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By Marni Rose McFall
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Ben van Kerkwyk, who runs the YouTube channel UnchartedX, appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast The Joe Rogan Experience on Thursday, where he shared claims that there are labyrinths under the pyramids of Hawara in Egypt.
In an email shared with Newsweek, Kerkwyk said, "The labyrinth represents an incredible possibility for the most significant discovery of ancient structures in our time."
Why It Matters
In recent years, many theories and rumors about the pyramids have circulated online, with speculation spilling over into the mainstream, including theories that people other than the ancient Egyptians—or even aliens—could have built them.
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Earlier this year, a group of Italian researchers from the Khafre Project said they had discovered an underground complex or city under the pyramids—a claim that prominent Egyptologist Zahi Hawass has refuted as "fake news."
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What To Know
Rogan has previously spoken about the pyramids on his highly popular podcast.
In the latest episode, van Kerkwyk, who describes himself in his YouTube bio as a "longtime student and fan of history," shared his claims that there is a labyrinth underneath the pyramids. He spoke about these claims in a two-hour-long YouTube video, uploaded in August, which as of press time has been viewed over 1.5 million times.
In that video, titled, The Unknown Ancient Site Said to be 'Greater than the Pyramids?' Confirmed with Satellite scans!, Van Kerkwyk shared his claims that multi-level labyrinths exist under the pyramids.
Van Kerkwyk, who is an independent researcher, spoke about his claims and findings on Rogan's podcast.
"In my opinion, honestly, the labyrinth is the biggest archaeological discovery of the millennium. When we get into what that structure is and how big it is and the way it's reported in antiquity, there's nothing bigger," he says in the episode.
Previous outlandish claims about ancient Egypt and the pyramids have been dismissed by experts. These include Hawass, a former Egyptian minister of antiquities, who previously appeared on Rogan's show. Both Hawass and Rogan have both spoken negatively about this appearance, describing it as the "worst" they have ever done.
Hawass has repeatedly dismissed the idea that there is an underground city beneath the pyramids of Giza as "fake news."
"If aliens built the pyramids, there would be something in the ground. I have been excavating in Egypt for decades, and I've found nothing to indicate anything but human activity," Hawass previously told The New York Post.
What People Are Saying
Ben van Kerkwyk, in an email shared with Newsweek, said: "The great Labyrinth of Egypt has been visited and documented extensively over several centuries by well-known historians and geographers in antiquity, several of whom claimed it equals or surpasses the Great Pyramid the Giza Plateau in splendor.
"These accounts come from figures like Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, and Pliny the Elder, from both Greek and Roman civilizations, from the 5th Century BC to the 1st Century AD."
"In the 2010s, multiple emergent satellite-based scanning technologies further confirmed the extent and depth of the subterranean structures at Hawara, although the findings are as yet unverified by any exploration and exploration on the site.
"These very different technologies align with each other, confirm the previous findings from geophysical surveys, and match the descriptions left to us from the authors of antiquity. The labyrinth represents an incredible possibility for the most significant discovery of ancient structures in our time."
Joe Rogan, writing in a post on X after the episode aired: "This episode was really fun. Ben van Kerkwyk is an incredible reservoir of information on the mysteries of ancient Egypt, and after I saw his recent YouTube video on the insane labyrinths they've discovered there I had to have him on."
The description for the UnchartedX video The Unknown Ancient Site Said to be "Greater than the Pyramids?" reads in part: "From classical antiquity comes legends and stories of an Ancient Egyptian site so large and complex that it is said to exceed all the works of the ancient world, including the majestic pyramids of Egypt!"
Zahi Hawass previously told Newsweek: "[Rogan] clearly has an agenda aimed at denying that Egyptians built the pyramids. At the very least, that's nonsense. I didn't let him push that narrative—I responded with all the evidence. He produced a podcast about the pyramids featuring Zahi Hawass, but he didn't even read."
What's Next
Speculation about the pyramids is likely to continue online.
Update 9/7/25, 3:16 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with shared comment from Ben van Kerkwyk.
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