This technology that allows the camera to bend and move from side to side not only look straight in front. Robitic machine has revealed mysterious ancient markings deep inside a secret chamber of Egypt's Great Pyramid of Giza. The tiny camera transmitted video images through a hole in a stone door at the end of an extremely narrow tunnel.
The tunnel is one of four known secret passages leading from the King's and Queen's chambers. Thus far, researchers have not been able to come to a consensus as to their purpose.
The ancient hieroglyphics, consisting of wall markings in red paint and lines in stone, have not been seen by human eyes for 4,500 years. Scholars hope these symbols will help uncover the mystery as to why the monument's secret chambers and tunnels were built.
News of the discovery quickly took the Web by storm. Over the past 24 hours, Web searches for "great pyramid of giza" and "egypt pyramids" both spiked into breakout status. Also seeing big bumps in lookups: "hieroglyphic dictionary" and "hieroglyphic meanings."
This wasn't the only pyramid-related discovery in recent days. Archaeologists from the United States (with some help from the BBC) used satellite imagery to discover 17 pyramids beneath the sand and silt in Egypt. An article from Canada's CBC explains that 1,000 tombs and around 3,000 other buildings were also discovered thanks to the technology.
How does it work? According to the CBC article, "kiln-fired bricks used to build ancient cities can be distinguished from the earth covering it" on the infrared satellite images. This find may be just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. There may be many more buildings, tombs, and pyramids buried further beneath the Earth's surface.
Their tools have changed, but archaeologists shouldn't fear for their jobs. There is still a lot left to discover if you look hard enough.
These markings or "the wall lines" may have been made by the masons for the purposes of to allow each other to identify or used as guidelines or as used for directional symbols.
Der Manuelian notes, however, the biggest mystery concerning the tunnels is why the builders of the Great Pyramid included the tunnels as part of the design of the monument. "There are architectural explanations, symbolic explanations, religious explanations -- even ones relating to the alignment of the stars -- but the final word on them is yet to be written," says Der Manuelian. "The challenge is that no human can fit inside these channels so the only way to do this exploration is with robots."
The robot explorer was built and designed by researchers and engineers at the University of Leeds, who collaborated on the project with Scoutek UK and Dassault Systemes, France.
The robot is named Djedi, after the magician whom King Khufu consulted when planning the layout of the pyramid. Interestingly, the Djedi team won a competition -- coordinated by Dr. Zahi Hawass, Egypt's Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs -- designed to pick the best possible robot to explore the pyramid's shafts. In the final stages of the competition, the Djedi team's robots went head to head -- and beat out -- robots designed by researchers from Singapore University.
According to Dr Rob Richardson, academic leader of the research team from the University of Leeds, the "Djedi robot is completely unique, it is the lightest, gentlest climbing robot that has ever been deployed within the pyramid."
Meanwhile, the great mystery of the Great Pyramid of Egypt (aka Khufu's Pyramid and the Pyramid of Cheops), one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, remains firmly intact.
This is really amazing and very interesting since this may open all new doors and windows to our future and our past. I would love to be allowed to Travel with one of these groups to be able to see all this that is going on in Egypt. Here is a link to all the pictures of the find thus far.
http://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?p=great+pyramid+of+giza
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