New findings beneath the desert floor hint at entrances to long-lost chambers.

Ground-penetrating radar has enabled archaeologists to identify hidden structures beneath the surface. A new study conducted by Japanese and Egyptian researchers has revealed an L-shaped structure accompanied by a nearby anomaly next to the Great Pyramids of Giza. While the precise nature of the anomaly is unknown, the researchers speculate that the L-shaped feature could potentially be an entrance to a deeper structure.

In archaeology, ground-penetrating radar (GPR) has transformed the way sites are studied. This geophysical technique sends radar pulses into the ground to create subsurface images. Similar methods have previously uncovered Viking longships in Norway, revealed lost civilizations within the Amazon rainforest, and even mapped entire Roman cities without any excavation.

Once again, GPR has yielded discoveries near one of the world’s most thoroughly explored sites—the Great Pyramids of Giza. The research team, led by Motoyuki Sato of Tohoku University, combined GPR with electrical resistivity tomography (ERT), a method that uses variations in electrical resistance to map underground features. Using these techniques, they detected what they describe as an “L-shaped anomaly” in the western cemetery close to the pyramids.