YouTube star MrBeast has offered to explore the Giza pyramids amid claims from the Khafre Project that there was an underground city beneath them.
Newsweek has contacted a representative for MrBeast for comment via email outside regular working hours.
Why It Matters
Jimmy Donaldson, who is known professionally as MrBeast, holds the record for the most subscribers on YouTube—379 million as of press time. In January 2022, Forbes ranked Donaldson as the highest-earning content creator, with an estimated annual income of $54 million. He visited the Giza pyramids last year to make content for his channel.
Recently, a group of Italian researchers from the Khafre Project said they had discovered what they called “vertical cylinders” 2,000 feet below ground—a claim that a prominent Egyptologist has refuted as “fake news.”
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What To Know
On Monday, a social media user on X, formerly Twitter, posted an image of what the cylinders could look like, writing: “If the SAR scans of the Khafre pyramid are accurate then this is how deep the pillars go under the bedrock. Which is wild.”
Donaldson responded, “Should I go back and do more exploring?”
In December, the YouTuber spent 100 hours in the Egyptian pyramids with “unrestricted access,” exploring areas never seen by the public.
Zahi Hawass, an Egyptologist and a former minister of tourism and antiquities in Egypt, joined him. Earlier this week, Hawass dismissed the Khafre Project’s claims that there was an underground city beneath the pyramids of Giza.
The project used synthetic aperture radar tomography and involved scientists Corrado Malanga of the University of Pisa in Italy and Filippo Biondi of the University of Strathclyde in Scotland. The researchers scanned the Khafre pyramid and uncovered what they said was an underground system, stretching miles beneath all three of the major pyramids.
The researchers said there were spiral staircases beneath the surface of the Khafre pyramid and that five small, room-like structures were located in the pyramid. The study has drawn skepticism as it was not peer-reviewed.
What People Are Saying
Nicole Ciccolo, a spokesperson for the Khafre Project, said: “[This] groundbreaking study has redefined the boundaries of satellite data analysis and archaeological exploration.”
Zahi Hawass said in his statement: “Such claims are merely attempts to undermine the grandeur of ancient Egyptian civilization. However, these attempts are futile, and such baseless rumors will ultimately be consigned to the dustbin of history.”
What Happens Next
It remains to be seen whether Donaldson will return to explore the pyramids further.
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