Part 1 of the blog:
According to sources this is what led to the finding:
You can either read below or click here http://www.towers-online.co.uk/pages/shafted2.htm
In September 1997, a documentary film maker named Boris Said appeared on Bell's radio show to talk about his recent work at Giza. According to Said, one evening back in 1992 he was taking a stroll on the Giza plateau when he came across one of the plateau guards who offered to show him something interesting for twenty dollars.
In December 1995, Said entered into a joint venture agreement with Dr Joseph Schor. Schor was working under a five year permit, renewable annually, to conduct acoustic and radar surveys on the Giza plateau . Schor supplied one hundred thousand dollars for the venture as the financial sponser and was responsible for all scientific aspects of the work. Said was to be in charge of filming the work for a documentary programme for which he required his own photographic permit.
In November 1996, Said returned to the shaft and on descending it found that it had an intermediate level at a depth of about twenty six metres.
...He noticed two disturbed stone sarcophagii and an iron pump at this newly revealed level. The shaft continued for another fifteen metres to the chamber where he found that the water level had dropped by around five metres since his last visit. The chamber was quite spacious and clearly man-made judging from the appearance of the vertical walls, cut steps and right-angles.
Said next returned to the chamber in February 1997 to take some film of the location. His team scraped away at the dirt on the floor to clear a level area for the camera tripod. To their surprise, it quickly became apparent that a smooth hard surface was becoming exposed. Eventually, they uncovered a complete sarcophagus lid. Said says ancient texts contain many references to the use of a sarcophagus lid to cover the entrance to a sacred chamber or a secret tunnel so they decided to investigate further using ground-penetrating radar. This seemed to indicate that the lid was around thirty inches thick. Two and a half metres below the lid it detected a two and a half metre wide anomoly with what looked like a domed ceiling. This anomoly descended at a twenty five degree angle and headed in the direction of the Sphinx two hundred and seventy five yards away. The alleged tunnel emerging from the tail of the Sphinx and heading under the causeway now starts to assume a new significance.
Said uploaded photographs of the shaft and chamber to his Magical Eye website to accompany the programme. Some exterior shots of the location showed team members descending into a different shaft. Said stated in the interview that this was a deliberate ploy to put others off the true location of the shaft at the time. Unfortunately, the photographs are no longer available on-line.
Said uploaded photographs of the shaft and chamber to his Magical Eye website to accompany the programme. Some exterior shots of the location showed team members descending into a different shaft. Said stated in the interview that this was a deliberate ploy to put others off the true location of the shaft at the time. Unfortunately, the photographs are no longer available on-line. In another account, in his "Behind the scenes with the Magical Eye team on the Giza plateau" video, Said states that the sarcophagus lid was uncovered in November 1996 and that nothing further was done until the team returned in February 1997. There is also doubt as to whether Schor's permit was actually revoked as claimed by Said on the Art Bell radio show. Notwithstanding these points, Said played a major part in raising the profile of what would come to be known as the "Tomb of Osiris".
Sadly, Boris Said died of liver cancer on the 24th March 2002.
Enter Dr Hawass...
The discovery surfaced again when John Anthony West, an attendee and presenter at the Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E) conference held at Virginia beach in August 1998, gave a report on a presentation by Dr Hawass at the same conference. West reported that Dr Hawass had recently excavated a deep shaft found under the causeway midway between the Khafre pyramid and the Sphinx. The shaft was over a hundred feet deep, and opened into a kind of pillared chamber. In the middle there was a huge sarcophagus half submerged in water. By its style, Hawass placed the sarcophagus in the Saite Period (around 600 BC) and thought that the whole complex was reminiscent of the description given by Herodotus for the supposed tomb of Khufu. Hawass did not think it was Khufu's tomb but he did believe it might be a (or the) Tomb of Osiris, and in some way connected at least symbolically with the Oseirion at Abydos.
The "Tomb of Osiris" (as it was now called by Hawass) featured in the "Opening The Lost Tombs" FOX TV Special transmitted on the 2nd March 1999 (see page 5). The illustrations of the location were inaccurate compared to the actual layout; presumably there was some "artistic license" to show the interiors of the chambers more clearly. Doctor Hawass subsequently posted an article entitled The Osiris Shaft on his website and featured the location in his 1999 lectures, for example at the University of Pennsylvania on the 11th April (see page 7) and on the 9th December at the National Geographic Institute in Washington D.C. News of the discovery spread and on the 17th June 1999, the Egyptian State Information Service posted an item entitled "Osiris' Tomb near Cheops' Pyramid excavated".