Egypt plans to explore pyramid
( 2002-10-24 16:13 ) (7 )

Egypt plans to explore the surface of the Great Pyramid in search of an exit to a mysterious shaft blocked on the inside, the country's chief archaeologist said.

If archeologists do find a sealed exit, expected to be about 100 feet up the side of the 452-foot-high pyramid, it would indicate something is locked away in the shaft, Chairman of the Supreme Council of Antiquities Zahi Hawass said Wednesday.

The investigation of the shaft, which leads from a room-sized chamber deep inside the pyramid, received widespread attention in September when a robot was shown crawling up the narrow passages on live television. The machine pushed a tiny camera through a hole drilled in a stone door that blocked the shaft.

But the camera revealed only a short passage closed by a second door.

Speaking to reporters, Hawass said he had still not decided how to pursue the investigation of the shaft internally. "But we will. Within one year, we will do the investigation."

"Maybe it's closing the burial chamber of Khufu," he said, referring to the pharaoh who built the Great Pyramid more than 4,000 years ago. "If it's sealed, it means that this door is hiding something. If it's not sealed, it means it's a symbolic door."

A few days after the robot's televised exploration, it crawled along a second shaft and came up against another stone door.

The two shafts, one on the south side and one on the north, are found only in the Great Pyramid. Archeologists have long debated whether their purpose was symbolic or utilitarian, perhaps for ventilation.

Hawass said the archeologists would clean the exterior of the pyramid on the north and south sides to see if the shafts reached the surface. If the south shaft had a hidden chamber, he would expect the north one to have one as well.

He was asked if drilling through shaft doors and opening sealed exits might incense future archeologists and raise accusations he was destroying the pyramid.

"The pyramid is like part of my body. To make a one centimeter hole in the pyramid to reveal a part of the mystery is very important to everyone," Hawass replied.