No, the CIA Did Not Secretly Discover the Hall of Records Under the Sphinx in 1950

​More than a quarter-century ago, the CIA released a 1952 archival document listing archived photographs taken in 1950. According to the heavily redacted 10-page document, a couple whose names were withheld—but were certainly anthropologist and Afghanistan scholar Louis Dupree and his first wife, Annie Dupree—took photos during a trip to Afghanistan between July and December 1952.
 
The agency’s primary interest was in the Afghan photos, but the roles of film, which were loaned to the agency and then returned, also included some exposures from a stop-over in Lebanon and Egypt on route. Photos taken of the Sphinx caused a stir online yesterday when social media gadflies like Jimmy Corsetti suggested they proved the CIA had evidence of the supposed Hall of Records under the Sphinx.

Declassified CIA Files from 1952 discussing an inventory of photographs of Egypt, also includes:

“Temple under Sphinx; July ‘50”

But of course, it’s meaningless. Rest assured, there’s absolutely nothing to see here…□ pic.twitter.com/BukbiB3e60

— Jimmy Corsetti (@BrightInsight6) May 11, 2026

​As most of you know, the Hall of Records myth derives from Classical ideas, recorded in Pliny (Natural History 36.17) that the Egyptians claimed the Sphinx was hollow and housed the tomb of King Harmaïs or Armais. Travelers in the 1700s reported that the Egyptians spoke of “apartments beneath” the Sphinx, which became secret tunnels filled with scientific treasures among nineteenth-century pyramid speculators, and then achieved their final for as the Hall of Records in the works of the Rosicrucians by 1936—as I outlined in a 2016 blog post.
 
The CIA records, however, do not describe the Hall of Records. The document lists these photos:

13: Tourist at Pyramids; July ’50
14: Sphinx, July ’50
15: Temple under Sphinx; July ’50
16: Ruins near Sphinx, July ’50
17. Temple of Cheops (?), next to Pyramids; July ’50

​The “Temple under Sphinx” is not the Hall of Records as Corsetti and other implied. As should be obvious from the context, a tourist is unlikely to have wandered into a secret Atlantean hall to take a single photo.
 
Instead, the context makes plain that this refers to the Sphinx Temple, which is located on lower ground than the Sphinx itself. When one takes a photo of it from the front, it does indeed appear to be “under” the Sphinx in the composition of the photo, for the Sphinx would loom over it. You can see this for yourself in this photo of the Sphinx temple appearing as though under the Sphinx from around 1939 in the Library of Congress:

G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

The other titles help to clarify this. The “Ruins near Sphinx” are likely either the Khafre Valley Temple next to the Sphinx Temple, or else a second view of the more ruined Sphinx Temple. The “Temple of Cheops” may refer to the Mortuary Temple of Khufu, though this is not quite “next” to the pyramids, though it is close by.
 
At any rate, the full context of the document makes plain that almost all the photos are simply standard tourist images. That goes for the “spinning mechanism at Baalbek, Lebanon” also listed in the file and sparking speculation about lost high technology. The Baalbek region is famous for its wool, and this almost certainly a photo of a device for spinning wool into yarn.
 
This little flap over a long-public document came only days after the Department of Defense released the first batch of UFO files promised by President Trump. The UFO files included thousands of pages of previously released FBI documents, with some new material and the redactions from their original release removed. This, for instance, allowed us to see the unredacted correspondence and investigative files related to Richard Shaver of Shaver Mystery fame and Ray Palmer of Amazing Stories when the FBI investigated them for inventing the myth that flying saucers were alien craft.
 
It was also interesting to see in the files occasional references to ancient astronauts. For instance, what appears to be an Army briefing from 1950 provides an early example of connecting Ezekiel’s vision with a flying saucer, and it concludes with an insightful analysis of UFO hysteria:

The continued reporting of aerial phenomena must then be attributed to a mass hysteria caused by the present tenseness in the international situation; the public belief in the ability of science to accomplish miracles; and to statements in the press by “name” individuals hinting at the existence of some new weapon. Such statements, of the type attributed to [Eastern Airlines president and legendary flying ace Eddie] Rickenbacker, often solicited in the most sensational form by news reporters in order to make a good story, make people watch the sky, and any object they cannot immediately recognize is called a “flying saucer.” This helps to maintain the “chain reaction” of such reports.

​A 1952 Air Force briefing delivered the FBI in the wake of the infamous Washington, D.C. UFO sightings found Air Force Commander Randall Boyd, of the Current Intelligence Branch, stating that at that early date the Air Force researched historical sightings going back centuries: “He advised that Air Force research has indicated that the sightings of flying saucers goes back several centuries and that the number of sightings reported varies with the amount of publicity.”  
 
This is a bit more expansive than the conclusions Edward Ruppelt gave to a panel of experts hearing UFO evidence for the National Security Council a few months later, in January 1953, as reported in his 1956 book:

The next topic I covered in my briefing was a question that came up quite frequently in discussions of the UFO: Did UFO reports actually start in 1947? We had spent a great deal of time trying to resolve this question. Old newspaper files, journals, and books that we found in the Library of Congress contained many reports of odd things being seen in the sky as far back as the Biblical times. The old Negro spiritual says, “Ezekiel saw a wheel ’way up in the middle of the air.” We couldn’t substantiate Ezekiel’s sighting because many of the very old reports of odd things observed in the sky could be explained as natural phenomena that weren't fully understood in those days.
 
The first documented reports of sightings similar to the UFO sightings as we know them today appeared in the newspapers of 1896. In fact, the series of sightings that occurred in that year and the next had many points of similarity with the reports of today.

​It does make one wonder what changed in the few months between Boyd’s briefing and Ruppelt’s, unless it is the difference between the excitement of preliminary research and the more sober reflection after analysis.
 
My favorite parts of the newly posted versions of the FBI files are the handwritten letters everyday Americans sent the FBI in the wake of the 1952 flap with their bizarre UFO theories, which ranged from Nazi wonder-weapons, to Communist holograms, to byproducts of TV transmission “rays.” Some have to be seen to be believed. I’ve posted a number of them on my X feed, but I strongly recommend checking them out for yourself in the FBI files.