Today’s scientists baffled by pyramid builders

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33929, 23 August 1975, Page 12

Today’s scientists baffled by pyramid builders

(By

ALAN KENT)

Is there anything more tantalising than a centuries-old mystery that deties all efforts at rotation? Consider the Chefren Pyramid mystery? a mystery that remains unsolved in spite of the recent efforts of a team of Egyptian and American scientists using the iastest ideas in radar. The mystery? Whether or not one or more undiscovered chambers and passageways lie hidden inside this massive monument. And if so, whether these chambers are crammed with gold and other fabulous treasures? This pyramid, one of the three famous pyramids at Giza built some 40 centuries ago. is close to the great Sphinx monument which itself lies about three miles south-west of modern Cairo. Since other lesser pyramids in the neighbourhood are honeycombed with interconnecting chambers, confusing corridors and barricades designed to discourage grave robbers, should not the Chefren pyramid also be full of similar hidden rooms and misleading passage-ways? Tunnel dug That is how modern-day scientists, as well as goldseekers of past centuries, have reasoned. In the tenth century, it is said. Caliph Mamoon had a tunnel dug through the heart of the largest of the pyramids, the Cheops. What did he discover? A vault right in the heart of the Cheops pyramid, but apparently no treasure. Surely, say Egyptologists, Chefren must possess something similar? It does have a room now kn own as Belzoni's chamber. situated roughly in the centre of the pyramid's base. Belzoni, a giant of a man, an Italian adventurer and mountebank, was the first man of “modern" centuries to penetrate into the Chefren pyramid, doing so in 1818. Right in the heart he found a burial chamber — carved out of solid rock — empty of all treasure! Henri-Paul Eydoux, in his book "In search of Lost

Worlds,” refers to this chamber: “It is reached by a long causeway where the visitor is forced to proceed warily and bent double.

Decoy crypt “The hall grips the imagination both because of the mysterious atmosphere which envelops the sacred places hidden in the depths of the rock, the solidity of its walls cut out of the stone and its absolute bareness (it was robbed of its contents in the Middle Ages by Saladin’s successor).” However, Egyptologists suspect that this crypt was built as a decoy, to satisfy grave robbers and make them believe this was the true burial chamber of the Pharoah’s body. Scientists reasoned that its location was found too easily, and that therefore the real burial chamber was hidden elsewhere, the

long-dead Pharoah lying undisturbed in his sacrophagus.

These beliefs were the spur that, during 1967-73, fired the efforts of teams of Egyptologists and scientists to locate this other chamber. Yet, although they used a cosmic ray detecter in Belzoni’s chamber, and made some 2m to 3m “strikes” with it, later analysed by computer, they failed to discover any secret chambers.

Electronic signal Then, in late 1974, a further determined effort was made to find this secret chamber. This time Egyptian scientists and scientists of the Stanford Research Institute used a simple-looking electronic gadget known as a “sounder.” They believed that this portable instrument should

not only be able to penetrate these “inaccessible regions of the pyramid walls but also.to locate chambers and passageways up to several hundred feet below ground.”

The team of scientists put the short-range radar waves to work. Although the signals did penetrate solid rock some distance, they petered out without accomplishing anything. They, too, failed to solve the Chefren mystery.

And now, say reports, these scientists are thinking of using infra-red photography to locate that secret chamber — if it exists. But what was it that defeated the team using the sounnder? Nothing more than moisture — too much of it in the pyramid, despite its location in a hot climate and its existence for thousands of years.