5 Aug 2024 · Saqqara, Egypt
A French team proposed that the Gisr el-Mudir enclosure acted as a check dam. Water would then flow to a shaft where a floating platform lifted stones.
Why it matters: It is a mainstream-published idea of unexpected engineering. Egyptologists are highly sceptical.
Site guide: Giza & Saqqara · Source: Landreau et al. 2024, PLOS ONE ↗
10 Aug 2026 · Great Pyramid, Giza, Egypt
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.
remote sensingcontroversypyramids
Site guide: Giza & Saqqara · Source: Retraction notice, Remote Sensing 2026 ↗; Original paper (retracted), Remote Sensing 2022 ↗
20 Jul 2026 · Dahshur, Egypt
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.
ancient technologypyramidsremote sensing
Site guide: Giza & Saqqara · Source: Landreau, Piton & Hemeda 2026, npj Heritage Science ↗
18 Jun 2026 · Sacsayhuamán, Cusco, Peru
Researchers analysed 138 dispersed blocks from a dismantled sector, using geometric silhouettes and computational matching, to propose how the early Inca walls fitted together.
Site guide: Sacsayhuamán & Cusco · Brien Foerster · Source: npj Heritage Science 2026 ↗
18 Jun 2026 · Great Pyramid, Giza, Egypt
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.
Site guide: Giza & Saqqara · Source: Maier et al. 2026, Scientific Reports ↗