The "door".
Posted on 09/16/2004 9:10:41 PM PDT by vannrox
The "door".
"In Egypt: Secret Chambers Revealed [2002], archaeologist and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Dr. Zahi Hawass and a team of engineers explored a mysterious blocking stone within the southern shaft of the Great Pyramid at Giza. During the program, a state-of-the-art robot, developed by iRobot in Boston, Massachusetts, traversed the length of the shaft, encountering a second blocking stone a mere 45cm beyond the first."
Yes, I remember seeing it on TV broadcast.
Was wondering if tehre are three 'doors' like in Tut's tomb.
They should probably prepare for that.
Something they could do is the siesmic probe.
No other way to describe it. In oil prospecting they have some vehicles called 'shakers' that creep along and vibrate, creep along and vibrate, and a lineof acoustic sensors picks up the signal bounced back from teh underlying rock and creates a 3d 'sonar' image of underlying rock strata giving them a guess as to where oil is.
Something similar can be done with the pyramid to create a map of the internals.
Just without the big creeping vehicles.
The history of the investigation of these shafts begins in September 1872, when the British engineer Waynman Dixon discovered the openings of the north and south shafts of the Queen’s Chamber. Dixon pushed a wire through the joints of the masonry of the south wall, and realized there was a hollow space behind. He then chiseled through the wall to reveal the shaft. He looked for a shaft in the equivalent area of the north wall and found one. When he lit a candle and placed it in the southern shaft, there was a slight draft.In the south shaft, Dixon and his associate James Grant found a small bronze hook. The north shaft yielded a granite ball and a portion of cedar-like wood. They became known as the Dixon Relics. Both sets of artifacts lay amongst rubble at the bottom of the sloping shaft. The relics were taken to England, recorded by astronomer Royal Scotland, and returned to Dixon – after which they disappeared. Report of the discovery of the relics was made in “Nature” December 26, 1872, including a drawing of the items.
In 1993 a search led to the discovery of the ball and hook in the British Museum, where they still are today. The piece of cedar-like wood remained missing until 2001, when it was traced at the Marischal Museum, Aberdeen. Although they are sure it is in their collection, they haven’t yet located it as they are in the process of moving.
http://www.guardians.net/hawass/articles/secret_doors_inside_the_great_pyramid.htm
We were at the British Museum a month ago. Before going, I searched for these items on their website. No listing. Nonetheless, I made it a point to look for the display in the Egypt rooms. I found the glass display case (room 65 IIRC) with a limestone casing stone, and in it was the place where these items (at least the hook and the ball/weight) are "normally" displayed. The card read, "Removed for photography". I wonder if they are ever displayed.
I ran across a link (that I can't find now) with a very intriguing story about the rediscovery of these Dixon relics. It must have been written prior to the wood being rediscovered in 2001. I didn't know that the wood had supposedly resurfaced. Fascinating.
THE DIXON RELICSIn September 1872 a British engineer, Waynman Dixon, working in Egypt was requested by Piazzi Smyth, the Astronomer Royal of Scotland, to undertake for him some casual exploration inside the Great Pyramid [7]. It was around this time that Dixon discovered the openings of the two shafts on the south and north walls of the Queen's Chamber.
In the horizontal section of the shafts that leads into the chamber, Dixon found three small relics: a small bronze hook; a portion of 'cedar-like' wood, and a granite ball [8]. The relics were packed in a wooden cigar box and taken to England by John Dixon, Waynman's older brother, also an engineer. They were mailed to Piazzi Smyth who recorded them in his diary, then returned to John Dixon who eventually arranged for the publications of articles and drawings of the relics for the science journal Nature and the popular London paper The Graphic [9].
The 'Dixon Relics' then mysteriously disappeared. Astonishingly, although the discovery of the shafts of the Queen's Chamber by Waynman Dixon was reported by Flinders-Petrie in 1881 and by Dr. I.E.S. Edwards in 1946 and through the years by numerous other pyramid specialists, the 'Dixon' relics were never mentioned and their existence apparently forgotten [10]. The only person, as far as I can make out, who mentioned these relics after they were published in December 1872 in Nature and The Graphic was the astronomer Piazzi Smyth (see below).
Here is, in fact, what actually happened to the relics after December 1872: exactly a century later, in 1972, a certain Mrs. Elizabeth Porteous living in Hounslow near London, was reminded (apparently by the excitement generated by the Tutankhamun Exhibition at the time) that her great grandfather, John Dixon, had left in the family a cigar box with relics inside them found in the Great Pyramid which she had inherited in 1970, after the death of her father.
Mrs. Porteous then took the relics, still in the original cigar box, to the British Museum. They were registered by Mr. Ian Shore, then the assistant of Dr. I.E.S. Edwards, the curator of the Egyptian Antiquities Department. However, probably because of the distraction caused by the Tutankhamun Exhibition, the Dixon Relics were stored and forgotten.
In September 1993, having come across a comment by Piazzi Smyth in one of his books [11], I decided to find out where the Dixon Relics were. I contacted Dr. I.E.S. Edwards (then retired at Oxford) and also Dr. Carol Andrews and Dr. A.J. Spencer at the British Museum, but neither seemed to have heard of these relics. Eventually, with the help of Dr. Mary Bruck, the biographer of Piazzi Smyth [12], I traced Piazzi Smyth's personal diary at the Edinburgh Observatory and found his entry on the relics dated 26 November 1872, as well as private letters he had received from John Dixon at the time.
Through these documents I then traced the articles published in Nature and The Graphic. While still searching for the relics, it was recalled that it was John Dixon who, in 1872-6, had arranged for the transport of the Thotmoses III obelisk (Cleopatra's Needle) to London's Victoria Embankment and, more importantly, that underneath its pedestal Dixon had ceremoniously embedded various relics including a cigar box!
Naturally many of us began to suspect that this item might have been the very same cigar box which contained the ancient relics found in the shafts of the Queen's Chamber of the Great Pyramid. Fortunately this was not to be the case. I decided at that stage of the search to publish a full page article in the British newspaper, The Independent [13], in the hope that someone might remember the whereabouts of the Dixon Relics.
The ploy worked. Ian Shore, who had registered the relics back in 1972 at the British Museum, read the article and remembered them being donated by Mrs. Porteous. He promptly informed Dr. Edwards who in turn contacted Dr. Vivian Davies, the curator of the Egyptian Antiquities at the British Museum. A search was called and the relics were 're-discovered' at the British Museum in the second week of December 1993 [14].
Unfortunately the small piece of 'cedar-like' wood was missing, and thus no Carbon 14 dating was possible. The relics are now displayed at the British Museum's Egyptian section.
Pax, are you on SC's ping list? This is such the kind of thing you would LOVE.
Hey, I thought this thing was giant power plant. Maybe there's a nuclear reactor inside.
Hmmm ... maybe Steven Spielberg had it right all along:
I have a tape of Gantenbrink's TV special "The Journey Of Upuaut" that aired on the Discovery Channel back in the 90's. It's fascinating stuff, even from a purely technical engineering perspective. One curious thing about the "door" however, was his speculation and accompanying drawings about how the "door" might be designed to slide down from a slot above and that the two copper wires (that's what he called them) seen protruding were a type of spring lock mechanism designed to prevent its being raised again. Seemed to me they were pointing in the wrong direction for that purpose, but who knows? Maybe they're just the ends of the electrical lines for the pharoah's DSL internet connection. I mean, after all, when your time comes, would you want to spend eternity without Free Republic?
Zahi Hawass is really Hogwash. He has more opinions this way and that than Kerry, as long as it gets him publicity. His face will be chiseled off the Cairo Antiquities Building as soon as he is out of office.
These little shafts the robots explore were to let the RATS IN NOT spirits OUT
ping
George W. Bush will be reelected by a margin of at least ten per cent
The Great Sphinx of Giza -- A Creation of Khufu/Cheops (Rainer Stadelmann) -- The so-called Dream Stela of Tuthmosis IV does not mention that the Great Sphinx was created by Khafre (Chephren), but the older stela of Amenhotep II mentions both Khufu and Khafre. It is located within the quarries of Khufu. Since the causeway of Khafre runs slightly to the southeast, rather than straight to the east, and since his valley temple lies beyond the axis of his pyramid complex, also toward the southeast, it is suggested that it was to avoid something important that already stood there -- the Great Sphinx. The features also point to Khufu -- the square face and broad chin, the pleated nemes without a band, the wide open eyes and large ears, and the fact the statue was beardless in the Old Kingdom.This is interesting in that (unlike Zahi "Zowie" Hawass) Rainer Stadelmann is actually a scholar, and that the supposedly incontrovertible connection between Khafre and the Sphinx is a given to, uh, some people.
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
The GGG Digest -- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)
Ah, here we go:
http://minervamagazine.com/shop/back_issues/11-04.php
Would a robot be affected by the curse of the mummy?
I have no idea what may be found in the future, but I still maintain that to say the Great Pyramid was an Egyptian tomb is preposterous. I think those who study in detail facts known about its construction agree on that. Except Zowie, of course.
I've seen the prior specials and writeups on this and I think this is another Capone's vault. The shaft is so small a human being couldn't fit in it - which is why a robot had to be sent into it. I think all they will find is air.
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