New Secret Chamber Next To The Great Pyramid What S Hiding Inside

Hello everybody and welcome to Ancient Architects. Please subscribe to the channel for regular content on ancient architecture as well as all the latest news from the world of archaeology. You'd think by now that every secret on the Giza Plateau had been uncovered, that no stone has been left unturned. Explorers, treasure hunters, antiquarians and Egyptologists have been captivated by Giza for hundreds and hundreds of years. But there's one big secret that still might be hiding. And no, I'm not talking about a so-called second sphinx. No, in this video I'm talking about something real. A possible intact royal tomb belonging to someone who was not far below Pharaoh Khufu in terms of power and authority in the 4th dynasty And such a discovery sounds almost too good to be true, especially in the 21st century. But this is something that none of us should overlook. And it's thanks to independent researcher Keith Hamilton that it's come to my attention. Recently, Keith published a guide called Khufu's Mastaba's Part 4, Cemetery G7000, which is the Great Pyramid's eastern cemetery and it houses the remains of so many important people, including Khufu's eldest son Prince Khawab. But it isn't his Mastaba we're looking at today. It's another, it's another even larger Mastaba, the largest one in the cemetery. This is Mastaba G7510 and it measures around 100 by 51 metres in size. It consists of an exterior wall of large blocks of masonry holding back a debris fill, and then the Mastaba was cased in fine white chura limestone. To help visualise the size of this Mastaba, its longest length is about the same as the base length of the Pyramid of Menkaure. Yes, it's enormous. And it's almost identical in size to Mastaba G2000 in the western cemetery. For its enormous size, interestingly there is only one burial shaft that's sunk into it, and it's located right here in the southwestern quadrant, an almost identical position to the shaft we find in Mastaba G2000. The occupant of Mastaba G2000 in the western cemetery is anonymous, but regarding G7510, we do find clues of the occupant in the Mastaba's chapel. The chapel takes the form of a recess, built into the Mastaba close to its southeastern corner. Inside we find the name Prince Ankaf, and he's thought to have been Khufu's half-brother. In Khufu's reign, Ankaf held the position of the vizier, and he was also the head of the royal building works. He's even mentioned in the now famous Diary of Mera, a document that dates to the latter years of Khufu's reign, and talks about bringing chura limestone to Giza for construction projects. So it does seem logical that this Mastaba belongs to Ankaf, but George Reisner believed that this Mastaba dates to an expansion phase of the cemetery, and the chamber in G7510 actually dated to early in Khafre's reign. But this was just his opinion, and he does have opponents. Another expert believes that this Mastaba was certainly part of the original core of the Eastern Cemetery, and may actually be one of the oldest Mastabas on the plateau. Before we continue, I'd like to thank the sponsor of this video, NordVPN, who are very much an all-in-one digital security powerhouse, combining the world's leading VPN with a next generation antivirus to protect you from the growing list of online scams. Because a growing number of people are being caught out by online scammers, people posing as trusted sources to try and get you to lower your guard so they can swoop in to con you out of your personal details and sometimes your hard-earned cash. 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And now back to the video. Here is a plan of the Mastaba's chapel, and behind the false door there's a surdab, which is a concealed chamber used to house the car statue of the deceased. As far as I'm aware, nothing was found inside the surdab. As Keith Hamilton says in his guide, even though the Mastaba is so grand, there was no fine stone external chapel, just a mud brick construction. Inside we find an offering chamber, a small room, another room with wooden columns, and in here labelled D, this fabulous bust of Ankaf was discovered. A platform on a pedestal was also found inside this room, which may have acted like an offering table. Because it's believed that this Mastaba belongs to Ankaf, the shaft in the top is believed to lead to his tomb, and the size of the Mastaba is fit for a vizier. George Reisner did search for a second shaft, because it would be common for his wife known as Heta Perez to have been buried in the same Mastaba, but sadly no second shaft was ever discovered. So now to the burial shaft. It's 2.6 by 2.6 metres in size, is masonry lined, and goes down for more than 17 metres. At the bottom there's a sloping passage, and this leads to a partially lined burial chamber. No canopic chest or sarcophagus was found inside, and there were also no signs that a coffin was taken out either. There was still some surviving masonry that was set in plaster, used to block access to the chamber, so if a sarcophagus was taken out, it would be strange to find this masonry. And that's because the passage is so narrow, and you wouldn't have been able to keep the access point partially blocked if you were taking out a large sarcophagus. I guess it is possible the sarcophagus was taken out in dynastic times and reused, and this blocking masonry is some kind of secondary addition, maybe erected later in history for a new burial. Right now we just don't know. From the one image we have of the interior, some wall blocks do look smooth but most look unfinished, and it does give the appearance of still being under construction. It doesn't look like a finely dressed burial chamber fit for a vizier, aka the prime minister under Khufu, the man in charge of the building works on the plateau. In Keith's guide, the last paragraph at the section on the starboard G7510 did get me excited, because it says it is feasible that a coffin chamber may still exist beyond the southern wall. The passage leading into the chamber is only 1.15 metres in height, and the unfinished masonry lining on the southern wall of this chamber could easily hide a continuation of the passage. And you know what, Keith is onto something, and it's something the Egyptian authorities really should be taking a closer look at. Because looking back to page 68 of his guide, and we can see that the internal space of another double mastaba does have an additional chamber. There's a main chamber, and then a sarcophagus chamber to the south, and this is accessed by the main chamber's southern wall. The design of the large chamber of this mastaba known as G7130 shows it was said to be lined with fine limestone, but it appears as though this work was never done. Although the entrance to the coffin chamber was blocked in antiquity, it was easily found because the main chamber was not finished, aka it wasn't lined with fine limestone to conceal it. And with that knowledge, we now go back to Ankaf's mastaba, and the one picture we have of the chamber inside. Although unfinished, this chamber was beginning to be lined, and because of this, Keith believes that this stone lining could be concealing the entrance to a burial chamber. A burial chamber that by all accounts would be untouched. And, as I said, there is no evidence a grand sarcophagus was ever taken out of this mastaba. There were no traces of any kind of grave goods or canopic chest, there were no discarded bones or objects, and so maybe that's because the mummy is still inside, hidden away in a concealed burial chamber that was untouched by grave robbers or archaeologists. Even in the mastabas where burial chambers have been found, sarcophagi were often left in place, and that's because the task of removing them was just too great. Maneuvering them out of the chamber and then up the shaft. So the fact we don't find a sarcophagus inside this chamber under G7510 doesn't mean it was likely robbed. To Keith it may imply the sarcophagus has never actually been discovered, and I agree. And what are the implications? Well, still there on the Giza plateau, underneath the largest mastaba in the Eastern Cemetery, there could be an untouched burial chamber of Prince Ankaf, the possible half-brother of Khufu, the vizier to the king, who was the most powerful man in Egypt in Khufu's reign after Khufu himself. And if Keith is correct, it's not difficult to confirm. All we have to do is scan the southern wall of the mastaba's main chamber, and if there's a hollow, there is a very good chance that Ankaf is still there and waiting, and who knows what we'll find with him. In terms of the history of the Great Pyramid, although we're still trying to unravel its many secrets, by looking into the big void and also behind the Queen's Chamber northern channel blocking stone, we could actually find something absolutely incredible right here. A person directly related to the pyramid's construction, a man with royal blood, and someone with immense power in Khufu's reign. Scanning the southern wall is easy, and the results could be groundbreaking, and so I would urge the authorities to get behind Hamilton's claims and take a closer look. Thank you very much for watching this episode of Ancient Architects. 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