The revealed corridor was supposedly created to redistribute the pyramid’s weight
A 30-feet-long hidden corridor was discovered near the main entrance of the 4,500-year-old Great Pyramid of Giza, Egyptian antiquities officials said on Thursday.
The pyramid, constructed as a monumental tomb around 2560 BC, is the last of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still standing. The discovery was made thanks to the Scan Pyramids project launched in 2015, which allows researchers to peer inside the structure using non-invasive technology including infrared thermography, 3D simulations, and cosmic-ray imaging.
The revealed corridor was supposedly created to redistribute the pyramid’s weight around either the main entrance or around another undiscovered chamber, according to Mostafa Waziri, head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.
“We’re going to continue our scanning so we will see what we can do … to figure out what we can find beneath it, or just by the end of this corridor,” he said.
Scientists detected the corridor through cosmic-ray muon radiography. They later retrieved the images by feeding an endoscope from Japan through a tiny joint in the pyramid’s stones. The discovery could contribute to knowledge about the construction of the pyramid and the purpose of a gabled limestone structure that sits in front of the corridor, according to the researchers.
