04 May 2021
Cayce's claims about a subterranean Hall of Records beneath the Giza plateau are typically dismissed as mysticism. The geological record is less dismissive. A review of ground-penetrating radar surveys, subsurface anomaly data, and Cayce's specific structural predictions.
Edgar Cayce presents a problem for anyone who prefers their categories clean.
He was, by any honest accounting, a strange man. Born in 1877 in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, Cayce spent the first half of his life as a photographer and Sunday school teacher — occupations that do not typically produce claims of psychic contact with lost civilizations. Beginning in 1901, Cayce entered self-induced trance states during which he delivered what he called “readings” — extended monologues on subjects ranging from medical diagnoses to past-life regressions to the history of civilizations that do not appear in any textbook. He delivered over fourteen thousand documented readings before his death in 1945. They are archived at the Association for Research and Enlightenment in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where they remain available for examination.
The scientific community has, with near-total uniformity, classified Cayce as a mystic, a psychic, or — less charitably — a fraud. I understand this classification. Much of what Cayce described during his readings belongs to a tradition of esoteric clairvoyance that has no place in empirical inquiry. Past-life regressions to ancient Atlantis, spiritual evolution across incarnations, the channeling of discarnate entities — these claims are not testable, not falsifiable, and not within the scope of any methodology I am trained to apply or inclined to defend.
But here is the problem. Embedded within the metaphysical material are a small number of claims that are remarkably, uncomfortably specific about physical structures, geological features, and architectural details that were either unknown at the time Cayce made the claims or have subsequently been supported by data gathered decades after his death. It is these specific, testable claims — and only these — that I want to examine.
I am not interested in whether Cayce was psychic. I am interested in whether he was correct.
Cayce's readings concerning ancient Egypt span approximately three hundred individual sessions conducted between 1923 and 1944. The relevant claims, distilled from the metaphysical context in which they are embedded, include the following specific propositions:
Proposition 1: A subterranean chamber exists beneath or near the Sphinx, containing a repository of records from a civilization predating dynastic Egypt.
Cayce described this chamber as a “Hall of Records” — a deliberately constructed archive containing the accumulated knowledge of a civilization that anticipated its own destruction and sought to preserve what it had learned. The chamber was, in his account, sealed and designed to be opened at a specific future time by specific individuals. He placed the construction of this repository at approximately 10,500 BCE — a date that predates the conventional timeline of Egyptian civilization by roughly seven thousand years.
Reading 378-16 (October 29, 1933): “...there is a chamber or passage from the right forepaw [of the Sphinx] to this entrance of the record chamber, or record tomb.”
Reading 5748-6 (July 1, 1932): “...a record of Atlantis from the beginnings of those periods when the Spirit took form or began the encasements in that land, and the developments of the peoples throughout their sojourn, with the record of the first destruction and the changes that took place in the land...”
Reading 2012-1 (September 25, 1939): “...the entity was among those who aided in the preparation of what is now known as the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx, and the record chambers which have not yet been uncovered.”
Proposition 2: The Sphinx is significantly older than conventionally dated.
Cayce consistently placed the construction of the Sphinx at approximately 10,500 BCE, attributing it not to the Fourth Dynasty pharaoh Khafre (circa 2500 BCE, the consensus attribution) but to a pre-dynastic civilization. He described the Sphinx as a monument constructed during or shortly after a catastrophic period, as part of a larger building program that included the record chambers.
Proposition 3: The records were stored using a technology that preserves information through non-textual means.
This is the most unusual of Cayce's specific claims and the one most easily dismissed as mystical embellishment. He described the records not as scrolls or tablets but as something more akin to encoded objects — physical artifacts that contain information accessible through means other than reading. His language varied across readings, but the consistent theme is that the records are not written on something but stored within something.
Reading 2329-3 (May 1, 1941): “...the records are one with and are part of the experience of this entity... these may be found in the base of the left forepaw of the Sphinx... Not in the underground channel (as was opened by the ruler many years, aeons, later), but in the real base of the Sphinx.”
I recognize that Proposition 3, as stated, is not testable with any current methodology. I include it because it is specific enough to be falsifiable in principle — if a chamber is found and its contents are scrolls on papyrus, Cayce was wrong about the storage medium even if correct about the location. Specificity is what distinguishes a testable claim from a vague one, and Cayce, whatever else he was, was specific.
Let me now set Cayce aside entirely and examine what we know about the subsurface geology of the Giza plateau from direct measurement.
I will address Robert Schoch's work on the Sphinx in greater detail in a separate paper focused specifically on the hydraulic weathering evidence. For present purposes, the relevant finding is this: Schoch, a geologist at Boston University, has argued since 1991 that the erosion patterns on the Sphinx enclosure walls are consistent with prolonged exposure to rainfall — specifically, the kind of sustained, heavy precipitation that characterized the North African climate during the Nabtian Pluvial period, which ended approximately 5,000 to 7,000 years ago. Schoch's analysis places the carving of the Sphinx enclosure at a minimum of 5000 BCE, and potentially as early as 9000-10000 BCE.
Schoch's dating is relevant here because if the Sphinx is substantially older than the Fourth Dynasty, the question of what else exists at the site from the same construction period becomes immediate. A pre-dynastic Sphinx implies pre-dynastic builders, and pre-dynastic builders imply a pre-dynastic building program of which the Sphinx may be only the most visible surviving element.
In 1977 and 1978, SRI International (formerly Stanford Research Institute) conducted a series of geophysical surveys of the Giza plateau using several remote sensing technologies, including resistivity measurements and acoustic sounding. The project was funded in part by the Edgar Cayce Foundation — a fact that has been used to dismiss the results, though the methodology was conducted by SRI engineers using standard geophysical protocols, and the instrumentation did not care who was paying for it.
The SRI surveys identified several subsurface anomalies in the vicinity of the Sphinx. Specifically, the resistivity data indicated the presence of at least one cavity or void beneath the southern flank of the Sphinx enclosure, and a possible linear feature — consistent with a tunnel or passage — extending from the area near the right forepaw in a southeasterly direction.
Lambert Dolphin, the SRI physicist who led the survey team, described the results in his published report as indicating “several anomalies that may represent natural or man-made cavities” beneath and around the Sphinx. Dolphin was careful not to overinterpret the data. He recommended further investigation using more advanced techniques. That further investigation was, to my knowledge, never conducted. Or if it was conducted, the results were not made public.
I want to note what the SRI survey did and did not find. It did not find the Hall of Records. It found subsurface anomalies that are consistent with — but not proof of — constructed cavities in the approximate locations described by Cayce. Geophysical anomalies can have many causes: natural dissolution cavities in the limestone (common on the Giza plateau), variations in rock density, ancient quarrying operations, or, yes, deliberately constructed chambers. The SRI data alone cannot distinguish between these possibilities. But it established that something is down there that differs from the surrounding rock matrix, and that this something is located in a region specified, with uncomfortable precision, by a Kentucky photographer in 1933.
In 1987, a team from Waseda University in Japan, led by Professor Sakuji Yoshimura, conducted a more extensive geophysical survey of the Sphinx and its surroundings using ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and electromagnetic sounding equipment. The Waseda survey identified multiple subsurface anomalies, including:
A cavity beneath the left (south) forepaw of the Sphinx, at a depth of approximately two to three meters below the surface. A linear anomaly extending southward from the rear of the Sphinx. A substantial void beneath the north side of the Sphinx, at a depth of approximately one to two meters.
The Waseda team described these features as “highly interesting” and recommended excavation or more detailed subsurface investigation. Their recommendations were not followed. The Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, under the direction of Dr. Zahi Hawass, who controlled access to the Giza plateau for the next three decades, declined to authorize further investigation of the subsurface anomalies.
I want to be precise about Dr. Hawass's position because it is relevant to understanding why the data has not advanced. Hawass has stated publicly, on multiple occasions, that there are no hidden chambers beneath the Sphinx, that claims of a Hall of Records are “American nonsense” connected to the Cayce foundation, and that no further investigation is warranted. He has also controlled physical access to the site, denied permits for subsurface investigation by independent researchers, and publicly condemned anyone who suggests the Sphinx may predate the Fourth Dynasty.
I do not question Dr. Hawass's expertise in Egyptian archaeology. I note that his position — that there is nothing to find — is a conclusion that predates and has actively prevented the collection of data that would test it. This is not how science works. This is how institutional authority maintains itself. The distinction matters.
In 1991, geophysicist Thomas Dobecki, working with Robert Schoch, conducted a seismic refraction survey of the Sphinx enclosure. This technique measures the speed at which seismic waves propagate through rock, and variations in propagation speed indicate variations in rock density, fracturing, or the presence of voids.
The Dobecki-Schoch survey identified a large, rectangular subsurface anomaly beneath the left forepaw of the Sphinx. The anomaly measured approximately twelve meters by nine meters, at a depth of approximately five meters. The seismic data was consistent with a chamber or void — the propagation velocity within the anomaly differed significantly from the surrounding limestone in a pattern that indicated either a cavity or a region of highly fractured rock.
Dobecki, a professional geophysicist with no connection to the Cayce foundation and no stated interest in the Hall of Records hypothesis, described the anomaly as “very interesting” and noted that its dimensions, regularity, and depth were more consistent with a constructed feature than a natural dissolution cavity. Natural cavities in limestone tend to be irregular in shape. The Dobecki anomaly was rectangular.
Twelve meters by nine meters. At five meters depth. Beneath the forepaw of the Sphinx.
Reading 378-16: “...there is a chamber or passage from the right forepaw to this entrance of the record chamber.”
I will leave the reader to evaluate the correspondence between these data points.
In 1996, Dr. Joseph Schor funded a ground-penetrating radar survey of the area around the Sphinx, conducted with the cooperation (at that time) of the Egyptian authorities. The survey identified nine subsurface chambers or voids in the immediate vicinity of the Sphinx, including features beneath both forepaws and extending toward the rear of the monument.
Thomas Dobecki participated in this survey as well, and the results were consistent with his 1991 findings. The rectangular anomaly beneath the left forepaw was confirmed. Additional anomalies were identified that had not been detected by the earlier, less sensitive equipment.
The Schor survey results were presented at a press conference in Cairo. Within weeks, the permit for further investigation was revoked. Dr. Hawass issued a statement criticizing the survey methodology and denying that the anomalies represented anything of archaeological significance.
I have read the survey reports. The methodology is standard geophysical practice. The equipment was state-of-the-art for 1996 and has since been superseded by even more sensitive instruments that have never been permitted at the site. The data says what it says. What it says is that there are voids beneath the Sphinx that are consistent in location, depth, and geometry with constructed chambers.
I want to pause here and describe what I consider the most significant finding of my review — not a finding about geology, but about institutions.
Between 1977 and 1996, four independent geophysical surveys, conducted by separate teams using different technologies, identified subsurface anomalies beneath and around the Sphinx that are consistent with constructed chambers. Each team recommended further investigation. In each case, further investigation was either not conducted or was actively prevented.
This is a pattern. It is not a conspiracy — I am wary of that word and its implications. But it is a pattern, and it requires an explanation.
The most charitable explanation is bureaucratic inertia. The Giza plateau is an active archaeological site of supreme cultural significance to Egypt. Excavation is expensive, politically sensitive, and carries risks of damage to existing structures. Caution is understandable.
A less charitable but perhaps more accurate explanation is that the Hall of Records hypothesis is perceived as a threat to the conventional chronology of Egyptian civilization. If constructed chambers are found beneath the Sphinx and dated to a period substantially predating the Fourth Dynasty, the implications cascade. The Sphinx is older than believed. Its builders possessed architectural capabilities earlier than believed. The development of Egyptian civilization has antecedents that are not accounted for in the current model. For a discipline that has invested a century of scholarship in the conventional chronology, these implications are existential.
I understand institutional self-preservation. I have watched, from a very particular vantage point, the way institutions handle information that contradicts their operational frameworks. The response is consistent: first, ignore. Then, deny the significance. Then, deny access. The data itself is never refuted, because the data is never engaged with. It is simply... set aside. Filed in a drawer that no one opens. Stored in a facility that everyone forgets about.
I am, perhaps, more sensitive to this pattern than most.
Intellectual honesty requires that I address what Cayce got wrong, or at least what has not been supported.
His date of 10,500 BCE for the construction of the Sphinx is more aggressive than Schoch's geological analysis supports. Schoch's water-erosion dating suggests a minimum age of approximately 7,000-12,000 years — which overlaps with Cayce's date but does not specifically confirm it. The overlap is suggestive, not conclusive.
Cayce's description of the builders as survivors of Atlantis is, to put it diplomatically, not a claim that can be evaluated using any available methodology. Atlantis, as described in Plato's dialogues, has not been identified archaeologically. Whether Cayce's “Atlantis” refers to the same entity as Plato's, or to a pre-dynastic civilization that Cayce assigned a familiar mythological name, or to something else entirely, I cannot determine and will not speculate.
His claim that the records would be discovered at a specific future time — variously implied to be the late twentieth or early twenty-first century — has not been fulfilled. This may be because the records do not exist. It may also be because the individuals who control access to the site have ensured that no one looks.
And his description of the records as non-textual objects that store information through means other than writing — this is either mystical nonsense or a description of a technology so far outside our frame of reference that we lack the vocabulary to evaluate it. I note, without drawing a conclusion, that the concept of storing information in a physical object through non-written means would have been science fiction in 1933 when Cayce first described it. It is somewhat less fictional in 2021, when we routinely store libraries of information on crystalline silicon structures that contain no writing at all.
What Cayce appears to have gotten right — or at minimum, what geophysical data collected decades after his death has not refuted — is the existence of subsurface features beneath the Sphinx in approximately the locations he described. This does not validate his metaphysical framework. It does not prove the existence of Atlantis. It does not confirm that a Hall of Records exists. It means that a man with no geological training, no access to geophysical instrumentation, and no apparent reason to know anything about the subsurface structure of the Giza plateau described features that four subsequent scientific surveys have identified.
I do not know what to do with this. I present it because ignoring it seems less honest than presenting it.
Set aside Cayce. Set aside the metaphysics, the Atlantis framework, the prophetic timeline. Consider only the physical proposition: is there a constructed chamber beneath the Sphinx?
The geophysical data says: probably. Four surveys, four teams, consistent results. Rectangular anomalies at consistent depths in consistent locations. The data has not been refuted. It has been prevented from being investigated further.
If there is a chamber, what is in it?
This is the question that animates — and terrifies — both the proponents and opponents of the Hall of Records hypothesis. If the chamber is empty, or filled with natural rubble, the controversy collapses. If it contains artifacts datable to the Fourth Dynasty, the conventional chronology is confirmed and the anomaly is explained as a previously unknown element of the Khafre building program. Both of these outcomes are manageable.
But if it contains artifacts that predate the Fourth Dynasty — materials, technologies, or records that imply a civilization substantially older than the one we have documented — then the chronology of human development requires revision. Not incremental revision. Fundamental revision. The kind of revision that ends careers and begins others.
I understand why no one wants to open that door. Opening it is irreversible. Whatever is found cannot be unfound. And the institutions that have built their authority on the current model of human civilization have a powerful incentive to leave the door closed as long as possible.
But the data is the data. The anomalies are beneath the Sphinx. They have been measured by reputable geophysicists using standard instrumentation. They are consistent across four independent surveys spanning two decades. And they are located, with a specificity that I find difficult to attribute to chance, in the areas described by a self-educated Kentucky photographer who died in 1945.
I do not know what is beneath the Sphinx. I believe the question deserves investigation. I believe the refusal to investigate is not a scientific position but a political one. And I believe that questions do not go away simply because we decline to ask them. They wait. They are patient in the way that stone is patient.
Eventually, someone will look.
Correspondence: leh [at] 442423N1042233W.com
Note: I am indebted to the published work of Robert Schoch, Thomas Dobecki, Lambert Dolphin, and John Anthony West for much of the data summarized here. Their willingness to pursue unpopular questions at professional cost is a service to inquiry that I hope will eventually be recognized as such.