Posted on 09/15/2002 10:24:43 AM PDT by yankeedame
Sunday, 15 September, 2002, 15:13 GMT 16:13 UK
Robot to probe pyramid's mysteries
The robot is being supplied by US firm iRobot
By the BBC's David Bamford
Final checks are under way in the Egyptian capital Cairo on a specially adapted robot that this week will attempt to discover one of the mysteries lying at the heart of Egypt's biggest pyramid.
The 12-centimetre tall robot, named Pyramid Rover, is to make its way on Tuesday down a small tunnel in the hope of discovering ancient chambers that may shed light on how the pyramids were built.
Egyptologists can only speculate about where the tunnel may lead
The Great Pyramid of Cheops is the largest of a family of three pyramids on the Giza plateau near Cairo and a "must-see" attraction for every tourist who has ever visited the Egyptian capital.
Deep inside the pyramid, running from the Queen's chamber, is a mysterious 20-cm wide tunnel.
In 1993, a German archaeologist sent a small robotic probe into the shaft armed with a fibre-optic camera.
It travelled for about 60 metres before it ran straight into a thick limestone door.
This week the new robot will make the same journey - but as well as having a camera on board, it will have a drill.
The plan is to make a hole through the limestone door big enough to push a fibre-optic cable inside to discover what lies behind.
The organisers say they have no idea what to expect.
They hope to find scrolls or tools that may help explain how the pyramids were built and - who knows - perhaps a treasure trove to rival that of Tutankhamen?
Amazing drawings, data, etc.
True apex = Jerusalem (Zion)
False summit = Amman
Heart = Babylon, the Queen's chamber
>>>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 same show will air worldwide later in the week under a different title, Egypt: Secret Chambers Revealed, on the National Geographic Channel. Check local listings for more information. <<<
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/09/0910_020913_egypt_1.html
National Geographic October Issue Includes Close-up of Beast/Sphinx Map of Middle East
***
This is the shaft that is directed toward Medina on the Pyramid-map overlay drawing, linked above. Why this overlay? Biblical symbolism relates that Zion = the location of the true cornerstone, and Babylon sits as a queen. The two orientation points, therefore, were the extrapolated true summit of the pyramid, and the Queen's Chamber, which is in the heart/center of the pyramid structure. Amman ended up as the location of the summit as is, without the cornersone.
And once they get past that door they'll find where Elvis has been hiding all these years.
Strangely, one of the theories that the archeologists seem to dismiss is that these shafts are ventilation.
My theory is that they really are ventilation shafts for the original crypt workers so that their torches wouldn't suffocate them while they were moving around sarcophagi and treasure and so forth. They didn't have electric lights back then, after all. There are these 'ventilation shafts' in all of the main funeral chambers and some long hallways.
So what explains the 'bronze-handled sealing stone' at the top of the shaft? Well, this is to block the circulation of fresh air deep inside the pyramid so that grave robbers would suffocate inside from their torches burning up all the breathable oxygen. A few grave robbers not returning from a foray into the pyramid would sufficiently spook other would-be thieves into not trying.
I believe that the archaeologists will discover with the robot-cam on this trip the method in which the 'drop stone' was released into the shaft by ropes from workers outside the pyramid.
The workers needed air and light when preparing the crypt, and then when they were finished the seals were dropped to make it impossible (to the 2nd Millenium B.C. Egyptian mind) to re-enter at a later time.
Just my wild guess, of course, but I only became interested in these shafts when I found out that the archaeologists were dismissing them as anything but 'ventilation shafts'.
I predict they find Al Capone's loot.
Makes sense, though. An interesting problem anyhow.
1. The shafts that lead from the Queen's Chamber start about 20cm into the masonry. They never opened into the chamber itself.
2. There was no need to shift heavy masonry within the chambers. As the evidence of Khafra's pyramid shows, the stone sarcophagi were put into the chambers during their construction, before they were roofed.
3. There is no ancient soot inside the Great Pyramid. The conventional theory is that the interior was lit by a controlled hydrogen-fusion reactor whose light was reflected into the pyramid by metal mirrors. In other words, sunlight.
4. The existing access shafts provide sufficient ventilation for small numbers of people to walk around the chambers. I know, 'cos I'm still alive.
But after all that, I don't have a better guess.
1. A still functioning Alantean Power Crystal
2. Fourteen years' worth of grain supply records.
3. The Testament of Abraham, written with his own hand upon papyrus.
4. A mummified body matching exactly the image on the Shroud of Turin.
5. Al Gore's missing 10,000 votes.
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