* Astronomy

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Pyramids in Sudan

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RE: Great Pyramid

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The Ancient Egyptians built their great Pyramids by pouring concrete into blocks high on the site rather than hauling up giant stones, according to a new Franco-American study.
The research, by materials scientists from national institutions, adds fuel to a theory that the pharaohs’ craftsmen had enough skill and materials at hand to cast the two-tonne limestone blocks that dress the Cheops and other Pyramids.
Despite mounting support from scientists, Egyptologists have rejected the concrete claim, first made in the late 1970s by Joseph Davidovits, a French chemist.

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A robotic archaeologist is to be sent deep inside Egypt's largest pyramid in a bid to solve secrets revealed by a first foray more than four years ago, antiquities supremo Zahi Kawass said on Thursday.

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Robots are set to probe the narrow shafts of the Great Pyramid to try to solve one of the mysteries of the 4 500-year-old structure.

This week, Zahi Hawass, an Egyptologist, will inspect a robot designed to climb the two narrow shafts which might lead to an undiscovered chamber in the pyramid of Cheops at Giza, on the outskirts of Cairo.

The shafts are currently blocked by displaced stone panels, but they could mark the location of a hidden chamber. That could mean that the hidden chamber is the pharaoh's real tomb.
The shafts were last probed in September 2002, when a robot drilled a hole through one of the stone panels to reveal a small empty space at the end of which lay another panel, which appeared cracked and fragile.

The new robot, designed by a university in Singapore over two years, would drill through that panel and the stone slab blocking the second shaft.

"It's very important to reveal the mystery of the pyramid. Science in archaeology is very important. People all over the world are waiting to solve this mystery. I believe that these doors are hiding something... It could be, and this is a theory, that maybe Khufu's chamber is still hidden in the pyramid" - Zahi Hawass.

The two shafts, which rise from an unfinished chamber in the pyramid, have puzzled archaeologists since they were first discovered in 1872.

Egyptologists speculate the shafts, which measure 20 cm by 20 cm were passages for the king's soul to ascend to the afterlife. Others said they were built as vents, or needed as guide lines in the construction.

"I hope that we will do this work and in a few months from now we will really know what's behind them" - Zahi Hawass.

The Cheops pyramid, also known as Khufu, is 145 metres high, and is the biggest of the pyramids on the Giza plateau complex on the western edge of the Egyptian capital.