Archinect - News

Egypt suspends plan to restore granite cladding on one of the pyramids of Giza following backlash

2024-02-17T08:00:00-05:00

Egypt has scuttled a controversial plan to reinstall ancient granite cladding on the pyramid of Menkaure, the smallest of the three great pyramids of Giza, a committee formed by the country’s tourism minister said in a statement. [...] The pyramids are the only one of the seven wonders of the ancient world that still remain.

The initiative was announced in January by Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, Mostafa Waziri, calling it “the project of the century.”

The project, led by a team of Egyptian and Japanese experts, would have commenced after at least a year of planning but has since drawn international outcry, with many critics believing that there should be as little intervention on the structure as possible and that this restoration attempt could have the effect of disrupting its natural state. The pushback has led Egypt’s antiquities authority to review the project.

The plan called for the reuse of fallen granite blocks that have remained around the pyramid’s base. However, according to Zahi Hawass, a former minister of antiquities who headed the Menkaure pyramid review committee, it would be impossible to determine where each granite block had originally been located.

Hidden corridor discovered in Great Pyramid of Giza

2023-03-03T16:34:00-05:00

A hidden corridor nine metres (30 feet) long has been discovered close to the main entrance of the 4,500-year-old Great Pyramid of Giza, and this could lead to further findings, Egyptian antiquities officials said on Thursday.

The discovery was made under the Scan Pyramids project, a program launched in 2015 that aims to explore and discover ancient Egyptian Pyramids using non-invasive and non-destructive techniques. The group, which includes Cairo University and the French Heritage Innovation Preservation (HIP) Institute currently uses infrared thermography, 3D simulations, and cosmic-ray imaging. Reuters reports that the discovery could provide more information of the Pyramid’s construction and the purpose of a gabled limestone structure located at the front of the corridor.

It’s theorized that the corridor was made to redistribute the pyramid’s weight around either the main entrance, now used by tourists, or around a potentially undiscovered space. Scientists found the corridor through cosmic-ray muon radiography and then retrieved images of it by feeding a 6mm-thick endoscope from Japan through a small joint in the pyramid’s stones.

Ancient tunnel that may hold the tomb of Cleopatra discovered beneath Egyptian temple

2022-11-09T14:34:00-05:00

A long-lost, rock-cut tunnel 43 feet underneath the ancient Taposiris Magna temple has been unearthed by archaeologists outside of Alexandria, Egypt.

The passage was discovered by the Egyptian-Dominican archaeological mission of the University of San Domingo, led by archaeologist Kathleen Martins. The tunnel stretches approximately 4,265 feet in length and is a little over six feet in height.

Image courtesy of the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism

Martins has been working on excavations at Taposiris Magna since 2002 in search of the tombs of Cleopatra and Marc Antony. She views it as the perfect plan for the tomb of Cleopatra. Martins describes the expansive tunnel as an engineering miracle. It has gone undiscovered for so long because it was partially submerged underwater due to a series of ancient earthquakes that occurred.

An alabaster head discovered at the excavation site. Image courtesy of the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism

Last year, her team unearthed 16 burial chambers and two mu...