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The pyramids, successful bid from left: Menkaure, Khafre, and Khufu. (Travelpix Ltd/Getty Images)
Scans of the third-largest pyramid astatine Giza, the Menkaure pyramid, person revealed 2 anomalous pockets of thing but aerial hiding down its sloping chromatic walls.
The find follows earlier findings wrong the Great Pyramid of Khufu, including a immense interior void and a corridor adjacent its bluish entrance. But the Menkaure cavities are dramatically antithetic successful shape, size, and layout – hinting astatine a precise antithetic operation past and purpose.
"The images revealed 2 anomalies straight down the polished granite blocks, which would bespeak the beingness of air-filled voids," writes a team led by archaeologists Khalid Helal and Mohamed Elkarmoty of Cairo University.
"This mentation was supported by a bid of numerical simulations that considered assorted imaginable scenarios nether real-world conditions."
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As tremendous chromatic monuments to long-dead kings, the pyramids of Giza person fascinated humanity for centuries. Aside from their mythology, though, the pyramids connection a dazzling model into the satellite of past Egypt, not conscionable the value of past Egyptians' funerary rites and splendor, but their ability to adjacent build specified structures successful the archetypal place.
The Great Pyramid is the largest of the monuments and receives the astir attention. Menkaure, the smallest of the 3 main pyramids, hasn't been studied successful item since American archaeologist George Reisner conducted his excavations from 1906 to 1910.
Yet it is unsocial among the 3 pyramids for its unfinished facade of reddish granite implicit the limestone operation – a diagnostic hinting astatine shifting architectural priorities.
All 3 pyramids person stood for much than 4 millennia arsenic a magnificent grounds to past Egyptian craftsmanship; arsenic such, it's profoundly important to survey them without causing further damage. In caller years, techniques and technology person emerged that let conscionable that, with the quality to non-invasively scan wrong a structure.
The locations of the 2 voids down the eastbound partition of Menkaure Pyramid. (Helal et al., NDT&E Int., 2025)This is what the researchers did arsenic portion of the ScanPyramids project. In an effort co-led by Cairo University and the Heritage Innovation Preservation Institute successful France, the squad utilized a operation of 3 antithetic scanning techniques to adjacent down the granite cladding connected the little information of Menkaure.
Electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) sends a existent done coagulated mass, measuring changes successful the resistivity of antithetic materials. Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) sends vigor waves through a mass and measures however they bespeak disconnected antithetic materials. And ultrasonic investigating (UT) uses dependable waves to bash the same.
Using each 3 techniques to 'see' wrong the Menkaure Pyramid, the researchers discovered 2 tiny anomalies connected the eastbound look that did not behave similar the surrounding limestone.
The archetypal was located astir 1.4 meters (4.6 feet) beneath the granite, and measured astir 1.5 meters wide and 1 metre high. The second, astir 1.1 meters nether the granite, measured 0.9 by 0.7 meters. Both anomalies behaved similar pockets of air, not joints betwixt the blocks.
Next, they ran simulations to find whether determination was thing other that explained the data. These ruled retired models suggesting that the signals could person been produced by blocks of chromatic with antithetic carnal properties from the surrounding material.
"It was concluded that some anomalies apt correspond air-filled voids wrong a limestone medium, opening straight down the outer granite casing of the Eastern face," the researchers write.
The bluish entranceway to Menkaure pyramid (left) and the likewise polished conception connected the eastbound face. (Helal et al., NDT&E Int., 2025)These cavities are precise antithetic from the Khufu cavities, 1 of which is quite large, and the different of which is good structured. What the 2 pyramids person successful communal is that the purposes of neither of their voids are clear.
However, arsenic Helal and his colleagues note, the configuration of the granite blocks covering the Menkaure voids is precise akin to that of the blocks astir the pyramid's northbound entrance. In 2019, autarkic researcher Stijn van den Hoven suggested that this could bespeak a 2nd entrance.
The researchers were incapable to find the extent of the cavities; they suggest utilizing cosmic-ray muography to analyse further. "However," they conclude, "the mentation of the detected anomalies should beryllium discussed among Egyptologists."
The probe has been published successful NDT & E International.
