A landmark reveal in the Great Pyramid of Khufu!
Wednesday, March 2, 2023 marks the reveal of a 4500-year-old, previously unknown corridor filmed with an endoscope in the famous pyramid of Khufu, Egypt.
This highlight belongs to the team of the ScanPyramids scientific mission, which has been using their cutting-edge, non-invasive technologies to unlock the remaining mysteries of the Egyptian pyramids -namely Khufu, since 2015. Internationally reputed researchers from the renowned universities of Ain Shams in Cairo, Quebec City and Nagoya in Japan, as well as the French Atomic Energy Commission, are indeed all gathered on site to investigate the heart of Egypt's largest pyramid and unravel the mystery of its construction and internal structure.
This announcement is the conclusive result of years of research on the North face of the pyramid, since 2016 when the ScanPyramids team discovered thermal anomalies in the area of the edifice rafters, confirming the existence of a void there. Using different scientific techniques, the researchers were then able to precisely locate this void and reach it through the rafters with an endoscope. This is precisely what has just been achieved in the last few days. This great advance proves the reliability of such non-invasive methods, the interest of a multidisciplinary approach and the pivotal potential of such technologies for future discoveries.
We wish to congratulate the HIP Institute, which is co-leading the ScanPyramids mission with the Cairo Faculty of Engineering, for this discovery.
The Dassault Systèmes Foundation has been supported the HIP Institute and ScanPyramids since its inception in 2015; indeed, and as today's big news demonstrates, this project opens new perspectives for breakthrough transformation of research in the future. The Foundation further congratulates the Institute, as well as its partners, on this new decisive chapter in the Scan Pyramids mission.
Starting from this, the mission’s scientists are now planning to learn more on the exact purpose of the new corridor, and discoveries may still happen in this area. Indeed, some stones are still located at the bottom of the corridor, and those might also hide their own secrets!