- CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt will close the interior of the Great Pyramid
for eight months of conservation work from April 1 and give it a break
from the humid breath of tourists. ``The pyramid has to rest,'' Zahi Hawass,
Director of the Pyramids, said of the 137-metre (449-foot) high monument
built by the Pharaoh Cheops (Khufu) more than 4,500 years ago. He told
Reuters this week that each of the three main Giza pyramids would be closed
in turn under a site management system being applied for the first time
in Egypt. ``It's the only way to save the pyramids from destruction, pollution
and tourism,'' he said. ``We must accommodate the needs of archaeology
and the public, but archaeology comes first.''
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- Cheops' pyramid was last closed six years
ago when five cm (two inches) of encrusted salt was removed from the walls
of the Grand Gallery. Now the salt is coming back. ``We will clean off
modern graffiti, repair cracks in the Grand Gallery and study why the salt
has returned.'' Hawass said. ``Maybe it's because of the breathing of the
visitors.'' During the eight-month closure, workers will also install a
French-designed ventilation system to control the humidity. Hawass said
he hoped to persuade the Egyptian government eventually to close the interiors
of all three pyramids permanently. ``The magic is from outside, not inside,''
he said. In the heart of the Great Pyramid lie three chambers, including
the main burial chamber, or King's Chamber, which visitors can enter after
climbing through the Grand Gallery.
-
- Tourists will get access to the other
two, the so-called Queen's Chamber at a lower level than the King's Chamber
and an unfinished chamber hewn in the natural rock beneath the pyramid,
for the first time when the interior is reopened, Hawass said. To reach
the unfinished chamber, visitors will have to clamber bent double down
a steep walkway that drops nearly 100 metres (330 feet). Then they must
crawl on hands and knees through a narrow, airless passage into the chamber
itself. There is little to see except a pit about 4.5 metres (15 feet)
deep and indecipherable black graffiti on the ceiling. Archaeologists believe
construction was abandoned in favour of a burial site in the Queen's Chamber,
misnamed because there is no evidence of queens being buried within the
pyramid.
-
- The builders apparently changed plans
again and the King's Chamber became the final resting place of Cheops'
sarcophagus. Hawass said he believed Cheops had departed from the previous
royal practice of burial beneath the pyramids because he had carried out
a ``religious revolution,'' declaring that he was the sun god Ra in his
lifetime, not just after death. ^REUTERS@
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