The Scan Pyramids Project — an international program to scan ancient pyramids — revealed the discovery of an unfinished corridor in Egypt’s Great Pyramid

The corridor is close to the Great Pyramid’s main entrance and could lead to more discoveries, according to Egyptian antiquities officials.

The Minister for Tourism and the Egyptian archaeologists announced the discovery at a ceremony outside the pyramid. The Scan Pyramids project, an international program that uses scans to look at unexplored sections of the ancient structure, was credited for the find.

An article published in the journal Nature on Thursday said the discovery could provide knowledge about the purpose of the gabled limestone structure located in front of the corridor.

The Great Pyramid was constructed to be a monumental tomb during the reign of Cheops. Built to a height of 146 meters (479 feet), it now stands at 139 meters and was the tallest structure made by humans until the Eiffel Tower in Paris in 1889.

The unfinished corridor was likely created to redistribute the pyramid’s weight around either the main entrance now used by tourists, almost seven meters away, or around another as yet undiscovered chamber or space, said Mostafa Waziri, head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.

“We’re going to continue our scanning so we will see what we can do … to figure out what we can find out beneath it, or just by the end of this corridor,” he told reporters after a press conference in front of the pyramid.

Even relatively minor discoveries generate great interest, as experts are divided over how the pyramids were constructed. A major source of foreign currency in the Middle east is tourists, which are often touted by authorities as discoveries.

Following the uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak, the tourism sector in Egypt suffered a downturn, as well as the outbreak of the coronaviruses.