A low mound of hardened sand on the Giza Plateau has become the focus of a new argument about what may still be hidden beside Egypt’s best-known monuments. The spot sits near the Great Sphinx, close enough to invite comparison but plain enough that most visitors would pass it without a second look. Over the past few days, that patch of ground has been pulled into a much larger story after researchers said their scans picked up unusual shapes below the surface.
Part of the excitement comes from how the claim was presented. Filippo Biondi, a radar engineer at the University of Strathclyde, discussed the finding on the Matt Beall Limitless podcast on March 26, 2026, where he said his team had identified a buried form that appears to mirror the layout of the known monuments nearby. Reports that followed quickly tied the anomaly to long-running stories about a hidden companion to the Great Sphinx.
That old story has never really gone away. A 2021 article in Ancient Origins traced the modern version of the idea to claims by Egyptian tourism official Reda Abdel Halim, who said a second giant statue was buried in the sands near Giza. Former antiquities minister Zahi Hawass dismissed that theory at the time, calling the Great Sphinx unique and rejecting talk of any verified second monument.
The Moment the Claim Surfaced
The new version is more technical, and that is what has given it fresh reach. Biondi said satellite and radar work pointed to a subsurface structure about 108 feet tall, with what he described as a strong geometric relationship to the Great Sphinx and nearby pyramids. He also said his team saw signs of vertical shafts and horizontal passages, features that have fueled the idea that the mound could be covering a much larger buried object.
Biondi’s name is already attached to earlier work on Giza. In 2022, he and Corrado Malanga published a paper in the journal Remote Sensing describing a synthetic aperture radar tomography method that they said could reconstruct internal and subsurface structures in the Great Pyramid of Giza using satellite data and background seismic motion. That paper did not announce a second Sphinx, but it established the scanning approach now being cited in the new reports.
The researchers also pointed to symbolic clues. News reports on the new scans said Biondi referenced the Dream Stele, the monument placed between the paws of the Great Sphinx, arguing that imagery of paired sphinxes could support the idea of a missing twin. That reading has circulated for years in fringe and alternative archaeology circles, and it is one reason the latest claim spread so quickly online.
Why the Giza Plateau Keeps Drawing New Theories
The Giza Plateau has a way of pulling modern technology into very old debates. Because the site is so famous, any new scan, shaft, void, or unexplained contour can rapidly become part of a larger narrative about hidden chambers and lost architecture. The 2022 radar paper already drew attention because it argued that satellite-based methods could reveal details normally thought to be beyond the reach of that kind of sensing.
But the second Sphinx claim has moved faster than the evidence. A recent Newsweek fact check said there is no confirmed archaeological evidence for a second Sphinx under Giza, no excavation has taken place, and no peer-reviewed study has validated the new interpretation. The outlet rated the viral claim false, noting that experts in Egyptology and geophysics said the available radar interpretations do not prove a buried monument.
Experts Are Pushing Back Hard
That skepticism is not limited to one publication. Coverage citing Hawass said he rejected the conclusions and argued that the methods being promoted are not accepted as proof of large hidden structures beneath Giza. Other expert responses summarized in recent reports said previous work at the site has found only limited voids, not the kind of giant mirrored monument now being discussed.
Even so, the claim has landed because it mixes several things that travel well together: a famous site, new imaging tools, a precise visual target, and the possibility of symmetry in one of the world’s most studied landscapes. For now, what exists is a reported radar anomaly, a public argument led by Filippo Biondi, and a sharp rebuttal from archaeologists who say the Giza Plateau has not produced confirmed evidence of a second Sphinx.
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