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The Robot - The Pyramid
| Date: |
15 September 2002 12:00 |
| Producer: |
Diana Lucas
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| Show: | Carte Blanche |
Egypt, the Giza Necropolis, is a place never far away from speculation and intrigue. For 4 500 years these mountains of stone have tantalised. Archaeologists, scientists, tourists, and mystics of the new age have all flocked to Giza as bit by bit the secrets of the Pharaohs were brought to light.
No less enchanted with these monuments are the people who write about them.
Graham Hancock: 'The monuments of the pyramids of Giza are extraordinary works of symbolic and spiritual art.'
Robert Bauval: 'Everything suggests that they are not tombs only - you have to realise that the funeral of a Pharaoh wasn't the same as we visualise a funeral. The king was being prepared to undertake a journey towards the stars. The pyramids are the agency to undertake this journey. If you label them as tombs, and you label this site as a cemetery, you are missing the point.'
John Anthony West: 'Whatever Giza meant, it was in some way or another a tremendous technologically advanced means of enhancing or furthering that quest for immortality. You come here and something inside you goes ... you get this uplift and exhilaration.'
Even the man called the King of Giza, Dr Zahi Hawass - who is now in charge of all Egyptian Antiquities - is lured by the magic.
'This place I believe it has magic, and the magic - if you enter and close your eyes - you will feel the past, you will smell and feel the history of 5 000 years,' he says.
The Great Pyramid of Khufu is unique - not only because of its size but because it has four shafts. Two radiate out from the King's Chamber and two directly below from the Queen's Chamber.
In the Queen's chamber, 60 meters up the southern shaft, deep into the core of the pyramid, is what seems to be a limestone door with two copper handles - a door that Dr Zahi Hawass plans to look behind in a live television broadcast on Tuesday; a door that some believe may hide the secrets of the greatest civilisations of the ancient world.
But this door was discovered nine years ago by a German robotics engineer, Rudolf Gantenbrink. It was his robot, Upuaut 2, that explored these unfathomed shafts.
Upuaut 2 might not be your most attractive robot, but its power and strength belies its size. Rudolf custom built it using the latest technology of the early 90s.
Built of aircraft aluminium, with hi-tech tracks to grip the upper and lower walls of the shaft, a sophisticated laser that could probe the cracks and corners and a miniature CCD video camera, this robot had to be even smaller than the 20cm-square shaft.
In March 1993 Gantenbrink and his team arrive at the Great Pyramid. The robot's first journey up the southern shaft of the Queen's Chamber opens up a new era in Egyptology as the tiny robot looks up the passage that has been closed to humanity for thousands of years.
It's a bumpy and difficult ride that, with stops and re-starts, takes five days. While Upuaut was designed to go over sand and small stones, the sudden cracks in its path spell trouble. Gantenbrink successfully manoeuvres his little protégée until all systems come to a standstill.
Despite falling more than 30 metres, Upuaut is unharmed and the camera is still working. Once more they begin the arduous journey. Onwards and upwards ... Upuaut goes deeper still until the floor suddenly becomes smooth and the walls have changed to a polished white stone. Why, and for what purpose?
And then something stranger still ... a slab of limestone blocking the end of the passage, a piece of copper on the floor. Is this an artefact left by the ancient Egyptians? On closer inspection the slab has two copper fittings. The copper on the floor seems to have broken off the one on the left.
There's a gap between the slab and floor. The slab looks like it could be removed, like a door that could be hiding something. Maybe.
Upuaut 2 has been stopped in its tracks by a strange little door, 60 metres up the shaft.
The first major story about Gantenbrink's discovery appeared on the front page of the London Independent. The reaction was electrifying as dozens of reporters gathered on his doorstep and the international media had a field day - from Melbourne to Switzerland to LA.
But back in Egypt there was not a squeak
Five years after Gantenbrink's discovery, we asked Zahi Hawass when the door would be opened.
'Maybe we are thinking to attract people all over the world,' he says. 'We'll send the robot through the northern shaft, and the southern shaft, and the Great Pyramid, and this robot will walk up in the shaft, and it will be sent by satellite to every individual - and this will be the gift from Egypt.'
Hawass's undertaking is that both of these shafts will be investigated around the time of the millennium.
'Yes, we will. We will. We will do it and we will investigate the northern and southern shaft. We will answer the question to everyone, and this will tell you something very important - we are not just going to dynamite something and open it. No, we are scientists, we do everything after we have studied, after we know who can do it, and how it can be done,' he says.
And will Rudolf Gantenbrink be there?
'No. Gantenbrink is working through the German Institute. If he wants to come and work here, he has to come through the German Institute. We do not have any relations with Gantenbrink,' he says.
The Egyptian authorities say Gantenbrink had no permission to explore and film the shafts but, according to Gantenbrink, Dr Hawass had given him the go-ahead. What is clear is that his team worked in the Queen's Chamber with the robot and sophisticated camera rig in full view of the Egyptian inspectors.
Pyramid Rover is the new robot, following in Upuaut's tracks. It will use the world's smallest ground-penetrating radar system to look through the door and, if it picks up anything interesting, it will feed a fibre-optic camera through the cracks to capture the first pictures.
A secret chamber, ancient treasures - whatever is found behind the door of the world's largest, oldest and most mysterious of monuments - will be powerful stuff. It's been a long wait.
One man who will be watching the live broadcast with mixed feelings is Gantenbrink. He's calling National Geographic's exploration a scientific crime - basically because he wasn't invited to take part in this dramatic event. Still, he wishes the new team good luck.
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:While every attempt has been made to ensure this transcript or summary is accurate, Carte Blanche or its agents cannot be held liable for any claims arising out of inaccuracies caused by human error or electronic fault. This transcript was typed from a transcription recording unit and not from an original script, so due to the possibility of mishearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, errors cannot be ruled out.
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