Archaeologists discover tombs from ancient 'great cemetery' in Egypt's Nile Valley

One tomb from Ptolemaic-era burial shaft carved into the bedrock, another a child's grave: This was not an army camp

Three tombs dated to the Ptolemaic Period, more than 2,000 years ago, have been discovered in the Nile Valley, the Egyptian antiquities ministry said on Wednesday. The discovery was made in an area called al-Kamin al-Sahrawi, south of Cairo.

The discovery of sarcophagi and clay fragments suggests that the archaeologists found a major necropolis used over generations. It was evidently used sometime between the 27th Dynasty (when ancient Egypt was under Persian control, from 525 B.C.E. to 404 B.C.E.) and the subsequent Ptolemaic period.

A burial shaft carved out of the bedrock in one of the tombs leads to a chamber where four sarcophagi with anthropoid lids, containing two women and two men, were found.

Another tomb contains two chambers, one with six burial holes, including one for a child. Excavation on a third tomb is still underway, the ministry stated.

Since women and children were buried there, the necropolis is unlikely to be part of an ancient military site, as had been previously suggested, postulate the archaeologists.

Sarcophagi in cemetery dating back about 2,000 years in the al-Kamin al-Sahrawi area in Minya province, south of Cairo.AFP Photo / Egyptian Antiquities Ministry

The 27th Dynasty had been founded by the Persian emperor Cambyses II, son of Cyrus the Great. Cambyses II conquered Egypt in 525 B.C.E., wresting control from the unfortunate and short-lived pharaoh Psamtik III. He tried to continue onto Libya, to no avail. 

The Greco-Roman Ptolemaic period began in 305 B.C.E. when the Roman general Ptolemy assumed the title of King, dubbing himself Ptolemy I Soter, i.e., the Savior. His dynasty would rule Egypt for over three centuries: male rulers took the soubriquet Ptolemy, while the queens tended to be named Arsinoe, Berenice and, famously, Cleopatra.

Archaeologists discover tombs from ancient 'great cemetery' in Egypt's Nile Valley

Tomb of Ramses III (KV11)

King Ramses III was the second ruler of the Twentieth Dynasty, and the last of great pharaohs on the throne. Ramses III, son of Setnakht, ruled Egypt for 31 years. Shortly before his death, there was a conspiracy to kill him by several members of his household including one of his minor wives, Queen Tiy. 

It was essentially an attempt to ensure her son's ascending to the throne. The trial of this conspiracy is shown upon the walls of his mortuary temple at Madint Habu.

The tomb was begun by Setnakht, who then abandoned it and turned to KV14 where he was buried. Setnakht's son, Ramses III, then resumed work on KV11.

James Bruce was the first European traveler to enter this tomb in 1768. He was struck by the painted figures of the two blind harpists that he called it the Tomb of the Harpists.

Nowadays, the Tomb of Ramses III is considered one of the most visited tombs in the Valley of the Kings as there are many impressive reliefs and paintings to be seen on this tomb.

Tomb of Ramses III (KV11)

Ramesses III's Mortuary Temple at Medinet Habu, Egypt

Medinet Habu is the name commonly given to the Mortuary Temple of Ramesses III, an important New Kingdom period structure in the location of the same name on the West Bank of Luxor in Egypt. Aside from its intrinsic size and architectural and artistic importance, the temple is probably best known as the source of inscribed reliefs depicting the advent and defeat of the Sea Peoples during the reign of Ramesses III.

The Sea Peoples, or Peoples of the Sea, were a confederacy of seafaring raiders of the second millennium BC who sailed into the eastern Mediterranean, caused political unrest, and attempted to enter or control Egyptian territory during the late 19th dynasty and especially during year 8 of Ramesses III of the 20th Dynasty. The Egyptian Pharaoh Merneptah explicitly refers to them by the term "the foreign-countries (or 'peoples') of the sea" in his Great Karnak Inscription.

Description

The temple, some 150 m long, is of orthodox design, and resembles closely the nearby mortuary temple of Ramesses II (the Ramesseum). The temple precinct measures approximately 700 ft (210 m). by 1,000 ft (300 m) and contains more than 75,350 sq ft (7,000 m2) of decorated wall reliefs. Its walls are relatively well preserved and it is surrounded by a massive mudbrick enclosure, which may have been fortified. The original entrance is through a fortified gate-house, known as a migdol (a common architectural feature of Asiatic fortresses of the time).

Ramessid columns in the peristyle court

Just inside the enclosure, to the south, are chapels of Amenirdis I, Shepenupet II and Nitiqret, all of whom had the title of Divine Adoratrice of Amun.

Ceiling

Reconstruction of the Mortuary temple of  Ramesses III

The first pylon leads into an open courtyard, lined with colossal statues of Ramesses III as Osiris on one side, and uncarved columns on the other. The second pylon leads into a peristyle hall, again featuring columns in the shape of Ramesses. This leads up a ramp that leads (through a columned portico) to the third pylon and then into the large hypostyle hall (which has lost its roof). Reliefs and actual heads of foreign captives were also found placed within the temple perhaps in an attempt to symbolize the king's control over Syria and Nubia.

In Coptic times, there was a church inside the temple structure, which has since been removed. Some of the carvings in the main wall of the temple have been altered by coptic carvings.

The Royal Palace was directly connected with the first courtyard of the Temple via the "Window of Appearances".

Ramesses III

Modern identification and excavation

One of John Beasley Greene's set of the earliest photos of the temple, showing the Second Pylon

As for much of ancient Egypt, the first European to describe the temple in modern literature was Vivant Denon, who visited the temple in 1799-1801. Champollion described the temple in detail in 1829.

Initial excavation of the temple took place sporadically between 1859 and 1899, under the auspices of the Department of Antiquities. During these decades the main temple was cleared, and a large number of Coptic period buildings, including a substantial Coptic Church in the second court, were destroyed without notes or records being taken.

The further excavation, recording and conservation of the temple has been facilitated in chief part by the Architectural and Epigraphic Surveys of University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, almost continuously since 1924.

Ramesses III's Mortuary Temple at Medinet Habu, Egypt

Great Sphinx of Giza

The Great Sphinx of Giza (Arabic: أبو الهول‎‎ Abū al-Haul, English: The Terrifying One; literally: Father of Dread), commonly referred to as the Sphinx of Giza or just the Sphinx, is a limestone statue of a reclining (or couchant) sphinx, a mythical creature with a lion's body and a human head. Facing directly West to East, it stands on the Giza Plateau on the west bank of the Nile in Giza, Egypt. The face of the Sphinx is generally believed to represent the Pharaoh Khafre.

Cut from the bedrock, the original shape of the Sphinx has been restored with layers of blocks. It measures 238 feet (73 m) long from paw to tail, 66.3 ft (20.21 m) high from the base to top of the head, and 62.6 feet (19 m) wide at its rear haunches. It is the oldest known monumental sculpture in Egypt and is commonly believed to have been built by ancient Egyptians of the Old Kingdom during the reign of the Pharaoh Khafre (c. 2558–2532 BC).

Construction

The Sphinx is a monolith carved down into the bedrock of the plateau which also served as the quarry for the pyramids and other monuments in the area. The nummulitic limestone of the area consists of layers which offer differing resistance to erosion (mostly caused by wind and windblown sand), leading to the uneven degradation apparent in the Sphinx's body.

The lowest part of the body including the legs is solid, hard rock. The body of the lion up to its neck is fashioned from softer layers that have suffered considerable disintegration. The layer in which the head was sculpted is much harder.

Origin and identity

The Great Sphinx is one of the world's largest and oldest statues but basic facts about it are still subject to debate, such as when it was built, by whom, and for what purpose. These questions have resulted in the popular idea of the "Riddle of the Sphinx", alluding to the original Greek legend of the Riddle of the Sphinx.

1st century AD writer Pliny the Elder mentioned the Great Sphinx in his Natural History, commenting that the Egyptians looked upon the statue as a "divinity" that has been passed over in silence and "that King Harmais was buried in it".

Names of the Sphinx

It is not known by what name the creators called their statue, as the Great Sphinx does not appear in any known inscription of the Old Kingdom, and there are no inscriptions anywhere describing its construction or its original purpose. In the New Kingdom, the Sphinx was called Hor-em-akhet (English: Horus of the Horizon; Hellenized: Harmachis), and the pharaoh Thutmose IV (1401–1391 or 1397–1388 BC) specifically referred to it as such in his Dream Stele.

The Great Sphinx partially excavated, ca. 1878.

The commonly used name Sphinx was given to it in classical antiquity, about 2000 years after the commonly accepted date of its construction, by reference to a Greek mythological beast with a lion's body, a woman's head and the wings of an eagle (although, like most Egyptian sphinxes, the Great Sphinx has a man's head and no wings). The English word sphinx comes from the ancient Greek Σφίγξ (transliterated: sphinx), apparently from the verb σφίγγω (transliterated: sphingo / English: to squeeze), after the Greek sphinx who strangled anyone who failed to answer her riddle.

The name may alternatively be a linguistic corruption of the phonetically different ancient Egyptian word Ssp-anx (in Manuel de Codage). This name is given to royal statues of the Fourth dynasty of ancient Egypt (2575–2467 BC), and later in the New Kingdom (c. 1570–1070 BC) to the Great Sphinx more specifically.

Medieval Arab writers, including al-Maqrīzī, call the Sphinx balhib and bilhaw, which suggest a Coptic influence. The modern Egyptian Arabic name is أبو الهول (Abū al Hūl, English: The Terrifying One).

Builder and timeframe

Though there have been conflicting evidence and viewpoints over the years, the view held by modern Egyptology at large remains that the Great Sphinx was built in approximately 2500 BC for the pharaoh Khafra, the builder of the Second Pyramid at Giza.

Selim Hassan, writing in 1949 on recent excavations of the Sphinx enclosure, summed up the problem:

Taking all things into consideration, it seems that we must give the credit of erecting this, the world's most wonderful statue, to Khafre, but always with this reservation: that there is not one single contemporary inscription which connects the Sphinx with Khafre; so, sound as it may appear, we must treat the evidence as circumstantial, until such time as a lucky turn of the spade of the excavator will reveal to the world a definite reference to the erection of the Sphinx.

The "circumstantial" evidence mentioned by Hassan includes the Sphinx's location in the context of the funerary complex surrounding the Second Pyramid, which is traditionally connected with Khafra.Apart from the Causeway, the Pyramid and the Sphinx, the complex also includes the Sphinx Temple and the Valley Temple, both of which display the same architectural style, with 200-tonne stone blocks quarried out of the Sphinx enclosure.

A diorite statue of Khafre, which was discovered buried upside down along with other debris in the Valley Temple, is claimed as support for the Khafra theory.

The Dream Stele, erected much later by the pharaoh Thutmose IV (1401–1391 or 1397–1388 BC), associates the Sphinx with Khafra. When the stele was discovered, its lines of text were already damaged and incomplete, and only referred to Khaf, not Khafra. An extract was translated:

which we bring for him: oxen ... and all the young vegetables; and we shall give praise to Wenofer ... Khaf ... the statue made for Atum-Hor-em-Akhet.

The Egyptologist Thomas Young, finding the Khaf hieroglyphs in a damaged cartouche used to surround a royal name, inserted the glyph ra to complete Khafra's name. When the Stele was re-excavated in 1925, the lines of text referring to Khaf flaked off and were destroyed.

The Spinx circa 1880s, by Beniamino Facchinelli.

Dissenting hypotheses

Theories held by academic Egyptologists regarding the builder of the Sphinx and the date of its construction are not universally accepted, and various persons have proposed various alternative hypotheses about both the builder and the dating.

Early Egyptologists

Some of the early Egyptologists and excavators of the Giza pyramid complex believed the Great Sphinx and other structures in the Sphinx enclosure predated the traditionally given construction date of around 2500 BC in the reign of Khafre.

In 1857, Auguste Mariette, founder of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, unearthed the much later Inventory Stela (estimated Dynasty XXVI, c. 678–525 BC), which tells how Khufu came upon the Sphinx, already buried in sand. Although certain tracts on the Stela are considered good evidence, this passage is widely dismissed as Late Period historical revisionism, a purposeful fake, created by the local priests with the attempt to certify the contemporary Isis temple an ancient history it never had. Such an act became common when religious institutions such as temples, shrines and priest's domains where fighting for political attention and for financial and economic donations.

Gaston Maspero, the French Egyptologist and second director of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, conducted a survey of the Sphinx in 1886. He concluded that because the Dream stela showed the cartouche of Khafre in line thirteen, that it was he who was responsible for the excavation and that the Sphinx must therefore predate Khafre and his predecessors (i.e. Dynasty IV, c. 2575–2467 BC). English Egyptologist E. A. Wallis Budge agreed that the Sphinx predated Khafre's reign, writing in The Gods of the Egyptians (1914): "This marvelous object [the Great Sphinx] was in existence in the days of Khafre, or Khephren,[a] and it is probable that it is a very great deal older than his reign and that it dates from the end of the archaic period [c. 2686 BC]."

Modern dissenting hypotheses

Rainer Stadelmann, former director of the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo, examined the distinct iconography of the nemes (headdress) and the now-detached beard of the Sphinx and concluded that the style is more indicative of the Pharaoh Khufu (2589–2566 BC), builder of the Great Pyramid of Giza and Khafra's father. He supports this by suggesting that Khafra's Causeway was built to conform to a pre-existing structure, which, he concludes, given its location, could only have been the Sphinx.

Colin Reader, an English geologist who independently conducted a more recent survey of the enclosure, agrees that the various quarries on the site have been excavated around the Causeway. Because these quarries are known to have been used by Khufu, Reader concludes that the Causeway (and the temples on either end thereof) must predate Khufu, thereby casting doubt on the conventional Egyptian chronology.

Frank Domingo, a forensic scientist in the New York City Police Department and an expert forensic anthropologist, used detailed measurements of the Sphinx, forensic drawings and computer imaging to conclude that the face depicted on the Sphinx is not the same face as is depicted on a statue attributed to Khafra.

In 2004, Vassil Dobrev of the Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale in Cairo announced that he had uncovered new evidence that the Great Sphinx may have been the work of the little-known Pharaoh Djedefre (2528–2520 BC), Khafra's half brother and a son of Khufu. Dobrev suggests that Djedefre built the Sphinx in the image of his father Khufu, identifying him with the sun god Ra in order to restore respect for their dynasty. Dobrev also notes, like Stadelmann and others, that the causeway connecting Khafre's pyramid to the temples was built around the Sphinx suggesting it was already in existence at the time.

Orion correlation theory

Main article: Orion correlation theory

The Orion correlation theory, as expounded by popular authors Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval, is based on the proposed exact correlation of the three pyramids at Giza with the three stars ζ Ori, ε Ori and δ Ori, the stars forming Orion's Belt, in the relative positions occupied by these stars in 10500 BC. The authors argue that the geographic relationship of the Sphinx, the Giza pyramids and the Nile directly corresponds with Leo, Orion and the Milky Way respectively. Sometimes cited as an example of pseudoarchaeology, the theory is at variance with mainstream scholarship.

Water erosion hypothesis

Main article: Sphinx water erosion hypothesis

The Sphinx water erosion hypothesis contends that the main type of weathering evident on the enclosure walls of the Great Sphinx could only have been caused by prolonged and extensive rainfall,and that it must therefore predate the time of the pharaoh Khafra. The hypothesis is championed primarily by Robert M. Schoch, a geologist and associate professor of natural science at the College of General Studies at Boston University, and John Anthony West, an author and alternative Egyptologist.

Colin Reader, a British geologist, studied the erosion effects and noticed that the effects are selectively at the western enclosure wall and not on the Sphinx itself. He proposed the rainfall water runoff hypothesis, which also recognizes climate change transitions in the area.

The Great Sphinx as Anubis

Author Robert K. G. Temple proposes that the Sphinx was originally a statue of the Jackal-Dog Anubis, the God of the Necropolis, and that its face was recarved in the likeness of a Middle Kingdom pharaoh, Amenemhet II. Temple bases his identification on the style of the eye make-up and the style of the pleats on the head-dress.

Racial characteristics

Over the years several authors have commented on what they perceive as "Negroid" characteristics in the face of the Sphinx. This issue has become part of the Ancient Egyptian race controversy, with respect to the ancient population as a whole.The face of the Sphinx has been damaged over the millennia.

Restoration[edit]

At some unknown time the Giza Necropolis was abandoned, and the Sphinx was eventually buried up to its shoulders in sand. The first documented attempt at an excavation dates to c. 1400 BC, when the young Thutmose IV (1401–1391 or 1397–1388 BC) gathered a team and, after much effort, managed to dig out the front paws, between which he placed a granite slab, known as the Dream Stele, inscribed with the following :

... the royal son, Thothmos, being arrived, while walking at midday and seating himself under the shadow of this mighty god, was overcome by slumber and slept at the very moment when Ra is at the summit [of heaven]. He found that the Majesty of this august god spoke to him with his own mouth, as a father speaks to his son, saying: Look upon me, contemplate me, O my son Thothmos; I am thy father, Harmakhis-Khopri-Ra-Tum; I bestow upon thee the sovereignty over my domain, the supremacy over the living ... Behold my actual condition that thou mayest protect all my perfect limbs. The sand of the desert whereon I am laid has covered me. Save me, causing all that is in my heart to be executed.

Later, Ramesses II the Great (1279–1213 BC) may have undertaken a second excavation.

Mark Lehner, an Egyptologist who has excavated and mapped the Giza plateau, originally asserted that there had been a far earlier renovation during the Old Kingdom (c. 2686–2184 BC), although he has subsequently recanted this "heretical" viewpoint.

In AD 1817 the first modern archaeological dig, supervised by the Italian Giovanni Battista Caviglia, uncovered the Sphinx's chest completely. The entire Sphinx was finally excavated in 1925 to 1936, in digs led by Émile Baraize.

In 1931 engineers of the Egyptian government repaired the head of the Sphinx. Part of its headdress had fallen off in 1926 due to erosion, which had also cut deeply into its neck.

Missing nose and beard

The one-metre-wide nose on the face is missing. Examination of the Sphinx's face shows that long rods or chisels were hammered into the nose, one down from the bridge and one beneath the nostril, then used to pry the nose off towards the south.

The Arab historian al-Maqrīzī, writing in the 15th century, attributes the loss of the nose to iconoclasm by Muhammad Sa'im al-Dahr—a Sufi Muslim from the khanqah of Sa'id al-Su'ada—in AD 1378, upon finding the local peasants making offerings to the Sphinx in the hope of increasing their harvest. Enraged, he destroyed the nose, and was later hanged for vandalism. Al-Maqrīzī describes the Sphinx as the "talisman of the Nile" on which the locals believed the flood cycle depended.

François de La Boullaye-Le Gouz, Les Voyages et Observations (1653)

There is also a story that the nose was broken off by a cannonball fired by Napoleon's soldiers, that still lives on today. Other variants indict British troops, the Mamluks, and others. Sketches of the Sphinx by the Dane Frederic Louis Norden, made in 1738 and published in 1757, show the Sphinx missing its nose. This predates Napoleon's birth in 1769.

In addition to the lost nose, a ceremonial pharaonic beard is thought to have been attached, although this may have been added in later periods after the original construction. Egyptologist Vassil Dobrev has suggested that had the beard been an original part of the Sphinx, it would have damaged the chin of the statue upon falling. The lack of visible damage supports his theory that the beard was a later addition.

Residues of red pigment are visible on areas of the Sphinx's face. Traces of yellow and blue pigment have been found elsewhere on the Sphinx, leading Mark Lehner to suggest that the monument "was once decked out in gaudy comic book colors".

Mythology

Colin Reader has proposed that the Sphinx was probably the focus of solar worship in the Early Dynastic Period, before the Giza Plateau became a necropolis in the Old Kingdom (c. 2686–2134 BC). He ties this in with his conclusions that the Sphinx, the Sphinx temple, the Causeway and the Khafra mortuary temple are all part of a complex which predates Dynasty IV (c. 2613–2494 BC). The lion has long been a symbol associated with the sun in ancient Near Eastern civilizations. Images depicting the Egyptian king in the form of a lion smiting his enemies date as far back as the Early Dynastic Period.

In the New Kingdom, the Sphinx became more specifically associated with the god Hor-em-akhet (Hellenized: Harmachis) or "Horus-at-the-Horizon", which represented the pharaoh in his role as the Shesep-ankh (English: Living Image) of the god Atum. Pharaoh Amenhotep II (1427–1401 or 1397 BC) built a temple to the north east of the Sphinx nearly 1000 years after its construction, and dedicated it to the cult of Hor-em-akhet.

Reception

In the last 700 years, there has been a proliferation of travellers and reports from Lower Egypt, unlike Upper Egypt, which was seldom reported from prior to the mid-18th century. Alexandria, Rosetta, Damietta, Cairo and the Giza Pyramids are described repeatedly, but not necessarily comprehensively. Many accounts were published and widely read. These include those of George Sandys, André Thévet, Athanasius Kircher, Balthasar de Monconys, Jean de Thévenot, John Greaves, Johann Michael Vansleb, Benoît de Maillet, Cornelis de Bruijn, Paul Lucas, Richard Pococke, Frederic Louis Norden and others. But there is an even larger set of more anonymous people who wrote obscure and little-read works, sometimes only unpublished manuscripts in libraries or private collections, including Henry Castela, Hans Ludwig von Lichtenstein, Michael Heberer von Bretten, Wilhelm von Boldensele, Pierre Belon du Mans, Vincent Stochove, Christophe Harant, Gilles Fermanel, Robert Fauvel, Jean Palerne Foresien, Willian Lithgow, Joos van Ghistele, etc.

Over the centuries, writers and scholars have recorded their impressions and reactions upon seeing the Sphinx. The vast majority were concerned with a general description, often including a mixture of science, romance and mystique. A typical description of the Sphinx by tourists and leisure travelers throughout the 19th and 20th century was made by John Lawson Stoddard:

It is the antiquity of the Sphinx which thrills us as we look upon it, for in itself it has no charms. The desert's waves have risen to its breast, as if to wrap the monster in a winding-sheet of gold. The face and head have been mutilated by Moslem fanatics. The mouth, the beauty of whose lips was once admired, is now expressionless. Yet grand in its loneliness, – veiled in the mystery of unnamed ages, – the relic of Egyptian antiquity stands solemn and silent in the presence of the awful desert – symbol of eternity. Here it disputes with Time the empire of the past; forever gazing on and on into a future which will still be distant when we, like all who have preceded us and looked upon its face, have lived our little lives and disappeared.

From the 16th century far into the 19th century, observers repeatedly noted that the Sphinx has the face, neck and breast of a woman. Examples included Johannes Helferich (1579), George Sandys (1615), Johann Michael Vansleb (1677), Benoît de Maillet (1735) and Elliot Warburton (1844).

Most early Western images were book illustrations in print form, elaborated by a professional engraver from either previous images available or some original drawing or sketch supplied by an author, and usually now lost. Seven years after visiting Giza, André Thévet (Cosmographie de Levant, 1556) described the Sphinx as "the head of a colossus, caused to be made by Isis, daughter of Inachus, then so beloved of Jupiter". He, or his artist and engraver, pictured it as a curly-haired monster with a grassy dog collar. Athanasius Kircher (who never visited Egypt) depicted the Sphinx as a Roman statue, reflecting his ability to conceptualize (Turris Babel, 1679). Johannes Helferich's (1579) Sphinx is a pinched-face, round-breasted woman with a straight haired wig; the only edge over Thevet is that the hair suggests the flaring lappets of the headdress. George Sandys stated that the Sphinx was a harlot; Balthasar de Monconys interpreted the headdress as a kind of hairnet, while François de La Boullaye-Le Gouz's Sphinx had a rounded hairdo with bulky collar.

Richard Pococke's Sphinx was an adoption of Cornelis de Bruijn's drawing of 1698, featuring only minor changes, but is closer to the actual appearance of the Sphinx than anything previous. The print versions of Norden's careful drawings for his Voyage d'Egypte et de Nubie, 1755 are the first to clearly show that the nose was missing. However, from the time of the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt onwards, a number of accurate images were widely available in Europe, and copied by others.

Legacy

Mystery of the Sphinx, narrated by Charlton Heston, a documentary presenting the theories of John Anthony West, was shown as an NBC Special on 10 November 1993 (winning an Emmy award for Best Research) A 95-minute DVD, Mystery of the Sphinx: Expanded Edition was released in 2007. Age of the Sphinx, a BBC Two Timewatch documentary presenting the theories of John Anthony West and critical to both sides of the argument, was shown on 27 November 1994. In 2008, the film 10,000 BC showed a supposed original Sphinx with a lion's head. Before this film, this lion head theory had been published in documentary films about the origin of the Sphinx.

Great Sphinx of Giza

Temple of the Goddess Hathor, Dendera, Egypt

Similar to other temple sites in Egypt, the presently standing complex at Dendera marks the location of a very old holy place. An indication of the antiquity of the temple site is given by the astronomical alignment of the main temple to Gamma Draconis before 5000BC. 

Early texts refer to a Pre-dynastic temple that was rebuilt during the Old Kingdom, and further developed by New Kingdom pharaohs including Thutmose III, Amenhotep III, and Ramses II and III. The present structure dates to the Greek and Roman periods, with the sanctuary and its surrounding chapels built by the later Ptolemies in the 1st century BC, and the great Hypostyle Hall by the Romans in the 1st century AD. 

Dendera was the chief place for the worship of Hathor, who is variously seen as the patroness of earthly love, the goddess of healing, and the great feminine source of all nourishment (like the Hindu goddess Kali, Hathor also has her terrible aspects; in one ancient myth she is a raging lioness sent to punish mankind for its rebellion).

Recent studies indicate that the temple of Dendera had several interrelated functions. It was a venerated place of pilgrimage where miraculous cures were effected by the goddess; it was a sort of hospital where various physiological, psychological and magical therapies were practiced; and it was the scene of great processions and festivals throughout the astrological cycle. A feature of Dendera not found elsewhere in Egyptian temples are the dozen mysterious crypts, some underground, some enclosed within the massive double walls of the upper temple. It has been suggested that these crypts were the dwelling place of the goddess, where her statue and ritual objects were kept, and where began the great New Year's processions celebrating the dawn of creation. In the dark of night, the temple priests brought the statue of the goddess from the crypt, through the corridors of the enormous temple and, ascending to the roof, awaited the coming of the dawn. As the first rays of the morning sun broke upon the horizon, the statue was unveiled. Ancient texts speak of this ceremony whereby: "the goddess Hathor might be united with the beams of her father, Re" and that "the sky rejoices, the earth dances, the sacred musicians shout in praise."

The all overshadowing building in the Complex is the main temple, namely Hathor temple (historically, called the Temple of Tentyra). The temple has been modified on the same site starting as far back as the Middle Kingdom, and continuing right up until the time of the Roman emperor Trajan. The existing structure was built no later than the late Ptolemaic period. The temple, dedicated to Hathor, is one of the best preserved temples in all Egypt. Subsequent additions were added in Roman times.

Layout elements of the Temple
Large Hypostyle Hall
Small Hypostyle Hall
Laboratory
Storage Magazine
Offering Entry
Treasury
Exit to Well
Access to Stairwell
Offering Hall
Hall of the Ennead
Great Seat and Main Sanctuary
Shrine of the Nome of Dendera
Shrine of Isis
Shrine of Sokar
Shrine of Harsomtus
Shrine of Hathor's Sistrum
Shrine of gods of Lower Egypt
Shrine of Hathor
Shrine of the Throne of Rê
Shrine of Rê
Shrine of Menat collar
Shrine of Ihy
The Pure Place
Court of the First Feast
Passage
Staircase to Roof
Depictions of Cleopatra VI which appear on temple walls are good examples Ptolemaic Egyptian art. On the rear of the temple exterior is a carving of Cleopatra VII Philopator (the popularly well known Cleopatra) and her son, Ptolemy XV Philopator Philometor Caesar (Caesarion), fathered by Julius Caesar

Enclosed within the precincts of the Dendera complex are a sacred lake, a temple of the goddess Isis, and a brick sanatorium where divine healing was practiced. There is also an early Christian church that typifies the situation in so many Egyptian temples, whose sacred precincts were usurped by the Christians. Within the main temple it is interesting to study the beautiful and highly detailed astrological calendars carved and painted upon the ceilings. Visitors may wonder about the blackened condition of other ceilings in the temple. When Napolean's scholars first visited Dendera they found a centuries-old Arab village firmly established inside the great temple; the villagers' cooking fires had blackened the ceilings over the years.

Temple of the Goddess Hathor, Dendera, Egypt

3,800-Year-Old 'Tableau' of Egyptian Boats Discovered

More than 120 images of ancient Egyptian boats have been discovered adorning the inside of a building in Abydos, Egypt. The building dates back more than 3,800 years and was built near the tomb of pharaoh Senwosret III, archaeologists reported.

The tableau, as the series of images is called, would have looked upon a real wooden boat said Josef Wegner, a curator at the Penn Museum at the University of Pennsylvania, who led the excavation. Only a few planks remain of the wooden boat, which would have been constructed at Abydos or dragged across the desert, Wegner said. In ancient Egypt, boats were sometimes buried near a pharaoh's tomb.  [In Photos: Tomb Painting Discovered Near Great Pyramid of Giza]

Etchings and a boat

Archaeologists found that the tableau was incised on the white plaster walls of the building.

The largest images are nearly 5 feet (1.5 meters) in length and show "large, well-rendered boats depicted with masts, sails, rigging, deckhouses/cabins, rudders, oars and in some cases rowers," wrote Wegner in an article published in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology. Some images are small and simple, the smallest reaching only about 4 inches (10 centimeters) in length, wrote Wegner.

An image showing part of the boat tableau, which includes both large and small images. Some of the larger boats are highly detailed, showing masts, sails, rigging, cabins, rudders and oars.

Though 120 boat images survive today, there would have been more incised on the building walls in ancient times, Wegner wrote. In addition to the boats, the tableau contains incised images of gazelle, cattle and flowers, he noted.

Near the entranceway of the building — whose interior is about 68 feet by 13 feet (21 by 4 m) — archaeologists discovered more than 145 pottery vessels, many of which are buried with their necks facing toward the building's entrance. "The vessels are necked, liquid-storage jars, usually termed 'beer jars' although probably used for storage and transport of a variety of liquids," wrote Wegner in the journal article.The existence of the building was first noted in a 1904 report by an Egypt Exploration Fund (EEF) team that worked at Abydos between 1901 and 1903. However, that team didn't have time to excavate the building and didn't know what was in it; "they came down on the very top of the boat building. They saw the vault of it but abandoned work," Wegner said. 

Many mysteries

The discoveries leave archaeologists with a series of mysteries that future excavations may help solve. [7 Amazing Archaeological Discoveries from Egypt]

The archaeologists don't know who drew the tableau or why they created it. "We can't conclusively answer that on the basis of what's preserved," Wegner told Live Science. However, the researchers think multiple people created the tableau within a short period of time, he added.

One of the 120 incised boat images found in the 3,800-year-old structure. The sail on this boat is unfurled.

One possibility is that the people who built the boat also created the tableau, he said. Or, perhaps, a group of people taking part in a funerary ceremony after the death of pharaoh Senwosret III etched the images onto the building walls. Yet another possibility is that a group of people gained access to the building after the pharaoh died and created the tableau. Archaeologists found that a group of individuals entered the building at some point after the pharaoh's death and took the boat apart, reusing the planks.

Archaeologists are also puzzled over the purpose of all the pottery found near the entrance of the building. It's possible that those attending a funerary ceremony could have spilled liquid from the pots on the ground on purpose. "Potentially a massive decanting of liquid, likely predominantly water, at the entrance of the building was a way of magically floating the boat," Wegner wrote in the paper. The boat would not have been literally floated if this ceremony took place.

Another possibility is that the wooden boat was transported on a wooden sledge across the desert. In that case, "water and other liquids may have been used to lubricate and solidify the ground along the path of the boat as it was pulled from the floodplain to its desert resting place," wrote Wegner, adding that "the ceramic vessels used in this journey may themselves have taken on a ritual significance, and both boat and jars were then buried together as ceremonial interment of objects associated with royal mortuary rites."

The team plans to carry out excavations in the future that may help solve the various mysteries, he said.

Wegner's team, in cooperation with Egypt's Ministry of State for Antiquities, carried out the excavations of the building between 2014 and 2016.

3,800-Year-Old 'Tableau' of Egyptian Boats Discovered

Egypt authorities admit mistakes but aim for 20 million visitors by 2020

The Temple of Karnak at Luxor, one of the Nile Valley cities to which Egyptian authorities hope to boost tourist numbers

Khaled Ramy, Egypt's minister of tourism, said that “we failed to tell people about the positive things about Egypt” over the past four years, but confirmed plans to attract 20 million annual visitors by 2020, up from 9.8 million in 2014.

His ambitious plans to bolster the Egyptian tourism industry, which has suffered as a result of domestic political unrest and terrorist attacks, as well as violence in neighbouring Libya, ride on a new advertising campaign with a “six zero” budget, due to be launched in August.

But he announced that the Grand Egyptian Museum, a large museum near the Giza pyramids that was due to open at the end of this year, would not be ready until 2018, because of a lack of money.

“We need funding. We will be fundraising in the next few months, but $1.2 billion (£779m) is needed to finish the museum,” he said.
View from the Grand Egyptian Museum site last week pic.twitter.com/poWlySLeFr
— Campbell Price (@EgyptMcr) 22 Mai 2015
A tweet purportedly showing the Grand Egyptian Museum site last week.

He said that although most of the concrete shell has been finished, half of the rest of the museum remains incomplete.

• How well do you know Ancient Egypt?

The much-feted project, designed to ease pressure on the National Museum in Cairo by housing 100,000 objects, began in 2002, when the former president Hosni Mubarak laid the first foundation stone, but since then progress has stalled. Mr Ramy said that the museum would not open until higher income from tourism could contribute to its funding.

Egyptian authorities are hoping to attract more visitors to Aswan 

Speaking in London, Mr Ramy said that tourism authorities hope to draw visitors back to the Nile valley, where hotel occupancy in Luxor, renowned for the temple complex at Karnak, stood at 20 per cent last month. Mr Ramy, who has been in his post since March, said he is “working very hard” on attracting visitors to the city, but said, “I really don’t know what happened [to arrivals]. Have tourists changed?”

The British Foreign Office currently considers the Nile valley suitable for visitors, but advises against all but essential travel to the Sinai peninsula outside Sharm el-Sheikh, putting the Red Sea resort towns of Taba, Nuweiba and Dahab off limits to ordinary travellers. Taba was the scene of a terrorist attack in February 2014, in which three South Korean tourists and an Egyptian driver were killed.

Mr Ramy insisted that security in Sharm el-Sheikh was “very high” and that it may only be a “matter of time” before foreign travel advisories changed. He pointed to the relaxation in France’s stance towards Taba after a meeting between French and Egyptian ministers.

Lake Nasser: the Foreign Office currently has no advisories against the Nile Valley (Photo: AP)

He did not appear to consider the target of 20 million visitors by 2020 overly ambitious, despite a significant drop in tourist numbers from their 2010 peak of 14.7 million. The aim is to attract more visitors from the Far East, while also encouraging more people from the UK, Egypt’s second biggest market after Russia. The number of UK tourists to Egypt fell from 1.5 million in 2010 to 900,000 last year, as travellers eschewed its beaches and ancient sites for destinations they considered more secure.

The Egyptian Tourism Ministry is also attempting to improve training around food hygiene and quality on Nile cruise boats. Mr Ramy reported that Abta, the Association of British Travel Agents, would be visiting Egypt in the coming weeks for food inspections. “We need to train them again [boat and hotel operators] , and tell them every few weeks.” He said that non-compliant hotels and boats would be shut down: “Quality is very important to us and those who don’t comply will stop operating.” He also announced plans to build three “state-of-the-art” docking facilities at Abu Simbel and Aswan to help with the maintenance of tourist boats.

The Tourism Minister has plans for a boat docking station near Abu Simbel. (Photo: AP)

Following an embarrassing U-turn earlier this year, in which Egyptian authorities were forced to rescind announcements to end visas on arrival for independent travellers, Mr Ramy said that no changes would be made to visa arrangements until an e-visa system is introduced. He said that this would happen in 8-10 months’ time, which would be followed by a trial period of 3-4 months before being rolled out for all visitors.

Egypt authorities admit mistakes but aim for 20 million visitors by 2020

How were the Giza Pyramids built? Yukinori Kawae Solving the Pyramids’ Secrets

Using 3-D models, one archaeologist is recording the structures’ exact measurements.

Kawae builds precise 3-D models of the pyramids using photographs and videos. Here, he stands on the top of a pyramid for the best view.

When Yukinori Kawae explores the Great Pyramids at Giza, he isn’t after treasure or lost chambers—he’s looking for dimensions. For all that the pyramids have been dug, scanned, and photographed, the exact measurements of many are still unknown.

Kawae first saw the pyramids in 1992 as a 19-year-old traveling from Japan to study them. He was disappointed: They were much smaller than he’d imagined. Today, as an archaeologist, he values every inch of the pyramids in his mission to preserve their unique stone construction. 

For the past decade Kawae has been recording the sites in precise detail. He creates digital 3-D models of the pyramids using laser scanners and photogrammetry, a method that stitches together photographs and videos captured from different vantage points. He also mapped the unusual cave-like indentation on the side of Khufu, the largest pyramid, and made a model of the oldest pyramid before restoration work began.

With this information, he hopes to illuminate how the pyramids were built. Then he wants to enlist muography—an imaging technique that uses cosmic rays to scan a structure’s density and create a blueprint of its interior. Kawae compares his detailed examinations to a “crime scene investigation.”

Laser scans, cosmic ray detectors, and 3-D models have unearthed Indiana Jones-style mysteries and opened archaeological sites to researchers of all ages and nationalities across the world. Last year an archaeologist studying laser scans found hints of hidden chambers in King Tut’s tomb. In February a class at Harvard University “toured” a virtual reality version of Giza’s complexes built from scans and photographs. Crowdsourcing this information, Kawae says, “may solve the mysteries of the pyramids”—but walking the site “is equally important to sitting in front of the data.”

In high school Kawae became obsessed with the pyramids after watching a TV documentary. Now he’s quick to say that sweating under the Egyptian sun isn’t as glamorous as Hollywood portrays it.

His most exciting find so far? A pile of trash, unearthed a decade ago, which provided a glimpse into the daily lives of ancient people. The purpose of archaeology, Kawae says, is “to record everything about the past and to understand human beings. We are not treasure hunters. We need information rather than treasure.”

3D Reconstruction of the “Cave” of the Great Pyramid from Video Footage

Abstract 

 — Studies on the great pyramid of King Khufu (2509-2483 BCE ±25) in Egypt are numerous, but only a few surveys, which are the basis of any hypotheses on the construction of a pyramid, have been conducted. In particular, since no observation of the core of the pyramid has been made, theories about the structure are still hypothetical. In 2013, a Japanese TV production company had the opportunity to climb the northeast corner of the pyramid to shoot a crevice that led to an open space (named “cave”) inside the pyramid, located about 80m from the ground. The authors are fortunate to be allowed to use this video footage for academic research. We employed a “structure from motion” (SfM) technique using Microsoft Photosynth to reconstruct the 3D point cloud of the surface of the cave. Twenty minutes of footage was split into thirty thousand image frames, out of which we selected three hundred images shot using several smooth motions of the camera and used these for the SfM process. SfM tracks the “feature points” in the image sequence to estimate the camera motion and then triangulates these feature points to produce the point clouds. As a result, the static feature points from the overall surface of the cave were effectively collected and reconstructed as point clouds, whereas inconsistent points from a moving person are automatically eliminated through the SfM process. Thus we have produced, albeit in a small area, the first record of the actual structure of the great pyramid’s core. The production of a 3D model from existing video footage is a rather new methodology in the field of archaeology. This set of techniques can be applied to not only academic investigation but also to the restoration and conservation of damaged heritage and artifacts.

 Keywords— Pyramid masonry; SfM (Structure from Motion);  point clouds; Egyptology; Archaeology; 3D recording

I.

INTRODUCTION

In March 2013 a Japanese TV production company, TV Man Union, had the opportunity to climb the northeast corner of the great pyramid of King Khufu (2509-2483 BCE ±25) [1] at Giza plateau, Egypt. The purpose of the program made by the company is to introduce Jean-Pierre Houdin’s internal ramp theory [2]. The TV crew successfully filmed two open spaces, “notch” and “cave”, that are, according to Houdin, a  possible remnant of space for the internal ramp. The notch of the northeast corner of the pyramid is located on the 104

th

 course, which is about 80m from the ground (Figs. 1 and 2). This half-open space has a crevice in the north that led to another open space (“cave”) inside the pyramid.

Fig. 1.

The location of the “notch” of the northeast corner of the pyramid. Fig. 2.

Closeup shot of the “notch” facing the southwest.

One of the authors, climbing with the crew, did not ascertain any evidence supporting Houdin’s theory but rather found interesting archaeological features showing the masonry at the core of the pyramid. Previous archaeological surveys of the great pyramid have only focused on the external part of the monument and inner spaces such as chambers and passages [3], but no observation of the core of the pyramid has been made. Therefore, this is  

the first data produced of the actual state of the core of the great pyramid. II.

 OBJECTIVES OF THE PROJECT

 The aim of this project was to apply and test a structure from motion (SfM) technique for video footage for non-archaeological purposes in order to reconstruct a 3D model of the study area. The authors are fortunate to be allowed exclusive usage of the video footage of “Discovery of the World's Mysteries” (a cultural quiz TV program) from TV Man Union for academic research. The three main objectives of the project are: 1. Generation of a 3D point-cloud model of Khufu’s “cave” from video footage. 2. Production of line drawings of the study area for archaeological research. 3. Presentation of archaeological interpretations of this study area. III.

METHOD

Due to the limited conditions permitted by the local authorities, for example the number of people allowed to climb the pyramid and time limitations to stay in the area, only the shooting of material for an introductive TV program was allowed. Almost every frame of the footage targets the guide who keeps explaining and moving around the cave. This footage is of particular value, especially considering that this was only the second opportunity in the world to shoot the cave using a digital VCR in HD quality (the first document was made by the National Geographic Society). Therefore, we attempt to extract additional geometrical information from the cave to assist further archaeological interpretations by using the post- process data of the video footage. The following table shows the specifications of the original data:

Camera equipment Panasonic AG-HMC155 Lens LEICA DICOMAR lens with optical image stabilizer, motorized/manual mode switching, F1.6-3.0 f=3.9mm to 51mm/35mm equivalent: 28mm to 368mm Format of video footage Apple ProRes 422, 1920x1080, linerPCM, 24bit little-endian, 48000Hz Bit rate 21

Mbps (average), 24

Mbps (maximum) FPS 29.97 Volume of data 24.74 GB Data rate 144.43 Megabit/sec

We focused on the background regions of the image sequences that cover almost the entire surface of the cave, while shooting the guide from a variety of viewpoints and angles. Then we came up with the idea of employing a SfM technique to solve two problems at once: stitching the  background images, and using them to reconstruct the 3D geometric information of the inner surface of the cave.
 A.

3D Reconstruction by Photosynth
We employ Microsoft Photosynth [4] to reconstruct the 3D geometry of the cave. Photosynth is convenient and easy to use and allows us to take digital photos and upload them onto Photosynth website through the internet. Data of 3D point clouds can then be generated for users to download point clouds from the website. The core technique of this application is based on Snavely et al. [5], in which unorganized photo sets can be used for reconstructing 3D scenes from the intrinsic information of the photos and by visualizing the reconstructed scenes on a web browser. The  process of scene reconstruction is accomplished by a SIFT (scale-invariant feature transform) keypoint detector [6] and SfM [7].

Fig. 3.Stitched images and 3D scenes by Photosynth that allow for browsing and exploring on a website.

The SIFT algorithm is used for feature extraction from the images and for finding matching images. The SIFT keypoint detector is invariant to image transformations such as scales, rotations, and translations, and thus capable of robustly finding feature points from images shot by different camera  positions and angles. SfM aims to recover camera parameters,  pose estimates, and provide 3D scene geometry from image sequences. SfM calculates the correlation between feature  points in an image pair and estimates the camera transformation during the shooting of the two images [7]. The number of feature points matched by the transformation of the same camera motion is checked by the RANSAC algorithm [8]. The RANSAC algorithm then adopts the majority of the feature points that adhere to the same transformation. When many of the same feature points can be tracked across an image sequence, geometrically consistent matches can be found. Such image sets and feature point sets are registered as a “track” in [5]. To deal with the large number of photos to apply SfM stably, selecting a good image pair to produce tracks

 

is important. Finding a good image pair is achieved by checking whether many of the feature points can be matched  by a transformation that includes a large amount of camera translation, that is, a long baseline for triangulation. In cases where image features that match well are shared by multiple tracks, the coverage of the reconstructed surfaces grows appropriately in the resultant 3D scene. 

 B.

 Application to the cave photos

Twenty minutes of footage was split into thirty thousand image frames out of which we selected three hundred images shot using several smooth motions of the camera, and we used these for the SfM process. Image sequences shot using the same smooth motion of the camera are expected to be used for  producing a track in the SfM. Within the track, some clear feature points are consistently included in the images shot by comparatively distant viewpoints so that the many SIFT keypoints are steadily reconstructed as point clouds, and this allows for a higher potential to be connected with that of other tracks. Examples of the image sequences are shown in Fig. 4.

The 3D point clouds produced from the photo set are shown in Fig. 3. We found that the consistent feature points from the static surface of the cave are effectively collected for  producing point clouds, whereas most of the inconsistent feature points from the guide are automatically eliminated through the SfM process. Once the point clouds are acquired, we can take advantage of the 3D coordinates in a way that arbitrary portions of the wall surface can be extracted and  projected onto a picture plane to produce elevation and ground  plans as needed for expressing archaeological interpretations (Fig. 5).

C.

Visualization for Archaeological plans

We also employed a visualization technique called PEAKIT (LANG CO., LTD.). PEAKIT has several features that are capable of enhancing the visibility of the point clouds  by (1) auto noise reduction, (2) 3D to 2D orthogonal  projection, (3) feature shape detecting and especially, (4) coloring point cloud by using predefined lookup table so as to support archaeological interpretations. Here we applied features (2) and (4) to create 2D images, called Colored Distance Maps (CDMs). For example, Fig. 6 illustrates the CDMs of a plan and sections of the west and south of the target point clouds. The color of the points in CDMs expresses the quantized distance between a point and an arbitrary plane. A warmer color means a shorter distance from a reader’s viewpoint, and a cooler color means a longer distance. The  plan is a projection to the X-Y plane, the northern and southern sections are projections to the Z-X plane, and the eastern and western sections are projections to the Y-Z plane

IV.

I

 NTERPRETATION

 The point cloud data of the cave produced by SfM allows us to trace its shape. However, it should also be noted that this shows points of not only the lowest blocks but also those of higher blocks. Therefore, we used CDM point cloud images generated by PEAKIT that show the depth or height of the area for the production of line drawings of a plan and elevation (Fig. 7). The following points were ascertained:

1. The cave does not show any indication of a breaking down of the structure like “Al-Mamun's breach” located 7m above the northern face of the pyramid's base. In addition, the point cloud image clearly shows that the ceiling stones fit together tightly. Therefore, it seems reasonable to suppose that the cave is an artificial structure. 2. The masonry of this area is not perfectly aligned in orientations like that of the outside; ceiling stones in particular were placed on an irregular base. Interestingly, the sizes of the stones of the cave are quite different from those of the outside. The height of the cave, consisting of two masonry courses, is approximately 2m. The two courses are almost the equivalent of the total height of the three course of the outside: 106th course (63.5-64cm), 107th (63-63.5cm), and 108th (74.4-75.5cm) . The function of the cave has not yet been fully ascertained at this time and to discuss this in details is beyond the scope of this short paper, but this area may have contained fine-grained sand as a packing material, which has already been found inside the great pyramid by a French mission [9]. The structures of the cave and the notch indicate that the pyramid of Khufu seemingly has a core of steps (that is, the “notch”) in horizontal courses of rough masonry like that of the construction of the pyramid of Menkaure (the 3rd pyramid of Giza).

V.

CONCLUSION In the course of this project, we showed that a 3D reconstruction from normal video footage is feasible with SfM. Although the image data produced has no certain scale, orientation, and level as it stands now, it was to a certain extent beneficial for academic research in understanding the masonry of the core of the pyramid. A future challenge will be to identify archaeologically important elements such as a scale, an orientation, and a level in the target. The production of a 3D model with SfM, particularly from existing “video footage” is a rather new methodology in the field of archaeology [10]. One of the unique characteristics of this technique is to produce a point cloud of a structure without a human in the video as his image was eliminated in the SfM  process. Moreover, archaeological interpretations of scarce  point cloud data can be satisfactorily made with the application of the visualization technique PEAKIT (Fig. 7). We expect that this set of techniques can be applied to not only academic investigation but also to the restoration and conservation of damaged heritage and artifacts. A

CKNOWLEDGMENTS

 The authors would like to give special thanks to Mr. Tamotsu Iwagaki, a director of TV Man Union Inc. for  providing the valuable video data. We wish to thank Mr. Shin Yokoyama, the president of LANG Co., Ltd., for his generous collaboration in the PEAKIT analysis. We are also grateful to Mr. Takeo Narita, a designer of Narita Seisakushitsu, for his help with design issues. We especially want to express special thanks to Ali El-Asfar, the general director of Giza Pyramids. This work was also partially supported by JSPS, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (24510239). 

Rererences/Sources/Photos/Bibliography

[1]E. Hornung, Erik, R. Krauss, and D. Warburton, Ancient Egyptian Chronology, Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2006. 

[2]B. Brier and J-P. Houdin, The Secret of the Great Pyramid, NY: Collins, 2008. 

[3]W.M.F Petrie, The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh, London: Field & Tuer. 1883; V. Maragioglio and C. Rinaldi, L'architettura delle Piramidi Menfite. parte IV, Rapallo: Officine Grafiche Canessa, 1965; G. Dormion and J-P. Goidin, Kheops, Nouvelle Enquete: Propositions Preliminaires, Paris: Editions Recherche sur les civilisations, 1986 

[4]PhotoSynth, <URL:photosynth.net/> (accessed July 2013)

[5] N. Snavely, S. M. Seitz, and R. Szeliski, “Photo Tourism: Exploring image collections” in 3D. ACM Transactions on Graphics (Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 2006), 2006, pp. 835-846.

[6]D.G. Lowe, “Object recognition from local scale-invariant features,” in International Conference on Computer Vision, Corfu, Greece, 1999, pp. 1150-1157. 

[7]R. Hartley, and A. Zisserman, Multiple View Geometry. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2004. 

[8]M. Fischler, and R. Bolles, Random sample consensus: a paradigm for model Fitting with applications to image analysis and automated cartography. Readings in computer vision: issues, problems, principles, and paradigms, pp. 726-740, 1987. 

[9]S. Yoshimura, T. Nakagawa, S. Tonouchi, and K. Seki, Non-Destructive Pyramid Investigation – By Electromagnetic Wave Method, Tokyo: Waseda University, 1987, pp. 73-78. 

[10]G. van Loon, and et al, “Archaeological Three-Dimensional Recording and Reconstruction of Pharaonic and Christian features of the quarry complex of Dayr Abu Hinnis (Middle Egypt),” in Proceedings of AARG2012, in press; and M. Doneus, and et al, “From deposit to point cloud: a study of low-cost computer vision approaches for the straightforward documentation of archaeological excavations,” in Geoinformatics 6, Prague , 2011, pp. 81-88.

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How were the Giza Pyramids built? Yukinori Kawae Solving the Pyramids’ Secrets