An Exclusive Interview with Andrew Collins

The Egyptian Underworld, Edgar Cayce’s Hall of Records, and the star system of Cygnus

By Brent Raynes

ANDREW COLLINS is an acclaimed British science and history writer. The author of such brilliant and scholarly works as From the Ashes of Angels, Gods of Eden, Gateway to Atlantis, and The Cygnus Mystery, his newly released Beneath the Pyramids is a bombshell of a volume that describes in great detail his earthshaking discovery of a cave entrance into a massive underground cave system beneath Egypt’s Giza plateau. The existence of an Egyptian Underworld is the stuff of ancient Egyptian legends and myths, and the location of Edgar Cayce’s psychic impressions of an ancient “Hall of Records.”

For the latest information and updates on Andrew’s ongoing investigations and research, readers are invited to visit his website: www.andrewcollins.com. You can also subscribe for news updates as well.

Brent Raynes: In your new book, that just came out, entitled Beneath the Pyramids, this really came about because of the research of a couple of gentlemen that was done many years ago and then was forgotten about and that you rediscovered. Could you kind of bring us up-to-date on this?

Andrew Collins: Well in 1817, the British explorer and diplomat Henry Salt wrote in his memoirs that he and Italian explorer Giovanni Caviglia entered into catacombs at Giza, west of the Great Pyramid, and traversed them for a distance of several hundred yards before entering a spacious chamber that connected with three others, from which went various labyrinthine passages. One of these passages Caviglia later explored for a distance of 300 feet further. Now this was mentioned in his memoirs but these were never published until 2007.

Prior to this publication, I had been focusing in on a particular area of the plateau as a possible entrance into Giza’s legendary cave underworld. Now this was a particular tomb which is not recorded other than in two, possibly three rough plans that were done between 1939 and 1942. The site also seems to have been entered in 1837 by a British explorer named Colonel Howard Vyse and a British engineer John Shae Perring. Now what we know is that Vyse and Perring had removed from here the remains of bird mummies, and this is mentioned in Vyse’s diary for one day in May, 1837. I had taken an interest in this site because of the fact that bird mummies were found here, associating it perhaps with the cult of the underworld god Sokar, a falcon-headed god, who was said to be guardian of the Giza necropolis and also the realm of the underworld, known as Rostau. This was also a name of Giza in ancient times. Giza was known as Rostau, which means the “mouth of the passages”.

We had investigated this place in January 2007, before the publication of Salt’s memoirs, believing that it might be the entrance to a cave underworld. But we didn’t find anything specific, and came away from there (this was myself and my wife Sue) trying to figure out why this site might have been so important. However, after this time, we found that it featured into quite basic geometry involving the three pyramids and the Sphinx monument and almost sort of gave us a spot which suggested that this site was actually important, that this spot was very close to there. In other words, the geometry seemed to focus in on this site. There was no reason for this. Plus the fact that I had been looking for an astronomical alignment in connection with Giza and its pyramids which had featured the constellation of Cygnus, known as the Northern Cross. And in this, the three wing stars, the three main stars that make up the wings of this celestial bird, seem to overlay the three pyramids near perfectly and match their geological positions.

However, using this same criteria, it meant that Cygnus’s brightest star, which was Deneb, had no obvious monument on the ground to mark it. It had been suggested to me that maybe that was important in itself and that perhaps it marked the entrance into Giza’s cave underworld. Well, this spot was very close to this tomb, which, by the way, we ended up calling the Tomb of the Birds, simply because there was no other designation that we had come across for it at that time and obviously for the fact that bird mummies had actually been found there.

Then what happened was that Salt and Caviglia’s memoirs were published and my colleague Nigel Skinner-Simpson, an Egyptological researcher, immediately obtained a copy of the memoirs and read them and found Salt’s account of him going into these catacombs with Caviglia and very studiously worked out the back route that the two men had taken to actually arrive at this particular site on the plateau, which was to the west of the Great Pyramid, and realized that the entrance must have been in the vicinity of the Tomb of the Birds.

Now this obviously greatly excited me because I had already considered that this was the location of the entrance. So we sought the sponsorship of the A.R.E. (Association for Research and Enlightenment), the research wing of the Edgar Cayce Foundation. They said that they would help sponsor an expedition to go out there, and in March 2008 myself, Nigel Skinner-Simpson, and my wife Sue went there, as tourists, and were able to go back to this tomb, which has been greatly overlooked really because it is in an area of the plateau that people just don’t go under any normal circumstance.

We went in there looking for this cave entrance. We couldn’t find anything to start with. We were just about to go and we found in the rear of the tomb, which is fairly simple in design, a crack, within a walled up hole. In other words, it had been breached. This hole in this wall had been covered in modern stone, with a small bridge in it which I had not come across before.

Brent Raynes: So you had to remove the stones?

Andrew Collins: No. We didn’t touch anything. It was actually open. All we had to do was crawl through it and on the other side of it was a precipice that overlooked a large cave chamber, a natural cave chamber which was probably about 40 feet by 40 feet square. Now I say square but it was natural in origin, though here and there it had been enhanced to try and make it more rectangular in appearance, and the only way that you could reach the base of this chamber, which was a lot deeper than the actual floor of the tomb itself, was to scramble down large quantities of rock debris that had fallen from the ceiling. Quite clearly the whole thing looked very dangerous, plus there were bats flying out of this small hole showing that the site was also the location of a bat colony. But despite this, we decided to investigate and went into the cave which led into various other cave compartments, as well as a low, southerly running cave tunnel from which went various other minor compartments and short tunnels, and we continued until eventually, on this particular occasion, we stopped and didn’t go any further.

But on three subsequent visits, myself and Sue, while Nigel remained in the tomb, penetrated deeper and deeper into the cave tunnel, eventually reaching a distance of around 100 yards, which is a conservative estimate. We probably went further than that. We never reached the end, and quite clearly this is where Salt and Caviglia had traveled several hundred yards before entering chambers. They themselves never reached the end of it, so quite clearly we were dealing with a cave system that was vast and stretched beneath the plateau in the direction of the main pyramid field.

Brent Raynes: In your book, there is so much research that went into this and then you did your on-site investigation and it was a very dangerous kind of situation too because you were going in and it was so very dark.

Andrew Collins: That is something that needs to be emphasized about caves. They are pitch black inside and we only had a small flashlight to use while in there, which barely illuminated the walls that we were passing by. The ceiling was about 15 feet from the rock debris on the ground to the top of the ceiling. So in other words, it’s quite difficult to see where you’re going. The only way that we could tell what was going on was to use camera flashes, which obviously recorded exactly what was visible from any particular point, plus I was using a camcorder, which I was also able to film inside using the low light switch.

We really were in a very dangerous place where we could easily have misjudged and fallen down a pit. There were very deep holes in the ground. It wasn’t a flat cave tunnel. The floor was almost like V-shaped and the rock debris was piled on top and it wedged in so that at any particular point you could put your feet suddenly down six feet, or something like that.

Brent Raynes: Right. You had to go slowly and feel your way.

Andrew Collins: That’s right. Exactly.

It’s important to mention also that the progression was extremely slow. It probably took us 20-25 minutes to get the 100 yards or so that we reached eventually, plus obviously it would take the same amount of time to get back out safely. So the journeys were nothing less than 45 minutes or more each. Sometimes even longer, depending on what we were doing in there.

Brent Raynes: Right, and you had to cover yourself completely head to toe because of the bats.

Andrew Collins: Well it wasn’t just that. We also identified a species of spider in there called white widow. White widow’s are venomous and can kill small children or the elderly, and obviously anybody else bitten by them is going to need hospitalization immediately. So we obviously had to cover up our skin completely in the final visits because we realized that we didn’t want to touch any spiders.

Brent Raynes: And I think it was the last time, when you had gone the farthest, you were also concerned because Sue had heard something.

Andrew Collins: That’s right. We had reached our final compartment which suddenly sort of shrinks down at the end of it into a stunt chute that you have to crawl through and Sue had started to crawl through this and distinctly heard the sound of an animal or a creature and this was in a compartment that was beyond it, to the left, and I suggested to her that we shouldn’t go any further.

But what we didn’t realize is that we were also suffering, by this time, from the first symptoms of oxygen starvation, which is a big problem inside caves. Cavers will tell you all about foul air or bad air, which is the increase of carbon dioxide and the decrease of oxygen levels. Obviously it’s something that you’re supposed to check for very carefully, at regular intervals. Well, we never had any professional equipment so we couldn’t check using instrumentation. You’re supposed to check using a lighter, which you can flick on, and depending on the height of the flame will tell you just how much oxygen is down there. We both started getting these feelings of wanting to sit down and just stay there, almost as if we just didn’t want to go. There was a weird sense of euphoria coming with it, and only afterwards did I check and find that this is exactly the first symptoms of oxygen starvation, and if we had stayed there any longer it could have been quite a problem for us.

Brent Raynes: Yes. Very, very scary.

So now that you’ve done this, I know that you let the Egyptian authorities, and in particular Dr. Zahi Hawass, know about this find, and so now you’re just kind of waiting for maybe further response.

What happened? Can you bring us up-to-date with that?

Andrew Collins: First of all, as far as Dr. Hawass is concerned, there is a stalemate. He has made public his opinion that the caves do not exist and that we simply got confused inside a tomb and thought that its 35 meters distance was much more than what it actually is. Now in all honestly, this is complete nonsense. We have literally hundreds of photographs of the caves themselves, which have been examined by well known geologists who have confirmed to us that we had entered into natural caves, the first ever discovered at Giza. Secondly, and I double checked, triple checked and quadruple checked exactly what distance that we had actually achieved, and I’m happy myself to say that my estimate of 100 yards is correct. It may well be that we traveled further, but I’m just giving a conservative estimate, just in case we have exaggerated it in any way. My earlier estimate was that we had traveled a lot further, but that remains to be seen.

As long as Dr. Hawass denies the existence of the caves, nothing more can be done. He obviously will not consent to any further exploration of them because he says they don’t exist. He will not agree to any kind of any promotion or publicity surrounding the caves because they do not exist and this is a shame because we are now pretty certain that we have evidence from satellite radio imagery that not only show the extent of the cave that we have traveled so far, but also that they continue on and curve around right beneath the second pyramid, the one that was constructed probably around 2,500 B.C. for the Pharoah Khafre, also known as Chephren in Greek.

This is quite an extraordinary discovery. The reason that I say that is because the second pyramid was said to mark the location of the cave tomb Hermes Trismegistus. He was said to be the founder of all knowledge and wisdom and writing in Greco-Egyptian religion and mythology. It was said that he was buried with the key to understanding his philosophy, which is known as hermetica, actually inscribed on the so-called Emerald Tablet. This was said to be buried with him in his tomb. So, if it is correct that his cave tomb is beneath the second pyramid, then there is a possibility that our cave system leads directly to the tomb of Hermes.

This is very interesting from the point of view of the Hall of Records as well because Edgar Cayce stated that the Hall of Records contained 32 tables of stone recording the lives of people who existed in an earlier civilization in Egypt around 10,000 or 11,000 B.C. I cannot confirm whether Edgar Cayce’s statements are correct, but I do think that he was getting on to the idea of the tomb of Hermes, which he refers to as the Hall of Records. But this could well be that this is the entrance into the tunnel system that will take us to the Hall of Records, but we have even more confirmation that there are underground chambers awaiting discovery beneath the second pyramid because in 1977 a scientific expedition jointly by the SRI (Stanford Research Institute) in association with the Ain Shams University of Cairo, under the leadership of an American named Lambert T. Dolphin, detected deep chambers beneath the second pyramid during their work on the plateau. This I believe it very likely was where Salt and Caviglia actually ended up beneath the second pyramid in these very chambers that were detected by the SRI and Ain Shams University back in 1977. They were using ground penetrating radar.

Brent Raynes: I was interested when reading your book to see the illustration that Edgar Cayce had long ago drawn out a sketch showing a pyramid and a well, that pretty much paralleled your discovery of a Moslem well there.

Andrew Collins: Yes, absolutely. Edgar Cayce, before he even began the readings, when he was still a youth, had this recurring dream of a well with three palm trees around it. There was no specific indication as to where this was, but in later years he started seeing this place. In one specific reading from 1924 (unfortunately it doesn’t recall which one) he saw the well and palm trees again in association with other abstract symbols, including a triangle, which was later interpreted as the Great Pyramid. This was connected with Cayce’s supposed Egyptian life as the priest Ra-Ta around ten to eleven thousand B.C. The well was either interpreted by Cayce or his followers as connected with Cayce’s Persian life.

Now the year after 1924, when he saw the well, the palm trees and the triangle that was later interpreted as the Great Pyramid, he started to receive through the readings, for the first time, information about the Sphinx and the Hall of Records. In fact, they both came through in the same sitting. I don’t remember exactly what month it was, but it was in 1925. So within just a year of this image coming back into his head, this one he had repeatedly seen in dreams during his youth, he began picking up about the Sphinx and something beneath the Sphinx. So what I propose in the book is that the well is almost certainly the one just to the south of the Sphinx, just a few hundred yards away, and this is indeed the exact perspective that the well and palm trees has been drawn in later pictures that depict it in connection with the Great Pyramid. I mean, the relationship and the position, is almost remarkable.

It could be just a coincidence, but I think that there is a good chance that Edgar Cayce was picking up information about the Hall of Records and Giza’s cave underworld, even before the readings began.

Brent Raynes: He had so many remarkable insights. There is nothing that hardly surprises me anymore.

Andrew Collins: Well indeed. I mean the story was that he could put a book beneath his pillow at night, without reading it of course, and the following morning would somehow have absorbed the contents and could recite them back to people. So if he could have done that then it certainly suggests that he could have tapped into some kind of what he himself described as the Akashic Records, information that he could draw from, almost like a pool of knowledge, a universal pool of knowledge which went back for tens of thousands of years of human history.

Brent Raynes: His information on archeology, migration patterns as Greg and Lora Little found out, and medical things too have been so accurate. Way above what should have been.

Andrew Collins: Absolutely. Particularly in the medical area, and his readings continue to be confirmed by the science of alternative medicine.

Brent Raynes: I know that you’ve met with Dr. Hawass about this and I know that you’ve shown him the pictures and he did send some people out to the Tomb of the Birds to look at it, but apparently they didn’t really find what they were supposed to have found.

Andrew Collins: I believe that they simply missed the entrance into the cave system. They came back and reported what they had genuinely seen to Zahi Hawass and he took their word for it and did not go and check himself. So with this he dismissed our discovery.

Brent Raynes: Right. So hopefully, down the road, he’ll re-examine this and have someone else take a look or maybe he’ll personally visit that area since he is right there to begin with and resolve this, and then you’ll be able to go back and pursue this further.

Andrew Collins: Yes. It’s our intention to work with Dr. Hawass and the Egyptian authorities to fully investigate the extent of the caves and what exists at the end of them, whether it’s the Tomb of Hermes, the Hall of Records, or indeed some kind of womb chamber of creation, as I’ve suggested in Beneath the Pyramids.

Brent Raynes: Your book came in the mail to me about three days before this interview. It’s a very, very nice looking book, very well done, a real eye catching cover, and it’s full of photographs and illustrations. You’ve got quite a number of color photographs too taken of inside the caves. If anyone wants to find out what this is all about and look into it themselves then this is a wonderful place to start at.

Editor’s Note: For the latest information and updates on Andrew’s ongoing investigations and research, readers are invited to visit his website: www.andrewcollins.com