Crypts, engineered to house those subject to the venerable institution of death, prove an integral element to many cultures. Their infrastructure is often a function of the means by which one has departed, the stratum that life had seen them in, and certainly, the articles to which the builders of said tomb availed themselves – from mud to stalwart stone, and even the occasional bone, as is the reality of the Czech republic’s macabre Sedlec Ossuary. If ever there were, though, a people whose traditions lent themselves consummately to observance of funerary rites and pristine sepulchral architecture, it, by accord, ought to be the Egyptians: a deference for foregone folk and a sound quarry (that’s to say, in lithic pursuit) rendered the torrid North African wastes an apt ground for the erection of the Pyramids.

Storied King Khufu’s mausoleum in Giza, however, may well serve as the location of a hitherto undiscovered burial chamber.

The Scan Pyramids initiative, taken up on behest of Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities, has employed thermal imaging systems, radiographs, and 3D software to effect the virtual reconstruction of the pyramids in which the patrimonial pharaonic line of kings Khufu, Khafre, and Snefru are interred, nigh but five millennia past. Given the notion, if a speculative one, that anomalous temperature fluctuations and atypical masonry in the lower east and upper sections of the Great Pyramid proper are indicative of a spatial reserve that archaeologists have neglected to find or investigate, patrons of this new project are raring for further information. As of the most recent robotic expedition into the recesses of the goliath geometric body, the sedulous efforts of the Scan Pyramids team have been suspended – a series of inimical false quarters have posed difficulties for the once-sound procedure. Henceforth, the immediate resumption of said measures will be deliberated, seeing as the nascent project could be of appreciable archaeo-anthropological consequence. In order that fruition be realized, and quality work made of the project, its resident coterie of technicians and social scientists expects with alacrity that their objective begin as soon as possible.