Posted on 01/09/2025 8:10:28 PM PST by logi_cal869
This article presents the first verifiable space-based evidence of an enormous underground structure at Hawara that is likely the below-ground portion of the Labyrinth first mentioned by Herodotus. Combining historical sources with modern geospatial data reveals a discrepancy between Herodotus’s account of colossal stone structures in the middle of Lake Moeris and Petrie’s archaeological survey of much more modest ruins at Biahmu. An analysis of the alignment of the Labyrinth and other ancient sites in the Faiyum suggests they may be much older than we think.
The Labyrinth
The legendary Labyrinth of Hawara was brought to the attention of the Western world by Herodotus in the fifth century BC. He describes an above-ground structure that he saw, and one below-ground that he was denied access to by the Egyptians.
Moreover, they decided to preserve the memory of their names by a common memorial, and so they made a labyrinth a little way beyond lake Moeris and near the place called the City of Crocodiles. I have seen it myself, and indeed words cannot describe it; if one were to collect the walls and evidence of other efforts of the Greeks, the sum would not amount to the labor and cost of this labyrinth. And yet the temple at Ephesus and the one on Samos are noteworthy. Though the pyramids beggar description and each one of them is a match for many great monuments built by Greeks, this maze surpasses even the pyramids. It has twelve roofed courts with doors facing each other: six face north and six south, in two continuous lines, all within one outer wall. There are also double sets of chambers, three thousand altogether, fifteen hundred above and the same number under ground. We ourselves viewed those that are above ground, and speak of what we have seen, but we learned through conversation about the underground chambers; the Egyptian caretakers would by no means show them, as they were, they said, the burial vaults of the kings who first built this labyrinth, and of the sacred crocodiles. Thus we can only speak from hearsay of the lower chambers; the upper we saw for ourselves, and they are creations greater than human. The exits of the chambers and the mazy passages hither and thither through the courts were an unending marvel to us as we passed from court to apartment and from apartment to colonnade, from colonnades again to more chambers and then into yet more courts. Over all this is a roof, made of stone like the walls, and the walls are covered with cut figures, and every court is set around with pillars of white stone very precisely fitted together. Near the corner where the labyrinth ends stands a pyramid two hundred and forty feet high, on which great figures are cut. A passage to this has been made underground.
Sir Flinders Petrie’s 19th-century survey provides a rough idea of the scale of the above-ground structure. His assessment was that the Labyrinth was maintained up to the second century BCE – “at least as late as Kleopatra I, 193 B.C., the Labyrinth was still in royal care, and probably being restored in some degree. Soon after that, ruin fell upon it, and in Pliny’s time it was ‘marvellously ravaged.’” Petrie’s reconstruction of the western half of the Labyrinth indicates a north-south length of approximately 526 feet. Squaring that (assuming the structure is roughly square) yields an area of about 277,000 square feet.
Mataha Expedition In 2008, the Mataha expedition reported the discovery of below-ground features resembling archaeological structures south of the Hawara pyramid of Amenemhet III:
These features covering an underground area of several hectares, have the prominent signature of vertical walls on the geophysical results. The vertical walls with an average thickness of several meters, are connected to shape nearly closed rooms, which are interpreted to be huge in number.
Very low frequency electromagnetic (VLF-EM) surveys revealed “spatially distributed elongated and square shaped subsurface anomalies, which may identify the walls and rooms of the labyrinth mortuary temple complex.”
The presence of possible archeological features below ground suggests the possibility that what Petrie thought was the foundation of a large above-ground structure could instead be the roof of an undiscovered structure below ground. As the VLF-EM and other surveys were conducted over a limited area, it was not possible to determine the full extent of the underground structure.
Inspired by the discoveries of the Mataha expedition, a remarkable 3D reconstruction of the site using proprietary space-based technology revealed two levels of subterranean chambers over an extended area surrounding the pyramid of Amenemhat III. But unlike the Mataha findings, no accompanying scientific paper describing either the methodology or the data used was ever published making it difficult to corroborate their findings.
Spaceborne Radar Imaging
Under certain conditions, spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is able to penetrate desert sands to reveal subsurface features. Sentinel-1, the first of the five missions developed by the European Space Agency under the Copernicus initiative, transmits vertically polarized waves and receives horizontally and vertically polarized waves that are processed to form VH and VV images. VV images tend to pick up height/vertical features whereas VH images tend to be more sensitive to surface textures. A portion of a C-band Sentinel-1 SAR image collected 7/6/2023 over a region in Western Egypt containing the Faiyum Oasis centered on the pyramid of Amenemhet III in Hawara is shown below.
Although there are a number of strong returns in its vicinity, the lack of a strong response from the pyramid itself is likely due to its highly eroded state. Several bright returns north of the pyramid (A) are from high-voltage transmission line towers (you can see one of the towers in the feature image at the top of the article). Below the pyramid in what is believed to be a mortuary complex are at least three returns that are rectangular in shape.
One of the delineated regions (B) is about 275,000 sq. feet – almost the same size as the rectangular area excavated by Petrie. Another region (C) may be the continuation of the above structure. A second rectangular area (D) west of the Faiyum canal is also evident in the SAR image. The lack of any structures in Google Earth imagery over these areas indicates that they are subsurface features. It is interesting that the orientation of these structures is not the same as the pyramid of Amenemhet III suggesting they are not part of the mortuary complex.
Herodotus goes on to describe what he saw north of the Labyrinth:
Such is this labyrinth; and still more marvellous is lake Moeris, on which it stands. This lake has a circumference of four hundred and fifty miles, or sixty schoeni: as much as the whole seaboard of Egypt. Its length is from north to south; the deepest part has a depth of fifty fathoms. That it has been dug out and made by men’s hands the lake shows for itself; for almost in the middle of it stand two pyramids, so built that fifty fathoms of each are below and fifty above the water; atop each is a colossal stone figure seated on a throne. Thus these pyramids are a hundred fathoms high; and a hundred fathoms equal a furlong of six hundred feet, the fathom measuring six feet or four cubits, the foot four spans and the cubit six spans. The water of the lake is not natural (for the country here is exceedingly arid) but brought by a channel from the Nile; six months it flows into the lake, and six back into the river. For the six months that it flows out of the lake, the daily take of fish brings a silver talent into the royal treasury, and twenty minae for each day of the flow into the lake.
When Petrie visited the ruins at Biahmu, he found the remains of two stone structures. Based on his reconstruction, stone figures, about forty feet tall, were emplaced on platforms about 30 feet high, for a total height of about 70 feet. This is only ¼ of the above water height reported by Herodotus, who coincidentally overestimated the circumference (perimeter) of the lake by a factor of four as well.
Lacking modern technology Herodotus cannot be faulted by the inaccuracy of his measurements. But there seems to be more to the discrepancy. In fact, Petrie’s description of Biahmu does not seem to match Herodotus’s at all:
When, six years ago, I visited the two so-called pyramids of Biahmu, about four miles north of Medinet el Fayum, I concluded from their appearance that it was very unlikely that they had really been pyramids, but rather that they were courts surrounding two great pedestals on which statues had stood. This result agreed nearly with the description of Herodotos, of two pyramids rising out of the water, each bearing a stone statue seated on a throne. His idea that they were large pyramids half submerged was easily to be explained by the fact of his visiting the province during the inundation, and his viewing them from Arsinoe, and not going down to Biahmu. The Arab name, Kursi Faraun, or “throne of Pharaoh,” accords also with this idea ; they are, however, more usually known as es sanatn, the “high places” or “high things.”
Where was Herodotus when he saw the Colossi? The water level of Lake Moeris (see below) has varied considerably (up to 60 meters) over the last 10,000 years. Using a digital elevation model (DEM), we can estimate the water level when Amenemhet III is thought to have built the Colossi and when Herodotus saw them. Based on the DEM, Biahmu was above water at the time of Amenemhet III and below water when Herodotus was there. But more importantly, if the Colossi were partially below water, so too was the surrounding area over a radius of more than six miles. From this distance, the pyramids in Giza are barely visible let alone a structure the size reconstructed by Petrie. If the stonework that Petrie believed was a courtyard around the figures was the base of a pyramid 120 feet tall, even that would not be large enough to be visible from that distance.
Another possibility is that Herodotus was in a boat. But if he were, one would think he would have sailed up to Colossi to see them close up. After all, he did attempt (unsuccessfully) to visit the Labyrinth’s underground.
An aerial view of the site shows the courtyards are not well-aligned in any particular direction. Different parts of the stonework surrounding the pedestals vary by several degrees in azimuth. This is in contrast with other Egyptian temples and monuments such as the Colossi of Memnon, which are aligned to the solstices. If Herodotus was right about the Labyrinth, perhaps he was right about the Colossi as well.
A way of reconciling Herodotus’s account and Petrie’s reconstruction is to hypothesize that the structure Amenemhet III built, or possibly co-opted was once much larger. Like the Labyrinth, perhaps the original structure at Biahmu was dismantled and used as building material leaving only the modest reminder we see today.
Discussion
Qasr al Sagha is a megalithic structure north of Lake Moeris. Seemingly in the middle of nowhere, Qasr al Sagha would have been close to the lake shoreline when the water level was higher. The same is true of another site, Dimai (Soknopaiou Nesos), which is also north of Lake Moeris. It is believed that Lake Moeris existed as a paleolake more than 10,000 years ago. Although there have been variations in lake level even before the Faiyum canal, it has decreased significantly in size over the past 2500 years.
Devoid of any inscription, little is known about Qasr al Sagha. Composed of giant limestone blocks, its architectural style indicates Middle to Old Kingdom. That it is oriented in the direction of minor lunar standstills, not uncommon in desert regions, suggests Qasr al Sagha could have been a lunar temple.
Other sites in the Faiyum are more difficult to explain in terms of their alignment. Madinet Madi (“City of the Past”) is not aligned in known geographical/astronomical directions, however, its minor axis would have aligned with minor lunar standstills relative to the Hudson Bay pole – the hypothesized location of the North Pole during the North American ice age, 20,000 to 45,000 years ago. The alignment of its major axis would have been in the direction of the Greenland Pole, another proposed location of the North Pole even further back in time, 75,000 to 130,000 years ago. Subsurface features at Hawara, which are not aligned with the pyramid of Amenemhet III, are also oriented in the direction of the Greenland pole. Based on an application of Hapgood’s theory of crustal displacement theory, these alignments may be the fingerprint of at least two prehistoric civilizations in the Faiyum over the past 100,000 years or so.
Basically, the author outlines technical evidence of a culture predating the Egyptians, directly conflicting in many ways with orthodox Egyptology.
Too many images from the source to place here. His blog promotes his book, Before Atlantis. I recommend clicking through to see the evidence.
The paper: "The Labyrinth, the Colossi, and the Lake: New Evidence of Advanced Prehistoric Civilizations in the Faiyum" https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4518835
The original video which hooked me to the paper: "The Labyrinth, the Colossi, and the Lake: New Evidence of Advanced Prehistoric Civilizations" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UT1uGszLSZI
Clickable:
The paper: “The Labyrinth, the Colossi, and the Lake: New Evidence of Advanced Prehistoric Civilizations in the Faiyum”
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4518835
The original video which hooked me to the paper: “The Labyrinth, the Colossi, and the Lake: New Evidence of Advanced Prehistoric Civilizations”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UT1uGszLSZI
PING
Here’s a summary of it:
1. **Labyrinth’s Fame**: The Labyrinth of Hawara, near Lake Moeris, was described by ancient historians like Herodotus as an architectural marvel surpassing even the pyramids.
2. **Herodotus’s Account**: In the 5th century BC, Herodotus detailed the Labyrinth as having 12 roofed courts and 3,000 chambers, half above ground and half below, with intricate passages.
3. **Purpose**: The underground chambers were believed to be burial vaults for kings and sacred crocodiles.
4. **Petrie’s Survey**: In the 19th century, Sir Flinders Petrie surveyed the site, estimating the above-ground structure’s area to be about 277,000 square feet.
5. **Mataha Expedition**: In 2008, the Mataha expedition used geophysical methods and reported discovering underground features south of the Hawara pyramid, suggesting the presence of numerous large rooms.
6. **Geophysical Findings**: The expedition identified vertical walls forming nearly closed rooms, indicating a complex subterranean structure.
7. **VLF-EM Surveys**: Very Low Frequency Electromagnetic surveys revealed anomalies interpreted as walls and rooms of the Labyrinth’s mortuary temple complex.
8. **Structure’s Extent**: The surveys covered a limited area, so the full extent of the underground structure remains unknown.
9. **Historical Discrepancy**: There’s a discrepancy between Herodotus’s account of colossal structures in Lake Moeris and Petrie’s findings of more modest ruins at Biahmu.
10. **Alignment Analysis**: An analysis of the Labyrinth’s alignment with other ancient sites in the Faiyum suggests they may be much older than previously thought.
11. **Advanced Civilizations**: The findings imply the existence of advanced prehistoric civilizations in the Faiyum region.
12. **Underground Structure**: The article presents space-based evidence of an enormous underground structure at Hawara, likely the subterranean portion of the Labyrinth mentioned by Herodotus.
13. **Herodotus’s Access**: Herodotus was allowed to see the above-ground chambers but was denied access to the underground ones by the Egyptians.
14. **Architectural Marvel**: The Labyrinth was considered a creation greater than human, with mazy passages and intricately fitted stone pillars.
15. **Pyramid Connection**: Near the Labyrinth’s end stood a pyramid about 240 feet high, with a passage connecting it underground.
16. **Preservation State**: By the second century BCE, the Labyrinth was still under royal care but likely faced ruin shortly after.
17. **Modern Technology**: The use of modern geospatial data has provided new insights into the Labyrinth’s structure and extent.
18. **Ongoing Mystery**: Despite these findings, much about the Labyrinth remains unknown, inviting further exploration and study.
Thanks for the summary. One note:
“18. **Ongoing Mystery**: Despite these findings, much about the Labyrinth remains unknown, inviting further exploration and study.”...
...IF hawass permits such exploration and study at the site.
ping
You needn’t ping a zeeper ;-)
Thanks, but no thanks.
:-) 🙂
It is a significant new find. In the best common interest of history it’s self it should also be added to Civ’s archive list for important future reference. Politics destroys history.
📌 Nephilium
So some ancient civilization capable of building such a large stone structure does so to bury f’ing alligators? Not buying it. And how many kings did they have to bury, when societal stability (IOW, no rapid turnover of leaders) would be necessary for such a project to be completed. Definitely not buying it.
Can’t wait for Hawass to retire, one way or another - then we might actually find out something true about Egyptian history before about 4,000 years ago.
“In the best common interest of history it’s self it should also be added to Civ’s archive list for important future reference. Politics destroys history.”
Nope. I disagree.
It came out of the closet to stab me in the back like a liberal biological aberration from the Sumerian city of Lagash circa 2nd millennium BC for ‘political reasons.’
https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/4260048/posts
“Choices.”
Time for another archive imho. Normally I’d write ‘complementary’, but I wouldn’t choose to insult another FReeper so blindly. An archive that doesn’t start at the end of the alphabet to troll other FReeper’s posts and defecate in his own thread amidst a scientific discussion for ‘political reasons’...
Truer words have never been spoken.
(at a minimum ranks WAY up the list)
So you are saying that all the destruction of history in the Middle East for political reasons was an acceptable priority then?
It is a poor example... And he has the list and I want to get pinged. Have you made years of effort to create an archive and ping list? Is this all about you, or can the rest of us be respected enough to appreciate our love for history without political conflict?
Again... Politics destroys history... It has no just place or acceptable function from any source.
Ok.
Get him to apologize and I will in kind.
But he started this, SO GET OFF MY BACK.
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