Almanac of the Gods
The Giza Pyramids & Sphinx
Photo: Ricardo Liberato · CC BY-SA 2.0 · cropped and resized

Place No. 03 of 44

The Giza Pyramids & Sphinx

Egypt · 29.979° N · 31.134° E

Three mountains of cut stone and a lion with a king's face have stared across the desert edge for 4,500 years, and people still argue over who really put them there.

Great Pyramid height
about 146.6 m when built; about 138.5 m today
Great Pyramid base side
about 230.3 m
Blocks in the Great Pyramid
about 2.3 million
Heaviest granite blocks
up to about 80 tonnes (roof of the King's Chamber area)
Alignment error to true north
about 3 to 4 arc-minutes
Great Sphinx size
about 73 m long and 20 m high
Workforce (mainstream estimate)
about 10,000 laborers in rotating shifts
Distance to the Grand Egyptian Museum
about 2 km

What it is

The Giza Plateau sits on the west bank of the Nile, at the edge of modern Cairo. It was the royal burial ground of three kings of Egypt's Fourth Dynasty: Khufu, his son Khafre, and Khafre's successor Menkaure. Each king built a pyramid with its own temples, a causeway down to the valley, and smaller pyramids for queens. Around them spread cemeteries of stone tombs for the officials and family members who served the court.

The Great Pyramid of Khufu is the giant of the group. Egyptologists date it to around 2560 BCE. It rose about 146 meters when new and held the title of tallest human-made structure on Earth for well over three thousand years. Its sides line up with the compass points to within a small fraction of a degree. Inside, narrow passages climb to the Grand Gallery and a granite burial room called the King's Chamber.

Khafre's pyramid stands on higher ground, so it looks taller than Khufu's even though it is not. A patch of its original smooth limestone casing still clings to the top. Menkaure's pyramid is much smaller. Below Khafre's causeway lies the Great Sphinx, a lion with a human head carved straight out of the bedrock. Most Egyptologists link its face to Khafre, though some argue for Khufu.

Giza is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still standing, and it anchors the idea of 'ancient Egypt' for most of the world. It is also the single most discussed site in ancient-astronaut circles. The questions of how the blocks were moved, why the pyramid is so precise, and how old the Sphinx really is come up again and again on Ancient Aliens.

The ancient-alien case

Theorists start with the scale and precision. Giorgio Tsoukalos and others on the show ask how a Bronze Age society with copper tools cut, lifted and placed millions of blocks, some of them granite giants weighing dozens of tonnes, and aligned the whole thing almost perfectly to true north. In The Alien Architects, the series argues the pyramid is the best-aligned building ever made and lists numbers hidden in its measurements, such as its latitude echoing the speed of light.

Robert Bauval's Orion Correlation Theory holds that the three pyramids copy the three stars of Orion's Belt, with the smallest pyramid set off to one side just as the dimmest star is. Ancient Aliens connects this layout to Teotihuacan in Mexico and asks whether one outside architect planned both. Engineer Christopher Dunn goes further in his book The Giza Power Plant, arguing that the Great Pyramid was a machine that made energy, not a tomb. The show has repeated the idea that the pyramids formed part of a wireless power grid.

The Sphinx is the second pillar of the case. Geologist Robert Schoch argues that deep grooves in the Sphinx enclosure were cut by long periods of heavy rain, which would push its age back thousands of years before the pharaohs. In Mysteries of the Sphinx, Tsoukalos ties that older date to a time when, he suggests, visitors from elsewhere lived among humans. Robert Temple argues the statue first had a jackal or dog head, which David Childress and David Wilcock read as a portrait of an Anubis-like being.

Hidden rooms round out the story. Many theorists repeat psychic Edgar Cayce's 1930s prediction of a 'Hall of Records' under the Sphinx. When muon scans found a large empty space inside the Great Pyramid, Earth Station Egypt treated it as a possible sealed chamber; William Henry speculated it might hold advanced technology. In 2025, a team led by Corrado Malanga and Filippo Biondi claimed radar showed huge shafts deep under Khafre's pyramid, and theorists took this as a sign that far more lies below Giza than Egyptologists admit.

What archaeologists say

Egyptologists say the paper trail and the physical trail both point to Egyptian builders. The Merer papyri describe a crew hauling limestone from the Tura quarries across the river to Khufu's pyramid, and they use the pyramid's ancient name. Quarries still sit on the plateau with half-cut blocks. South of the Sphinx, Mark Lehner's team uncovered a town with bakeries, breweries, sleeping halls and a copper workshop. Nearby tombs belong to the workers themselves, and their skeletons show injuries from heavy labor that were treated and healed.

On the Sphinx, most geologists and archaeologists say the weathering fits soft, uneven limestone reacting to salt and moisture, and that the Sphinx sits inside a quarry whose stone went into the temples beside it. Those temples belong to Khafre's building program. Experts note that no settlement, tool or pottery from a much older civilization has been found at Giza. The Orion correlation is rejected because the fit to the stars is loose and the pyramids were built by three kings over several generations.

Scientists involved in the muon work stress that the voids are real but likely structural, such as relief spaces to spread the weight of the stone above the passages. The 2025 radar claims were rejected by radar specialists, who said the method cannot see through that much stone. In August 2026 the journal Remote Sensing retracted the team's earlier paper on hidden tunnels inside the Great Pyramid over flawed methods.

Timeline

  1. c. 2580–2560 BCEThe Great Pyramid is built for King Khufu. Papyri found in 2013 log stone shipments for it in the 27th year of his reign.
  2. c. 2558–2532 BCEKhafre builds the second pyramid; most Egyptologists place the carving of the Sphinx in his reign.
  3. c. 2510 BCEMenkaure's smaller pyramid is completed, closing out the big building phase at Giza.
  4. c. 1400 BCEThutmose IV clears sand from the Sphinx and sets the granite 'Dream Stele' between its paws.
  5. 1378 CEA medieval historian records a deliberate attack on the Sphinx's face; the nose was gone long before Napoleon arrived.
  6. 1979UNESCO lists Memphis and its necropolis, including Giza, as a World Heritage Site.
  7. 1990s–2000sMark Lehner and Zahi Hawass excavate the workers' town and the builders' cemeteries south of the Sphinx.
  8. 2013The Wadi al-Jarf papyri, including the logbook of an inspector named Merer, are found on the Red Sea coast.
  9. 2017–2023ScanPyramids uses cosmic-ray muons to find a large void above the Grand Gallery, then a sealed corridor behind the north face, filmed with an endoscope in 2023.
  10. Nov 2025 – Aug 2026The Grand Egyptian Museum fully opens near the plateau (Nov 1, 2025). In August 2026 a journal retracts a 2022 radar paper claiming hidden tunnels inside the Great Pyramid.

Still unanswered

  • Exactly how the blocks were raised is still argued: straight ramps, spiraling ramps, internal ramps, or a mix of these.
  • What the Big Void above the Grand Gallery is for, and whether it has any access route, remains unknown.
  • Whether the Sphinx was carved for Khafre or for his father Khufu is still debated among Egyptologists.
  • The purpose of the narrow 'air shafts' in the King's and Queen's chambers, and the small doors that block two of them, is not settled.
  • How the builders achieved such a close alignment to true north, and which star or solar method they used, is still discussed.

Did you know?

  • The oldest known papyri with writing on them are the logbooks of Merer, a crew boss who shipped stone for the Great Pyramid.
  • The Sphinx's nose was already missing in drawings made in 1737, decades before Napoleon's army arrived in Egypt.
  • Workers at Giza received medical care: some skeletons from their cemetery show set bones and healed injuries.

On Ancient Aliens

  • S09E02 Mysteries of the Sphinx Presents Robert Schoch's water-erosion dating, Robert Temple's Anubis idea and the Hall of Records beneath the paws.
  • S12E04 The Alien Architects Argues the Great Pyramid's alignment and measurements encode advanced knowledge and links Giza's layout to Orion and Teotihuacan.
  • S13E07 Earth Station Egypt Built around the newly found void in the Great Pyramid, which the show treats as a possible hidden chamber.
  • S19E11 The Top Ten Pyramid Sites A countdown of pyramid sites worldwide that includes the Giza Plateau.

Episode numbers follow Wikipedia's episode list; History and some reviewers number a few seasons differently.

Visiting

Getting there. Giza, on the western edge of greater Cairo; most visitors come by taxi, tour bus or ride-hail from central Cairo, about 30 to 60 minutes depending on traffic.

What you can see. The plateau is open to visitors, with a newer visitor center and site buses. Separate tickets are usually needed to enter the Great Pyramid and some tombs, and interior access can be limited on any given day. The Sphinx is viewed from a terrace, not walked on. Climbing the pyramids is forbidden.

Tip. Pair the plateau with the Grand Egyptian Museum next door, which now holds Khufu's restored cedar boat and the full Tutankhamun collection.

Sources

  1. Giza pyramid complex (Wikipedia) en.wikipedia.org
  2. Great Pyramid of Giza (Wikipedia) en.wikipedia.org
  3. Great Sphinx of Giza (Wikipedia) en.wikipedia.org
  4. Muons unveiled new details about a void in Egypt's Great Pyramid (Science News) sciencenews.org
  5. Journal retracts paper claiming network of corridors inside the Great Pyramid (Retraction Watch, 2026) retractionwatch.com
  6. The Grand Egyptian Museum fully opens (ArchDaily) archdaily.com
  7. List of Ancient Aliens episodes (Wikipedia) en.wikipedia.org
  8. Review of Ancient Aliens 'Mysteries of the Sphinx' (Jason Colavito) jasoncolavito.com
  9. Review of Ancient Aliens S12E04 'The Alien Architects' (Jason Colavito) jasoncolavito.com
  10. Review of Ancient Aliens S13E07 'Earth Station Egypt' (Jason Colavito) jasoncolavito.com
Research notes: what we could not confirm
  • The old entry tied the 'Giza power plant' idea to S8E3; I did not confirm that episode's content, so Christopher Dunn's theory is attributed to his book instead.
  • The old entry listed further Giza episodes (S3E4, S3E13, S5E1, S8E3, S9E3, S12E6, S21E1); only the four listed here were checked against episode descriptions or reviews.
  • Colavito numbers 'Mysteries of the Sphinx' as S07E07; Wikipedia lists it as season 9, episode 2. The Wikipedia numbering is used here.
  • The 2025 Malanga–Biondi claims about shafts under Khafre's pyramid were reported as appearing on History channel programming; I did not confirm which, if any, Ancient Aliens episode aired them.