The Great Pyramid of Giza, the sole surviving member of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, stands today as the most massive puzzle in the history of civilization. From the ancient Greeks to today's techno-geeks, many have asked this question: How was something this huge built with such precision? The entire 13-acre pile of limestone blocks, most weighing more than 2 tons, has sides no more than 8 inches out of alignment, says archaeologist , author of , released in April. Its interior shafts, some hundreds of feet long, vary less than a few inches from being perfectly straight.

Now French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin has reopened this conversation with a controversial proposal that the giant tomb of the pharaoh Khufu (Cheops to the Greeks), who reigned from about 2589 B.C. to 2566 B.C., was built from the inside out with the use of internal ramps.

The theory challenges decades of archaeological thought about how the pyramid was built, and graces the cover of the current Archaeology magazine [How to Build a Pyramid, , Volume 60, Number 3, May - June 2007], published by the Archaeological Institute of America. But Egypt's chief archaeologist isn't impressed. "I receive a theory every day," says Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities...

All [theories] have problems, Brier says: Too much labor and stone would be needed for the outside ramp; there's not enough available wood for cranes; and a spiral ramp would ruin external sightlines...

And Romer dismisses Houdin's idea. "In reality, huge amounts of well-documented facts exist concerning the genuine building methods employed," he says. "Quite simply, we see the outline where a ramp ends in a quarry..."

Scientists ramp up for pyramid theory, Dan Vergano, USA Today, New York, USA, May 16, 2007.

Previously:

Review: The Great Pyramid: Ancient Egypt Revisited by John Romer, April 10, 2007.

Book Review: The Great Pyramid: Ancient Egypt Revisited by John Romer, March 01, 2007.

How to Build a Pyramid, April 09, 2007.

The inside [out] story, April 07, 2007.

Great Pyramid Built Inside Out, French Architect Says, April 03, 2007.

Ancient riddle of the Great Pyramid's construction is turned inside out, March 30, 2007.

Real-time 3D Helps to Finally Solve the Mystery of the Great Pyramid of Kheops!, March 30, 2007.

The J. Paul Getty Museum inched a step closer to relinquishing ownership of one of its most prized artefacts, a 2,400-year-old statue of a goddess claimed by Italy, at a conference of international experts to discuss the artefact this week, its director said.

The Getty has not reached a formal conclusion based on the conference, which was convened at the museum on Wednesday and was closed to the public. But museum officials and some of the experts who attended said their discussions buttressed what the museum says are its own suspicions that the statue, acquired by the Getty in 1988, might have been illegally excavated in southern Italy.

“There was no dramatic single conclusion, no eureka moment, but it is certainly helping us narrow down the focus,” Michael Brand, the museum’s director, said in an interview. “It would be fair to say that most of the discussion focused on Sicily.”

The statue’s precise provenance, like that of many antiquities, is unknown. But the Italian government asserts that it was looted in recent decades, and Mr. Brand said the Getty’s own investigation into its acquisition had revealed “problems...”

Getty Moves Closer to Returning an Ancient Statue to Italy, Sharon Waxman, The New York Times, New York, USA, May 12, 2007.

The Museum (Thursday, BBC2) is a predictable addition to the BBC’s tried and comforting fly-on-the-wall series that look at institutions with a loving, tweedy fondness. The British Museum has all the requisite old relics and forgotten dusty bits and pieces these human quilts of shows need. There are lots and lots of rather dotty eccentrics, who are utterly adorable and admirably monomaniac. They really wouldn’t survive long in the real world. The pleasure of looking at these institutions is of peering into an enclosed world, like taking the front off a dolls’ house.

All well and good. There is, though, a troika of problems. The curators, conservators, cleaners, guards and shifters are all made, by the nature of this style of documentary, to be far more interesting and important than the objects they serve. Indeed, the things are merely props for a slightly dysfunctional, inverted human drama. In this first episode, we watched a Greek bronze being given a facial by a metal conservator who was, quite frankly, a bit of a gorgeous exhibit herself, and far easier on the eye than the legless green-tin Stavros she was poking about on. When she looked at the camera and said, “His genitals are a darker colour because they’ve been touched so much,” then giggled suggestively, all over the home counties men were shifting on the sofa, saying, “We haven’t been to the BM for ages.”

Then there’s the problem of the soundtrack. We were given that compilation of mood tunes that seems to go with everything, like aural mayonnaise. And then there was the third little pig of a problem, the voice-over. The Tristrams will all have thought long and hard about what sort of tone they wanted to offer to lure you in. It can only have been a committee decision that finally settled on a Yorkshire comedy voice. If you look at the BM and consider all the things in it, its status in the country and to civilisation, then think, “If it could speak, what would it sound like?”, I bet none of you would come up with a working men’s club MC from Batley. But then, that’ll be exactly why they chose it: to make the stuffy old museum sound accessible and not in the slightest snobbish. Accessible and not snobbish are the most important things on telly, along with not being old; far more important than being believable, authoritative or even pleasant. The Museum is a nice enough series, gilded with a patronising, unthreatening, unintellectual, softly tepid tour of the great ivory tower of civilisation, and that is more snobbish and elitist than anything.

Who's a pretty dull boy, then?, AA Gill, The Sunday Times, Uk, May 13, 2007.

Are you planning to go anywhere out of your own country for a vacation? Perhaps Egypt? Well, it’s a good choice, to me at least. I have always been fascinated by the culture of this exotic country. It has a different way of expressing its places. This habit is not shared among most of the countries in the world. Some must-to-see places in Egypt are the Pyramids of Giza, the markets at Cairo, the deserts of Egypt, and the longest river, the Nile river. The tombs of all the kings are also a thing you must see. The most fantastic thing about this country is its history. The pharaohs, pyramids, dynasties, and gods play a very important role in the history of Egypt.

I myself wanted to become an Egyptologist. Sadly, that is now a thing which I do not want to achieve. The aromas of food have lured me to become a chef. Even then, I still spend my leisure time in trying to find out more of its fascinating history. I am most astounded by its hieroglyphics and its gods. I tried learning the Egyptian language of hieroglyphs, but, honestly, it was no good. It is a language which I think means ‘writing on stone’. It is made up of the most complicated figures which are pictures. They can be of feathers, birds, or crocodiles. Well, the language is one thing I cannot understand, but the gods are quite another subject. I must say, the ancient Egyptians must have had a vividly wild imagination if they could think up such stories of their gods. The Egyptian gods include Atum-the creator, Tefnut, the rain goddess, Shu, the air god, and Osiris, the god of the underworld and death. My favourite is the god of wisdom, the moon, Thoth. He is depicted and worshipped in the form of an ibis or a baboon (sounds odd doesn’t it?). I like him because he is related with the moon, my favourite heavenly body and because I also like wisdom. He is also depicted as an ibis, which is one of my favourite birds...

The lure of Egypt, Altamash Gaziyani, Cybernoon.com, India, April 30, 2007.

Does the curse of the Pharaohs really exist? Or is it simply a case of illusion and stories spread by people? To answer this question, let us relate some stories of the curse. The Solar Boats were discovered in May 1954 while Kamal al Mallakh and Anis Mansour were having lunch at the Excelsior restaurant in the centre of the city [Cairo]. They received a phone call from Garceni who was responsible for removing the heaps of sand that covered the southern side of King Khufu's [the Great] Pyramid. As usual in archaeological zones, the director was responsible for architectural works and removing the huge blocks of stone from the site.

The story began in 1944 during a visit by King Farouk and King Abdulaziz Al Saud to the pyramid in a royal horse and carriage. French archaeologist Monsieur Drioton, the then director of the antiquities department, briefed them on the archaeological zone. As the royal coach passed behind Khufu's pyramid, the Saudi monarch noticed a towering heap of sand and stones by the southern side of the pyramid and brought it to the attention of King Farouk, who directed Drioton to remove the mound. The antiquities department allocated 50 Egyptian Pounds for the operation. The removal of approximately 60,000 cubic metres of sand and stones exposed the remains of the archaeological wall that surrounded the pyramid, which is part of the Great Pyramid's complex.

When the discovery took place, archaeologist Zaki Nour, the then secretary of the site, was sick and absent from the scene...

The Curse of the Pharaohs, Zahi Hawass, Asharq Alawsat, UK< May 02, 2007.