The Giza pyramids stand on the Giza Plateau, a limestone shelf on the west bank of the Nile at the edge of Greater Cairo. The plateau holds the pyramids of three Fourth Dynasty kings, Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure, built roughly between 2560 and 2510 BCE, along with the Great Sphinx, their temples and causeways, the cemeteries of their courtiers and the town that housed their builders. The Great Pyramid is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still standing.
Giza matters because it is where the big questions about ancient Egypt become physical. How the pyramids were raised, how old the Sphinx really is and what, if anything, lies under the bedrock are all argued over stones that anyone can walk up to and touch. Knowing what has been excavated, measured and published makes it easier to weigh the newer claims, and it makes a visit far richer than a quick photo stop.
What is on the Giza Plateau?
The Giza Plateau is a complete royal necropolis, not just three pyramids. The three main pyramids run in a rough diagonal line from north-east to south-west, each with its own mortuary temple against its east face, a causeway running down towards the old floodplain and a valley temple at the bottom.
Around them are the smaller monuments that are easy to miss. Three queens' pyramids stand beside Khufu's pyramid and three more beside Menkaure's. The Eastern and Western Cemeteries are fields of mastabas, the flat-topped stone tombs of royal family members and officials, laid out in neat streets. Between the causeways of Khafre and Menkaure is the monumental tomb of Queen Khentkaus I, sometimes nicknamed Giza's fourth pyramid. At the foot of the plateau sit the Great Sphinx, the Sphinx Temple and Khafre's valley temple. South of the monuments, beyond a massive stone wall, archaeologists have uncovered the workers' town at Heit el-Ghurab.
The Great Pyramid of Khufu
The Great Pyramid was built for the king Khufu, known to the Greeks as Cheops, around 2560 BCE. It originally rose about 146.6 metres; with its capstone and outer casing gone, it now stands about 138.5 metres. Egyptologists estimate it contains around 2.3 million blocks, and it held the record as the tallest human-made structure on Earth for thousands of years.
The pyramid was once sheathed in fine white limestone quarried across the river at Tura. Most of that casing was stripped in the medieval period and reused in Cairo, which is why the stepped core is what visitors see today. Inside, a descending passage runs down into an unfinished chamber cut into the bedrock, while an ascending passage leads to the so-called Queen's Chamber and, through the corbelled Grand Gallery, to the granite-lined King's Chamber and its empty, lidless granite sarcophagus. Visitors enter today through a tunnel traditionally attributed to the ninth-century caliph al-Ma'mun rather than through the original entrance above it.
On the south side of the pyramid, in 1954, excavators opened a sealed pit containing Khufu's dismantled cedar boat. Reassembled from some 1,200 pieces, the vessel measures 43.6 metres and is one of the oldest intact ships known. For the full debate over ramps, labour and engineering, see the companion article on [how the Great Pyramid of Giza was built](/how-was-the-great-pyramid-of-giza-built-evidence-theories-and-open-questions), and the earlier overview of [the pyramids at Giza](/pyramids-at-giza).
The pyramids of Khafre and Menkaure
Khafre's pyramid is the second largest at Giza and often looks like the tallest. Built for Khufu's son Khafre (Chephren in Greek sources) around 2530 BCE, it stands about 136.4 metres, slightly lower than the Great Pyramid, but it sits on higher ground and still keeps a cap of its original casing stones near the summit, which makes it the most recognisable silhouette on the plateau.
Khafre's complex is also the best preserved: his valley temple, built of enormous limestone blocks faced with granite, is linked by a causeway to the mortuary temple at the pyramid's base.
Menkaure's pyramid, built around 2510 BCE for a later king of the same dynasty (Mycerinus to the Greeks), is much smaller at about 65 metres. Its lower courses were cased in red granite brought from Aswan, and some of those blocks were never fully smoothed, leaving a clear record of how casing was finished from the top down. Its three satellite pyramids for royal women stand in a row to the south.
The Great Sphinx and its temples
The Great Sphinx is a lion with a human head, carved directly from the bedrock of the plateau and roughly 73 metres long and 20 metres high. Mainstream Egyptology dates it to Khafre's reign, mainly because it sits beside his causeway and valley temple and because the Sphinx Temple in front of it was built with stone quarried from around the Sphinx itself.
That attribution is not unanimous. Since the 1990s, the geologist Robert Schoch and others have argued that the weathering on the Sphinx enclosure walls points to long exposure to rainfall and therefore an earlier date, while most Egyptologists and geologists reply that other processes explain the erosion. The arguments on both sides are laid out in detail in [how old the Sphinx is and who built it](/how-old-is-the-sphinx-who-built-it-water-erosion-and-what-lies-beneath).
The monument also had a long second life. By the New Kingdom, a thousand years after Khafre, the Sphinx was venerated as Horemakhet, Horus in the Horizon, and the Dream Stele of Thutmose IV still stands between its paws recording how the young prince cleared the sand from around it. The wider family of deities it became linked to is covered in [Egyptian gods and goddesses explained](/egyptian-gods-and-goddesses-explained-ra-osiris-isis-horus-thoth-and-more).
Who built the Giza pyramids?
The archaeological evidence points to an organised, provisioned workforce of Egyptians rather than slaves. At Heit el-Ghurab, excavations led by Mark Lehner and Ancient Egypt Research Associates uncovered bakeries, long gallery buildings interpreted as housing, storage areas and huge quantities of animal bone, evidence of a state that fed its workers well.
On the slope above the town, Zahi Hawass's team began excavating the workers' cemetery in 1990. The people buried there were given tombs of their own close to the kings they served, something unlikely for slaves. Further evidence came in 2013, when Pierre Tallet's team found papyri at Wadi al-Jarf on the Red Sea, including the logbook of an official named Merer whose crew shipped limestone from Tura to Giza for Khufu's pyramid.
What lies beneath Giza: the documented features
There are real spaces beneath and inside the Giza monuments, and most of them have been explored and published. The best known are:
- The Osiris Shaft. Beneath Khafre's causeway, a series of shafts cut down through the bedrock leads to chambers containing sarcophagi, with groundwater at the lowest level. Hawass's team cleared it in 1999, and it is associated with the cult of Osiris and dated much later than the pyramids.
- The tunnels at the Sphinx. A few short passages exist in and around the Sphinx. They are dead ends: natural fissures in the rock and an exploratory boring made during the survey work of John Perring in the nineteenth century.
- The ScanPyramids voids. Using cosmic-ray muon imaging, the ScanPyramids project reported in 2017 a large void of at least 30 metres above the Grand Gallery of the Great Pyramid, and in 2023 confirmed a corridor about nine metres long behind the chevron blocks on its north face. Their purpose is still unknown.
- The caves near the Tomb of the Birds. In 2008 the author Andrew Collins publicised a natural cave system in the plateau's north-west. It sits in an area long known for animal burials, and Egyptologists regard it as a known catacomb rather than a hidden complex.
The 2025 underground city claim
The claim of a vast city deep beneath the pyramids comes from a study that has not been peer-reviewed. In March 2025, researchers Corrado Malanga and Filippo Biondi presented images derived from satellite synthetic aperture radar (SAR) that, they said, showed vertical shafts and chambers extending far below Khafre's pyramid. Media coverage turned this into a city some two kilometres underground.
Geophysicists rejected the interpretation, noting that radar signals from orbit are generally understood to penetrate only a short distance into solid rock, and Zahi Hawass publicly dismissed the claim. That does not prove the bedrock hides nothing, as the muon discoveries show, but this method and this claim have not stood up to review.
Visiting Giza: a practical guide
The plateau is generally open from about 7 am to 5 pm, with hours shifting seasonally, so confirm the current schedule before you go. Entry to the plateau is ticketed, and going inside the Great Pyramid needs a separate ticket with limited daily numbers. Khafre's and Menkaure's interiors open on rotation, so which of them you can enter depends on the day. All three interiors involve low, steep passages and warm, still air.
A few points make the day smoother:
- Go to the panoramic point. The viewpoint to the south-west gives the classic view of all three pyramids in a line.
- Handle the touts calmly. Camel and horse handlers approach visitors throughout the site. Agree on any price and route before you get on, or decline politely and keep walking.
- Finish at the Sphinx. The walkway past Khafre's valley temple brings you to the Sphinx at the end of the route, and the evening sound-and-light show is staged in front of it.
- Leave time for the Grand Egyptian Museum. The GEM sits beside the plateau. It soft-opened in 2024 and fully opened in 2025, and it holds the Tutankhamun collection as well as Khufu's boat.
Billy Carson leads Egypt tours that include Giza. Itineraries and dates are on the Egypt tour page, and all upcoming trips are listed on the 4biddenknowledge tours page. Any special access arrangements are set by the tour operator and the Egyptian authorities, so check the details on the tour page rather than assuming them.
Billy Carson's reading
Billy Carson treats Giza as a site where the official timeline deserves scrutiny rather than automatic acceptance. He has engaged closely with alternative readings such as the water-erosion argument for the Sphinx, and he argues that the questions the evidence leaves open, including the purpose of the voids inside the Great Pyramid, are worth pursuing rather than dismissing.
On the 4biddenknowledge Podcast, in the episode Underground City Discovered Under the Giza Pyramids, Carson discusses the 2025 radar claims and what they would mean if they held up. It is best heard as his discussion of the claims alongside the critical response summarised above, not as a confirmed finding.
Carson's wider framework also draws on the Emerald Tablets, the text he explores in his Compendium of the Emerald Tablets, whose narrator Thoth presents himself as a builder at Giza. Carson reads that material as a record worth taking seriously; mainstream Egyptology regards the Emerald Tablets as a twentieth-century esoteric work with no known ancient manuscript. His interest in Egypt extends beyond stone to the spiritual system behind it, which is explored in [Kemetic spirituality explained](/kemetic-spirituality-explained-neteru-maat-and-the-ancient-egyptian-worldview).
Watch, read and go deeper
On 4BK TV, [Egyptian Mystery School](/watch/egyptian-mystery-school) explores the ideas and sites behind Egyptian sacred knowledge. For Carson's discussion of the underground claims, listen to the podcast episode on the Giza underground city. Every article on the pyramids, the Sphinx, the gods and Kemetic thought is gathered on the [Ancient Egypt topic hub](/topics/ancient-egypt).
Frequently asked questions
How long do you need at the Giza Plateau?
Half a day is enough to see the three pyramids, the panoramic point and the Sphinx at an unhurried pace. Add an hour or more if you plan to go inside a pyramid. The Grand Egyptian Museum beside the plateau is large enough to deserve a separate visit.
Can you go inside the Great Pyramid?
Yes, with a separate ticket that is limited to a set number of visitors each day. The route climbs through the Grand Gallery to the King's Chamber and is steep, narrow and warm. Arrangements change, so check current rules before you travel.
Which of the Giza pyramids is the tallest?
Khufu's Great Pyramid is the tallest, at about 138.5 metres today and about 146.6 metres originally. Khafre's pyramid, at about 136.4 metres, often looks taller because it stands on higher ground and keeps some of its casing near the top.
Is there a city under the Giza pyramids?
There is no accepted evidence of a city beneath the pyramids. The 2025 claim of structures two kilometres down was based on satellite radar, was not peer-reviewed and was rejected by geophysicists and by Zahi Hawass. Documented underground features do exist, including the Osiris Shaft, short tunnels at the Sphinx and the voids found inside the Great Pyramid by muon imaging.
Who built the Sphinx?
Mainstream Egyptology attributes the Great Sphinx to the reign of Khafre, around 2530 BCE, based on its position beside his causeway and valley temple. Some researchers, including the geologist Robert Schoch, argue that its weathering points to an earlier date. That question remains one of the most debated at Giza.
Sources and further reading
- Mark Lehner, The Complete Pyramids (Thames & Hudson, 1997).
- Mark Lehner and Zahi Hawass, Giza and the Pyramids: The Definitive History (Thames & Hudson, 2017).
- I. E. S. Edwards, The Pyramids of Egypt (Penguin).
- Pierre Tallet and Mark Lehner, The Red Sea Scrolls (Thames & Hudson, 2021), on the Wadi al-Jarf papyri and the logbook of Merer.
- Herodotus, Histories, Book II.
- Kunihiro Morishima et al., Discovery of a big void in Khufu's Pyramid by observation of cosmic-ray muons, Nature (2017).
- Billy Carson, Compendium of the Emerald Tablets.
