Alas, there are no shocking answers revealed in The Secret of the Egyptian Pyramids, a Russian television documentary. It basically frames the discovery of what is behind the door found in one of the abandoned air shafts leading into the Queen's Room in the Great Pyramid's as the big payoff at the end, then quickly exits stage left after revealing what Rudolf Gantenbrink's Upuaut-2 project -- which sent a miniature mobile robot to explore the shafts -- showed us in 2002.

Along the way, though, the documentary provides a good overview of a lot of alternative historical and scientific thought about the Giza monuments, the building of the pyramids, the age of the Sphinx and the true origins of human civilization.

If you're already familiar with the works of John Anthony West, Robert Schoch, Gordon Hancock, Robert Bauval and other researchers, you probably won't see or hear anything you're not already familiar with. Anyone unaware of the increasingly shaky ground on which traditional Egyptology sits, however, may well find this video fascinating. It is certainly interesting to hear Russian scientists openly embrace ideas concerning Atlantis and the existence of a lost, highly advanced civilization -- the existence of which would, as one interviewed scientist points out, overturn the dialectical materialism argument of Karl Marx.

So, while there are no great revelations to be had, at least The Secret of the Egyptian Pyramids provides a good overview of alternative views on Egyptology.