Tunnel to pyramid's secret royal chamber possibly found

<body leftmargin="0" bgcolor="#000060" text="#FFFFFF" link="#FFFF00" vlink="#FF9900"> <b> <p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" size="4">“Secret tunnel” to pyramid's royal chamber may be found</font></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" size="1">Posted August 31, 2004<br> World Science staff</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" color="#ffffff" size="2"><b>Amateur archaeologists believe they’ve found a secret tunnel to the king’s burial chamber in the world’s most famous pyramid, but they’re not being allowed to investigate it further, published news reports say.</O:P> </b></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" color="#ffffff" size="2"><b>The Great Pyramid of Giza, Egypt, is considered one of the seven wonders of the world and contains the mummified remains of the Egyptian King Cheops. But the king’s actual remains have never been definitively discovered. <O:P> </O:P> </b></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" color="#ffffff" size="2"><b>According to the reports, the archaeologists, Gilles Dormion and Jean-Yves Verd'hurt made the findings using ground-penetrating radar and architectural analysis. According to a report in The Guardian newspaper, of London, the two have been working in the pyramids for 20 years and previously discovered two earlier unknown rooms in a pyramid at Meidum.<O:P> </O:P> </b></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" color="#ffffff" size="2"><b>The Egyptian authorities have so far refused to give permission for the two to carry out further research, possibly on grounds that they don’t have enough professional experience, according to the reports. But they do have the backing of a respected egyptologist, Jean-Pierre Corteggiani of the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology in Cairo, the reports said.</b></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" color="#ffffff" size="2"><b>The pyramid of Cheops, whose construction began around 2,680 B.C., is the largest pyramid ever built and is one of the three pyramids of Giza near Cairo, also the largest of their kind. It is believed to house the Egyptian pharaoh Cheops, who ruled from 2560 to 2532 B.C.</b></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Arial" color="#ffffff" size="2"><b>A solid mass of limestone blocks covering 13 acres (5.3 hectares), the pyramid was originally 756 ft (230 m) along each side of its base and 482 ft (147 m) high. It has several passages, two large chambers in addition to one beneath the ground level, and two small air chambers for ventilation.</b></font></p> </body>