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What Archaeologists Want You To Know About The Great Pyramid Void

, Archaeologist, Writer, Scientist Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.


This week, an international team of scientists published new research that used muon radiography imaging to locate a void in the Great Pyramid of Khufu. While the technique is getting worldwide applause for being deployed to peer inside the pyramid, archaeologists have begun to criticize the way the media is covering the discovery.

Muon tomography's relevance to archaeology has been discussed for quite a while. In 1970, Science published an article by Luis Alvarez and colleagues that used muon technology in an attempt to look for chambers in the Pyramid of Khafre. But the techniques have advanced considerably in fifty years.

In a 2016 article in the Journal of Physics: Conference Series, a group of physicists wrote about the innovative nature of applying this technique, which involves measuring muons or elemental particles, to old structures. Specifically, they noted, "By detecting the muons that cross the studied object and reconstructing their directions, it is possible to identify the existence of significant differences in the muon rate for a given direction. These differences, [a] consequence of variation of the mean density of the object traversed by the muons, indicate the possible existence of an internal structure inside the object."

That is, by pointing a stream of muons at something like a pyramid, it is possible to non-invasively discover holes and voids. In this sense, it's something like the techniques that archaeologists have used for years to find anomalies under the ground, but applicable to a vastly wider array of objects.

This week's news of a void in the Great Pyramid came out of a new article in Nature by an international team of researchers led by Kunihiro Morishima, a physicist at Nagoya University in Japan, and co-authored by Mehdi Tayoubi, co-founder of a company called ScanPyramids. Using three different cosmic ray muon imaging techniques, the team found a void in the Khufu pyramid above the so-called Grand Gallery.

If the use of muon tomography is not new, and the discovery of previously unknown voids in various Egyptian pyramids is also not new, then why has this week's news caused such a stir? Many archaeologists are afraid that the public are subscribing to a pseudoscientific narrative of "mysterious" pyramids thanks to incautious media reporting, rather than understanding that the muon technology is instead producing new data to one day help solve the longstanding question of precisely how the pyramids were built.

Archaeologist David S. Anderson of Radford University tells me that, in particular, he finds the words that science writers are using to be very problematic. "There is far too much association between archaeology and the occult in the public imagination," he says. "It's not just Indy; every archaeologist in the movies is pursuing some occult or religiously powerful object. Overusing 'mysterious' simply pushes the public imagination further in this direction."

More specifically with respect to the Egyptian pyramids, Anderson says that "there is an incredibly long history of various pseudoarchaeology claims regarding the dating of Giza, how the pyramids were constructed, and in particular just how many more 'secret' chambers there might be. This new study in essence confirms a popular misconception about the pyramids -- that they are in fact a store of mysterious chambers that archaeologists have been keeping under wraps."

Archaeologist Ethan Watrall of Michigan State University agrees and tells me that "the problem is not so much with the science behind this discovery, but the way in which it is being picked up and presented within the popular media. All you see are secret chambers, hidden spaces, secret vaults... all of this language suggests a mystery where none probably exists."

This skepticism about the coverage of the pyramids is not unfounded: conspiracy type theories about how aliens built the pyramids abound, and it is almost two years to the day that then-presidential hopeful and now Secretary of Housing & Urban Development Ben Carson asserted that the pyramids were built to store grain.

Even Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass told the AFP something similar: "The pyramid is full of voids, and that does not mean there is a secret chamber or a new discovery. The project has to proceed in a scientific way that follows the steps of scientific research and its discussion before publication." When he met with scientists from ScanPyramids, he "informed them this is not a discovery."

Read More: What Archaeologists Really Think About Ancient Aliens, Lost Colonies, and Fingerprints of the Gods

But some see this research study as a way to better explain what 21st century technology can and cannot tell us about the pyramids. Archaeologist Sarah Parcak of the University of Alabama, who is no stranger to using innovative techniques to study the archaeology of Egypt, posted on Twitter that she is skeptical of the find as reported because voids seen by muon technology could be the result of various things. "Best case: it helps us to understand pyramid construction," she writes. Parcak also points out that this is just the latest in voids being discovered, as archaeologist Yukinori Kawae found one using LIDAR technology recently.

Egyptologist Mark Lehner told the New York Times that “the great pyramid of Khufu is more Swiss cheese than cheddar,” further bolstering the idea that a new void is most likely no big deal. Lehner also told the New York Times that the angle of the void "doesn’t make much sense for it to be a chamber that would contain artifacts, burials, and objects."

"I think the biggest takeaway," Parcak maintains, "is that new technologies will evolve to give us new perspectives on old sites." But Watrall notes that "it's going to be very hard to confirm the new finding by any other means -- which is obviously problematic for the scientific process. It requires archaeological interpretation and confirmation."

The big news about the Great Pyramid, then, is both that technology is advancing to a time when we will be able to basically x-ray large structures, but also that many people still think of Egyptian archaeology as romantic and ancient Egyptian culture as mysterious, when neither is close to the truth.

"The new study is a fantastic use of technology to understand ancient construction techniques," Anderson concludes, "but the way it's appearing in the news now, it looks more like a treasure-hunting tool. That's problematic because it adds fuel to over a century's worth of pseudoarchaeology claims about the pyramids."


Kristina Killgrove is a bioarchaeologist and science communicator. For more ancient news, follow her on Twitter (@DrKillgrove), Instagram (PoweredbyOsteons), or Facebook (Powered by Osteons).