Joe Rogan Pyramid Claims Trashed by Archeologist
Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content.
Zahi Hawass, a prominent Egyptologist and former Egyptian minister of antiquities, has hit out at Joe Rogan over claims about the Egyptian pyramids during an interview with The New York Post, following his own appearance on Rogan's podcast.
Newsweek has reached out to Hawass via an online contact form and to a representative for Rogan via email for comment.
A general view of The Pyramids and Sphinx on June 19, 2025 in Giza, Egypt.
A general view of The Pyramids and Sphinx on June 19, 2025 in Giza, Egypt.The Context
The two-hour episode of Joe Rogan's podcast on ancient Egypt aired on May 14 and has also been viewed by over a million people on YouTube.
Hawass cited detailed archaeological evidence supporting the view that massive monuments such as the Great Pyramid of Giza were built by ancient Egyptians thousands of years ago and rejected theories that others—for instance, aliens—could have built them.
Rogan later called Hawass a "closed-minded fellow that's been in charge of gatekeeping all of the knowledge." He added that the episode "might have been the worst podcast I've ever done, but maybe a good one too."
What To Know
On Thursday, Hawass told the New York Post, :" It was the worst interview he ever did in his life. Well, I'm telling you this. I want you to print this. It was the worst interview I've ever done in my life."
He added that Rogan "wouldn't listen to the evidence I was giving him!" A week after Hawass' appearance on his show, Rogan mocked Hawass and weighed in again on skeptical theories over who built the pyramids.
When asked about being willing to consider "aliens as co-architects", Hawass told the Post :"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. But you have someone like Joe Rogan."
Hawass, who has been on a lecture tour across the U.S., which has drawn large crowds, said that Rogan was talking about the research from the Khafre project, which used Synthetic Aperture Radar tomography, and suggested the presence of massive vertical shafts beneath the Khafre pyramid.
Hawass has repeatedly dismissed the research that said that there was an underground city beneath the Pyramids of Giza as "fake news."
In March, a group of Italian researchers who were looking into the Giza necropolis, said that they had discovered what they called "vertical cylinders," 2,000 feet below ground. These findings were made public through a scientific paper and have been widely shared online. The study had not been peer-reviewed.
Hawass told the New York Post: "When you do an interview with a person, you expect this person to do their homework. When I talked to Piers Morgan, he did his homework. Joe Rogan did not do his homework."
What People Are Saying
Zahi Hawass previously told Newsweek: "The man 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."
Joe Rogan mockingly told Aaron Rodgers on The Joe Rogan Experience episode of May 21: "He's discovered everything, basically. He's the best."
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