Search to Find King Khufu Begins, but Not in the Great Pyramid

Archaeologists have begun searching for the remains of King Khufu, but not inside the Great Pyramid, but under Giza's Western Cemetery!

So was the Great Pyramid the final resting place of Khufu or not? This is the great question that divides researchers.


On the one hand, if you were the powerful ruler of Egypt’s Old Kingdom, being entombed in the grandest structure ever built would of course be a fitting finale.


But on the other hand, if you wanted your mummified body and your worldly goods to be kept safe for an eternity, would the Great Pyramid really be the best place to put them?


Is it too much of a beacon, a vanity project that is bound to attract the inevitable unwanted attention of tomb robbers?


There is no doubt that Giza was a funerary complex in the Old Kingdom - mastabas, burial chambers, human remains and grave goods have been found in abundance.


But where is Khufu? Was the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid really his burial chamber? Herodotus said he was laid to rest in an underground tomb and that a tributary of the Nile ran through it, with the waters flowing around an island on which the King was buried. But the unfinished Subterranean Chamber of the Great Pyramid was certainly unused; this wasn’t what Herodotus was referring to. But could the grandfather of history actually be correct? Has the final resting place of Khufu been hiding for more than 4,000 years, not in the pyramid, but in its shadow on the Giza Plateau? One Egyptologist, Dr. Sakuji Yoshimura, thinks so and what may surprise you, is that excavations have already begun! Watch this video to learn more.

Matt Sibson
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