CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt will close the interior of the Great Pyramid for eight months of conservation work from April 1 and give it a break from the humid breath of tourists. "The pyramid has to rest," Zahi Hawass, Director of the Pyramids, said of the 137-metre high monument built by the Pharaoh Cheops (Khufu) more than 4,500 years ago. He told Reuters this week that each of the three main Giza pyramids would be closed in turn under a site management system being applied for the first time in Egypt. Cheops' pyramid was last closed six years ago when five cm (two inches) of encrusted salt was removed from the walls of the Grand Gallery. Now the salt is coming back. Hawass said: "Maybe it's because of the breathing of the visitors." During the eight-month closure, workers will also install a French-designed ventilation system to control the humidity. Hawass said he hoped to persuade the Egyptian government eventually to close the interiors of all three pyramids permanently. "The magic is from outside, not inside," he said. In the heart of the Great Pyramid lie
three chambers, including the main burial chamber, or King's Chamber, which visitors can enter after climbing through the Grand Gallery. Tourists will get access to the other two, the so--called Queen's Chamber at a lower level than the King's Chamber and an unfinished chamber hewn in the natural rock beneath the pyramid, for the first time when the interior is reopened. Archaeologists believe construction was abandoned in favour of a burial site in the Queen's Chamber, misnamed because there is no evidence of queens being buried within the pyramid. The builders apparently changed plans
again and the King's Chamber became the final resting place of Cheops' sarcophagus. Hawass said he believed Cheops had departed from the previous royal practice of burial beneath the pyramids because he had carried out a "religious revolution", declaring that he was the sun god Ra in his lifetime, not just after death.
