mark lehner

There is exciting news breaking right now in Egypt. An archaeological team led by Dr. Zahi Hawass has discovered several new tombs that belong to the workers who built the pyramids of Khufu and Khafre.

“This is the first time to uncover tombs like the ones that were found during the 1990’s, which belong to the late 4th and 5th Dynasties (2649-2374 BC),” said Dr. Hawass in the press release.

When we think of Giza we tend to think of the Giza Pyramids. However, while the pyramids were under construction, there was an extensive city to the south that supported the workers. It included houses, bakeries, magazines and a hypostyle hall (See the video below, in which Mark Lehner descibes his work researching this area).

How do you keep the Great Sphinx’s paws dry?  With a lot of work, that’s how!  The latest Heritage Key video clip of Dr Zahi Hawass highlights his collaborative effort with Dr Mark Lehner in protecting the Sphinx from the danger of rising ground water, an issue that is threatening Egyptian heritage sites from Nubia to the Giza Plateau.  The problem is as large as global warming and as local as sewage and agricultural runoff, but the insidious threat coming from below—the changing of the water tables—requires innovation as recent as cutting-edge mining technology and as ancient as divining water in the desert.

One of the most impressive and startling structures in the world is the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, yet the construction of it remains the subject of much debate and discussion to this very day.

Dr Mark Lehner, an archaeologist at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, and Harvard Semitic Museum, has given an exclusive video interview to Heritage Key in which he explains what he and his team are doing in their latest excavation.

Dr Zahi Hawass and a huge team of experts have just finished laser scanning the Great Sphinx, and now the Pyramids of Giza are being surveyed using the latest laser technology. Dr Hawass, who reports on the project in his blog, has employed the services of the National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences at the Mubarak Institute for the project, which saw Djoser's Step Pyramid at Saqqara subjected to the same techniques in June by a Japanese group.