secret chamber pyramid Giza
© The Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities/Handout via REUTERSA 30-foot-long corridor was discovered by scientists Thursday March 2, 2023, near the main entrance of the 4,500-year-old Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt.
Perhaps it could lead to a real-life Chamber of Secrets.

A 30-foot-long hidden corridor was discovered by scientists Thursday near the main entrance of the 4,500-year-old Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, Reuters reported.

The pyramid — considered the last of the seven wonders of the world still standing — has been undergoing regular searches using infrared and cosmic-ray imaging since 2015 as a part of the Scan Pyramids project.

Officials said the newly unearthed hallway could lead to more knowledge about the structure.

"We're going to continue our scanning so we will see what we can do ... to figure out what we can find out beneath it, or just by the end of this corridor," said Mostafa Waziri, head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

The Great Pyramid was constructed as a monumental tomb around 2560 b.c. during the reign of the Pharaoh Khufu, or Cheops. Built to 479 feet, it now stands at 139 meters and was the tallest structure made by humans until the Eiffel Tower in Paris in 1889.

The pyramid, which is the last of the seven wonders of the world still standing, has been undergoing regular searches using infrared and cosmic-ray imaging since 2015 as a part of the Scan Pyramids project. REUTERS

Five rooms atop the Pharaoh Khufu burial chamber in another part of the pyramid are also thought to have been built to redistribute the weight of the massive structure, according to Nature journal.

It is also possible the pharaoh had more than one burial chamber, Waziri added.
giza pyramids
© ReutersThe pyramid, which is the last of the seven wonders of the world still standing, has been undergoing regular searches using infrared and cosmic-ray imaging since 2015 as a part of the Scan Pyramids project.
The Great Pyramids were built in 2560 b.c. during the reign of Pharaoh Khufu (reign circa 2551 b.c. to 2528 b.c.) and stood at a whopping 479 feet — the tallest man-made structure until the Eiffel Tower in 1889.
archaelogists giza pyramid
Mostafa Waziri, head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities holds a press conference on the new discovery.
Waziri also revealed that the corridor could be used to help balance the weight or contain a secret chamber within the structure.

This secret passage is not the first thing to be discovered within the structure. In 2022, scientists released a study that showed two "mysterious voids" within the pyramid from a 2017 scan.
giza pyramids muon scan tomographic image
© ScanPyramids / SWNS.comThe scans will “image muons from nearly all angles and will, for the first time, produce a true tomographic image of such a large structure.”
"We plan to field a telescope system that has upwards of 100 times the sensitivity of the equipment that has recently been used at the Great Pyramid," wrote the researchers.

"Since the detectors that are proposed are very large, they cannot be placed inside the pyramid, therefore our approach is to put them outside and move them along the base."

"In this way, we can collect muons from all angles in order to build up the required data set."