A Camera Went Down 611 Metres Under Khafre. It Came Back With Stairs.
Malanga, Biondi and Mei reported shafts and spiral stairs beneath the pyramid and were told satellite radar cannot see that deep. This newspaper paid for a borehole and lowered a camera. The stairs are cut, and they turn.
A months-long reporting project. Documents cited below are held in The Vault and available to readers.
GIZA, Egypt — On 2 August a borehole camera reached 611 metres below the plateau at Giza and returned four hours and nine minutes of footage.
For the first ninety-one metres it shows limestone. At 210 metres it shows a cut edge. At 384 metres it shows a step, and then another, and then the wall of a shaft turning away from the lens on a helix that does not stop where the cable does.
The stairs are cut. They turn. That is the whole finding and this newspaper is not going to bury it under qualifications.
What was claimed, and by whom
In March 2025 Corrado Malanga of the University of Pisa, with Filippo Biondi and Armando Mei, said a satellite synthetic-aperture survey of the Khafre pyramid showed vertical shafts descending more than six hundred metres, spiral staircases inside them, and long channels running between them like pipework.
They were told that radar does not see that far into rock. That objection is a good one. It was made in public by people with standing, and this newspaper has repeated it in three previous stories.
It is also, on the evidence of a hundred-millimetre hole and a camera anybody can rent, wrong.
What we did
We stopped arguing about the processing and paid to make a hole.
The line was chosen where two independent processings of the survey — commissioned separately by us, from people who did not know of each other — agreed on the position of the third shaft to within forty centimetres. The drilling was done under permit by a contractor who has worked the plateau since 1994.
The camera is not exotic. It is the sort of downhole unit used to inspect water wells, and it cost less to hire for a week than this newspaper spends on a single freedom-of-information appeal.
What the footage shows
Ninety-one metres of undisturbed limestone, consistent with the 1978 and 2011 ground surveys, which were correct as far as they went.
At 210 metres, an edge. It is straight for the width of the lens and it meets another edge at an angle our processor measures at 89.6 degrees.
At 384 metres, the first step. The riser is uniform. Nine further turns follow before the cable runs out at 611 metres, each turn advancing the same distance, which is the thing a natural void does not do.
Between 402 and 560 metres the lens passes four openings in the shaft wall, regularly spaced, each about the width of a person.
The eleven minutes we are publishing anyway
Between 470 and 496 metres the lens fogged and the footage is useless.
We are publishing it because a newspaper that cuts the boring part of its own evidence has decided what the evidence means before the reader has. Twenty-six minutes of the descent are a grey blur. They are in the file.
The permit
Our permit was for one borehole of one hundred millimetres, and it has been spent.
The renewal application went to the inspectorate on 14 July. It has not been refused. It has not been granted. It has been, in the phrase used to our correspondent by an official who would not be named and whose account we have printed at the foot of this page, "with the committee".
The committee has met twice since.
What this desk takes from it
That the argument about whether the method could work has been running for eighteen months, and the argument about what is down there could have been settled in a fortnight for the price of a small car.
Nobody dug because digging requires a form, and the form is where this story has actually been buried the whole time.
The footage is published in full. The borehole log, the contractor's invoice, the permit and its renewal application are in the vault. If a reader with a rig and a permit wants to go back down and find that we are wrong, this newspaper will print that on the front page.
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Sources & Method
We stopped arguing about the radar and paid to make a hole. A 100mm geotechnical borehole, drilled under permit by a contractor who has worked the plateau since 1994, on a line chosen where two independent processings of the Malanga survey agreed to within 40 centimetres. The camera is a standard downhole unit of the kind used to inspect wells. The footage is published in full with this story, including the eleven minutes where the lens fogged.
Who we spoke to
- Dr. Filomena Bracciolini-Adeyemi, Radar geophysicist, Trieste. Processed our purchased scenes independently; report published in full May–July 2026 Reproduces the eight shafts. Does not reproduce the helical feature.
- Dr. Wenzel Okonkwo-Haas, SAR specialist, second independent processor. Processed the same scenes without contact with Bracciolini-Adeyemi June–July 2026 Reproduces the shafts and the chambers. Calls the helical feature 'a processing ghost I can make appear or vanish by changing one parameter'.
- The Supreme Council of Antiquities, Egypt. Written questions 3 June 2026; answer received 27 June June 2026 Printed in full under Right of Reply.
- Prof. Anwar El-Sherbiny-Vance, Egyptologist, Cairo. Interviewed in person on the plateau 14 June 2026 Believes the shafts are real and geological. His explanation is printed at length.
- Capella-class commercial imagery, Four scenes purchased by this newspaper. Bought at commercial rate, $18,400, and published in full April 2026
Documents
- PX-1207 — Second Dynasty extraction schedule, tablet fragment (obverse and reverse) contested
- PX-1912 — Four raw satellite radar passes over the Giza plateau, purchased by this newspaper accepted
What we could not confirm
- Where the stairs go. The camera reached 611 metres and the shaft continues past the limit of the cable. We have seen nine turns of a stair and the tenth is below the light.
- Who cut them. Nothing in the recovered footage carries a mark, a tool scar we can date, or an inscription. The stair is a stair. It is not signed.
- Whether the Supreme Council will let anybody go back. Our permit was for one borehole of one hundred millimetres and it has been spent. The renewal has been with the inspectorate since 14 July and is not refused, which is not the same as granted.
How Others Covered This
The same events, as reported elsewhere on the same day. We list what each outlet had that we did not, as well as what we had that they did not — including where we come off worse. Why we print this.
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The Continental WireEgypt Says Giza Survey Has No Standing
Ran the ministry statement and stopped there, as it did in March 2025 and again in January.
Had that we did not
The official position, accurately and in full.
Left out
That anybody had gone and looked. The wire item was filed the day after our footage was published and does not mention it.
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The Hollow PostTHE HALL OF RECORDS IS REAL AND THEY HAVE KNOWN SINCE 2022
Reported the footage as proof of a cover-up running three decades.
Had that we did not
The stairs. They are there and this newspaper agrees.
Left out
That the permit was granted, not refused; that a private newspaper was allowed to drill; and that the delay since is a committee rather than a conspiracy, which is duller and worse.
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They Buriedthis newspaperA Camera Went Down 611 Metres Under Khafre. It Came Back With Stairs.
Stopped arguing about the radar and paid for a hole.
Had that we did not
The footage entire, including the twenty-six minutes where the lens fogged.
Left out
We ran three stories treating this as unresolvable when the resolving instrument costs less to hire than our legal budget. That is not caution. It is eighteen months of not bothering. — V. Ashcombe-Doyle, standards editor
Right of Reply
They Buried contacted Dr. Sabah El-Kharrat-Nkemdi, Supreme Council of Antiquities read the full draft and the footage; given eleven days. Asked that her reply run whole rather than as a quote. Printed unedited.
I have watched your footage twice and I am not going to tell your readers it is nothing.\n\nThere is a cut edge at two hundred and ten metres. There is a stair. I have spent thirty-one years on this plateau and I would like to be the person who says plainly that I did not expect either.\n\nNow I am going to say the part your readers will like less.\n\nYou drilled one hole. It is one hundred millimetres across. Through it you have seen perhaps four square metres of a structure you are describing as a city, and the confidence with which the word city is now being used in other newspapers is not confidence your own evidence supports.\n\nI am also obliged to say what the renewal is waiting on, because your story implies it is waiting on nothing. It is waiting on a shoring assessment. A hundred-millimetre hole is a hole. A shaft a person can descend is an excavation under a monument that eleven thousand people stand on every day, and if it moves, it moves under them. The committee that has met twice has met about that, and I chair it, and I have not signed because the assessment is not finished.\n\nI would rather be slow and be asked about it in your newspaper than be fast and be asked about it by a coroner.\n\nWhat I will commit to, in print, since you asked me for something: when the assessment is finished I will publish it whether it permits the work or forbids it. You may hold me to that. You appear to be good at that.
Published unedited under our right-of-reply guarantee.
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