The chamber resembles a room of an ancient Egyptian pyramid with artifacts placed on shelves and the floor. The Bureau of Standards was consulted on the design of the Crypt and advised how artifacts should be stored. The crypt was deeded to the United States government, its heirs and assigns, to be held in trust for the people of the 82nd century. The project was financed by industrialists and philanthropists.

Peters supervised construction and served as the Crypt's archivist who would represent the current civilization. The stainless steel doorway was welded permanently closed after the oxygen had been removed and replaced with inert nitrogen. The walls are lined with plates of enamel, secured in place with pitch. It sits on a bedrock floor and has a stone roof 7 ft (2.1 m) thick. The swimming pool was modified into an airtight chamber, measuring 20 ft (6.1 m) long, 10 ft (3.0 m) high and 10 ft (3.0 m) wide, which was remodeled between 19.

The Crypt of Civilization was constructed in the swimming pool in the basement of the Phoebe Hearst Hall at Oglethorpe University. Jacobs calculated that 6,177 years had passed since the start of the Egyptian calendar and proposed the creation of a Crypt of Civilization to be opened in AD 8113 after another 6,177 years. By June 1940 they had collected all the items they thought represented human life on earth of the previous 6000 years. Peters and the project was started in August 1937. Jacobs sought the help of scientist Thomas K. In November 1936 an article was published describing the time capsule project. In 1935, he discussed this idea with the editor of Scientific American, Orson Munn, and he promised to use the magazine to publicize the project. Jacobs' vision was to make available to some civilization far in the future a kind of latter-day Egyptian style tomb of a complete cross section record of physical and visual items showing the life and traditions that people had developed to the time of the closing of the crypt. He determined that while the ancient items found gave some degree of life events from thousands of years ago there were no complete and accurate records on any single generation of how people lived.

The second was from rock inscriptions and tablets found in ancient Assyria. One being the items found in tombs of the Pharaohs of Egypt and the kings of Sumeria and Babylonia. He realized that practically all the accumulated knowledge we had of the civilization was based on two incomplete sources. Jacobs was engaged in research in the 1920s for one of his books when he was astounded by the meager amount of detailed information available about ancient Egyptian life. Thornwell Jacobs (1877–1956), President of Oglethorpe University from 1915 to 1944, is considered the father of modern time capsules by historian Paul Stephen Hudson. Oglethorpe University – location of the Crypt is in the basement

Crypt of the ancients