Helwan Observatory

"Shaw and the Helwan Observatory" by Jeremy Shears & Ashraf Ahmed Shaker

Azbakia Book Market

Next time you are in Cairo, Egypt.

"Rummaging Around Nooks and Crannies in Azbakia Book Market, Cairo"

by

Nick Rowlands

February 15th, 2010

trazzler

Take the Metro to Ataba—a sprawling neighborhood of chaotic markets, where you can even buy the proverbial kitchen sink—and you first emerge into Sour El Azbakia Book Market. Rows of whitewashed wooden shacks with battered mashrabia paneling, the market is an Aladdin’s Cave for culture vultures. Books of all shapes and sizes tumble from groaning shelves. Leather and gilt-bound Qurans jostle for space with HTML 4 Dummies, and Magic’s First Gymkhana does battle with The Bourne Identity. Burrow a little deeper, and you’ll turn up seventy-year-old National Geographics, satirical Egyptian comics, and faded vintage film posters. Seek out the most wizened old man with the most wizard-like beard, and if he doesn’t have an ancient alchemical tome, he’ll at least have a genuine, framed photo of King Farouk. The air here is thick with the dust of time, and the hope that tired old print will once more see the light of day.

Zahi Hawass is back...temporarily

After being abruptly sacked in an overhaul of the country's cabinet, Zahi Hawass has been reinstated, but only temporarily.

"The Fall of Zahi Hawass"

Removed as minister of antiquities, the high profile archaeologist no longer holds the keys to 5,000 years of Egyptian history

by

Andrew Lawler

July 18th, 2011

Smithsonian

[Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect developments after Hawass was initially fired. (UPDATED 07/26/2011)]

It is not as dramatic as the collapse of an ancient Egyptian dynasty, but the abrupt fall of Zahi Hawass is sending ripples around the planet. The archaeologist who has been in charge of Egypt’s antiquities for nearly a decade has been sacked in an overhaul of the country’s cabinet.

After several days in which his status was unclear—the appointment of a successor was withdrawn, leading to reports that Hawass would return temporarily—he confirmed by e-mail that he was out.

The antipathy toward Hawass in Egypt may be difficult to grasp in the West, where he is typically found on American television, fearlessly tracking down desert tombs, unearthing mummies and bringing new life to Egypt’s dusty past. But in Egypt he was a target of anger among young protesters who helped depose President Hosni Mubarak in February. Hawass had been accused of corruption, shoddy science and having uncomfortably close connections with the deposed president and first lady?all of which he vociferously denied. Many young archaeologists also demanded more jobs and better pay?and they complained Hawass had failed to deliver. “He was the Mubarak of antiquities,” said Nora Shalaby, a young Egyptian archaeologist who has been active in the revolution.

On July 17, Prime Minister Essam Sharaf removed Hawass, 64, as minister of antiquities, arguably the most powerful archaeology job in the world. The ministry is responsible for monuments ranging from the Great Pyramids of Giza to the sunken palaces of ancient Alexandria, along with a staff of more than 30,000, as well as control over all foreign excavations in the country. That gives the position immense prestige in a country whose economy depends heavily on tourists drawn by Egypt’s 5,000-year heritage.

“All the devils united against me,” Hawass said in an e-mail afterward.

Sharaf named Cairo University engineer Abdel Fatta El Banna to take over but withdrew the appointment after ministry employees protested that El Banna lacked credentials as an archaeologist. On July 20, Hawass told the Egyptian state news agency he had been reinstated, but it was unclear for how long. Six days later, Hawass said in an e-mail that he was leaving to rest and to write.

Finding a replacement may take time, foreign archaeologists said. In addition, the ministry of antiquities may be downgraded from a cabinet-level agency.

Mubarak had created the ministry in January as part of an effort to salvage his government; it had been a non-cabinet agency called the Supreme Council of Antiquities, which reported to the ministry of culture. The possibility that ministry would be downgraded, reported by the Los Angeles Times, citing a cabinet spokesman, worried foreign archaeologists. “I’m very concerned about the antiquities,” said Sarah Parcak, an Egyptologist at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. “And these monuments are the lifeblood of the Egyptian economy.”

Hawass had risen from the professional dead before. Young archaeologists gathered outside his headquarters February 14 to press for more jobs and better pay. He was accused of corruption in several court cases. And in March he resigned from his post, saying that inadequate police and military protection of archaeological sites had led to widespread looting in the wake of Egypt’s revolution. But within a few weeks, Sharaf called Hawass and asked him to return to the job.

In June, he embarked on a tour to the United States to encourage tourists to return to Egypt—a high priority, given that Egypt’s political upheaval has made foreign visitors wary. Egyptian officials said in interviews last month that Hawass’ ability to persuade foreigners to return was a major reason for keeping him in his position.

Hawass rose to power in the 1980s, after getting a PhD in archaeology from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and being named the chief antiquities inspector at the Giza Plateau, which includes the pyramids. In 2002, he was put in charge of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. He began to call on foreign countries to return iconic antiquities, such as the Rosetta Stone in the British Museum and the Nefertiti bust at the Neues Museum in Berlin. At the same time, he made it easier for foreign museums to access Egyptian artifacts for exhibit, which brought in large amounts of money for the Egyptian government. In addition, he halted new digs in areas outside the Nile Delta and oases, where rising water and increased development pose a major threat to the country’s heritage.

Hawass also began to star in a number of television specials, including Chasing Mummies, a 2010 reality show on the History Channel that was harshly criticized for the cavalier way with which he treated artifacts. In addition, Egyptians complained that there was no way to know what was happening to the money Hawass was reaping from his book tours, lectures, as well as his television appearances.

Enter "Zahi Hawass" in the search engine for more.

Mars--Egypt

"MARS TRADED WITH ANCIENT EGYPT"

by

Erik Van Datiken

May 13th, 2009

Unscientific American

BERN – Swiss scientists say they can prove beyond a doubt that the Lost City of Atlantis was on Mars, and its astronauts traded with ancient Egypt for thousands of years!

Even more incredible, they claim to have the evidence to show that the legendary King Tut died spectacularly in a space shuttle crash with an alien crew.

"The Martian Civilization destroyed itself or was destroyed by a meteor while Egypt was still in its prime," Dr. Stephan Weisz told a gathering of reporters and scientists in Bern, Switzerland. But the inhabitants left their mark both on Earth and Mars. Top secret photographs taken by America's Martian probes clearly show the remains of temples on the surface of the planet.

"Egypt's pyramids and the ability to mummify the human body are definitely the result of technologies that originated not on Earth but someplace else, in this case Mars. It is our belief that the Atlantans traded these technologies to the Egyptians for gold."

Dr. Weisz and a colleague, Egyptologist Conrad Vetsch, said that a recently deciphered Egyptian scroll first led them to believe that Atlantis was located on Mars. The scroll describes a technologically advanced civilization existing beyond our own planet "in the vast, black ocean of space."

It also alludes to space travel and the use of a shuttle craft to ferry manlike extraterrestrials from a space-bound mother ship to the surface of Earth.

"Researchers have long known that the Egyptians were exposed to flight because an elaborate model of what they called a glider was found in Tut's tomb," Dr. Weisz told the group. "In light of information gleaned from the scrolls, we now see that the glider was in fact the replica of a space shuttle. And it was just such a space craft that crashed with Tut aboard."

Not everyone attending the conference agreed with the experts' theories. Dr. Seth Rausch, a German historian, thinks they went too far in calling the Martian civilization Atlantis. "I don't doubt that the Egyptians were in contact with extraterrestrials," said the expert. "But until we actually inspect the ruins on Mars, there is no way to know if they are the remains of Atlantis."

"In my opinion, if Atlantis did exist, it existed here on Earth."

Norwegian astronomer Elling Gade agreed. "Atlantis might have been the colony of an alien civilization. But it most definitely was located on this planet," he said.

Sphinx is being assaulted

Hillary Clinton and daughter Chelsea with Zahi Hawass [secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt] in 1991 assured them that the Sphinx was not in danger.

Things change and I suppose there is not much in the way of permanent preservation that can be done. The Sphinx is probably the oldest mammoth artifact existing and is now being assaulted by pigeon droppings.

"Keep an eye on the Sphinx"

by

Jill Kamil

September 10th, 2008

Al-Ahram Weekly

The secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities had much to tell his interviewer on "Spotlight". Zahi Hawass waxed lyrical about "exciting things" that have been happening in the field of archaeology -- the discovery of a new tomb of a queen at Saqqara that has yet to be formally announced; the entrance to two tombs in the Valley of the Kings on which excavation will begin in October; and "big happenings" in Aswan, Edfu and Kom Ombo. He was enthusiastic about the "improvements" at Dendera and the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, and gave details of the new museums at Rashid, Arish, Minya and Amarna, as well as site management at Beni Hassan and Tuna Al-Gabel.

Zahi Hawass raved about the progress on the Civilisation Museum at Fustat and the Grand Egyptian Museum at Giza. Indeed, he also had much to say about the plan to upgrade the Pyramid Plateau and turn it into "a tourist-friendly and hawker-free zone". He mentioned that the project's security component included installing cameras, alarms and motion detectors, as well as building up a 20-kilometre fence.

I wonder if the new electronic security devices, however, while monitoring the movements of tourists and hawkers, cameleers and horse riders, will be able to pick up the unwelcome winged creatures that are finding a comfortable and shady roost in the eye and ear cavities of the Sphinx, and causing damage to the stone with their droppings. Apparently the pigeons are pecking away at this most grand and famous of monuments, finding in it an appetising calcium meal. Back in 1991, after a Save the Sphinx programme of restoration, Hawass declared that the monument was not in any danger. "Its head and neck can live for another thousand years," he declared at the time. He could not possibly have foreseen this newest threat -- the high level of acidity in the droppings of birds and its destructive effect on the stone. Just how serious is the problem?

I am reminded of the press coverage in the United Kingdom back in November 2002, about the health hazard and the "mess" created by some 4,000 pigeons in Trafalgar Square, when campaigners called for the right to continue to feed the birds. The British press made a great hue and cry about that. "Court threat over Trafalgar pigeons", "In defence of pigeons" and "Pigeon protest ruffles feathers", the headlines screamed. Well, we in Egypt are not that concerned about birds, and we certainly don't cast birdseed around to feed them. Yet pigeons here in Egypt have become thoroughly urbanised. They habitually build nests and raise families in garages, on balconies, and in and around satellite dishes. So once they pass the word around that the Giza Sphinx offers singularly superior accommodation for Rest and Recreation than Greater Cairo's concrete jungle, perhaps they will fly to Giza in ever larger numbers.

The Sphinx was carved from a single block of limestone left over in the quarry used to build the Pyramids, and scholars believe it was sculpted about 4,600 years ago by King Khafre, whose Pyramid rises directly behind it. Half human, half lion, it has the head of the king with his nemes head covering, and its body is 57 metres long and 20 metres high. It certainly exudes an aura of mystery: the Arabs called the Sphinx Abul Hol, Father of Terror; and 18th- and 19th-century visitors claimed that it was the work of an extremely ancient civilisation that had completely disappeared.

If more pigeons are attracted to the area, their droppings will cause more and more damage. The monument has undergone numerous restorations over the millennia, beginning with one conducted in about 1400 BC by the prince who later became Pharaoh Tuthmose IV, who dreamt that the Sphinx asked him to clear the sand around it in return for the crown of Upper and Lower Egypt. It was cleared, and he was crowned Pharaoh, but wind- blown sand soon buried the monument to its neck -- its nose, incidentally, had been missing for at least 400 years by the time Napoleon arrived in Egypt in 1798 with the band of French savants who took measurements of the head.

The first attempt to clear away the sand in modern times was made in 1816/17 by a Genoese merchant, Caviglia, who did not get very far. The next attempt was made in 1853 by Auguste Mariette, founder of the Egyptian Antiquities Service. He managed to clear the sand right down to the rock floor of the surrounding ditch, and the task was taken up by his successor, Gaston Maspero. The French engineer Emile Baraize, working for the Antiquities Service, did a more thorough job. He not only dug along the Sphinx's body, but found ancient restoration blocks scattered about which he replaced, adding some small brick-sized blocks of his own.

More recently restoration was carried out in the 1950s and 1970s, when some of the damaged masonry was patched up around the lower parts of the Sphinx's body. In 1979 the Sphinx Project of the American Research Centre in Egypt (ARCE), in collaboration with the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo, produced the first scale elevations and detailed plans of the monument. It was discovered that the stone used in the modern restoration of the monument flaked and powdered more rapidly than the earlier restoration so various steps were taken to consolidate the stone.

In the 1980s, the famous Sphinx was subjected to intensive care. Chemicals were injected into the stone for strengthening, but the project had to be abandoned because the chemicals unexpectedly caused the treated parts to flake off, taking with them some of the original rock surface. A Sphinx Committee was formed, comprising scholars of the EAO, Egyptian universities, and foreign experts, and they all agreed that the "new" and "harmful" cement and gypsum mortar of previous restorations should be removed immediately and replaced with stones that matched the 1979 restoration, using the plan and elevations of the ARCE Sphinx Project.

Oh dear! Poor Sphinx. Work went ahead. Its paws and rear haunches were covered with nearly 2,000 limestone blocks held in place with cement (the suitability of which was later questioned). Meanwhile, its neck caused considerable concern because it seemed to be eroding more rapidly than the rest of the statue. Culture Minister Farouk Hosni called on UNESCO to form a committee comprising 13 specialists in the fields of archaeology, reconstruction, restoration and geophysics, to discuss procedures needed to protect the Giza Plateau generally and the Sphinx's neck in particular. It was even thought a good idea to ask the British Museum to send the Sphinx's beard of the back to Egypt so that it might ensure more stability to the head. The British Museum was said to be willing, as long as Egypt covered the cost. So the matter ended there.

The committee members, meanwhile, agreed that the Sphinx was suffering from weathering and chemical saturation by carbonic, nitric and sulphuric acids "produced by chemical pollutants associated with neighbouring cement and other industrial facilities," as well as vibration caused by dynamiting in quarries in the vicinity, not to mention the rumbling of heavy tourist buses across the plateau. Additionally, there was seepage from the inadequate sewage system of the neighbouring Nezlet Al-Simman village.

When, in 1988, a sizable piece of bedrock toppled from the right shoulder of the Sphinx it caused much concern. A "Save the Sphinx" campaign was immediately launched with a large initial donation by American Express in Cairo, as well as the Getty Conservation Institute of California in collaboration with the EAO. A six-and- a-half-metre-high mini-observatory was set up on the statue's haunches to monitor the direction and changes in the speed of the wind, the humidity and pollutants in the atmosphere, the temperature and effects of water and salt on limestone. Could it have monitored winged creatures? Probably not.

The Sphinx naturally remained a subject of debate and, not surprisingly, there was a windfall of contradictory statements in the press. One report in Al-Ahram daily newspaper in 1991 once again outlined the rapid state of the deterioration of the neck. Yet, in Al-Gomhuriya a day later, a statement appeared saying that the Sphinx was not in any danger at all; that the slaking stone on its chest was not an alarming phenomenon because the monument could easily be treated by chemical processes. Salah Lamei, professor of architecture and member of the Sphinx Restoration Committee; Mahmoud Taher, director- general of the Information Department of the EAO; and Shawki Nakhla, director-general of restoration, all agreed that the statue was only suffering to a minor degree. The problem, they claimed, was a natural result of the monument being subjected to heavy rainfall, humidity and wind. Farouk Hosni stated moreover that there was "no point in making media propaganda out of it". That was when Hawass made his comment of the Sphinx surviving for another thousand years.

A long-term master plan for the Giza Plateau was worked out under the directorship of Zahi Hawass and in collaboration with American Egyptologist Mark Lehner of the Stanford Research Institute (who earlier carried out a project to probe the ground beneath the Sphinx in an electrical-resistivity survey). Egyptologists and geologists studied the geology of the Giza formation; a workmen's village with a camp for craftsmen, overseers, and storerooms was excavated; and an enormous bakery was discovered where no fewer than 14 types of bread were made to feed the workmen. The veil of obscurity surrounding the Pyramids builders was coming to light. As for the Sphinx, a comprehensive article appeared in the October 1994 issue of Archaeology Magazine entitled "The Sphinx: who built it and why?" which carried a computer-generated contour map of the plateau and images of the geographical strata, but no mention of its condition -- or the possibility of the new threat.

How much damage are the pigeons causing? And how can the problem be remedied? Perhaps a pigeon-repellent device, similar to the bat-repellent device used (against the law) in some churches in the UK, might do the trick! But who would finance such a project?

Pyramids probe by physics

Now physics will probe the ancient pyramids.

"Secrets of the Pyramids"

by

Haley Bridger

Symmetry

March/April 2008

Volume 5, Issue 2

In a boon for archaeology, particle physicists plan to probe ancient structures for tombs and other hidden chambers. The key to the technology is the muon, a cousin of the electron that rains harmlessly from the sky.

In the dense jungles of northwestern Belize, the sound of metal hitting rock startles flocks of tropical birds and troops of black howler monkeys. Archaeologist Norman Hammond and his team stop digging. They have hit a stone wall 10 feet below ground; inside is a royal tomb. After almost one hundred test excavations at La Milpa, an ancient Mayan city of 50,000 people, Hammond has unearthed something big. Within the tomb lie the remains of a man wearing a jade pendant in the form of a vulture's head. He is thought to be either Bird Jaguar, the fifth-century ruler of La Milpa, or one of Bird Jaguar’s successors. And finding him was an incredible stroke of luck. Hammond made his famous discovery more than 10 years ago, but repeated efforts to find other tombs at the site have come up empty-handed. Lacking an ancient map of La Milpa or blueprints for its five pyramid mounds and buried plaza, archaeologists rely mostly on instinct. They run the risk of piercing priceless relics with their shovels or digging fruitlessly for years. The ground beneath the site "could be Swiss cheese, for all we know," riddled with burial chambers, tunnels, and hidden entrances, says Hammond, who is based at Boston University. Now researchers hope to find those hidden spaces with the help of particle physics.

A cosmic X-ray machine

The key to the new approach is the muon, a heavy cousin of the electron that's created when cosmic rays hit the atmosphere. Muons pass harmlessly through people and buildings; in fact, nearly 600 of them fly through your body each minute. They fascinate scientists because they’re one of the few high-energy particles raining down from the sky that can be examined for clues to the nature of the cosmos. Particle physicists started building muon detectors in the 1940s and they're still at it today; the most advanced particle detectors in the world, at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland, have components that record muons created in particle collisions. But it's the ability of the muon to penetrate deep into rock and water that has archaeologists excited. Muons traveling through rock or other dense material will slow and eventually stop, while those flying through empty spaces keep going fullspeed. The idea is to catch the muons after they’ve passed through an archaeological site and measure their energies and trajectories. With this information, researchers can reconstruct their paths and compile a 3D image that reveals hidden chambers or other voids.

La Milpa

Scientists at the University of Texas at Austin plan to place two muon detectors on either side of a pyramid at La Milpa in Belize. This arrangement gives them a stereo view of the site, making it easier to compile a 3D image.

If archaeologists are like surgeons probing a patient, physicists are the radiologists whose X-rays show where to cut and how to do it safely. Just as X-rays leave patients unscarred, muons offer a way to explore ancient ruins without disturbing them. This fall, a team led by Arturo Menchaca-Rocha of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, or UNAM, plans to place a muon detector beneath the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacán, northwest of Mexico City. Meanwhile, Roy Schwitters of the University of Texas at Austin is making plans to install muon detectors in wells dug on opposite sides of a mound at La Milpa. The detectors will gather muons for about a year, slowly building a picture of the interior of each pyramid.

First stop: Egypt

Muon detectors have a rich history of revealing the unusual and the unseen. Sixty years ago, scientists in Australia used them to measure layers of mountain snow. Today, Japanese scientists are testing the technology as a way to track magma rising within volcanoes, a possible sign of impending eruption. Border patrol agencies in the United States see muon detectors as a potential way to uncover radioactive materials shielded and hidden inside cargo containers and trucks.

It was about 40 years ago that archaeologists tapped muons for the first time. Luis Alvarez, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, wondered if muons might reveal chambers in the Second Pyramid of Chephren, one of the three great pyramids of Egypt, that had somehow escaped the notice of archaeologists and looters for 4500 years.

Alvarez and his team put a detector in the Belzoni Chamber, near the center of the pyramid’s base, and left it to collect muons for two years. They concluded that no additional chambers were hidden in the limestone above, although the scan was able to distinguish the four edges of the pyramid and what little remained of its smooth limestone facing. While it would have been more exciting to discover a new chamber, this information was nonetheless valuable for Egyptologists and archaeologists studying the pyramid—and it showed that the technique worked.

There are other high-tech ways to explore a ruin. Ground-penetrating radar reflects off buried features, while electrical-resistivity probes measure the increased resistance to electrical flow due to the presence of stone and brick. Though useful, neither of them probes as deeply or takes as wide a view as the muon detector does.

Egypt

In the first experiment of its kind, a team led by Luis Alvarez placed a muon detector in a chamber of Egypt’s Second Pyramid of Chephren. Although the muons revealed no hidden chambers, the experiment showed that the method had value for archaeology.

The Pyramid of the Sun

In the early 1970s, a pair of archaeologists cleared stone and gravel out of a well at the base of the world’s third-largest pyramid, the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacán. Beneath the rocks they found a stairway leading to a tunnel 100 meters long and eight meters below ground. It opened an extraordinary opportunity for the physics community, Menchaca-Rocha says: "It is the key that will allow us to carry out an experiment similar to that of Alvarez" by placing a muon detector directly below the pyramid.

Menchaca-Rocha hopes to put the detector in place this fall and begin collecting data by the end of the year.

The detector contains six gas-filled chambers. When a muon travels through one of them, it collides with particles in the gas and gives off light. By recording those light flashes and noting exactly where the muon entered and left the chamber, researchers can calculate its energy and trajectory. Menchaca-Rocha thinks the detector will reveal any cavity more than 75 centimeters—30 inches—tall.

The results could help to answer a question that has stumped archaeologists for decades: What was the purpose of the pyramid?

Linda Manzanilla, an archaeologist with UNAM, studies Teotihuacán, once a bustling center full of pyramids and temples. "It was a city that attracted many people," she says, "and it flourished for five centuries." She believes a volcanic eruption drove people from the north towards the valley where the metropolis rose; "There they built a temple to appease the fire gods."

Originally devoted to agriculture, the temple became a symbol of the state and its rulers. Could one of those rulers lie in a tomb within the Pyramid of the Sun? "I don’t think so. I don’t believe we will find anything inside," Manzanilla says. No tombs have been found there yet, and she doesn’t think that will change.

But without a muon detector, Manzanilla can't test her predictions. "The Pyramid of the Sun is so wide and so high," she says. "Ground-penetrating radar can see only a small depth and width. We can expand that view using the muon detector."

And, she hopes, put to rest speculation about what is inside.

Teotihuacán

At the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacán, scientists from UNAM will take advantage of an existing tunnel to place their muon detector. Muons traveling through its six gas-filled chambers will give off flashes of light.

Mayan mysteries

Schwitters is eager to answer similar questions at La Milpa in Belize.

The design of his detector is slightly different. It's a gas-filled cylinder wrapped with strips of material that detect muons as they enter and leave. Another detector, at the bottom of the cylinder, picks up flashes of light from muons zipping through the gas.

Rather than putting his detector directly below the pyramid, which would require digging a tunnel, Schwitters plans to place two detectors in shallow shafts on either side of the structure and 50 to 60 meters apart. This will give them a stereo view of the site, eliminate blind spots and make it easier to construct a 3D image. Only the most energetic muons will be used for the reconstruction; since they are not as easily deflected, their paths through the site are truer and more direct. Schwitters says it should take about 10 days to record and trace 1000 muon arrivals.

While waiting for the funding they need to set up a laboratory in Belize, Schwitters and his team have been testing the 16-foot-long prototype detector they built at the University of Texas at Austin. Big stacks of bricks stand in for the stony bulk of the pyramid; the team moves the bricks up onto the roof and into other difficult positions to see how the detector handles the challenge. From the data, Schwitters and his group can see not only the piles of bricks, but also the shadows of the nearby engineering and physics buildings, massive structures that impede the flow of muons. If the detector can distinguish these dense objects, Schwitters says, it can find cavities as well.

"The technology has really improved since the time of Alvarez," Schwitters says. "The detectors are simpler and more robust. We are looking to make the detector more portable and improve our software, and then we can get serious."

Designing the detector is the first of many challenges for the Schwitters team. Once they get funding and permission, they will have to transport the detectors to Belize and dig holes in which to put them. They'll also need to find a way to power the lab at the remote site. "It’s a slow process and we’ve got a lot to do here," Schwitters says, adding that he hopes to move to Belize by the spring of 2009.

La Milpa remains shrouded in mystery. Hammond says, "Some questions we cannot yet answer are: Why was the city founded? What was its strategic or economic importance? Why did it collapse? And why was it abandoned in a time of great construction?" Muon detection may answer at least some of these questions and give archaeologists enough of an edge to unearth the next exciting discovery.

At left: This detector, developed for use at La Milpa in Belize, snags incoming muons in two ways. First, a muon’s trajectory is recorded by three layers of material wrapped around a cylindrical chamber. Meanwhile, photodetectors pick up flashes of light generated as muons strike molecules of gas inside the chamber.

At right: The detector developed by UNAM for the Pyramid of the Sun contains layers of scintillating material; they collect light produced when muons interact with gas in the detector’s six chambers.

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