Khufu’s Great Pyramid: Hidden chambers and the peak of Egyptian pyramid building

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Modern scans and a 2023 camera probe revealed hidden spaces, raising hopes that more structures remain concealed inside the ancient monument.

Kwack Min-soo

The author is the director of the Korea Institute of Egyptology and an adjunct professor at Hanyang University. 

The pharaoh who succeeded Sneferu, builder of three enormous pyramids, was Khufu. Under his reign, pyramid construction reached its peak in both scale and sophistication.

Khufu set out to build a pyramid far larger and steeper than those constructed by his father and ultimately succeeded. His pyramid, called “Khufu’s Horizon,” rose about 146 meters (479 feet) and measured roughly 230 meters along each side of its base. Its outer slope was about 51 degrees, achieving on a monumental scale the inclination of more than 50 degrees that builders had pursued since Sneferu’s reign.

That angle subsequently became something of a standard for pyramid construction. It endured even during the Fifth Dynasty, when pyramids became considerably smaller.

Because Khufu’s pyramid is the largest ever built, it is commonly known today as the Great Pyramid. It also held the record as the world’s tallest human-made structure for some 3,800 years, until Lincoln Cathedral in England, with a spire reaching roughly 160 meters, was completed in 1311.

The Great Pyramid’s internal structure is also far more elaborate and complex than those of pyramids built either before or after it. This has long fueled speculation that previously unknown “secret chambers” may remain hidden inside.

Surveys in 1993, 2002 and 2011 found evidence of previously unknown features inside the southern shaft leading from the so-called Queen’s Chamber. Further findings from the ScanPyramids project in 2016 and 2017 raised the possibility of additional voids within the Great Pyramid.

One was a space roughly 30 meters long above the Grand Gallery. Another, about 10 meters long, lay behind the area above the pyramid’s original entrance.

The latter’s existence was confirmed in 2023, when researchers inserted an endoscopic camera into the space. Scientific measurements characterized it as a corridor about nine meters long, hidden behind the chevron-shaped stonework on the pyramid’s north face.

The discoveries show that even after centuries of exploration and modern scientific investigation, Khufu’s monument may still contain spaces unknown to researchers. The possibility, therefore, remains that further exploration of the Great Pyramid will reveal additional structures that have lain concealed for more than four millennia.