An Explorer’s Remarkable Discovery
British explorer Andrew Collins claims to have uncovered a hidden underground ‘city’ beneath the Giza Pyramids, an enormous system of caves, chambers, and tunnels concealed in the limestone bedrock beneath the pyramid field. According to Collins, this subterranean complex harbors untouched archaeological treasures and a delicate ecosystem, including colonies of bats and a species of venomous spiders, tentatively identified as the white widow.
Piecing Together Ancient Clues
Collins’ findings, detailed in his forthcoming book “Beneath the Pyramids,” were sparked by the forgotten memoirs of a 19th-century British consul general, Henry Salt. In his accounts, Salt recounts exploring an underground system of ‘catacombs’ at Giza in 1817, accompanied by Italian explorer Giovanni Caviglia. Their expedition ventured several hundred yards into the caves, revealing four large chambers and stretching passageways.
Rediscovering the Lost Catacombs
Armed with Salt’s memoirs and the expertise of British Egyptologist Nigel Skinner-Simpson, Collins reconstructed the 19th-century exploration on the Giza plateau. This led him to locate the entrance to the lost catacombs in an apparently unrecorded tomb west of the Great Pyramid, featuring a crack in the rock that opened into a massive natural cave.
Unveiling an Ancient Mystery
Collins believes these ancient caves, dating back tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years, may have inspired the development of the pyramid field and the ancient Egyptian belief in an underworld. Ancient funerary texts allude to the existence of a subterranean world near the Giza pyramids, and the region was known as Rostau, meaning “the mouth of the passages” – a reference to the entrance to the underworld known as the Duat.
Controversy and Skepticism
While Collins’ claim is expected to stir controversy in the Egyptological community, Zahi Hawass, the chief of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, has dismissed the discovery, stating that “there are no new discoveries to be made at Giza.” However, Collins maintains that his extensive research has revealed no modern records of these caves since Salt’s explorations, challenging Hawass to provide any reports related to them.
