid since the 1800s. Egypt's Great Pyramid of Giza -- one of the wonders of the ancient world, and a dazzling feat of architectural genius -- contains a hidden void at least a hundred feet long, scientists said. The space's dimensions resemble those of the pyramid's Grand Gallery, the 153-foot-long, 26-foot-tall corridor that leads to the burial chamber of Khufu, the pharaoh for whom the pyramid was built. However, it remains unclear what lies within the space, what purpose it served, or if it's one or multiple spaces. The void is the first large inner structure discovered within the 4,500-year-old pyramid since the 1800s -- a find made possible by recent advances in high-energy particle physics. The results were published in the journal Nature. "This is definitely the discovery of the century," says archaeologist and Egyptologist Yukinori Kawae, a National Geographic Emerging Explorer. "There have been many hypotheses about the pyramid, but no one even imagined that such a big void is located above the Grand Gallery."
I wonder whether, in today's climate of tearing down statues of famous slavers and imperialists (Jackson, Rhodes etc), people would advocate tearing down the pyramids which, for all their architectural genius, were built at a cost of thousands of lives. They're like Qatari football stadia x1000.
I thought that when the robot that was looking to the end of one of the "Star Shafts" (back in 2002), a chamber like this was hypothesized because the robot came to the "door" at the end of the shaft.
I haven't keep up with the research for a while, but I think saying that this is the "discovery of the century" is simple hyperbole.
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One of the remarkable facts of Egyptology is how nearly impossible it was to prevent tombs from being robbed over the course of thousands of years. There's never been a tomb found that hasn't been robbed at some point, even Tutankhamen's tomb. Most are picked clean of anything that might be of interest to anyone other than an archaeologist.
But it always seemed to me, given the scale of the pyramids, that there was an obvious option for deterring robbers: make the scale of the engineering project necessary to find and reach the burial chamber more costly than the value of the goods in the chamber. It's not unreasonable; the cost of even a small pyramid must have outweighed the cost of the funerary goods in it by thousands of times. I'm not talking about sealing the burial chamber with a ten ton slab of rock; I'm thinking in terms of hundreds of thousands of tons.
It has to have occurred to anyone who's pondered the pyramids that there might be things still left hidden inside all that volume. The thing is there is no way to investigate such speculation without some means of being able to see through solid stone. For that reason the matter of undiscovered chambers in the pyramids has become to Egyptology a bit like questions about perpetual motions machines are to physicists. I even saw one Egyptologist say in response to this news that there was "zero chance" of anything remaining undiscovered in the Great Pyramid.
But maybe speculation isn't so pointless, now that we in the 21st century actually *can* in a fashion see through solid stone.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Then have the arabs contributed anything to this world besides destruction, murder, rape, torture, fear, and hatred?
Arab civilization had a golden age when math and science (especially astronomy) flourished. That came to an end in the 13th century for a number of reasons, but mostly because of the repercussions from political and military failure. The Mongols destroyed Baghdad, and almost reached Suez. The Spanish Reconquista was pushing the Moors out of Iberia. Then the Turks showed up.
When civilizations are threatened with decline, they tend to become less tolerant, turn inward, and look for scapegoats ... which tends to accelerate decline. Finding parallels for this in the modern world is left as an exercise for the reader.
Be fair: One child. Very much a child when they married, but it was a political thing to tie families together. In accordance with custom he didn't consummate the marriage until she was menstruating, and thus considered an adult by the standards of the time. Today, he would be considered guilty of statutory rape - but those were very different times, and what he did was not really out of the ordinary for a man of some wealth and political importance.
Who do you think built the pyramids, idiot.
Like another poster already pointed out, the ancient Egyptians, which lived thousands of years before arabs even existed.
The Coptic people in Egypt represent the ethnicity and culture of Egypt prior to the Arabic invasion. Egypt had converted to Christianity before it was overrun by the Muslims.
Or did you think mohamed invented arabs when he invented allah?
Allah means "God" in arabic, and Islam is based on Judaism and Christianity - in many ways it's the same religion worshiping the "one true God". So Mohammed didn't invent Allah. Nope.
Wow. so much misinformation, where shall I begin? Allah is not "god" in Arabic. It is the name of the head god in the Arabic pantheon which was the Moon god. Why do you think there are crescent moon symbols everywhere? Mohammed's people, the Arabs where likely not related to the people of Ishmael. His tribe was likely the nomadic tribes on the Mount Sinai area. Judaism did not even exist at the time of Abraham. It grew out of Abraham but Arabic people had nothing to do with that lineage. Mohammed wanted to make his people monotheistic so he adopted some ideas that he learned from travelling traders of Jewish and Christian background and chose the Moon god to be their only god in his new religion. They still kept all of the traditions from the old Arabic religion. Mecca was the center for worship of the pantheon. The Hajji Pilgrimage to Mecca, the Kaaba, the stoning of the Devil (pillar) , circling the Kaaba, are all from the Arabic religion the preceded Islam. Where are the laws of Moses in Islam? Where are the teachings of Jesus in Islam? Nowhere because they were incompatible with it.
Calling Islam an Abrahamic religion is pure nonsense. There is no direct lineage. He just copied some ideas and tried to create a new backstory to support it.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Looks like we're going to be in a fight, sarge," said Nobby, as the painter very carefully started on the final 'k'.
"Won't last long. Lots of cowards, the Klatchians," said Colon. "The moment they taste a bit of cold steel they're legging it away over the sand."
Sergeant Colon had had a broad education. He'd been to the School of My Dad Always Said, the College of It Stands to Reason, and was now a postgraduate student at the University of What Some Bloke In the Pub Told Me.
"Shouldn't be any trouble to sort out, then?" said Nobby.
"And o'course, they're not the same colour as what we are," said Colon. "Well... as me, anyway," he added, in view of the various hues of Corporal Nobbs. There was probably no–one alive who was the same colour as Corporal Nobbs.
"Constable Visit's pretty brown" said Nobby. "I never seen him run away. if there's a chance of giving someone a religious pamphlet ole Washpot's after them like a terrier."
"Ah, but Omnians are more like us," said Colon. "Bit weird but, basic'ly, just the same as us underneath. No, the way you can tell a Klatchian is, you look an' see if he uses a lot of words beginning with “al”, right? 'Cos that's a dead giveaway. They invented all the words starting with “al”. That's how you can tell they're Klatchian. Like al–cohol, see?"
"They invented beer?"
"Yeah."
"That's clever."
" wouldn't call it clever," said Sergeant Colon, realizing too late that he'd made a tactical error. "More, luck, I'd say."
"What else did they do?"
"Well, there's..." Colon racked his brains. "There's al–gebra. That's like sums with letters. For... for people whose brains aren't clever enough for numbers, see?"
"Is that a fact?"
"Right..."said Colon. "In fact," he went on, a little more assertively now he could see a way ahead, "I heard this wizard down the University say that the Klatchians invented nothing. That was their great contribution to maffs, he said. I said “What?” an' he said, they come up with zero."
"Dun't sound that clever to me," said Nobby. "Anyone could invent nothing. I ain't invented anything."
"My point exactly," said Colon. "I told him, it was people who invented numbers like four and, and–"
"–seven–"
"–right, who were the geniuses. Nothing didn't need inventing. It was just there. They probably just found it."
"It's having all that desert," said Nobby.
"Right! Good point. Desert. Which, as everyone knows, is basically nothing. Nothing's a natural resource to them. It stands to reason. Whereas we're more civilized, see, and we got a lot more stuff around to count, so we invented numbers. It's like... well, they say the Klatchians invented astronomy–"
"'Al–tronomy," said Nobby helpfully.
"No, no... no, Nobby, I reckon they'd discovered esses by then, probably nicked' em off'f us... anyway, they were bound to invent astronomy, 'cos there's bugger all else for them to look at but the sky. Anyone can look at the stars and give 'em names. 's going it a bit to call it inventing, in any case. We don't go around saying we've invented something just because we had a quick dekko at it."
"'I heard where they've got a lot of odd gods," said Nobby.
"Yeah, and mad priests," said Colon. "Foaming at the mouth, half of 'em. Believe all kinds of loony things."
They watched the painter in silence for a moment. Colon was dreading the question that came.
"So how exactly are they different from ours, then?" said Nobby. "I mean, some of our priests are–"
"I hope you ain't being unpatriotic," said Colon severely.
"No, of course not. I was just asking. I can see where they'd be a lot worse than ours, being foreign and everything.
"And of course they're all mad for fighting," said Colon. "Vicious buggers with all those curvy swords of theirs."
"You mean, like...they viciously attack you while cowardly running away after tasting