Friday – The Mystery of the Circular Structures Behind The Great Pyramids at Giza, Egypt

5/8 @ 11:00 AM/CH

Instructor: Stephen “Dr. Steve” Phillips, Ph.D.

The pyramids and sphinx of Giza are not lone monuments in the desert; they are part of a vast cemetery complex that stretches nearly a mile from east to west. A joint archaeological excavation by Cairo University and Brown University has been mapping and surveying the northwestern section of the cemetery since 2000. I serve on the project’s management team. This behind-the-scenes lecture introduces the excavation, its goals, its methodology, its personnel, and its discoveries to date, much of which is now being published. This lecture examines the re-discovery and excavation of a pair of circular structures, constructed of sun-dried mud brick and shaped like igloos, the only examples of their kind yet found.

An earlier archaeologist posited that these structures were once hyena cages. In a cemetery! Over 4,000 years old! Can this be true? If so, why? If not, then what were these structures? This lecture takes the audience where the public cannot go – behind the scenes on an actual modern excavation in Egypt.