New @joerogan Joe Rogan Experience #2374 - Ben van Kerkwyk Hidden beneath Egypt's sands lies a labyrinth described by antiquity as larger and grander than the pyramids. Ben van Kerkwyk recounts a central atrium spanning tens of meters, at its center a long, metallic 40-meter object whose nature remains uncertain. Ancient writers, from Herodotus to Diodorus Siculus and Pliny the Elder, claimed the labyrinth housed thousands of rooms and vast courts, surpassed in labor by no other structure. Petri later reported a ruined Roman town at the surface, and modern crews at the site of Hara say underground walls and chambers lie beneath a water table around five meters. Between 2008 and the 2010s, the Matahar expedition, in collaboration with the Supreme Council of Antiquities and other institutes, used ground-penetrating radar, geomagnetism, low-frequency seismic tomography, and electrical resistivity to image the labyrinth. They found a dense maze of granite walls and wide corridors, extending at least two sectors with walls hundreds of meters across. The survey shows a water table about 5 meters below the surface; deeper levels may be drier. The labyrinth is said to span about 100 meters by 150 meters, with a large central atrium connecting multiple levels, and the bottom layers appear less waterlogged, potentially free of groundwater. Van Kerkwyk also highlights the pre-dynastic precision stone vessels, which modern scanning and geometry studies suggest were produced with extraordinary accuracy, including near-zero tolerance for flatness and circularity. Tubular drill marks appear on some pieces, while copper traces are conspicuously absent in tested fragments. In one set of analyses, titanium and other alloys appeared in tiny fragments, prompting speculation about exotic tool materials. Max Zamalov's SEM work raised the possibility of nuclear machining and even titanium usage in fabrication, though he emphasizes that more testing is needed. The Vase Scan project has since brought dozens of vessels into museum collections for scanning and verification. The conversation shifts to politics and gatekeeping in archaeology, with examples of data suppression around Matahar and other expeditions and tensions with Zahi Hawass and Egyptian authorities. The discussion links independent scanning approaches—space-based, muon, and radar—to claims about ancient technologies, star glyphs and stargates, notably at Dendera, where glyphs are interpreted as Stargate imagery. Van Kerkwyk argues that the labyrinth could be the century's biggest archaeological find if verified, and he advocates open investigation rather than premature conclusions. The dialogue probes civilization's oscillation between rise and fall, and whether ancient mastery predates dynastic Egypt. transcripted.ai/episode/joerog…