The Great Sphinx of Giza is one of the globe’s most recognizable monuments. Standing 66 feet high and some 240 feet long, constructed of limestone blocks weighing up to 200 tons, it is by far the largest sculpture of the ancient world. It is perhaps also its most enigmatic and mysterious.
To this day, experts are unsure about the origin and purpose of the Sphinx, about who created it, whose face adorns it, and what secrets it might be hiding. In ancient times, the Giza Plateau on which the Sphinx rests was known as Rostau, which means “the mouth of passages.” To understand the mysteries of the Sphinx, one might ask, what passages, and to where?
Underground City Beneath Giza
On February 16th, 1923, archaeologists in Egypt discovered the tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun, more commonly referred to as King Tut, which had been undisturbed for more than 3000 years prior. The magnitude of the discovery ensured widespread acclaim for the story all across the world, and, subsequently, led to a surge of archaeologists and amateur treasure hunters descending on Egypt.
By the 1930s, countless new discoveries had been made, but perhaps the most incredible was yet to come. In 1935, a massive, decade-long clearing project in Giza finally reached its conclusion, and what it revealed shocked the world. One of the leaders of the project, Hamilton M. Wright, described the findings:
“We have discovered a subway used by the ancient Egyptians of 5000 years ago. It passes beneath the causeway leading between the second Pyramid and the Sphinx. From this subway, we have unearthed a series of shafts leading down more than 125 feet, with roomy courts and side chambers.”
It appeared Wright and his team had discovered some sort of secret city under the Giza Plateau.
For the rest of that year, articles and stories appeared in academic journals and across mainstream news detailing further findings – buildings and hallways and walls, vertical stone support columns, even delicate stonework carvings, and pastel-painted art, all hidden beneath the ground. Photographs of this underground city were taken and shown to various experts, who were, in the words of one Egyptologist, “deeply impressed.”
And then, suddenly and without warning, the story disappeared; media coverage stopped, and Egyptian authorities diverted attention to new initiatives, while archaeologists shifted their focus to the tombs and treasures which have come to define Egyptology.
The question is, why? Why would the world suddenly ignore the unbelievable discovery of what appeared to be an ancient underground metropolis beneath Giza?
Historian Gerry Cannon, author of the 2018 book, “The Giza Plateau Secrets and a Second Sphinx Revealed”, has an answer. “Nobody knows what’s under there,” Cannon said of the Giza Plateau. And if they did, he continued, it would “blow all their books and all their history out of the window.”
Are history-changing secrets laying buried under Giza, forgotten, or, worse still, suppressed by those who would not like what the secrets revealed? And further, what would the secrets reveal?
Тo start, neither Cannon, nor Hamilton M. Wright in 1935, were the first to speak of secrets hidden deep below the desert sands.
Historical Accounts of Underground Passages
In the 5th century BC, the Greek historian Herodotus wrote his seminal work The Histories, known as the foundational work of history in Western literature. Within it, he described a journey he had taken to Egypt, where, he asserted, he had been shown the legendary Labyrinth of Egypt.
According to lore, the Labyrinth was a hidden underground complex which contained a mythical “Hall of Records,” comprising all the lost knowledge of the ancients compiled before the Great Flood. Of his purported journey to the underground Labyrinth, Herodotus wrote:
“There I saw twelve palaces regularly disposed, which had communication with each other, interspersed with terraces and arranged around twelve halls. It is hard to believe they are the work of man.
The baffling and intricate passages from room to room and from court to court were an endless wonder to me, as we passed from a courtyard into rooms, from rooms into galleries, from galleries into more rooms and thence into yet more courtyards. The roof of every chamber, courtyard, and gallery is, like the walls, of stone. The walls are covered with carved figures, and each court is exquisitely built of white marble and surrounded by a colonnade.
Near the corner where the labyrinth ends, there is a pyramid, two hundred and forty feet in height, with great carved figures of animals on it and an underground passage by which it can be entered. I was told very credibly that underground chambers and passages connected this pyramid with the pyramids at Memphis.”
Herodotus was far from the only prominent thinker among the ancients to speak of an underground world in Egypt. 1st-century Greek philosopher Strabo also claimed to have visited the Labyrinth, which he called “a great palace composed of many palaces,” as did his contemporary, the Roman author Pliny the Elder, who wrote of the “bewildering maze of paths” that made up the underground complex.
At around the same time, Greek historian Diodorus, provided a sumptuous description of the Labyrinth’s majesty:
“When one had entered the sacred enclosure, one found a temple surrounded by columns, 40 to each side, and this building had a roof made of a single stone, carved with panels and richly adorned with excellent paintings. It contained memorials of the homeland of each of the kings as well as of the temples and sacrifices carried out in it, all skillfully worked in paintings of the greatest beauty.”
But stories of the secrets which Egypt held beneath the desert sands did not stop with accounts of the Labyrinth. In the 4th century, Syrian philosopher Iamblichus recorded information on an underground tunnel system beneath Giza, accessed through the body of the Sphinx. As he wrote:
“This entrance, obstructed in our day by sands and rubbish, may still be traced between the forelegs of the crouched colossus. It was formerly closed by a bronze gate whose secret spring could be operated only by the Magi. It was guarded by public respect, and a sort of religious fear maintained its inviolability better than armed protection would have done. In the belly of the Sphinx were cut-out galleries leading to the subterranean part of the Great Pyramid. These galleries were so art-fully crisscrossed along their course to the Pyramid that, in setting forth into the passage without a guide throughout this network, one ceasingly and inevitably returned to the starting point.”
Even more incredibly, according to 10th-century Arab historian Masoudi, these subterranean galleries contained
“…written accounts of wisdom and acquirements in the different arts and science [which] were hidden deep, that they might remain as records for those who could afterwards comprehend them.”
Could any of this, all of this, be true? And if not, why do so many historical figures speak of it? Moreover, why have all these stories been forgotten or ignored in modern times?
Well, not all have forgotten …
Tunnels and Chambers Beneath the Sphinx
The life of the “The Sleeping Prophet,” as American psychic Edgar Cayce was known, was an incredible one by any measurement. Called The Sleeping Prophet because he would literally speak prophecy in his sleep, Cayce would make many thousands of predictions in the early-20th century, before his death in 1945.
And he was good at it. He predicted the market crash of 1929, World War II, the death of two American Presidents, the fall of the Soviet Union, and numerous other things. He was so good at it, in fact, that a stenographer was retained to sit next to his bed while he slept and write down whatever he said.
Among his prophecies was an assertion that the mythical Hall of Records would be discovered in the 1990s … underneath the front paw of the Great Sphinx of Giza. Further, he asserted a knowledge that the Sphinx was not 4,500 years old, as was commonly understood, but 10,000 or more. Could he have been right about these things, as he was with so many other things?
Between 1991 and 1993, a series of studies were conducted under the leadership of Egyptologist John Anthony West and geologist Robert Schoch, which took seismic and geological surveys of the ground around the Sphinx. The results of these studies were presented for the world to see in an hour-long NBC documentary titled The Mystery of the Sphinx, which was watched in prime time by more than 30 million people.
Stunningly, the documentary announced that seismic surveys had revealed a series of unexplained tunnels and chambers underneath the Sphinx. Could this be, as Cayce had predicted, the mythical Hall of Records?
Before questions could be answered, Egyptian authorities, led by the government’s Chief Inspector of Antiquities, Dr. Zahi Hawass, stepped in and shut down the research. West and Schoch were expelled from the site, while Hawass derisively called their findings “American hallucinations.”
In 1995, thinking the heat had perhaps died down, West and Schoch put in an application to resume their research, but were vehemently denied. As West would later tell The New York Times, “Zahi Hawass has basically obstructed us.”
But then, a most curious thing happened. In 1996, a new project was given permission by Hawass and the Egyptian authorities to conduct surveys around the Sphinx, after the company seeking the permit poured a very generous $10 million into the project.
In short order, a video was released. Its star was one Zahi Hawass, his dramatic accusations of “American hallucinations” nowhere to be found. The video showed Hawass entering an underground tunnel, amazingly, through a hole in the Sphinx. Once inside, Hawass gleefully announced:
“Even Indiana Jones will never dream to be here. Can you believe it? We are now inside the Sphinx in this tunnel. This tunnel has never been opened before. No-one really knows what’s inside this tunnel. But we are going to open it for the first time.”
On that teaser, the video ends, leaving many to wonder what might be found in this mysterious tunnel.
Later that year, Hawass began openly proclaiming that, not one, but a series of tunnels existed under the Sphinx, and that these tunnels “carry many secrets of the building of the pyramids.” By 1998, it was Hawass himself who was personally overseeing excavation below the Sphinx.
And then, all of a sudden, Hawass again reversed his position; the excavation project was abruptly shut down, and Hawass began to assert that there was absolutely nothing under the Sphinx. It was a strange position for him to take, considering there was so much evidence to the contrary. Hawass even saw fit to start denying that there was, in fact, a hole in the Sphinx through which it can be entered. Even if we had not seen a video of Hawass himself crawling into the Sphinx through a hole, this is something of a historical fact that has been well-established for hundreds of years.
As early as 1733, explorer Charles Thompson noted “a hole in the top of the back” of the Sphinx. In 1798, French archaeologist and artist Vivant Denon sketched an image of the Sphinx, which showed a man climbing out of a hole in its head. By the 1920s, an aerial photograph taken from a hot air balloon distinctly showed a hole in the top of the head of the Sphinx, leaving no ambiguity.
So, what was Hawass talking about? Why the denial of incontrovertible facts? Why the flip-flopping of positions? Why head a project worth millions of dollars only to crush the findings of that project before it truly began?
Suppression of Egyptian Discoveries
Unfortunately, this type of thing is not all that rare when it comes to archaeology in Egypt, whether or not Zahi Hawass is in charge. In fact, some Egyptologists speak of a “mafia” that controls research and suppresses new information at the country’s ancient sites.
Documents show that as far back as the 1830s, French engineers conducted a considerable excavation in front of the Sphinx, and had just discovered a doorway leading further underground when shadowy forces compelled them to suspend their work. This process, discovery and subsequent shutdown, continued resolutely into more modern times. In the 1990s, at the same time as West and Schoch were being expelled from their research around the Sphinx, another team, led by German robots engineer Rudolf Gatenbrink, was sending a small robot device equipped with a camera down an unexplored shaft within the Great Pyramid, barely half a mile away. Within the shaft, the robot came upon a small door with two small copper handles on it. This shocked researchers, since metal is not found anywhere else in the Great Pyramid. What could be behind this strange door, they wondered? Despite the incredible nature of the discovery, Gatenbrink and his team were shut down and banned from exploring further.
Even more recently, exploration has faced the same fate. In 2008, a research project called the Mataha Expedition was launched in the Hawara region, a few miles outside of Giza. The project was a collaboration between the National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics (NRIAG) in Helwan, Egypt, and Ghent University in Belgium. It would use advanced ground-penetrating radar to look for
secrets below the sand.
Incredibly, researchers began to find signs of chambers and tunnels and walls beneath the earth, massive rooms some 150m by 100m. It was what appeared to be the remnants of an ancient city. These results were published in the scientific journal of the NRIAG and presented in academic lectures, not the work of treasure hunters or content creators, but serious and lifelong scholars. Until, without warning, Egyptian authorities again shut the project down, and, further, attempted to suppress the release of all findings. Formally, authorities claimed:
“These things exist only in the minds of those who seek to attract the seekers for mystery […] All of our excavations in the territory of the Pyramid have failed to reveal any underground passageways or halls, temples, grottos, or anything of the kind.”
Despite copious evidence, Egyptian authorities continued, and continue, to deny that anything has been found beneath the ground in Egypt at all, attempting to bend the perception of the world to their very own non-reality through sheer force of will. It is no wonder that Egyptian authorities have been likened to a mafia, and that many assert a “hidden level of censorship” in operation in Egypt.
But then, the question becomes, censorship of what?
Remember the words of Gerry Cannon, who said:
“They’re frightened that if they find stuff under there, it’s going to blow all their books and all their history out of the window.”
The True History of the Sphinx
So, what secrets are they hiding? And how will these secrets fundamentally alter our understanding of human history?
Return to the research of West and Schoch in the early-1990s. A series of underground chambers and tunnels was not the only thing they discovered. Vitally, they also determined through a geological survey something amazing about the age of the Sphinx.
To that point, mainstream thought had placed the age of the Sphinx at about 4,500 years old, from the dynasty of Khufu around 2500 BCE. Yet, West and Schoch found that erosion showed the Sphinx had been carved far before that, back before the Sahara even became a desert, at the end of the last ice age when heavy rains constantly pounded the area. This meant that the Sphinx was not 4,500 years old, but over 10,000. It may be mentioned, this was just as Edgar Cayce, The Sleeping Prophet, had predicted.
Interestingly, the ancient Egyptians have no record of the Sphinx being built. In fact, an ancient Egyptian tablet found in the 1850s called the Inventory Stela seems to indicate that Khufu did not build the Sphinx, but rather, he only repaired it, meaning it was in existence before his reign.
Moreover, as authors Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval point out, the Sphinx is aligned with the Great Pyramids and the Nile River in a way which mirrors the orientation of the stars. Except, they do not mirror the stars today, but rather where the stars would have been approximately 10,000-12,000 years ago.
If the Sphinx really is over 10,000 years old, this would mean that it predates the ancient Egyptians. That long ago, it was the Sumerians who stood as the dominant group in the region.
According to ancient Sumerians texts, their civilization was visited by gods from the sky called the Anunnaki, who brought them advanced technology and knowledge, spurring their development, and in fact, the development of all humanity. In modern times, there are many who believe these gods were not deities at all, but rather, ancient aliens who came to mine gold from our planet.
But how does this relate to the Sphinx and what may or may not be hidden beneath it?
The Anunnaki Connection
Consider, ancient Sumerian texts reveal that the Anunnaki built massive cities underground, and, to enter these underground metropolises, one “entered through a tunnel, its entrance hidden by sand and by what they call Huwana … his teeth as the teeth of a dragon, his face the face of a lion.” This sounds almost as though the Anunnaki constructed some sort of lion-like Sphinx to guard their secret underground abode.
Return to the words of Masoudi, who claimed to have seen the hidden tunnels and galleries under Giza in the 10th century. In his work, he wrote that these tunnels and galleries were guarded by mechanical statues with amazing capabilities, the description of which sounded not unlike robots in modern science fiction. “I have seen things that one does not describe for fear of making people doubt one’s intelligence,” Masoudi proclaimed, “but I have still seen them.”
And what of Edgar Cayce, The Sleeping Prophet, who predicted the true age of the Sphinx, and the existence of tunnels and chambers beneath it. In another of his prophecies, he asserted that a flying saucer was buried under the Great Pyramid of Giza. Strangely, many ancient carvings in Egypt depict what look like flying saucers.
Is this what lies beneath the Giza Plateau, the remnants of a technologically advanced city built by ancient extraterrestrial visitors? Perhaps the secrets hidden beneath the Sphinx have the power to fundamentally reshape human history as we know it. Perhaps this is why these secrets are so closely guarded, all attempts to uncover them suppressed by authorities.
Perhaps, to this day, the Great Sphinx of Giza continues to exist as both the marker and the guardian of humanity’s secrets..