- CAIRO (Reuters) - Archaeologists
will scale one of Egypt's ancient pyramids in December to hunt for clues
about the purpose of mysterious doors blocking two shafts in the edifice,
Egypt's antiquities chief said Wednesday.
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- Zahi Hawass said if the shafts stretching from a room
inside the pyramid of Cheops did not emerge on the surface, it would show
that the passages lead to burial chambers hidden behind the doors, which
might be probed from the inside "within one year."
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- "If they (the shafts) do appear from the outside,
they are symbolic doors. If they don't appear, they are not symbolic doors
(and) there are burial chambers hidden," Hawass told reporters.
-
- He said part of the surface of the 4,500 year-old pyramid
would be cleaned by brush to look for signs of outlets to the shafts, which
measure eight by eight inches.
-
- Both shafts were explored in September using a robot
which drilled through a door with copper handles 213 feet up one of the
passages before inserting a camera on live television only to reveal a
second stone slab blocking the way.
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- "The second one is not a door," Hawass said.
"It's like a screening -- something that's hiding something. If you
look at it, it has cracks."
-
- The robot also probed the second previously unexplored
shaft, which also stretches from the "Queens Chamber," finding
another stone door with handles blocking the way 195 feet up the passage.
That door has not yet been drilled.
-
- Further probes to investigate what lies beyond the doors
would depend on the outcome of the surface investigations, Hawass said.
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- Theories on what could lie behind the puzzling doors
have included statues, workers' tools or ancient scrolls.
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- Both shafts emanate from a room below the pyramid's main
room, thought to have been the burial chamber of the Pharaoh Cheops, also
known as Khufu, whose mummy has never been found.
-
- Two larger shafts emanate from the burial chamber, but
unlike the shafts recently explored they open out on to the surface of
the pyramid, which sits on the Giza plateau overlooking Cairo.
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- Some Egyptologists think the shafts were built as vents.
Others have suggested they were built as passages to allow the dead king's
soul to ascend to the afterlife.
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