Egyptians used the Nile River to build the pyramids 1:05
(CNN) --
A 30-foot (9-meter) long hidden corridor has been discovered near the main entrance of the 4,500-year-old Great Pyramid of Giza, and this could lead to new finds, antiquities officials said Thursday. egyptian.
The discovery inside the pyramid, the last of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still standing, was made under the Scan Pyramids project which since 2015 has been using non-invasive technology including infrared thermography, 3D simulations and cosmic ray imaging to observe the inside of the structure.
A paper published in the journal Nature on Thursday said the discovery could contribute to knowledge about the construction of the pyramid and the purpose of a gabled limestone structure facing the corridor.
Tourists ride camels in front of the Great Pyramids plateau in Giza, Egypt, in December.
Credit: Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters
The Great Pyramid was built as a monumental tomb around 2560 BC during the reign of Pharaoh Khufu or Cheops.
Built to a height of 146 meters (479 feet), it now stands at 139 meters and was the tallest human-made structure until the arrival of the Eiffel Tower in Paris in 1889.
The unfinished corridor was probably created to redistribute the weight of the pyramid around the main entrance now used by tourists, nearly 20 feet away, or around another yet-to-be-discovered chamber or space, said Mostafa Waziri, head of the council. Supreme Court of Antiquities of Egypt.
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"We are going to continue our scanning to see what we can do... to find out what we can find below, or just at the end of, this corridor," he told reporters after a news conference in front of the pyramid.
Tourists at the Giza Pyramids necropolis on the southwestern outskirts of Cairo on Thursday.
Credit: Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images
It is also believed that five rooms were built over the king's burial chamber in another part of the pyramid to redistribute the weight of the massive structure.
It was possible that the pharaoh had more than one burial chamber, Waziri added.
Scientists detected the corridor through X-rays of cosmic ray muons, before retrieving images of it by inserting a 6mm-thick scope from Japan through a small junction in the pyramid's stones.
In 2017, Scan Pyramids researchers announced the discovery of a void at least 30 meters long inside the Great Pyramid, the first major internal structure found since the 19th century.
Pyramids of Giza