In 1967, a team of scientists hauled a big pile of gear electronics, particle detectors, a giant slab of iron into the burial chamber at the base of one of the pyramids at Giza. This sounds like a scene from a science fiction or fantasy novel throw in the fact that their first attempt was interrupted by the Six Day War and you've got an element of a Tim Powers secret history story but the goal wasn't the opening of an interdimensional portal or the raising of the dead.