The potential discovery of an “underground city” beneath Egypt’s pyramids has caused a heated debate amongst experts. A team of Italian researchers believe that they have located the previously unknown city using radar technology, although their findings have not been universally accepted.
Professor Corrado Malanga from the University of Pisa, who led the project said: “When we magnify the images in the future, we will reveal that beneath it lies what can only be described as a true underground city.” He believes that radar images show a vast array of structures beneath the world famous pyramids which includes water pipes, staircases and vertical shafts more than 2000 feet below ground. Malanga also believes the legendary Hall of Records, a library believed by some to contain a trove of lost information and knowledge, could exist within the “city”. However, the claims however have been dismissed by some.
Radar expert Prof Lawrence Conyers from the University of Denver has labelled Malanga’s findings as a “huge exaggeration”, stating that the technology that has been used would be unable to penetrate so deep beneath the surface.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, he conceded that some smaller structures could be found beneath this the pyramids, citing how “the Mayans and other peoples in ancient Mesoamerica often built pyramids on top of the entrances to caves or caverns that had ceremonial significance to them”.
Another expert, Egyptian archaeologist Dr Zahi Hawass, went one step further, blasting the claims as “completely wrong”, claiming the findings lack no scientific basis.
Speaking to MailOnline, Dr Roland Enmarch, Reader in Egyptology at the University of Liverpool, acknowledged the allure of such ideas which he said “makes for great science fiction, but it is most definitely not science fact.”
He added: “I will believe something exists when the balance of credible evidence points towards such a thing existing or having once existed.
“That is not the case with the idea of a Hall of Records under the Giza plateau.”
Prof Malanga’s team concentrated their work underneath the Khafre pyramid, one of three standing upon the Giza plateau alongside the Khufu and Menkaure pyramids.
The structures are believed to have been built around 4,500 years ago and sit on the west bank of the Nile in the north of Egypt.