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- It rises from the sands of the Egyptian desert,

seeming to guard the Great Pyramids of Giza.

But surprisingly little is known

about this great wonder of the ancient world.

- How could ancient Egyptians 4,500 years ago

sculpt a statue as mighty as the Sphinx?

- It's just an amazingly monumental [laughing] structure.

But it's silent.

It doesn't tell us exactly everything we need to know.

- For thousands of years,

the Sphinx has guarded its many secrets.

- The prevailing view

is that you had human workers

carving it away to make this.

Now another theory comes along

that the bulk of it wasn't even done by human beings.

- Now, we'll explore the top theories

surrounding the origins

and purpose of this mysterious monument.

- Was the Sphinx built by the same person

that killed his brother to become the pharaoh?

- It could be that the Sphinx

is part of a celestial map.

- In 1987, a team of researchers

think they've found hidden secret chambers

that were located under the Sphinx.

- Who built this massive statue

and why was it made?

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- 1403 BCE, the Giza Plateau of Egypt,

home to the Great Pyramids.

Pharaoh Amenhotep II rules the land.

His younger son, Prince Thutmose,

has come to Giza to hunt gazelle.

But this royal hunting ground

has an extraordinary past.

- If you go back around 1,000 years,

the Giza Plateau is a very important place

of monumental buildings.

It's there that some amazingly large pyramids are built.

However, at this time,

it's fallen into disrepair,

most of the structures have been covered

or partially covered by the desert sands,

and it's largely ignored.

- By the time of Prince Thutmose,

the Giza Plateau is already over 1,000 years old

and already ancient.

It's become this playground really for the royal family.

They race their chariots, they hunt,

they use it for these different expeditions.

- So, according to legend,

Thutmose was out on a hunting trip

and he was looking for a place

to get out of the hot, burning, Egyptian sun,

and he found shelter next to this object.

And as he got closer to it,

it turned out that this object

was a massive stone head

protruding from the desert sands.

- He falls asleep and has a dream.

And in dream, a God comes to him,

the God Horus, who says,

"If you free my body from this sand,

I will make sure that you're king."

- Because Prince Thutmose

was not the heir apparent for the throne of Egypt,

this sounded like a great deal for him.

And so Prince Thutmose then goes about

restoring this giant statue

to its former glory.

- [Laurence] Once the prince begins clearing away the sand,

an extraordinary and mysterious sculpture takes shape,

a towering figure carved from stone,

now known as the Great Sphinx of Giza.

- Its body is about 250 feet long,

which is nearly a football field long,

66 feet high,

and the shape of it is the head of a king

and the body of a lion.

- Some have estimated

that it must've taken something

like a million man hours of labor

to carve this thing.

That would be the equivalent

of something like 100 workers

working full time over the course of three years.

- It is a marvelous statue,

and it's all made from one piece of limestone.

And Thutmose calls it Haremakhet,

which means Horus in the Horizon.

- Horus, who spoke to Thutmose in this dream,

is a God associated with kingship,

but also with the sun god Ra.

And so after clearing the sands

around this giant sculpture,

Thutmose's dream comes true.

He does in fact become king in around 1400 BCE.

- As king, Thutmose not only digs it

out of the desert sands,

but he also does restoration work

on the statue itself.

- [Laurence] Analysis of pink remnants

discovered on the statue

reveal a fascinating truth about its appearance.

Experts now believe the face and body of the Sphinx

were painted a striking deep red

with dark eyeliner.

While the nemes, or royal headdress,

bore the noble colors of the pharaoh,

a vibrant blue interlaced with gold stripes.

To commemorate his accomplishment,

Thutmose places an engraved vertical tablet,

known as a stele,

between the statue's front paws.

- King Thutmose,

he put his dream on that stele

and wrote it down,

wrote exactly what happened,

that he fell asleep, that he had the dream,

and the Sphinx made him the next king of Egypt,

all inscribed on the dream stele.

- Not only does this tablet

establish a connection between Thutmose and the Sphinx,

but it really contributes seriously

to the legend of this mysterious object

known today as the Great Sphinx of Giza.

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- For a few hundred years,

you have people far and wide

to come and see the statue.

And that would include also travelers

from outside the Egyptian kingdom.

So this is where we actually get the name the Sphinx.

It was called this around 700 BCE.

It got this name from a Greek traveler

who was coming to look at the statue

and thought it beared a resemblance

to their mythological Sphinx.

- The Sphinx of Greek mythology

has the head of a woman,

the body of a lion and wings.

It's an altogether fearsome creature

who, according to myth,

asks passerbys riddles,

and if they can't answer, devours them.

That is very different

from the Egyptian Sphinx,

which has the head of a man and the body of a lion,

and is a guardian and protects the entryway

to the next life.

Over the centuries though,

confusion has got these two mixed up,

such that we use the word Sphinx

to describe this Egyptian artifact.

- [Laurence] It's believed that for hundreds of years

the Egyptian Sphinx stood as a symbol of power

and divine protection.

But as centuries pass

and the kingdom of Egypt falls,

the desert once again begins to reclaim

the mighty structure.

- And so with it, the sands of time come back,

they start to bury the Sphinx again,

until it's buried all the way up and to its neck.

It remains buried in this way for thousands of years

until 1817 when an Italian explorer

rediscovers the Sphinx

and wants to figure out what's beneath it.

- They set about to uncover the Sphinx

from the desert sands,

but unfortunately, the task at hand

is much harder than expected.

The sand keeps coming into their excavation pits,

and it's just this near impossible task

for him to uncover the Sphinx,

to the point where he actually abandons

the project altogether and gives up.

- It's not until some hundred years later,

when in 1922, the archeologist Howard Carter

finds King Tut's tomb,

that reignites an interest in all things Egypt.

So now a French archeologist

mounts another expedition to go down

and take a closer look at the Sphinx and

he does a series of expeditions in the 1920s and 1930s.

They're able this time to fully clear away the sand.

And when they do, they're just amazed at what they see,

this, again, humongous sculpture of this reclining lion

with a human head.

- [Laurence] Now that the Great Sphinx

can be seen in all its glory,

people around the world are in awe

of this ancient wonder.

- Sphinx is an icon.

When you see it for the first time,

it's the world's largest mammoth statue,

at least for 4,000 years,

and it's a mystery.

- The kind of engineering and workmanship

that would've been required

to construct this thousands of years ago

is really quite remarkable.

- [Laurence] But there's an even bigger mystery

that still baffles the experts to this day.

- What's most likely is that the Sphinx

is a symbol of power to a pharaoh.

Now, the question is, which pharaoh was it?

- The first step in trying to figure out

the architect who made the Sphinx

is to try to identify who the model was

for the Sphinx's face,

almost certainly a pharaoh.

And so scholars have gone back

and compared the image of the Sphinx

to the various statues that are still existing.

And the closest match that they have found

has been to the Pharaoh Khufu,

who was also the pharaoh

who oversaw the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza,

which is close by.

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- Khufu reigned Egypt for about 30 years

back in 2550 BCE.

He has the biggest, most fascinating,

most famous structure ever created,

the Great Pyramid of Giza,

yet we only have one confirmed statue

that shows us his face.

- The only named portrait

that we have of Khufu

is a tiny little statue

that's really only about three inches tall.

It's got broad eyes across the face.

Also, this small little three-inch statue

didn't have a beard.

- Most of the pharaohs that we see

are depicted with a long beard.

So the fact that we have this Sphinx head

and we have this statue of Pharaoh Khufu, both beardless,

leads us to believe that maybe he's the one

who had it built.

- Khufu is probably more familiar to people as Cheops

because this was the ancient Greek name for Khufu.

And this is also why his famous pyramid

is called the Great Pyramid of Cheops

rather than the Pyramid of Khufu

for most people.

- The Great Pyramid of Cheops is massive.

For around 4,000 years,

it was the tallest manmade structure in the world,

around 482 feet high.

- We know that the pyramids, of course,

were burial tombs for the ancient Egyptian kings,

but also for the kings,

they would be a show of their power,

their magistery.

So clearly the Great Pyramid shows off the king's power.

And if Khufu wanted to show this in other ways,

what better way than to build a large sculpture

combining his head with the body of a lion?

- [Laurence] Some Egyptologists believe

the artistic style of the Sphinx

is consistent with Khufu's era.

- Scholars have found a lot of evidence

of associations of lions

with the reign of Khufu.

So it could very well be

that whoever designed this monument

was playing on the lion as a metaphor for Khufu's reign.

- If truly Khufu did order the sculpting of the Sphinx,

then it makes perfect sense

because looking at the Sphinx

next to the Great Pyramid of Giza, Cheops's pyramid,

it looks like the Sphinx is standing there

with its profile

guarding the tomb of the king.

- [Laurence] However,

archeologists have yet to discover

any inscriptions or records

that explicitly link Khufu to the Sphinx.

But if it wasn't Khufu,

who else had the power and ambition

to build such a bold monument?

- Some people believe that the Sphinx

was built by his successor,

and specifically one of his sons

who rose to the throne

through pretty scandalous means.

- [Laurence] The enigmatic Sphinx

has fascinated humankind for thousands of years,

but much about its origins remain unknown.

- Given the location of the Sphinx

and its orientation with respect to the pyramids

on the Giza Plateau,

including the Great Pyramid of Cheops,

most scholars think that there's a definite relationship

between them

and that all of them together

project the majesty and power of the Egyptian kings.

- [Laurence] Some believe the Sphinx

wasn't built just to honor Khufu,

but for a far more sinister reason,

one which could reveal its true maker.

- Scholars believe that Khufu

intended to leave his throne

to his eldest son, Kawab.

But as so often happens in history,

royal bloodlines don't end up going according to plan.

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- It is clear that there is a problem

after Khufu's reign,

and this gives his younger sons

a lot of time to kind of bicker amongst one another

and decide who takes the throne.

And the best way to take the throne

was to get rid of the person in front of you.

- Prince Kawab was next in line

to become the next king of Egypt.

Prince Kawab dies suddenly

while Khufu was still a king.

- When one of the sons dies,

the first in line to succession,

there's always the speculation anyway

that maybe the death

was deliberately carried out by someone

to make way for the next in line to succeed.

And as it turns out,

that son who does succeed Khufu is Djedefre.

So not only was Djedefre not first in line to succession

and born of a lesser wife of Khufu,

he was sort of a black sheep of the family

who was not very popular with the people.

- We know Djedefre experienced a lot of kind of chaos

and discontent during his rule.

And so Djedefre probably would've been really concerned

with consolidating his power

and making sure that the people understood

that he was in charge

and that he was the rightful successor to his father.

- [Laurence] Some researchers believe

Djedefre tried to restore his good name

by building the Sphinx.

- So it makes a lot of sense

that Djedefre would've been undertaking

a lot of building projects

to commemorate and honor his father

who was a lot more popular than he was.

And this might be why he had the Sphinx built

protecting his father's pyramid.

- [Laurence] If Djedefre was the pharaoh

who built this monument to his father,

not everyone appreciated his efforts.

- Djedefre tomb was vandalized,

and statues associated with it

may well have been defaced.

Some believe that this would've been common

in an unpopular pharaoh

because, according to Egyptian mythology,

if you deface the statues at a pharaoh's tomb,

the soul would never make it to the afterlife,

which means they're condemned for eternity.

- In addition to having the nose of his statue broken off,

his cartouches, these are Egyptian hieroglyphics

that contain the name of the king,

those were damaged and defaced as well.

And this would mean that in the afterlife,

he would be nameless, he would be unknown.

- [Laurence] The Sphinx may not be the only way

Djedefre tried to memorialize his father,

as a stunning archeological find at Giza revealed.

- So, during excavations

around the Great Pyramid of Giza in 1954,

archeologists discovered a large pit

that was covered with limestone slabs.

And when they eventually removed these limestone slabs,

what they found was a large wooden boat from ancient Egypt,

over 144 feet in length

and over 4,500 years old.

- A lot of scholars hesitate to decide

what the boat was for,

and theories could be the boat

was made for the king's body to be in

to come all the way across the Nile

and land right in front of the pyramids.

But then we found no remnants whatsoever

that the boat was ever used.

So, the other theory,

which is more likely to be the case,

that the boat was more of a symbolic boat

for the afterlife.

- The stone slabs that covered over the pit

in which the boat lies

had inscriptions on them,

which include the name of Djedefre.

So, it's quite possible that Djedefre

had this boat constructed

for his deceased father, Khufu.

It therefore, like the Sphinx,

could have been made by Djedefre

in honor of his father.

- [Laurence] But some experts dispute this claim.

- Essentially there isn't enough archeological evidence

to support the idea that he was the king

who commissioned the Sphinx to be built.

- But this doesn't rule out

that it was one of Khufu's successors

who had the Sphinx made.

It could've been another successor and not Djedefre.

- [Laurence] Around the year 2550 BCE,

after roughly a decade on the throne,

the Pharaoh Djedefre dies.

Some scholars believe he may have been murdered.

- It is believed that just as Djedefre killed his brother

in order to take the throne,

Djedefre in turn was killed by his half-brother, Khafre,

who took the throne from him.

- [Laurence] During his reign,

Khafre also showed an interest

in building large-scale structures,

leading some to wonder

if he might be the Sphinx's true architect.

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- All you have to do is take a look

at the massive statues that were made for Khafre,

particularly in his Valley Temple at Giza,

once you overlay the face of these statues on the Sphinx,

you can see that there is resemblance.

But the problem is,

Khafre had representations

that showed him with a beard.

And looking at the Sphinx,

the Sphinx doesn't have a beard.

- During examination of the Sphinx in the 1980s,

scholars actually noticed

that there was essentially a bump

underneath the chin,

that might indicate that there used to be a beard there.

- It's quite possible

that there originally was a stone beard on the Sphinx,

which would make it more in Khafre's likeness

than his father Pharaoh Khufu,

and if the beard might've just been lost to time,

maybe vandalism or it could be lost

due to essentially long-term erosion in the desert.

- [Laurence] That's not the only potential link

between Pharaoh Khafre and the Great Sphinx.

- Khafre, like his predecessors,

built a lot of structures on the Giza Plateau.

He built a huge pyramid for himself as well

that's only a few feet shorter

than the Great Pyramid of Cheops.

He also had a Valley Temple built there for himself.

- To a lot of Egyptologists,

this close proximity makes us think

that this was all part of one plan, right?

To have the Sphinx built at the same time

maybe as this causeway

connecting the temple to his pyramid.

- [Laurence] The position of the pyramids,

the temple and the Sphinx

line up during celestial events

with breathtaking results.

- This temple has 24 stone columns.

And 24, of course, are the hours of the day.

There are also in the Sphinx temple

two niches on either side of the temple,

one on the east side and one on the west side.

- In the Sphinx temple on the equinoxes,

the sun rises in the east through the niche

and then sets to the west niche

inside of the Sphinx temple.

So it puts together an interesting sort of tableau

because you have the Sphinx temple,

you have the Sphinx itself behind it,

and behind that, you've got the Pyramid of Khafre,

all three of them being lined up

to celebrate a celestial event.

- The the spring and the fall equinox,

only those two days, no other day.

That's how perfectly calculated they were.

It wasn't coincidence.

The alignment of the stars,

the Sphinx looking at the dad

shining in the morning in the form of a sun

and the equinox day,

making the Sphinx and the Great Pyramids of his dad

come into one as a shadow.

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- [Laurence] Could Khafre have built the temples,

Sphinx and pyramids

as interconnected burial structures

to ensure his journey alongside his father

into the afterlife?

- Ancient Egyptians had a very strong

astronomy field of study.

And you can tell from all the buildings they've built

how aligned with the stars they were.

And the reason is because they believed

that they come from the stars.

And eventually when they are done with this life,

they go be immortal up in the sky with the stars.

So, if the Sphinx was actually built by King Khafre,

this would make perfect sense.

- [Laurence] Modern science has found another link

between Khafre and the Sphinx,

revealed in microscopic organisms

hidden within the rock itself.

- So when we look at limestone,

limestone is a compilation of mud,

sand and also sea organisms.

Nummulites is what we call them.

We look at these as the fingerprints of the limestone,

and it suggests that Khafre

may have been the one that built the Sphinx

because the same stone is used in the Sphinx

as is used in the structures that Khafre built.

- According to some of these theories,

they had originally sculpted the Sphinx

and then later used the stone

that was chiseled away from that

for use in Khafre's other building projects.

- [Laurence] But not everyone agrees

this was all Khafre's doing.

- Some scholars are skeptical

whether he actually built his Valley Temple

and carved the Great Sphinx at the same time.

- The Great Sphinx of Egypt

has fascinated scholars and historians for centuries.

But who built it and why

has long remained a tantalizing mystery?

Is it possible modern science

can finally solve the questions around its origin?

- In the 1980s, archeologists make a great leap forward

when it comes to unraveling

some of the mysteries of the Sphinx.

They begin to use radiocarbon dating techniques

to try to determine the age of the pyramids.

And if you can determine the age of the pyramids,

you might know the age of the Sphinx.

Since you can't carbon date stone,

they focus on the organic materials they find,

wooden coffins, human bones, reed mats.

The hope is to pinpoint

when the tombs were being used.

This would mean that Giza was active,

and if it was active,

you have a rough idea of when it had been built.

- Radiocarbon dating of a lot of these organic materials

sets the building date of most of these temples and pyramids

during the reigns of Khufu to Khafre.

But that doesn't necessarily link

or tell us when the Sphinx itself was built.

- Some people suggest

that the Sphinx was built earlier

than the pyramids on the Giza Plateau.

They think that, in fact,

it was an earlier ruler

who ended up building the Sphinx.

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- One piece of evidence

that has given rise to some theories

that the Sphinx might date from a much earlier period

than the nearby pyramids

is something called the Inventory Stele,

which was discovered in 1858 in that area.

The Inventory Stele we think dates

to sometime in the 600s BCE.

- The Inventory Stele lists everything being found

in that location at the time.

It says that King Khufu's pyramid

was built in the shadow of the Sphinx,

which led many scholars

to suggest that the Sphinx

was already there when the Great Pyramid was built.

- [Laurence] If the Sphinx predates the pyramids,

then who is the architect of this colossal monument?

One clue may be hidden

in the shape of the Sphinx's head.

- The proportions between the head of the Sphinx

and its body suggests that perhaps

there was a different head

on the body of the Sphinx originally,

which was then recarved and reshaped

to look like a human head.

- The head appears to be too small in proportion

to the body of the Sphinx.

And this is unusual

because Egyptian art is usually very proportional.

- [Laurence] Some suggest that the original statue's head

may have ties to the underworld.

- There are some theories

this body could have originally been

with the head of a dog,

which could mean that it was representing

the Egyptian god Anubis.

He was the god of funerary rites,

he was actually the one that would kind of help people

get into the afterlife.

So this would make a lot of sense

for then why later pharaohs

would wanna build their pyramids, their tombs,

right next to him.

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- Anubis was one of the oldest Egyptian gods,

was associated with mummification and the afterlife.

Now, he was popular during the first dynasty,

which is long before the reign of Khufu and his sons.

Some speculate that a much earlier ruler

carved the Sphinx with the head of a dog or jackal

as a celebration of an Anubis.

But then centuries later,

after Anubis has declined in popularity,

another ruler, maybe Khufu or one of his descendants,

has the Sphinx recarved in his own image.

Now, if that's the case,

it would mean the Sphinx

is centuries older than previously thought.

- [Laurence] Then in 1998,

new evidence emerges that backs up this idea.

- A geologist by the name of Colin Reader

examined the erosion on the Sphinx.

And in his view,

the head appears to be eroded from sand and wind,

whereas the lower portions,

the body of the Sphinx,

looks to be water erosion.

- The base being subject to water erosion

brings a lot of questions,

'cause obviously we're in the middle of the desert.

But we do know that Egypt

had this period known as the neolithic wet phase,

anywhere from 4,000 to 9,000 years ago.

- And that's 7,000, 8,000 years

before the Great Pyramid of Giza

was even built.

And if that is true,

then there was a whole civilization

that have created the Sphinx

over 7,000 years before ancient Egypt as we know it.

- Some scholars have tried

to actually look at the sedimentary evidence

around the Giza Plateau

to try to figure out if the whole Giza Plateau

was more like a savanna,

with lush vegetation.

And what they found is that there is a now dried-out canal

or branch of the Nile

that actually existed close by

where the Sphinx is located today.

- [Laurence] Evidence of an ancient canal

may indicate a civilization

even older than previously believed.

One whose ruler could have built the mighty Sphinx.

- If Colin Reader is somehow right,

the horizontal erosion

that was on the side walls of the Sphinx

suggests that the Sphinx could have been there

during the neolithic time, their wet era.

- [Laurence] In 2023, New York University

publishes a study

that might upend everything we think we know

about how the Great Sphinx was constructed.

- Even though the prevailing view

is that you had a king decide to do this,

here we are in 2023,

and now another theory comes along

that the bulk of it

wasn't even done by human beings.

- A team of researchers decides that they wanna see

if they can replicate what could've become

this naturally occurring Sphinx

4,500 years ago in Giza.

- The team from NYU found new evidence

to suggest that perhaps more powerful forces were at play,

even before any chisels hit the rock.

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- So, the New York team was drawing on research

from the 1980s

by a geologist and space scientist, Farouk El-Baz.

- So El-Baz spends his later career

studying how desert landscapes form,

using satellite imagery,

using various geological surveys.

He's trying to figure out

how land forms develop

and how they evolve over time.

- He has theorized that you can form

these kind of features on the surface of the Earth

and other planets as well

through wind and sand erosion

that create a large natural geological structure.

- Now, these are naturally occurring formations

that are known as mud lions,

largely because what happens

is that the softer mud floats away

and that the harder mud that's left

often becomes the figure of a recumbent lion.

And they are found all over the world,

largely in desert areas,

but also are found on mars.

According to this theory from El Baz,

rather than starting from scratch

and carving this whole thing,

they might've seen this naturally occurring formation

that maybe resembled a lion

or some form of animal

and then worked on it after the fact.

- [Laurence] Could desert winds also be responsible

for helping to create the Great Sphinx?

Researchers were determined to find out.

- So, this research team tried to recreate

the geological conditions

by getting some soft clay

and embedding within it harder bentonite clay,

and then running water over that

so that it would erode the soft clay on the exterior,

exposing some of that harder bentonite clay.

- They simulated the weather conditions,

what would've happened in the desert under flooding.

- [Laurence] The team uses 3D optical scanners

to record how the shape changes

as the clay structure erodes.

- The results were really surprising.

In fact, it was the natural formation of a lion

that was left.

- Not only do these erosion patterns

create a lion shape,

but they even give more perhaps distinctive features,

things like paws, a neck,

and even the head of a lion as well.

- So, after a long time of that mound of limestone

has been there,

a king or an engineer saw it.

And it looks to them like a body of a lion

sitting with its paws out.

So, it may very well be

that it was nature that created it.

And then ancient Egyptians came in,

just put their final touches

and made it the mighty Sphinx.

- [Laurence] Still, there's no way to be certain

whether nature truly shaped the Sphinx.

- Some skeptics have suggested

that we know that erosion

has been eating away at the Sphinx

since it was created.

But this doesn't necessarily mean

that these same forces

were used to create the statue in the first place.

- [Laurence] We may never know with certainty

who built the Great Sphinx,

but the more compelling question may be

what else is it hiding?

- While some Egyptologists and scholars

have debated the age of the Sphinx,

other groups have actually debated

what potentially lies beneath the Sphinx,

including this wild theory

that there are secret rooms and chambers of hidden knowledge

located below the statue itself.

- According to this theory,

there was a central library

established somewhere in one location

with all of the wisdom and technology of the age

in a repository of knowledge

about a vanished civilization.

And there are some who believe that that library

is located below the Great Sphinx of Giza.

And if that's true,

it's been buried there for thousands of years.

- [Laurence] Explorers have spent the last hundred years

looking for hidden passageways

in, around and under the Sphinx.

- As it turns out,

there actually are subterranean passages

beneath the Sphinx.

In the 1920s and '30s,

archeologists did find some passages there.

They found one at the rear or the rump of the Sphinx,

and also another one between the paws of the Sphinx.

However, when they investigated these passages,

they stopped in a dead end.

- A half a century later in 1977,

American researchers are able to use

new sub-imaging technology

to look further into these subterranean tunnels,

and they find some anomalies

that they can't explain.

They're not really able to explore it further

until 10 years later in 1987,

when a Japanese team

was able to use an electromagnetic sounding survey

to look into this further.

- This Japanese research team

from Waseda University in Tokyo

using electromagnetic sounding

to try to map underneath the Sphinx

found a water pocket eight to 10 feet underground,

a couple of cavities behind the hind paws of the Sphinx,

and another cavity some six feet away,

which seemed to also contain other anomalies within it.

- They also think that chamber

located to the east of the Great Sphinx

potentially contains some ancient artifacts within it.

This find increased interest

in trying to explore these anomalies

that were being found underneath the Sphinx.

But ultimately for the safety of the monument,

the Egyptian officials

decided not to continue exploration

of these underground anomalies.

- In 2019 though, the Egyptian government

did give permission to a research team

to do some digging.

And so they were able to investigate

some of these cavities and passages

under the Sphinx.

But alas, they didn't find anything.

- [Laurence] Despite the dead ends,

explorers continue visiting Giza

to search for this legendary lost haul of records.

- In 2021, Dr. Manu Seyfzadeh

used new scanning technology,

and he did find what he believes to be a manmade room

that is about 40 feet by 30 feet

under the Sphinx.

And he believes it's manmade

because it has perfect square right angles.

- The fact that they found this manmade room

under the Sphinx that scans have revealed

suggests that perhaps the Sphinx

was constructed specifically

to mark or perhaps even to hide

the location of this library.

Now, according to the scans though,

this room is flooded with water.

That means that if there were all these records in there,

they would've been destroyed by water long ago.

- [Laurence] One Roman historian

suggested that the chambers beneath the Great Sphinx

are not guarding knowledge,

but instead protecting a mysterious tomb.

- Proponents of the theory of a burial chamber

find evidence in an ancient text,

"The Natural History" of Pliny the Elder,

who visited the Great Sphinx,

and around 77 or 79 CE,

he recorded his observations

about the great structure in his book, "Natural History."

Pliny wrote, "In front of them is the Sphinx,

the inhabitants of the region regarded as a deity.

They are of the opinion that a king, Harmais,

is buried inside it."

- The problem is,

no one has been able to identify

that there ever was anyone named King Harmais.

There is a list from the Temple of Seti

of the 75 pharaohs,

and he is not included among them at all.

- We know though,

that this list omits many of the older pharaohs.

So if King Harmais was one of them,

it would [laughing] make the Sphinx

even older than the oldest current estimate.

- [Laurence] Researchers continue to debate

what the chambers beneath the Great Sphinx might hold.

But until archeologists are able to excavate

underneath the ancient monument,

the mysteries remain hidden.

- Unfortunately, the Egyptian officials

haven't granted any more permission to actually dig

and find out what is in this really interesting cavern.

And so there are people who are critical

who say that the Egyptian government

is hiding these secrets of the Sphinx.

But really until we can dig down there

and see for ourselves,

we're just not gonna know.

- For decades, scholars have poured

over every inch of the Sphinx,

trying to solve the many mysteries associated with it.

But for every time they think they come up with an answer,

they always end up with more questions about it.

And to this day,

the Sphinx is still a subject of endless debate.

- All across centuries,

the Sphinx has been this mystical figure

that is full of secrets.

You just don't know what it is

and who built it and why.

And today, if the Sphinx has been associated

with all these secrets.

It's no wonder that if you wanna keep a secret,

they say, "Silent as the Sphinx."

And it's true,

this structure is an enigma.

[dynamic music]

- Even so, researchers continue trying to solve the riddle

of this impressive monument,

hoping that one day new technologies

will finally reveal

who really built the Great Sphinx of Giza,

and why.

I'm Laurence Fishburne.

Thank you for watching "History's Greatest Mysteries."

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