The Second Sphinx Claim: What the Scans Say — and What Experts Don't Buy

The Claim Goes Viral

On March 26, 2026, Italian researcher Filippo Biondi announced on the Matt Beall Limitless podcast that satellite radar scans of Egypt's Giza Plateau appear to reveal a second Sphinx buried beneath a mound of hardened sand. The claim rapidly spread across social media, drawing tens of millions of views and generating tabloid headlines worldwide.

Biondi said he is "about 80 percent confident" a second sphinx-like structure lies buried beneath a mound roughly 108 feet high on the Giza Plateau — positioned at a geometric mirror point to the existing Great Sphinx.

"We are finding precise geometrical correlation, 100 percent of correlation, in this symmetry," Biondi said during the podcast. "We are very confident to announce this."

The announcement drew immediate pushback from mainstream archaeologists who said no excavation had taken place, no peer-reviewed study had validated the claims, and Egyptian authorities had not approved or announced any such discovery.

Who Is Making the Claim — and How

The work comes from the Khafre Research Project, led by Corrado Malanga, Filippo Biondi, and Armando Mei. According to reporting by the Times of India, the team used Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Doppler tomography — a technique that analyzes how radar signals interact with the ground to build layered, three-dimensional models of subsurface features.

Biondi described the scans as showing "vertical shafts and passageways strikingly similar to those already found beneath the original Sphinx" — dense vertical lines he interprets as the solid walls of underground shafts rather than empty voids. The team also claims to have detected horizontal passages extending from deeper sections underground, which they say mirror formations identified beneath the existing Great Sphinx.

The geometric argument behind the second Sphinx's location rests on a line drawn from the center of the Khafre Pyramid to the existing Sphinx. When mirrored from the center of the Great Pyramid (the Pyramid of Khufu), that alignment reportedly points to the site of the buried mound in question.

"Down underneath the Giza Plateau, there is something very huge that we are measuring," Biondi said. "There is an underground megastructure."

The team has prepared a formal project proposal for in-situ investigation, pending Egyptian government approval, according to the Daily Mail.

The Ancient Clue: The Dream Stele

The researchers anchor part of their theory in a physical artifact: the Dream Stele, a stone inscription erected between the front paws of the Great Sphinx by Pharaoh Thutmose IV around 1401 BCE during Egypt's 18th Dynasty. The stele appears to depict two sphinx figures flanking a central image.

Mainstream Egyptologists interpret this imagery as symbolic — representing the sphinx as a solar deity in a doubled or protective form, not as a literal map of two physical monuments. The stele's text does not mention a second Sphinx.

Biondi and his collaborators disagree. They argue the dual-sphinx imagery was not symbolic but rather a schematic record of the plateau's actual layout, suggesting the ancient Egyptians knew of — or built — a matching structure.

Egyptian Egyptologist Bassam El Shammaa had separately proposed a second Sphinx theory more than a decade prior, citing ancient records describing lightning striking the Sphinx as a reference to a twin monument that may have been destroyed. That theory also attracted significant skepticism from the archaeological establishment.

What the Critics Say

The archaeological response has been sharply negative.

Zahi Hawass, Egypt's former Minister of Antiquities and one of the world's most prominent Egyptologists, dismissed the claims outright. "The rumors suggesting the presence of columns beneath the Pyramid of Khafre are nothing but fabrications propagated by individuals with no expertise in ancient Egyptian civilization or the history of the pyramids," Hawass said, according to Newsweek's fact-check published March 27, 2026.

Hawass noted as far back as 2017 that the area around the pyramids and the Sphinx has been extensively studied and excavated over decades without uncovering anything resembling a second monument. His position has not changed.

Radar expert Lawrence Conyers, cited by the Times of India, highlighted the technical limitations of interpreting deep subsurface signals from satellite-based radar. Ground-penetrating radar and related methods typically resolve features only a few meters below the surface — not massive carved monuments buried tens or hundreds of feet underground in dense limestone bedrock, according to Newsweek's analysis of expert opinion.

Newsweek rated the claim "False," concluding: "While researchers have speculated based on unverified radar interpretations and symbolic readings of ancient art that a second Sphinx might exist, there is no confirmed archaeological evidence to support the claim."

What Hasn't Been Claimed vs. What Has

It is important to distinguish what the researchers actually said from how the story spread:

What Biondi claimed: Satellite radar data shows patterns consistent with a buried structure at a geometrically mirrored location on the Giza Plateau. He expressed 80 percent confidence. No excavation has occurred. The team is seeking permission for in-situ fieldwork.

What was claimed in some headlines: A second Sphinx has been "discovered," "found," or "detected," implying confirmation.

The gap between those two descriptions is wide. Biondi himself acknowledged in the podcast: "We have to study this more carefully. It makes sense to compare the elevations, but we are still analyzing the data."

No peer-reviewed paper has been published. No excavation license has been granted. Egyptian authorities have not issued any statement endorsing the findings.

Context: A Long History of Underground Giza Claims

The idea of hidden chambers beneath Giza has circulated for centuries. The Greek historian Herodotus described a vast Egyptian labyrinth containing thousands of rooms, some underground — a description that has fueled speculation for generations. Ancient Egyptian texts including the Book of the Dead describe layered subterranean realms, though scholars interpret these symbolically.

Modern iterations include the "Hall of Records" theory — a legendary repository believed by some to lie beneath the Sphinx. Seismic surveys conducted in the 1990s did reveal some anomalies beneath the Sphinx enclosure, but subsequent investigations did not confirm structured human-made chambers.

The Khafre Research Project's 2025 work (which preceded this announcement) had already drawn skepticism when it claimed to detect "massive underground structures" beneath the plateau using similar SAR techniques. The March 2026 announcement is a continuation of that earlier, also-contested claim.

The Bottom Line

The second Sphinx theory is, as of March 28, 2026, an unverified hypothesis advanced by a private research team using remote sensing data that has not been independently validated or subjected to peer review. The researchers themselves acknowledge that fieldwork is required before any conclusion can be drawn. Egypt's archaeological establishment, led by figures like Zahi Hawass, has rejected the underlying claims as inconsistent with decades of on-site excavation and study.

The story illustrates the tension between emerging remote-sensing technologies and conventional archaeology — and the gap between what a scan might suggest and what can be confirmed. That gap is currently very large.

It also illustrates how quickly an unverified claim, attached to one of humanity's most iconic monuments, can generate tens of millions of views before the fact-checkers arrive.