Why Is There A Mysterious White Pyramid In Arizona?

And then, of course, there’s the glorious, great white pyramid known as Hunt’s Tomb.

The white pyramid of Arizona

In Papago Park, the desert park spanning the cities of Phoenix and Tempe, Arizona, there’s a pyramid. It’s not huge – only 20 feet across at its base and 20 feet high, or 6.1 by 6.1 by 6.1 meters for those working in metric. That’s the equivalent of lopping off the top 3 percent of the Great Pyramid of Giza and moving it over to the Grand Canyon state; you could fit about 30 into a hot air balloon, assuming you were careful with the pointy bits; it would take a little less than seven cement mixers’ worth of cement to construct it.

Although, actually, it took a darn sight less than that. The pyramid is indeed made from concrete – the gleaming white appearance comes from ceramic tile placed on top, much like the dazzling limestone that once graced the sides of its Gizan ancestor – but it’s hollow. 

Why? Because, like the pyramids that inspired it, it’s a tomb. 

“The pyramid-shaped tomb of Arizona Governor George Wiley Paul Hunt stands at the peak of a great butte in the Salt River Valley,” notes Salt River Stories, an Arizona State University project promoting local history around Phoenix. “The tomb stands at a high point in Papago Park, a site selected by the Governor, and offers a grand view of the once empty valley.”

“Helen Duett Ellison Hunt, wife of Governor Hunt […] passed away in 1931 and became the first person to be buried in the tomb on April 4, 1933,” it says. “Governor Hunt joined his wife on December 24, 1934. In total, seven people are buried in Hunt’s Tomb; the Governor and Mrs. Hunt, Mrs. Hunt’s sister and their parents, and the Hunts’ daughter and her husband.”

While the exact inspiration for the tomb is unknown, it was built at a time when Egypt was all the rage. The tomb of Tutankhamen had been discovered less than a decade beforehand, and the aesthetic found its way into myriad creations of the period.

Unfortunately, its smooth white façade and role as a monument to the family of the local ruler weren’t the only qualities Hunt’s Tomb shared with its ancient predecessors. Between its construction and its acceptance to the National Park Service’s Register of Historic Places in 2008, it was regularly vandalized and used as target practice – and, as is the way with these things, robbed of its more notable riches (in this case, a bronze commemorative plaque at the door).  

Pharaohs in the Southwest

Hunt’s Tomb isn’t the only pyramid in the state, weirdly. Charles Debrille Poston, known variously as the “father of Arizona” and “that weirdo” – his contemporaries’ words, not ours; they were perturbed by his apparent adherence to Zoroastrianism rather than Christianity – is interred in a similarly geometric tomb. The Hi Jolly Monument in Quartzsite marks the resting place of Hadji Ali – originally from Syria, the locals mangled his name into “Hi Jolly”, and it stuck.

There’s even a couple of upended pyramids here and there: the Tempe Municipal Building and Pyramid on Central are both examples of the shape, albeit improbably balanced ones.

What’s with the apparent Egypt-mania in the southwest US? Well, if you believe the rumors, it’s totally sensible. Arizona, you see, was a favored destination of the Ancient Egyptians.

“I lead about four guided tours a week in the Grand [Canyon],” Haley Johnson, President of the Grand Canyon Historical Society, told the Durango Telegraph in 2023. “I’ll get a question (about the Egyptian civilization) on at least one of those.”

Why? Because, for more than a century now, claims have circulated about mummies, hieroglyphs, and gold and copper relics being found within caves in the Grand Canyon. It was an expedition sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution, so the story goes, and carried out by two men named S.A. Jordan and G.E. Kinkaid – and it uncovered, according to a news report of the time, “discoveries which almost conclusively prove that the race which inhabited this mysterious cavern, hewn in solid rock by human hands, was of oriental origin, possibly from Egypt, tracing back to Ramses.”

While the Smithsonian has long sought to downplay the discovery, the public has understandably been enamored with it – especially after the 1990s, when pseudoscience enthusiast David Hatcher Childress published his book Cities of North and Central America, which included the claim. 

There’s just one tiny problem: it’s all a huge hoax.

The Ancient Egyptian connection

Pretty obviously, the Ancient Egyptians did not have a secret hideout inside the Grand Canyon. Yes, yes, we’re always finding evidence that ancient peoples were smarter than we give them credit for, but “if there was some massive influx of Egyptian rulers and laborers, wouldn’t the Indigenous tribes know?” Johnson pointed out to Discover Magazine in 2023. “Wouldn’t their oral histories, pictographs and petroglyph panels, that dot the landscape like freckles, depict this sort of world-changing event?”

“But what about the news story?” you might ask. “It was written with quotes from Kinkaid himself!”

Well, there’s an easy answer to that: it was all made up, and Kinkaid never existed. At least, that’s what seems to be the case – the Smithsonian has never found any record of either him or his comrade Jordan, let alone any expeditions to unusually Egyptian caves in the Grand Canyon.

There’s a good reason for that, and it’s yet another reason that no Ancient Egyptians have been hiding out in the Canyon: “it would have been impossible to haul all those supposed ‘artifacts’ into such a remote and inaccessible cave without a helicopter,” Johnson noted. “Even a helicopter wouldn’t be able to access many of the Grand Canyon’s caves directly due to the nature of the impassible cliffs.”

Arizona has many spiritual connections to Ancient Egypt: the Grand Canyon contains both Isis Temple and Cheops Pyramid; their capital cities both invoke the myth of the Phoenix; and, of course, there are the multiple pyramids dotting both landscapes.

But as for the ancient remains in the Grand Canyon? In that case, denial really is just a river in Egypt.