Yamagata University and IBM researchers used an AI model on aerial imagery, then checked the candidates on foot. This nearly doubled the known figurative geoglyphs. Most are small relief-type figures beside footpaths, showing people and domestic animals.
Why it matters: It shows that many more lines and figures await discovery. It also separates the small, older relief figures (for viewing by walkers) from the large line figures.
Nature reported new geophysical survey results, published by Eldamaty, Abbas, Ballard and Reeves in the Amarna Royal Tombs Project’s occasional papers, that they say point to hidden chambers beyond the walls of Tutankhamun’s tomb, possibly the burial of Nefertiti.
Remote Sensing retracted Filippo Biondi and Corrado Malanga’s 2022 paper, which claimed SAR Doppler tomography revealed undiscovered internal structures in the Great Pyramid. The journal says an investigation after a reader’s concerns confirmed serious methodological flaws and statistical errors that undermine the conclusions.
Xavier Landreau, Guillaume Piton and Sayed Hemeda used satellite imagery, 19th-century maps and watershed mapping. They argue that two 600–700 m structures across Wadi Dahshur, west of the Red Pyramid, long read as stone-transport ramps, are dams, one with a duckbill-shaped spillway, linked to a roughly 1 km diversion channel passing close to the pyramid.
A ScanPyramids team from TU Munich and Cairo University published ultrasonic shear-wave scans, made in 2022, of the 45 accessible granite blocks in the two lower rows of the King’s Chamber walls. They built a 3D model of block thicknesses and joints and found internal reflectors up to about 3 m deep, including an anomaly about 2 m behind block NW9 on the north wall.
