Readers should check out this (very) lengthy entry recently posted on the quite useful Em Hotep blog. Readers may recall that Em Hotep has actually produced a series on pyramid construction and architecture that is very readable and worth bookmarking (check out the “Featured Series” on the front page). This post brings us up-to-date with Gantenbrink’s Upuaut pyramid rover.
The History of Pyramid Research: Another Installment from the Em Hotep Blog
Hi Micheal,
Thank you again for the mention of Em Hotep. Being regarded as useful on a website that is dedicated to debunking the not-so-useful sites out there is always an honor! And just so your readers will know, in the next day or two there will be a follow-up article to the Upuaut/Rover article that will focus just on the Djedi Project. I won’t be breaking anything that has not already been released, but I can say that I go beyond the talking points that we all read in the general media, and i will have exclusive interviews with Shaun Whitehead, who designed the robot and directed the mission, and Mehdi Tayoubi who helped design the bot and facilitated the 3D reconstructions based on the data. I will be following all this up with an interview with Jean-Pierre Houdin about how the pyramid shafts fit into his body of work, so it should be an interesting next few weeks.
Thanks again, and keep on keeping us honest!
–Keith/Shemsu
you’re welcome – looking forward to more!
still dont know why they build the shaft…. man..
They are working on it, Lost!
The truth is, we may never know. As Bob Brier has stated before, there are two things the ancient Egyptians did not write about–how to make mummies and how to build a pyramid, and probably both for the same reasons: trade secrets. But alien technology aside, reverse engineering does have its uses, and archaeology is one of them.
As with all Egyptological projects, the Djedi mission is at the mercy of the political situation in Egypt. I can say this (and will say this in my upcoming interview with Shaun Whitehead–shameless plug!!), the Djedi team has not been idle. The robot has undergone redesign in preparation for the next foray into the southern Queen’s Chamber shaft (QCS) and to drill into the blocking slab in the Queen’s Chamber northern shaft (QCN).
In QCS the big question is–is the block on the other side of the chamber a wall or another blocking slab. There are good arguments for both possibilities. Answering this question may not tell us what the shafts were built for, but it could eliminate some theories and narrow the scope.
Short of finding a statue of Khufu or some other ritual item, or a scroll or hieroglyphs that state explicitly what the shaft was for, all we can do is increase the likelihood of some theories while decreasing the likelihood of others. Sometimes Egyptology can be very Buddhist like that (two shameless plugs! Booyah!), we have to be content with the journey. It would be amazing to find that the shaft continues on the other side of the “wall” in the chamber. It would be equally amazing to find that the shaft ends there, because that would fit in with Jean-Pierre Houdin’s work, and an interview with him about the shafts will follow the Djedi article and interviews (THREE shameless plugs! Trifecta!)
Ok, I don’t know if Michael will let me keep plugging Em Hotep like this, but I am hoping to get an interview with him as well. I would very much like to talk with him about pyramidocy, alternative Egyptolgy, and why he thinks these things persist when there is so much about ancient Egypt as-is to keep us fascinated for eons.
But I am with you, Lost Angel. I want to know what those shafts were for, but I will be satisfied to learn a little more about what they are not, and even while Egypt works out its internal difficulties, work on the Djedi Project is very much an alive and kicking thing.
–Keith
I love the material you produce, so of course I’m going to plug the site!