Posted on 09/04/2004 10:50:57 AM PDT by wagglebee
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - A pair of French Egyptologists who suspect they have found a previously unknown chamber in the Great Pyramid urged Egypt's antiquities chief to reconsider letting them test their theory by drilling new holes in the 4,600-year-old structure.
Jean Yves Verd'hurt and fellow Frenchman Gilles Dormion, who has studied pyramid construction for more than 20 years, are expected to raise their views during the ninth International Congress of Egyptologists in Grenoble, France, which starts Monday. They also published a book about their theory this week.
Standing in their way is Zahi Hawass, the director of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, who heatedly rejected the theories during a Cairo press conference this week.
"There are 300 theories concerning hidden rooms and other things inside the pyramid, but if I let them all test their theories they will do untold damage to the pyramid, which was built with the blood of Egyptians," said Hawass. "I will not let Egyptian blood be damaged by amateurs."
He said earlier requests from the same pair were turned down in 1999 and 2003.
In their book, "The Room of Cheops," Dormion and Verd'hurt write that 1988 study of an area below the queen's burial chamber in the pyramid found what appeared to be an 11 1/2-foot "structure," according to the French magazine Science and Future.
"The study of this part of the pyramid was always neglected because there had been a grill to block access," they wrote. "While we were working on ventilation in 1988, we were able to penetrate into the depths and study briefly but not enough to state anything essential."
Verd'hurt laughed off Hawass'"amateur" tag, citing previous close relationships with Egyptian antiquities officials and work that he and Dormion had conducted in 1998 on the Meidum pyramid south of Cairo, which dates back more than 4,500 years to the 4th pharaonic dynasty.
The work at Medium, according to Verd'hurt, led to the discovery of two rooms and two passages that had been previously "undisturbed and unknown." They want to do similar work at the Great Pyramid, built by Khufu, a ruler also known as Cheops.
"To be sure of this process, we wanted to verify the result of our architectural works using a radar that confirmed the location of a passage and a system of closures. So I think that now we should at least take these results into account in order to go further in our work."
Verd'hurt said Egyptian opposition to his theory is a "shame." They are expected to raise the issue again with Hawass in Grenoble, but the Egyptian antiquities official said he will not speak to them.
Verd'hurt said he was disappointed by Hawass' refusal.
"It's true that Cheops arouses and attracts passions but, with regard to history, it's really too bad," he said. "I think it's too bad that he doesn't sit down with us to let us explain ourselves."
Journey to the "center of the earth" ping.
http://www.gizapower.com/
Thanks alot! That is appreciated.
I read a book by another frenchie who claimed the pyramids were actually made out of cement. A liberal acquaintance (not friend) also read the same book. When I remarked what a stupid theory this was, he scoffed in the well-known snotty liberal way, "What do you think, that they actually piled up all those stones?" I knew beforehand that the guy was an idiot, but he got pretty irritated when I laughed in his face.
There were never any mummies found in the Great Pyramid. Its uses were apparently infinite outside of being a tomb.
Make sure Geraldo is on hand with a video crew!
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Just updating the GGG info, not sending a general distribution. |
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Lexxtex -- the Hidden Secret of the Great Pyramid's Construction Uncovered
The Great Pyramid Mystery Solved - National Geographic
Khufu Reborn - Dassault Systemes
Keep in mind that Egypt was occupied by a number of people through the ages. The present residents are to a large part descended from Arab invaders. The despised Christian Copts have a stronger link to the more ancient Egyptians. And many of the Egyptians of ancient days likely migrated out of the rigid hierarchy of Egyptian society back when Greek and Roman civilizations were rising.
La chambre hypothé:tique, selon Gilles Dormion, se situerait sous la chambre de la Reine et à l'ouest.
[snip] Gilles Dormion, in conjunction with Jean Patrice Goidin, has participated in various work at the Great Pyramid built by Khufu at Giza in Egypt, as well as other pyramids in Egypt. They worked on the ventilation system within the Great Pyramid, and the French team also used an instrument which measures differences in gravity to find internal spaces. They did discover some abnormalities and obtained authorization from the Supreme Council of Antiquities to drill a series of minute holes into the west wall of the Queen's Chamber. The project, testing the theory of a hidden chamber behind the west wall, revealed a large cavity filled with unusually fine sand... Somewhat widely reported in the news of late, a French team consisting of Dormion and Jean-Yves Verd'hurt claim that a fourth, undiscovered room lies underneath the pyramid's so-called Queen's Chamber and insist that it is likely the burial chamber for the Egyptian Pharaoh... perhaps never have been violated, and would probably contain the king's remains... their radar analyses in another pyramid, at Meidum, led in 2000 to the discovery of two previously undetected rooms... Gilles Dormion and Jean-Yves Verd'hurt first set out to probe the mysteries of the Great Pyramid in 1986, returning in 1998. Using a technique called microgravimetry to measure the density of materials, they believe that they have discovered a cavity underneath the Queen's Chamber and evidence that the stone tiling had been moved at some point. Using radar technology, Japanese investigators also confirmed a cavity a few meters wide... One respected Egyptologist, Jean-Pierre Corteggiani, of the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology in Cairo, was impressed by their work from the start. What first struck him, he said, was that the georadar images were collected and interpreted by a non-Egyptologist, Jean-Pierre Baron, of Safege, a French company that specializes in georadar... Mr Corteggiani was also intrigued by the location of the proposed room, which is said to be under the so-called Queen's Chamber, but further west, which would place it "at the cross-section of the diagonals and the absolute heart of the pyramid", a possibly symbolic resting place for Khufu... Dormion and Verd'hurt believe that an investigation could be non-intrusive. According to them, "...one would simply have to pass a fiber optic cable down through existing holes in the stone, to see if there are portcullis blocks in the corridor below," said Mr Verd'hurt. "Then it will be necessary to enter the front part of the corridor and penetrate the room, taking all precautions to ensure that it is not contaminated."[/snip] [Secret Chambers of the Great Pyramid of Khufu in Egypt by Jimmy Dunn for Tour Egypt]
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