A research team’s astonishing claims that they discovered massive underground structures extending hundreds of feet deep beneath Egypt’s Khafre Pyramid sound like science fiction to experts.
Scottish and Italian researchers say they used special radar technology that allowed them to see far beneath the 4,500-year-old pyramid.
They said the technology revealed five structures connected by miles of geometric pathways and eight spiral staircases descending thousands of feet underground.
At the very bottom, the radar detected two square structures each measuring 67,000 square feet and spanning beyond Khafre to all three pyramids of the Giza Plateau.
Their announcement, livestreamed from Italy on March 15, sent shock waves through the world of Egyptology and their findings at first glance appeared to be one of the most significant archaeological discoveries in modern times.
Research team spokeswoman Nicole Ciccolo teased the announcement as the “discovery of a huge city under the pyramids.”
The jaw-dropping claims, however, may be at best an exaggeration and at worst a complete fabrication, critics in the field say.
Egypt’s renowned archaeologist and former minister of antiquities trashed the findings, calling them “fake news.” Zahi Hawass said the researchers used techniques that are “not approved” and “not validated” and lack any scientific basis.
The Khafre Pyramid, Mr. Hawass said, was studied extensively and it was determined the massive structure was carved directly from the bedrock. “All claims regarding the existence of columns beneath it are entirely unfounded,” he said.
A spokesperson for the researchers, Corrado Malanga of the University of Pisa in Italy and Filippo Biondi of the University of Strathclyde in Scotland, said they recognize that there has been skepticism regarding the feasibility of deep subsurface imaging through the team’s methodology.
“Our intent is to focus on the purely technical aspects of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) technology and to elucidate why and how it enables high-resolution imaging at significant depths,” a spokesperson told The Washington Times in a statement, which added that the methodology “is firmly grounded in established scientific research,” and SAR technology is an advanced and highly specialized academic discipline.
“Given the technical complexity of its signal processing framework, it is understandable that professionals outside the remote sensing field, including archaeologists, may not be fully acquainted with its capabilities,” the spokesperson said.
Advanced radar and other technology such as lasers in lidar (light detection and ranging) are being used in archaeology throughout the world to discover buried sites and artifacts.
The same type of radar used by the pyramid researchers, Synthetic Aperture Radar or SAR, was coupled with artificial intelligence to discover a 5,000-year-old city beneath the desert in Dubai.
Mr. Malanga and Mr. Biondi first published a report on using SAR to view beneath the Giza Plateau in August 2022.
They asked University of Denver professor Lawrence B. Conyers, a leading expert on ground-penetrating radar, to peer-review the article.
Mr. Conyers told The Washington Times that their methodology was promising, but their conclusions were a mystery to him because they appeared to be based on pages of highly complicated math formulas that required much more analysis than he could provide.
“Methods and their interpretation of the data that they acquired using those methods are two separate things,” he said.
Mr. Conyers said he was skeptical of their claims that their radar could penetrate thousands of feet. He said he’s only been able to penetrate about 30 feet in his extensive experience with the equipment because radar waves attenuate, or get pulled away, while underground.
“I don’t care what kind of radar you are using, whether you are using synthetic aperture radar or Doppler shift radar. The fact of the matter is … there is going to be a limit to how deeply we can get these to penetrate,” Mr. Conyers said.
The researchers have not published their latest claims in a scientific journal or had them peer-reviewed.
Radar and other equipment have previously been used to try to map what lies beneath the pyramids but those projects have never shown the kind of massive and detailed underground structures researchers said they found below the Khafre Pyramid.
Researchers in 2021 used ground penetrating radar to map out a dry moat structure surrounding the Step Pyramid in Saqqara, Egypt.
In 2016, a team of Egyptian researchers used cosmic ray muon technology to scan beneath the Khufu Pyramid and discovered a large cavity 272 feet below the surface and a second corridor-like void about 75 feet underground.
Mr. Malanga and Mr. Biondi said they built a three-dimensional model of the pyramid underworld using data from radar mounted on satellites orbiting around the Earth.
Egypt tightly controls research at the pyramid sites and Mr. Hawass said the scientists making the claims about Khafre never conducted research at the site.
The researchers said it wasn’t necessary to be at the pyramid.
The radar could penetrate the limestone and granite pyramids from afar by converting light into sound.
“If we manage to transform light into sound, what will appear is that granite is more transparent than glass,” Mr. Malanga said, according to a translation of the press conference.
Mr. Malanga said the radar revealed strange findings under the pyramid, such as a “world” with “luminous stuff that vibrates.” The large columns appeared to be needed to stabilize the pyramid above it, he said, but also may have served other mysterious purposes involving the electromagnetic field.
Egypt’s pyramid experts scoffed at the findings.
Mr. Hawass accused the group of making outlandish claims “to undermine the grandeur of ancient Egyptian civilization.”
Mr. Conway said he does not dismiss the findings entirely. Many other pyramids, including the largest one in North America, are built upon underground structures, he said. Ancient civilizations built caves and tunnels to bury the dead and to hold religious or ritualistic ceremonies.
Tunnels and structures beneath ancient pyramids, he said, “are entirely plausible,” but claims that satellite radar shows the details of a vast city beneath Egypt’s Giza Plateau aren’t as believable.
“Put me down as a scientific skeptic,” he said.
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
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