Exploration of the Pyramids| As structures | Exploration | History | As tombs | Overview -|- History of Ancient Egypt | My Homepage |
Exploration of the PyramidsThe first known historian who reported about the pyramids was the greek Herodotus atround 440 BC, roughly 2000 years after the most important ones were built. Around 20 and 70 AD, Strabo and Pliny wrote about the pyramids. In 820 AD, Caliph Abdullah al Mamun explored the Great pyramid. He was not successful in finding the original entrance, so he entered by by removing the hard casing stones and then tunelling into softer inner limestone. Doing this his men managed to find one of the passages. When crawling back up this passage, they discovered that the original entrance was higher on the pyramid face, hidden under the casing stones. Then, Mamun explored the pyramid in details and discoverd the Underground, Queen's and King's Chamber and Grand Gallery. Other arab writers visited the pyramids and in 13th century Idrisi wrote 'The history of pyramids'. In 17th century, Europeans became involved in exploration. In 1818, the first moderen era explorer, an Italian G.B.Belzoni, entered the second pyramid. Later in the century, an Englishman R.H.Vyse explored the Great pyramid, discovering the so called Relieving Chambers. He also made a contribution to exploration of the Second pyramid. Most importantly, he discovered the entrance to the Third pyramid, which led him into the interior. Like Belzoni in the Second pyramid, Vyse saw that the Third pyramid had also been broken into before and even found some graffiti in arab scripture. W.M.F.Petrie detailly measured some of the pyramids in 1833. Today, the exploration goes on with modern methods. ARE-USA acoustic survey and similar techniques were performed to find voids in the structure. In 1993, R.Gantenbrink explored shafts in Great pyramid using a robot.
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