Despite two centuries of mining and archeologic investigations in Giza , only three items have ever been recover from within theGreat Pyramid . Known collectively as the Dixon Relics , the trio of artifact was attain in 1872 by Waynman Dixon and James Grant , although we still do n’t bed what they are .
The pair fare across the antiques while exploring an air shaft leading from the Queen ’s Chamber , which lies inside the Great Pyramid - also known as thePyramid of Khufu . paper reports from the time of the breakthrough suggested that the items may have been tools that were used in the building of the iconic landmark , yet the exact subprogram of the ancient objects persist a topic of debate to this day .
After leaving Egypt , Dixon himself kept cargo area of two of the objects , both of which are now housed in the British Museum in London . This outmoded pairing consists of a small pit egg and a strung-out copper item in the embodiment of a peacenik ’s tail . According to the museum , the item come along to be tools that may have been used by construction workers , although they could also have been placed in the pyramid for let King Khufu ’s departing flavour to pass away the chamber and locomotion to the hereafter .
Grant , meanwhile , keep possession of the third relic - a 13 - cm ( five - inch ) patch of true cedar woods that was once part of a larger wooden object within the Pyramids of Egypt . In the forties , Grant ’s girl donate the item to the University of Aberdeen , yet it was seemingly not properly separate and immediately went missing .
It was n’t until 2019 that researchers stumble upon the object , which washiding inside a cigar tinwithin the University ’s Asia collection . More than seven X after taking possession of the ancient item , Egyptologist finally had a fortune to study it , with carbon 14 dating expose that it was first craft some time between 3341 and 3094 BCE , more than 500 years before the Great Pyramid was constructed .
Despite this revelation , archaeologists still ca n’t say for sure what the aim is , although some have proposed that it may be part of a measuring rule that was used during thebuilding of the Great Pyramid . Naturally , it would help if researcher could get at the turgid item from which this shard came , although this is currently stuck in an inaccessible dental caries within the Great Pyramid and was last project using a automatonlike television camera in 1993 .
