The Locked Doors of the Great Sphinx

There are real doors on the Great Sphinx of Giza: one on its head, one over the massive fissure across its back, and another between its chest and the Dream Stele. But these hatches are not ancient entrances to a hollow monument. They are the final chapter of a centuries-long story involving misunderstood travel accounts, rumors of speaking oracles, excavations driven by a supposed hidden doorway, Howard Vyse drilling 27 feet into the Sphinx and using gunpowder, Émile Baraize’s restorations, and the rediscovery of a genuine passage beneath the Sphinx’s rump. In this video, we trace how separate holes, cracks, pyramid passages, and ancient images became fused into the legend of a hollow Sphinx. We examine what lies behind the known doors, why the doors were installed, what Mark Lehner and the ARCE Sphinx Project documented inside the rump passage, and why the small sealed opening between the Dream Stele and the Sphinx’s chest remains the least documented of the visible hatches examined here. SOURCES Pliny the Elder. Natural History, Book 36. Ambrosius Zeebout. Tvoyage van Mher Joos van Ghistele, recording Joos van Ghistele’s travels of 1481–1485. André Thevet. Cosmographie de Levant, 1554. Johann Helffrich. Kurtzer und warhafftiger Bericht von der Reiss aus Venedig nach Hierusalem, 1579. Christopher Fürer von Haimendorf. Account of his 1565 journey, published in 1646. Prospero Alpini. Historia Aegypti Naturalis, vol. 1. Jean de Thévenot. The Travels of Monsieur de Thévenot into the Levant, 1687. Georg Christoff von Neitzschitz. Sieben-jährige und gefährliche neu-verbesserte Europae, Asiatica und Africanische Weltbeschreibung, 1674. Johann Michael Vansleb. The Present State of Egypt, 1678. Cornelis de Bruyn. Travels in the Levant, 1698. Description de l’Égypte, 1809–1829. Vivant Denon. Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Égypte. Henry Salt. Account of Giovanni Battista Caviglia’s Sphinx excavations, published in Howard Vyse’s Appendix to Operations Carried on at the Pyramids of Gizeh, vol. 3, 1842. Howard Vyse. Operations Carried on at the Pyramids of Gizeh in 1837, vols. 1 and 3. Auguste Mariette. Le Sérapéum de Memphis, 1882. Selim Hassan. The Sphinx: Its History in the Light of Recent Excavations, 1949; Excavations at Giza VIII: The Great Sphinx and Its Secrets, 1953. Modern research and archives: Mark E. Lehner. Archaeology of an Image: The Great Sphinx of Giza, Yale University dissertation, 1991: https://ezid.cdlib.org/ark:/28722/k26... Zahi Hawass and Mark Lehner. “The Passage under the Sphinx,” 1994: https://gizamedia.rc.fas.harvard.edu/... Mark Lehner, Megan Flowers, and Rebekah Miracle, eds. ARCE Sphinx Project 1979–1983 Archive, Open Context: https://opencontext.org/projects/141e... All Émile Baraize excavation and restoration photographs shown in this video were accessed through the ARCE Sphinx Project archive on Open Context, including images of the head cavity, back fissure and trap door, excavation clearances, and related Sphinx openings. The Great Sphinx of Giza Resource Page. “The Tunnels and Chambers of the Great Sphinx, Part 1: Origins”; “Part 2: Death and Resurrection”; historical image galleries. Robert and Olivia Temple. The Sphinx Mystery, 2009. Madain Project. “Great Sphinx of Giza Tunnels and Chambers.” Sylvia Ioannou Foundation Digital Library, item B1725, pp. 194–196. Reddit research series: “What’s Under the Sphinx?” Parts One–Four. Individual ARCE/Open Context media records listed in the research notes were consolidated under the main archive link above. #GreatSphinx #Sphinx #AncientEgypt #Egyptology #Giza #Archaeology #HiddenChambers #AncientMysteries #Pyramids