Mysterious structure near the Pyramids of Giza may be the entrance to underground chambers

What is known about this subject

The Western Cemetery contains the graves of long-dead members of the ruling family and high-ranking officials. Many of these tombs feature rectangular above-ground stone or mud structures with flat roofs known as “matab”.

There is an area in the middle of the cemetery where there is no earthen structure. To search for possible debris in the area, the team used ground-penetrating radar (GPR) as well as a technique called electrical resistivity tomography (ERT), in which electrical currents are sent into the ground and the resistance is measured to detect debris. ), a technique that sends radar signals into the ground and then reads their reflections, creating a map of underground objects.

Scientists were looking for possible graves here / Photo: Motoyuki Sato

Scientists were looking for possible graves here / Photo: Motoyuki Sato

The team found two anomalies at once:

• The first is a shallow structure, L-shaped in the horizontal plane, with the length of each half up to 10 meters. It starts at a depth of 2 meters from the surface. Based on the evidence, “it appears to be filled with sand, which means it was filled in after it was built,” the team of scientists wrote in their study.
• The second anomaly is a deeper cavity with high electrical resistance, spanning an area of ​​approximately 10×10 meters. The depth of the structure is approximately 5-10 meters below the surface. The electrically resistive material may be a mixture of sand and gravel with rare voids or air spaces between them. Neither GPR nor ERT could identify the characteristics of the abnormality.

So the first anomaly may be a kind of corridor leading to the second anomaly; A deeper chamber may contain someone’s grave.

The red mark resembling the letter G may be the entrance to a deeper chamber / Photo: Motoyuki Sato

Excavation

Excavations to determine what this anomaly actually is have just begun. The study’s first author, Motoyuki Sato, a professor at the Center for Northeast Asian Studies at Tohoku University in Japan, said he believes: the structure is not a natural phenomenon because “the shape is too sharp”.

Harvard University Egyptology professor Peter Der Manuelian, who was not involved in the research, said the region had previously “escaped research due to the lack of superstructure.” According to him, there are other L-shaped structures at Giza, including sacrificial chapels, but they are generally above ground.

Plan of the cemetery / Photo: Motoyuki Sato

I’m still not sure exactly what this anomaly is, but it definitely deserves further investigation.
– says Peter Der Manuelyan.

The remote sensing study was carried out between 2021 and 2023 by a joint team of scientists from Higashi Nippon International University, Tohoku University, and Egypt’s National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics.