Did the Great pyramid keep robbers out?

Mastabas, Pyramids and rock-cut tombs (the big three Ancient Egyptian tomb types) all employed tricks and countermeasures to stop grave robbers. They used obfuscation, hiding burial chambers behind blind corridors. The rock-cut tombs are the ultimate expression of obfuscation, where the entire tomb is hidden away.



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Finding an underground burial chamber still full of treasure was amazing. After all, even though the tombs of the pharaohs and nobles had been hidden, they were all robbed – probably not too long after they were sealed off.

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Climbing the pyramids is also banned because it's exceedingly dangerous, and typically anyone caught scaling the pyramids face up to three years in an Egyptian jail.

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A hidden corridor nine meters (30 feet) long has been discovered close to the main entrance of the 4,500-year-old Great Pyramid of Giza, and this could lead to further findings, Egyptian antiquities officials said on Thursday.

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Attempted demolition In AD 1196, Al-Aziz Uthman, Saladin's son and the Sultan of Egypt, attempted to demolish the pyramids, starting with that of Menkaure. Workmen recruited to demolish the pyramid stayed at their job for eight months, but found it almost as expensive to destroy as to build.

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Considering the pyramids were built more than four thousand years ago, the exact technique of construction remains a mystery and modern-day equipment was not available at the time. It is believed that ancient Egyptians ferried the huge stone blocks on the Nile river.

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Pyramids today stand as a reminder of the ancient Egyptian glorification of life after death, and in fact, the pyramids were built as monuments to house the tombs of the pharaohs. Death was seen as merely the beginning of a journey to the other world.

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Many people have said that the pyramids would last 1 million years or even until the world ended, but I'd say around 10,000 to 100,000 years based on current observations.

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The pharaoh's final resting place was usually within a burial chamber underneath the pyramid. Although the Great Pyramid has subterranean chambers, they were never completed, and Khufu's sarcophagus rests in the King's Chamber, where Napoleon is said to have sojourned, deep inside the Great Pyramid.

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Mummies found in Egyptian pyramids The first pyramid built was the Step Pyramid of Djoser. Human remains have been discovered inside, and Jean-Philippe Lauer (1902-2001) found a rib, a humerus, the left foot, and part of the stomach of a mummy in the stone sarcophagus of Djoser.

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While many theories have been proposed about how they were built, some researchers believe that the pyramids may have been more than just tombs for pharaohs. They may have also been part of a sophisticated power grid that harnessed hydrogen as a fuel and transmitted electricity wirelessly through obelisks.

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According to noted archeologists Mark Lehner and Zahi Hawass, the pyramids were not built by slaves; Hawass's archeological discoveries in the 1990s in Cairo show the workers were paid laborers, rather than slaves. Rather, it was farmers who built the pyramids during flooding, when they could not work their lands.

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But what the Egyptians lacked in tools, they made up for with science and engineering precision. Smith explains that they developed and used the cubit rod to measure and lay out the dimensions of the pyramid; a square level to level horizontal surfaces, and a 3:4:5 framing square to create precision 90-degree angles.

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