Scientists to Drill Into Great Pyramid to Peek Into Newly Discovered Chambers

They have been plundered by treasure hunters, picked over by archeologists, photographed from every conceivable angle by several generations of tourists. Yet more than 4,600 years after they were built, the Pyramids of Giza may still harbor ancient secrets and possibly even Pharaonic treasures.

A French scientific team thinks so, at any rate. And with the aid of high-technology instruments recently adapted to archeological use, it will attempt in the days ahead to peer into the interior of three newly discovered chambers in the Great Pyramid of Cheops, the oldest and largest of the three Giza pyramids.

The existence of hidden chambers inside the Great Pyramid has long been suspected. But there was never any proof of their presence until last May, when experts from a French geophysical survey company, using a sounding device known as a microgravimeter, located what appear to be three 6-by-9-foot cavities off a gallery leading to the so-called Queen’s Chamber.

The discovery of the cavities, which the French believe could be ancient storerooms, has created a flurry of excitement among Egyptologists, who for the most part have always assumed that all the treasures of Cheops were long ago plundered by grave robbers.

Even now there is considerable debate over whether the cavities are really storerooms or merely empty spaces built as relieving chambers to help balance the great weight of the pyramid’s 3 million blocks of stone, some of which weigh more than 30 tons.

Ahmed Moussa, director of the pyramids office of the Egyptian Antiquities Organization, said: “The Pyramids are well known. They have been studied by many people from many nations. In all these studies, in all the books written about them, nothing has ever been mentioned about these rooms. I for one think there’s nothing there, nothing left in the Pyramids except what is already known.”

Other experts disagree. Mohamed Saleh, director of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, said: “We have to be cautious because we don’t want to create flowery expectations. But I think there must be something there.”

One reason for thinking so is the care that the builders of the Great Pyramid took to ensure that the spaces would never be reopened: They sealed them off with a wall of stone nine feet thick. Another reason is that the microgravimetric studies done in May by the Geophysical Prospecting Co. of France suggest that the cavities are too large to have been designed merely as relieving or balancing chambers.

“The French think there is something in these rooms, perhaps burial objects that have escaped plunder,” said Wafaa Sedeeq, an archeologist with the Egyptian Antiquities Organization. “But even if the chambers are empty, even if they are just for balance, that will tell us something more about the construction of the Pyramids, so it’s all very exciting.”

The French team will drill four holes, 1.2 inches wide, through the gallery walls to observe and photograph the interiors of the three cavities using an endoscope, a tubular optical instrument. The holes will be drilled using a special process known as microboring, to ensure that no outside air, dust or change of temperature affects the millenniums-old atmosphere inside--a precaution crucial to the preservation of whatever may be inside.

The two-week job, scheduled to begin over the weekend, will be the first time that such high-tech devices have been used on the pyramid and the first time that its walls will be bored through with a drill--a destructive procedure that has sparked debate among Egyptian antiquities officials.

“My first thought was no, no, we cannot drill in the pyramids,” Sedeeq said. “But then I began to think that if it’s so important, why not?”

Egyptian authorities said the French team originally asked for permission to bore eight holes and received approval for four. The rock bored out of the holes will be saved and used to plug the openings after the interiors are examined through the endoscope, Saleh, the museum director, said.

Some officials feel that this compromise may not end the debate. Moussa, director of the pyramids office, said: “I don’t think there is anything there, but what if there is? What will we do if we find something? The walls of the Pyramid are themselves antiquities. Will we really break through and destroy them if there is something inside? It is a very big problem, a very big problem.”

Saleh agrees, and adds another reason for leaving the chambers and their contents intact--respect for the dead.

“If there are burial objects inside these chambers, we should photograph them and exhibit the pictures but leave the objects be,” he said. “These things were put in the pyramids for the kings to use in the afterlife. We have to respect (the ancient Egyptians’) beliefs and ideas. If we take these things away, we are doing something evil.”

Besides, Saleh said, Egypt’s museum storerooms are filled with Pharaonic artworks that have not even been catalogued yet, let alone exhibited.

“We have enough treasures,” he said. “We do not need more. The most important thing in this matter is to know more about the secrets of the Pyramids. We are scientists now, not ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark.’ ”