Archaeology & History

Controversy as pyramid 'lost city' scientists clash with Zahi Hawass

By T.K. Randall
March 27, 2025 ·  738 comments

Does a city lie beneath the desert sands ? Image Credit: CC BY-SA 4.0 Myousry6666 A few days ago we reported on the story that an international team of scientists had claimed to have discovered evidence of structures descending 6,000ft beneath Egypt's pyramids of Giza.

The discovery, which was made by researchers from Scotland's University of Strathclyde and Italy's University of Pisa, involved using radar pulses to create high-resolution images of the subsurface.

Describing their find as "groundbreaking", the team reportedly discovered eight vertical cylindrical structures extending 2,100 feet beneath the ground and even more unidentified structures descending a further 4,000 feet below that.

After the story broke in the press, however, it wasn't long before the team's findings had become the focus of significant criticism from various other researchers, archaeologists and Egyptian antiquities ministry officials.

One of the more prominent figures to play down the discovery was Zahi Hawass - Egypt's own 'Indiana Jones' and a legendary archaeologist who has been involved in countless excavations.

"I would like to make a statement regarding the news that was published all over the world by a group of amateurs," he said.

"The news was under the pyramid of Khafre at Giza they found a platform topped with pillars.""All this information is completely wrong and has absolutely no scientific basis."

"In addition, the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquity did not give permission to any individuals or institutions to work inside or outside the second pyramid."

The scientists themselves went on to respond to the criticism by emphasizing that they are in fact so certain of their discovery that the confidence level is above 85 percent.

They reiterated that they had used "a specialized algorithm" and "high-frequency electromagnetic waves" to build up an image of what lies beneath the desert sands.

Even so, experts still remain unconvinced.

"To make correlation confidence levels there needs to be something to correlate to or compare to," said Professor Lawrence Conyers, a radar expert at the University of Denver.

"What could that be here? Without that, these percentages are meaningless scientifically."

Source: Lad Bible | Comments (738)

Tags: Egypt, Pyramids