SECRET CHAMBERS REVEALED: The Foxification of the National Pornographic Society

A. PREVIEW

Gantenbrink gets the Shaft

A friend of mine, John Gordon, surveyor, Theosophist (he wrote an extremely interesting book on Egyptian mysteries called Khemmea) contacted me a while back asking if I would be in Egypt for this widely ballyhooed event.

Here is an updated, expanded version of our correspondence.

Gordon wrote:

Am off to Egypt with Robert (Bauval)and a couple of others on 10th September. Will you be there to witness the promised 'opening of the shafts' by robot on the 16th/17th? If it happens, it will be a bit of a jamboree with the world's press present.

jaw

No, I won't be. And if the opportunity arose, I'd turn it down flat.

Gordon

>If I were Hawass, I would do it informally and quietly before

> that date in order to make sure that there is something worth looking at,

> instead of a bunch of red faces. However, perhaps that is what he actually

> wants...

jaw

I'd bet on Zahi on this one. A friend of mine, Marshall Payn, formerly president of the Epigraphic Society, noted that the block sealing the shaft is (said to be) Tura Limestone. This is usually used as an EXTERIOR facing (or for some other special use). Marshall suggests that this represents the exterior face of the Gt. Pyramid at an earlier (but temporarily complete) stage of construction.

I like this scenario better than any other I've heard. If accurate, there will be nothing concealed behind that obstructing or sealing block except the core blocks of the final stage of construction. And you can bet that if they manage to get through or past the sealing block and there's nothing there, Bauval, you and everyone associated with 'New Age' heresies will be right in the cross hairs of the world's press. They/you will all be massacred.

If, on the other hand, the above scenario is incorrect and something significant is found,they'll then look (with predictable success!) for a way to ignore, marginalize or otherwise discredit all those who were excited by the initial discovery and who bravely went on record about finding something important behind the door and turned out to be right. The real victors will be relegated to the internet to celebrate as best they can. It's a lose/lose situation for us. I wouldn't touch it!

On the other hand, I have no personal use for Gantenbrink whatever. He builds a mean robot, that's certain, but the long vocational association has him thinking like one as well. That he should be cheated out of his rightful discovery by the National Pornographic* and excluded from the investigation (in much of the press, his name isn't even mentioned!!) is a gross injustice of course, but since it will wound only the Gantenbrink ego (sorely in need of a bit of ECT!), I can think of no reason to extend myself on his behalf, sign the petition that's been floating around complaining about the unfairness, or anything else; nor will I experience even a tremor of compassion. And if Nat Porn comes up empty, then they get what they deserve as well: no story to speak of, an unemployed robot, egg on their faces and large amounts of money spent for nothing. If Fox TV then ends up pulling off another 'Geraldo' that's the icing on the cake; another instance of the Divine Sense of Humor at work; for never has there been a network more deserving of failure. I. e. ; it's a win/win situation for me, as long as I'm not personally involved.  

Zahi wins either way as well. If there's nothing behind the block, he says, 'I told you so'. Which is the truth. And if there's something there he says, 'You see, we had open minds and we mounted this major expensive investigation and we found it. 'Which would also be the truth.

Still, I look forward to hearing the results of the brouhaha-- from my safe distance of course.

* Re: National Pornographic Magazine. Let's face it, this whole stodgy, hypocritical organization was an initial success solely because it was able to get away with printing (in the early decades of the 20th Century) graphic photos of tribal black girls with bare breasts (black girls didn't count as 'human' back then so they could get away with it). And, besides,it was all in the interests of 'science', right?. Adolescent boys in those bad old days couldn't wait for the day when the mailman brought the latest issue of Nat. Porn to the door, and they'd head straight for the bathroom.

But the magazine's chief attraction has now been successfully commandeered by Penthouse and Hustler, and so now Nat. Porn has no real raison d'etre and has to pretend it is actually interested in scholarship. But since it is incapable of original editorial thought, it restricts itself entirely to whatever orthodoxy declares safe.

I say: bring back the bare breasted black girls!! It's a far more attractive form of duplicity.

________________________________________________________________________

B. POSTVIEW

A month has gone by since this show was aired. Those who managed to squirm through to the end may have already forgotten it, the way one forgets a bad, long, convoluted, incoherent dream. I apologize if this stirs up unwelcome memories.

On the other hand many people on this list have asked my opinion on the matter. Not surprisingly, I have one. Robert Bauval has posted an exhaustive article in two parts on the show covering the complex set of events leading up to it, and an analysis of its contents and its implications.

To avoid repetition, I'll assume readers saw the show. If you didn't, you may want to read Bauval's account first. For the play-by-play recap. In this essay, I'll be concentrating more upon what was not in the show and the implications of those omissions.

Analysis:Given the Fox Network's motto ('No glitz, no gold. ') and the National Pornographic Society's obsession with academic respectability SECRET CHAMBERS REVEALED was a natural, even predictable outcome; the stillborn offspring of a grotesque experiment in media miscegenation. Or, to put it another way: squeeze an old, overweight ex-whore with social pretensions into a size 8, sequined miniskirt and this is what you get. (Interesting aside: my Egyptologist friend Daniel Kolos independently called up sexual imagery to describe the program. 'The show was the longest foreplay to look into a hole and had no climax. ')

Media-and-Egyptology cognoscenti, of course, expected nothing of value. But even hard-bitten realists were shocked by the sheer, unremitting awfulness of the program. The negative verdict in the volume of emails sent to me was unanimous. Yet several questions remained open.

1. Was this actually the worst program ever aired in the long, sordid history of network television in general and Fox television in particular?Or was the previous Fox Egypt show with Maury Povich and Suzy Somebody (purporting to be the live filming of the first opening of certain 'Lost Tombs') still worse?

Answer:No comment.

2. Was this truly, as the breathless commentary would have the audience believe, the first time the camera had actually penetrated the previously drilled hole?The Gantenbrink 'door' made of Tura limestone and fitted apparently with copper 'handles' (anyway, fittings of some sort) turned out to be a mere 3 inches thick or so. The new Gantenbrinkless robot had already explored this passage and had already drilled a hole through the 'door' -- better described as a plug. In other words, were the Fox and Nat. Porn crews, Dr. Hawass and all involved in the production also getting their first view of the world-behind-the-plug?Wow!

Answer. There is no way to know.

Only the inner circle knows. But this does not meanpeople do not have opinions; even strong opinions. (It's like those asinine CNN Polls that pretend to gauge public opinion on various issues but that actually have a psychological motivation; they're a ruse designed to con respondents into thinking they're both deeply knowledgeable andparticipating in crucial, democratic decision-making processes. E. g: Is the Universe at least 15 billion years old?. Yes or no. Is the global economy getting better or worse? Yes or no. If Saddam Hussein is captured should he be tortured to death on public television, or should he be beheaded and have his head impaled on a spike outside the White House as a signal to the world that we are a freedom-loving people seeking peace? Yes or no. Should the New York Jets fire coach Herman Edwards? Yes or no. Is Islam a satanic religion as claimed by our unelected President's good personal friends, Christian leaders Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and Franklin Graham? Yes or no).

In this case, the verdict was unanimous. Despite the incessant drumbeat -- two hours of club-footed attempts to build suspense-- not one single person was willing to believe the camera had not sneaked a prior peek. Even people willing to believe that the United States is a democracy and that Iraq poses an imminent threat to American security were not taken in by this. Nevertheless, the manner in which the scene was handled was peculiar. In my preview I wrote that I thought it likely (seconding the Marshall Payn hypothesis) the copper-fitted plug represented the exterior face of an earlier stage of the pyramid, and that behind it, there would be a regular core block representing the next and final stage of construction. In other words, there would be nothing of interest revealed.

This was not the case, not quite. Behind the thin, finely finished Tura limestone plug with its copper fittings there was a foot or so of empty space, and then another, roughly dressed limestone plug sealing off the little star shaft. This was hardly the mummy and golden funerary treasure of Khufu, not even the statue of Osiris some were predicting, but it wasn't nothing whatever. So, if the TV crew, robot operator and all concerned actually had had their sneak peek, why were they leaving themselves only a few minutes to deal with the real mystery posed by that inexplicable plug with still another plug behind it?

That mystery was compounded a few days later when it was reported that the robot had successfully negotiated the several dogleg angles of the previously unexplored northern shaft of the Queen's chamber and found it also blocked at its end by another Tura limestone plug with copper fittings or handles. (You may have seen this report if you were following the story. )

Now, to get to this point, we were all obliged to sit through an hour and fifty-five minutes of deliriously awful programming. (How often have you watched TV yearning for the commercial breaks?). But however excruciating the experience, there were points of significant interest for those watching very carefully.

For example, we saw reenactments of putative pyramid construction techniques.

Gangs of uncoordinated, flabby, shaven-headed extras in skirts were filmed slogging and flailing through the mud, hauling a small (perhaps half a ton), rough-cut block cradled in a sledge up a gently inclined ramp. (The editing was a joy to watch!Lord only knows what the actual raw footage looked like!)

A subliminal message was being sent --it wasn't actually stated because that would have given the game away. Yes, folks, this is how the pyramids were built!And the self-same method would obviously suffice to get seventy ton precisely honed granite blocks some 200 feet up a much steeper ramp where they were then gently wafted into place to form the roof of the so-called King's Chamber and the so-called relieving chambers on top of it. In other words, if a gang of men can haul a small block up a gentle inclined ramp, then hauling an exponentially bigger block up a much steeper ramp would require but a bigger gang of men. Perfectly logical. Right?

To put this into perspective: Let's say I decide to lift weights. I find I can press a hundred pounds. I work hard and after a year, I can press two hundred pounds. Well, by doubling my prowess each year, at the end of just five years I can press 1. 6 tons. Easy. And after another five years I can press more than fifty tons. Who can argue?The arithmetic is simple, flawless . . . and so the pyramids were built.

There was, at some point within the exercise, the obligatory, one-size-fits-all, generic sneer at New Age loonies who doubt the expertise of the experts on any matter whatsoever.

Then, since something had to fill up the hour and fifty-five minutes between the program's opening gong and terminating thud, we were shuttled to and fro between the extensive (utterly irrelevant) mummy fields of the Bahariya Oasis, the ostensible first opening of an Old Kingdom sarcophagus in the Workers Village to the east and south of the Giza Plateau, and Mark Lehner's ongoing excavation of the village itself.

This raised another question.

3. Background to the question. The opening of the sarcophagus hardly seemed the exercise in neurosurgical finesse that archeologists routinely claim for themselves. It was more like a beginner's class in demolition techniques: with a crowbar robustly applied to the mortar sealing the stone coffin. At a certain point the seal had been broken all around; the crowbar was inserted under the lid, and with a hefty thrust the lid was prised up. Tepid joke about 5000 year old germs escaping. Roll of drums. . . Voila!!and the camera revealed to a vast audience holding its collective breath . . . what may well have been the dullest exhumation in two centuries of Egyptology. An intact skeleton lying on its side with knees bent; no jewelry, no funerary urns or scarabs, no mummy wrappings (commoners weren't normally mummified in Old Kingdom times. Or maybe the tomb's occupant had been Overseer of the Palace Nudists?) no genies, no guardian cobras, no mummy's curse, nothing. Just that forlorn skeleton.

The question:Was this actually the first time the sarcophagus had been opened?

Answer:Who cares?

Discussion:Actually, as they were working to break the seal, it looked real enough to me. Others have claimed that's not very difficult to fake. But if they knew in advance that the find was that uninteresting, would they have hyped it so hard?Maybe.

Of equal intellectual significance were the segments devoted to Mark Lehner discoursing at length upon the Pharaonic butchers, bakers and candlestick makers of the Old Kingdom worker's village. Behind these discoveries lies an intriguing case history in abnormal academic psychology. (To make sense of it I'll have to digress into a brief recap of our Sphinx theory and Lehner's response to it, but I'll get back to the Fox/Nat. Porn show in due course. )

Lehner, as is well known, began his career in Egyptology as a young Edgar Cayce devotee. His aim, initially, was to use formal scholarship to prove Cayce right. But it did not take long before he found that the facts stubbornly declined to fit the Cayce shoe. By the late 1970's or thereabouts he had renounced his former beliefs though at least a few facts were beginning to surface that could have been used to support certain elements within the channeled Cayce scenario - specifically the water-weathering hypothesis (1979) for the Sphinx which, if acknowledged,would have lent a general broad credence to Cayce's much older chronology. But by this time, Lehner didn't want to know.

A decade passed. Then geologist Robert Schoch got behind the water weathering theory. Working with our seismographs we discovered what appears to be a substantial cavity/void/chamber under the left paw of the Sphinx-- which matched one of the best known and glamorous of the Cayce prophecies. He predicted the 'Hall of Records' would be found there, containing a detailed history of 'Atlantis'. Following our presentation at the Geological Society of America's Annual Meeting in San Diego CA (1991) the Sphinx controversy was ignited internationally. At this point, it could no longer be ignored and Lehner, along with a number of his colleagues, attempted to rebut the theory. He contended that the current 'flaking' taking place on the Sphinx and its enclosure walls is sufficient to explain the weathering. The flaking is supposed to be produced by ground water leaching up by capillary action into the higher strata of the bedrock.

This is a known geological process, but it does not apply here. To be brief (we've explained this at length elsewhere) flaking (exfoliation) does not and cannot explain how or why the rear enclosure wall and the western third of the wall to the south of the Sphinx (running east-west) are drastically more weathered than the eastern portion of that wall. Only vast quantities of water runoff (following the slope of the Plateau) pouring down over these portions of the walls -but not the eastern portion- in very ancient times when such climatic conditions prevailed can explain the dramatic disparity of the weathering.

The 'Lehner flakes' (they look like big stone potato chips) follow the already weathered undulating contours of the walls -- they do not and cannot create those contours.

This can be demonstrated conclusively. High up on the rear enclosure wall, cut into the already-deeply weathered surface, there is a series of three small shaft tombs. These date from the Late Kingdom (ca. 6th Century BC). The interiors of these tombs are effectively pristine. The cuts made by the masons chisels are perfectly preserved. However the entrances to the tombs are exposed to the elements, the same as the rest of the enclosure walls. There,the 'Lehner flakes" are plainly visible, following the contours of the strokes made by the masons chisels. After 2500 years of exposure, those chisel remarks are still plainly visible, just a bit blurry from the flaking. In other words, the flaking has done effectively no damage at all. The Sphinx, of course, is supposed to be another 2000 years older than these Late Kingdom tombs. But multiply effectively no damage by two and you get double effectively no damage. (The situation is a bit more complex than this but for present purposes the above will suffice). The most accessible and telling of those Late Kingdom shafts has been renamed 'Lehner's Tomb' for there the flaking theory lies buried.

Explanations tendered by other opponents have all been systematically dissected and discredited in like manner by Schoch and/or me. (See the archived Giza The (Half) Truth posts on my website >www. jawest. com<)The water-weathering theory remains intact. Therefore the Great Sphinx was not carved by Khafre in 2500 BC. But who carved it and when remains an open question. Meanwhile, the seismograph's evidence was dismissed as a natural 'karst' feature in the limestone. We think otherwise. There is a crude, extensive chamber cut into the bedrock just behind the rump of the Sphinx (probably by tomb robbers at some time in the past). There is no doubt about the existence of this chamber. On the seismograph, it shows up clearly. Whatever it is beneath the left paw of the Sphinx shows up with equal clarity. Assuming our seismograph was not 'channeling', it seems to have provided what looks like evidence for a chamber corresponding (at least in principle) to Cayce's 'Hall of Records'.

But Mark Lehner was unmoved. He may have begun his Egyptological career intending to spread the Cayce Gospel, but he seems to have suffered a severe personal unillumination on the road back from Damascus -or maybe it was the Mena House. Not only did he renounce his former affiliation but he converted to the Church of Progress, exhorting listeners at lectures to practice 'critical thinking' (by which he means thinking as he does and asking no questions) and passionately recommending scriptural readings from the Skeptical Inquirer (official publication of CSICOP -Committee for the Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. This debunking society is to the Church of Progress what the Holy Inquisition was to the Church of Rome. )

Beginning as an apprentice Paul, Lehner was transformed into a professional Saul, bent upon expunging Egyptological heresies, castigating heretics, laying down trails of academic red herrings designed to throw the jackals of the press off the scent of the real evidence ('Show me a pot shard!'), writing anti-alternative articles for major magazines, making TV appearances, designing spurious experiments purporting to prove how the pyramids were built and that the Sphinx really looks like Khafre even though it doesn't . . .

Remarkably, however, throughout the eighties, Lehner was carrying out admirable, meticulous archeological studies on the Giza Plateau that turned up crucial evidence flatly contradicting the tenets of his own newly chosen dogma. For example, he discovered that the weathering of the Sphinx was already complete by the time the first repair blocks were applied to its flanks -- effectively leaving it no time to weather if it had been carved (as claimed) by Khafre in 2500 BC. It was also Lehner who pointed out to me the two drastically different construction styles employed in the Khafre pyramid, leading to the conclusion that it, like the Valley Temple of the Sphinx was built in at least two stages. Yet, he seemed incapable of understanding, much less acknowledging the implications flowing inescapably from his own careful work. The transformation was complete. In his misnamed 1997 book THE COMPLETE PYRAMIDS (it should have been called THE INCOMPLETE PYRAMIDS) there is no hint of the controversies that have been swirling about these structures for two centuries. Everything is known, everything is solved, no breeze ruffles the still, calm surface of the academic frog pond.

With controversy put aside, Lehner evidently lost interest altogether, though the War on Heretics was proving demonstrably unsuccessful. Despite his own book, concerted propaganda campaigns and hatchet jobs in mainstream journals such as The New Yorker,National Pornographic Magazine,BBC's Horizon Programme, PBS and other cable television networks in the U. S. , alternative theories were as popular as ever. Our geology was now complemented by Bauval's Orion Correlation and other new developments in archeoastronomy, such as the megalithic stone circle in Nabta Playa, deep in the southern Sahara, west of Abu Simbel.

Just when he was most needed, Lehner rescued himself. His Sauline zeal had evaporated. His attention was now directed entirely toward excavating the worker's village recently discovered in the desert a few hundred yards south of the Sphinx. This, he claimed, was what archeology was really about: the lives and lifestyles of the common folk, the workers who (ostensibly) built the pyramids, not the Pharaohs who ordered them built, or how they were built, or why they were built, or when they were built -- which are not really questions to Egyptologists since they have answers to all of them even though there is no evidence whatsoever supporting any of those answers (except the 'when' and even that is hedged about with caveats).

Therefore, in two hours of prime time network television theoretically devoted to new explorations of the Great Pyramid, no such questions were raised. But we learned a lot from Mark Lehner about the lives of the workers. We learned they ate bread. Who'd've imagined that?We saw the mud brick remains of the ovens they used --everyone always wondered about those. And we were shown the pottery bread moulds they baked with, which raised an interesting question. Clay is much heavier than tin and cumbersome, too. If the New-Agers were right and the Egyptians were so advanced, then why didn't they use bread tins like everyone else in the civilized world, especially Teflon-coated non-stick bread tins? And then there was the incredible discovery of the fish bones. Mark Lehner must have felt the way Heinrich Schliemann felt when he finally found Troy. Fish bones!So the ancient Egyptian pyramid workers actually ate fish!How could they possibly have procured fish to eat?They were in the Western desert. The Nile was five miles away. There was no refrigeration, to say nothing of flash freezing. Was it possible that the builders of the Great Pyramid were able to figure out a way to transport highly perishable fish five full miles overland from the Nile to the workers village?And if so, how?Maybe on sledges over mud-slicked ramps?

If Cayce (along with most ancient societies in the world) was right about reincarnation and the Church of Progress wrong (as it is about most everything else of consequence-- down to and including newly discovered 'holes' in the previously sacred Second Law of Thermodynamics, the 'Big Bang', the Aether, and of course, the biggest whopper of all time, Darwinian Evolution - the only theory in the world less scientific than the Immaculate Conception*) then it's just possible that five thousand years from now Lehner will be back, reincarnated as an archeologist yet again, but this time maybe specializing in ancient baseball. At a certain point, finding the game too complex and the players too controversial, he will renounce his early interests. He'll decide, instead, that to understand baseball, what really counts are the lives and life styles of the hotdog vendors.

*Supplying references and supporting evidence to back up these sweeping generalizations is well beyond the scope of this review, but I wouldn't make the generalizations without the back-up material. I hope to delve into these matters in some future book length project. )

Given the momentous issues occupying most of SECRET CHAMBERS REVEALED it's not surprising that no time was left to explore the questions left unanswered by the camera penetrating through the copper-fitted limestone plug of the star shaft. In the event that a subsequent effort is made to penetrate the second, roughly dressed outer plug it's unlikely these questions will be asked then either. To understand why not it's essential to understand what drives archeology itself.

An aura of glamour hangs over this subject, with Harrison Ford forever playing Indiana Jones (neat bit of scripting, that -- with Hollywood it's never Bob or Jim or Joe Jones. That's understood. But where does 'Indiana' come from?This state has no direct or indirect association with adventure, archeological or otherwise. So why not New Jersey Jones, or Rhode Island Jones?)Archeology's not really all glamour of course; we all know that. On the contrary most of it tedious and quite devoid of any significance whatsoever, an exercise in idle curiosity (the same that killed the cat) about the past. Nevertheless, it's undeniable that spectacular discovery may lurk just around the corner:Tut's Tomb, Khufu's solar boat, the Ice Man in Switzerland, sunken Spanish galleons, red-headed mummies in plaid tartans in China, pyramids in the rain forests of the Yucatan. . . 'Hey' as they say in the ads for the New York State lottery, 'you never know. '

Behind this seductive Hollywood facade, and real life banality of day-to-day field archeology, a subtle program in Church of Progress disinformation is carried out. Writ large in the canon (albeit in invisible ink by some unidentified Church authority) is the command:Thou shalt learn what thou wilt about the past; thou shalt learn nothing from it.

Central to C. of P. atheology is the inviolable precept: our 21st Century represents the apogee of civilization on our planet. It follows inescapably, therefore, that there can be nothing (of consequence) known in the past that we do not know.

"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance--that principal is contempt prior to investigation. " Herbert Spencer,

This applies especially when apparent high science and/or technology are involved. On those many occasions where undeniable data (e. g. , the pyramids of Giza and Dahshur) suggest advanced knowledge the questions raised are ignored, denigrated or fudged away. Thus archeology and (in this case) Egyptology serve as support systems (masquerading as science) for upholding Church of Progress dogma. (Cf. THE[IN]COMPLETE PYRAMIDS). At a breakfast with Lehner some years back, he seemed truly upset by my calling (In SERPENT IN THE SKY) Egyptology 'dangerous', 'the intellectual equivalent of Agent Orange. ' However tame and boring it may appear on the surface (fish bones in the workers village), it is just that; mental herbicide, the ultimate synapse defoliant. If I may switch metaphors; a log jam in the river of truth leading back to the past.

Happily for the future of the human race, apart from archeologists, Egyptologists and proselytizing journalists (Science, Education and the Press are the Jesuits of the C. of P. ) the general public instinctively resists this academic chicanery, even if it is unable to recognize it for what it is. That is why there are dozens of knowledgeable, often technical, books, successfully exposing the ongoing sleight-of-mind -- though these are usually much less successful in explaining the intractable problems involved in turn, and all alternative theories are automatically tarred with the Von Danikin brush by academics. There remains, nonetheless,a vast audience for these works.

It's not my intention to add to the volume of literature; not here. Let's concentrate on the mysterious plug (now plugs) and those equally mysterious star shafts and the sequence of interesting, and possibly important questions raised by them. Had the Fox/Nat. Porn allegiance gone at the job with some measure of artistic competence and academic integrity a very different show might have resulted. But these are not traits associated with the respective players.

The pyramids, in fact all Egyptian tombs and temples, are executed in the service of a metaphysical doctrine, the quest for immortality. A corollary to the C. of P. conviction that everything they knew, we know, is the equally unquestioned assumption that this doctrine constitutes mere 'belief' .

We 'know'; they just 'believed' . . . and so we read in books devoted to ancient astronomy or religion the Egyptians 'believed' this or that, and these 'beliefs' were expressed in 'cults':there was a solar 'cult' and a stellar 'cult' and an Amon 'cult' and so on. In the Church of Progress dictionary a 'cult' may be defined as anybody else's belief system; for only we 'know'. (If, in a hundred years or so, a civilization manages to take root and flourish in the ruins of the shiny barbarism we call progress,enlightened scholars may well be talking - with good reason in this case- about our 21st Century 'cults' of science and economics).

So why not try a thought experiment, and address the mystery of the shafts and plugs starting from the opposite assumption:that the Egyptians had some very good reason for doing what they did; that perhaps, just perhaps, they actually knew (not just 'believed') things we, in our arrogance do not know? In all fairness, over the course of two centuries of Egyptology, at least a few Egyptologists of stature have entertained that possibility -- Champollion himself, of course, Heinrich Brugsch, Jean Capart, Francois Daumas, Alexandre Piankoff among them, and recently, following Schwaller de Lubicz, a sprinkling of closet 'symbolists'; a few erudite outsiders as well; Florence Nightingale, Gerald Massey . . . But their voices have been drowned out or marginalized by the triumphant Pedantry.

Yet our thought experiment is not arbitrary nor ornery nor frivolous. You don't have to be a good Christian, or religious at all to appreciate the wisdom of 'By their fruit ye shall know them. (Matt. 7,16,20). The 'soul' or essence of any civilization is best understood by looking at what it expends its creative faculties upon; how it expresses itself. With us it's missile defense systems, weapons of mass destruction, technology/manufacturing, shopping malls, Disneyland, Hollywood, advertising, television, frankenfoods*. Egypt expressed itself in those prodigious pyramids, magical tombs and resonating temples.

*I know, I know. . . The Church of Progress has its positive side. Even I would rather go to a 21st Century dentist than a 21st Dynasty dentist, but recognized for what it is, our Church of Progress does not present a classic optimist/pessimist, glass half empty/half full dilemma, but rather an Elephant and Rabbit Stew§ scenario which casts equality in a different light.

Recipe for Elephant and Rabbit Stew: A Shared Dinner
You bring the elephant, I'll bring the rabbit.

Is the price we must pay for modern dentistry and computer technology,nerve gas, the H-bomb, worldwide, perhaps irreversible poisoning of the earth, seas and skies, McDonalds, bobble-head dolls, Enron. . . You get the idea. . . Is there no other way?

Actually, there is. In a not-so-indirect fashion, that's what this update, the pyramids, Symbolist Egypt and the rewriting of history are all about.

The Egyptians associated their quest for immortality with stars and with the sun. Following the death of the Pharaoh'ba unites with ka, becomes a star, and sails across the sky in the company of Ra, in his boat of millions of years. ' (In Disney's LION KING --which is Hamlet, which is the Osiris-Isis-Horus myth-- the lion cub looks at the stars and ask his father, the king, what they are. 'The souls of dead kings' responds the father. Interesting!Someone within that rapacious, utterly unprincipled organization actually knew their Egypt!)

The star shafts are peculiar to the Great Pyramid. They occur nowhere else that we know of. The discovery that the shafts in the King's Chamber zeroed in at specific stars ca. 2500 BC was first made by astronomer Virginia Trimble and Egyptologist Alexander Badawy in the early 1960's;it went more or less unnoticed. Robert Bauval brought that discovery to the fore with own work, claiming the sealed-off shafts of the Queen's Chamber also pointed at stars, specifically the belt stars of Orion which nicely conforms with Egyptian mythology and funerary texts. Because it was Bauval who made this discovery and not one of their own, the theory aroused a storm of abuse and derision from Egyptologists, most of it invalid,but anyway, too complicated to get into here. Notwithstanding, it would seem that, however grudgingly, most Egyptologists now accept that the star shafts are not, as was previously supposed, ventilation shafts, and that they are, indeed, star shafts. . . of some sort. In THE (IN)COMPLETE PYRAMIDS, Lehner labels them 'air shafts' but takes the rare precaution of enclosing the label within quotation marks. What's this, Mark?Doubt about something creeping in?

What are these star shafts for?Why are two of them blocked off?Why are they found only in the Great Pyramid and not in the others?Definitive, even provisional answers may be impossible to provide. But raising such questions in the program would have made for interesting viewing and academically honest reportage, which is of course why they were not raised.

It has been suggested that the shafts were conduits through which the soul of the Pharaoh might escape from the tomb to access the stars. (John Neal in ALL DONE WITH MIRRORS likens this, derisively, to a rat scuttling up a drainpipe. )Since the Pharaoh's soul is by definition immaterial it hardly needs a physical corridor to make its way out of the tomb. In the tombs of the nobles the kA of the deceased (supposedly) passes easily through the solid stone of the so-called 'false door'. Why should the soul of the Pharaoh have a problem?

Then there are those perverse tomb questions. Was the Great Pyramid intended as a tomb?Was Khufu buried there?Egyptologists respond to such questions with a knowing 'wink, wink, nod, nod' smile. The indisputable fact remains, however, that there is no evidence whatever that the Great Pyramid or any of the pyramids on the Giza Plateau or Dahshur were built as tombs (a later incursive burial was found in the Menkaure pyramid; the sarcophagus was lost at sea in the early 19th century on its way to England). Explaining the many pros and cons would take more space than I want to take here, but in brief:the Zoser's Step Pyramid built in the IIIrd Dynasty was most definitely a tomb; the pyramids built in the Vth, VIth and subsequent dynasties were all tombs. There is no doubt of this. Therefore, say the Egyptologists, the Giza and Dahshur pyramids must also have been tombs.

This is an expression of belief, not really a rational argument. I have ten photos of contemporary corrugated steel buildings. Six of them are auto repair shops. Therefore -the Egyptological argument would go- they must all be auto repair shops. But no, the others are an Elks Club, a lab for a gold mining company, a Baptist Church and one in Giza is erected over the last of the solar boats of Khufu. They look nearly identical from the outside. Inside they are very different. So with the interiors of the pyramids of Giza and Dahshur. They defy consistent explanation in terms of tombs; they are all different from each other, and from all those pyramids that are unquestionably tombs.

And -I repeat-there is no evidence they were tombs, none, while in those other pyramids there is ample, indisputable funerary evidence. The Lehner challenge (AAAS Meeting, 2/92)comes into play here. 'Show me a pot shard!'So, show me a mummy!Mummy wrappings, just a few shreds will do. An inscription. Funerary paraphernalia. Explain the funerary logic of the bizarre interior systems of corridors and chambers in all of these pyramids. In all other pyramids there is ample evidence of burials and an easily explained funerary logic to the construction. Why not here?Egyptologists don't like it when they are asked to follow their own rules.

I should make it clear here that I am not saying they were NOT tombs ('Absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence' is the appropriate scientific truism)I am saying there is NO evidence that they were. (No matter how cautiously this is expressed, afterwards there is always some jackass characterizing you as 'Pyramid Power Proponent John Anthony West'. Cf. my entry Pyramid Power in THE TRAVELER'S KEY TO ANCIENT EGYPT)

Scientific objectivity is a delusion. There is no such thing. The gathering of data may be relatively 'objective' (though deciding which data to gather is not). Thereafter everything is a matter of interpretation; of perspective. (This applies even to such 'hard' sciences as quantum physics, astronomy and geology. )By their standards, archeology is not a science in any sense. It follows a systematic methodology, that is all-so do haruspicy and phrenology. Thereafter, everything is interpretation, perspective, which in turn depends upon stated or more often implicit, even unrecognized premises (what philosopher/mathematician Alfred North Whitehead called 'the diffused metaphysical concepts of our epoch'). Progress itself is a matter of perspective:The maggot sees its world as a boundless field of seething, purposeful activity. The falcon flying above just sees a dead horse.

So, let's look at those star shafts starting from the premise that the ancients may have known things we do not know. One fact looming ever larger over the past few decades is the importance placed by the ancients in astronomy. Temples are carefully oriented to solstices and equinoxes, even to particular stars; star maps are all over the place, texts are filled with stellar images and references. Evidence that the precession of the equinoxes was known in deep antiquity is commanding, written into the mythologies of cultures that today have little or no knowledge of or interest in astronomy (HAMLET'S MILL, De Santillana & von Dechend). Knowledge of the precession is quite unnecessary for developing a calendar to know when to plant wheat.

The ancients never explain what they mean. The meaning of all those stellar/solar references is therefore entirely a matter of interpretation. And since most of the interpreters are convinced they are dealing with 'belief' (wink, wink, nod, nod), with superstition, no clear meaning may be expected to emerge. There is, however, a telling relief carved into the Second Shrine of Tutankhamon in the Cairo Museum that broadly but definitively establishes the intended meaning. It shows a row of mummiform figures, each with rays of force/energy/consciousness connecting their foreheads ('third eyes'/pineal glands) to a star, and another row with the figures connected in the same way to a solar disk. As soon as a connection is made between stars or stellar configurations and human consciousness (and by extension, human actions and decisions) that is no longer just astronomy (the mechanism of the heavens), it is astrology (the meaning of the heavens). Perhaps that is the key to this otherwise inexplicable ancient attention to (almost obsession with) astronomy; it is actually astrology?The ancients were, for reasons we can but guess at, orchestrating/coordinating their civilizations to synchronize with the movements of the heavens; literally tuning them to the stars.

A few years ago, in a cable TV documentary on the pyramids, the phrase 'immortality machines' was used to describe them. The rest of this otherwise unmemorable production was strictly party-line, but the use of that phrase made it memorable. Just remove the wink and the nod . . . and it almost sounds as if the scriptwriter had been reading me!('It is difficult to avoid the impression that you are on the inside of an enormous instrument of some sort. 'Traveler's Key to Ancient Egypt, 1985,p. 115).

'Immortality machines'?If you have never been to Egypt, then this is necessarily 'on the page', it's not part of your experience, nor can it be. If you have been to Egypt you will know -unless you are emotionally defective and spiritually dyslexic- that the powerful emotional effects produced by the temples and that produced by the pyramids of Giza and Dahshur are very different.

The temples, through their geometry, harmony, measures and proportions express and evoke the 'gods', that is to say Cosmic, or Natural Principles. These are places of reverence, ritual, ceremony and (no doubt for those participating knowledgeably) initiation.

But these pyramids, with their baffling, almost 'inhuman'(anyway, indisputably user-unfriendly) systems of corridors and chambers, and daunting precision feel like technology. (Flinders Petrie, 100 years ago, described it as the precision then applied to optics, not masonry). Perfection in art is an end in itself, has always been, and needs no further elaboration. But with technology (as we understand it), precision is a corollary of function. And since increasing precision is exponentially more time-consuming, expensive and difficult to achieve, we employ only a precision appropriate to the task. The tolerances needed for a Ferrari are unnecessary for a wheelbarrow. So then why apply a precision appropriate to optics on a tomb?

That association of precision with function is one reason why a number of alternative researchers have proposed alternative technological explanations for the Great Pyramid; the pyramid as a gigantic hydraulic pump (Edward Kunkel), as an electric power generator (Christopher Dunn), even as a plutonium reactor (unpublished - a trio of nuclear engineers)These explanations are ignored or derided by Egyptologists yet are in fact more intelligently and responsibly developed than the prevailing knee-jerk tombs-and-tombs-only-theory they espouse. However, proponents of alternative theories start from the premise that the ancient Egyptians had an interest in our kind of technology. There is no known justification for that premise. Egypt was a one-issue civilization. That issue was the quest for immortality. To our Church of Progress,illumination is contingent upon electricity; the ancients saw it otherwise. Yet there are the pyramids, silently screaming out 'technology' at us!

Imagine a society seven thousand years in the future,as clever, arrogant and destructive as ourselves,confronted by a computer, but with nothing to plug it into since they have developed a different order of technology altogether. They might interpret the computer (sitting there mute with no moving parts) as some sort of cult object used to propitiate the only god recognized by the Church of Progress, the god responsible for bestowing money . . . and they would not even be wrong. But they would be missing the point altogether. Maybe it's like that with us and the Great Pyramid?

Are we looking at a sacred technology, huge physical constructions designed to somehow enhance or further the metaphysical quest for immortality - on a personal or even a civilization-wide level? In the Church of Progress dictionary 'sacred' is one of many synonyms listed for 'superstition', along with 'soul', 'spirit', 'meaning', 'purpose', 'vision', etc. A sacred technology is therefore an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. Even so, until the Paradigm Police come to take me away let us continue our thought experiment. (The scenario that follows applies whether or not the Great Pyramid was ever intended or used as a tomb for Khufu. )

STARSONGS?

A fact impressed upon every visitor to the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid (but that does not find it's way into THE COMPLETE PYRAMIDS) is its astounding and unique acoustics. Any empty stone room will of course produce a singing-in-the-shower effect. This experience is vastly heightened and intensified in many churches and concert halls and exalted in the great Gothic Cathedrals and Abbeys of Europe, but also in seemingly much cruder older structures such as the megalithic barrows of Britain. In recent years studies by a number of knowledgeable researchers have shown that the striking resonant qualities are not merely accidental by-products of construction. These spaces have been deliberately designed with acoustics in mind. They resonate at specific frequencies. In other words, in the very distant past, there was an advanced knowledge of harmonic principles, which, for reasons we do not know, were deliberately incorporated into the design of sacred buildings.

The King's Chamber may be the most spectacular acoustic phenomenon of all. Inside this stark granite room, empty, save for the lidless granite sarcophagus, it is impossible to hold a conversation at a normal speed in a normal voice. To communicate you are obliged to speak almost in a whisper, and very slowly. Otherwise,the words boom and chime and amalgamate with each other. A prolonged chant in the King's Chamber seems to set the entire gigantic structure vibrating. This has to be due to an effect produced by the four so-called 'relieving chambers' above the roof of the chamber made from closely fitted monoliths of granite weighing an estimated seventy tons each. A number of engineers and architects have argued that these are unnecessary from a structural point of view. A single massive gabled roof above the flat ceiling of the King's Chamber, similar to that we find in the Queen's Chamber, would have sufficed as support. Perhaps, rather than relieving chambers, they are resonating chambers. Could resonance hold the key, anyway, a key, to the function of the Pyramid?

Pondering further along these lines led me eventually to the mysterious, unfinished 'pit' deep in the bedrock, some two hundred feet and directly below the King's Chamber. This bizarre, roughly cut room seems to have been abandoned in mid-career. The usual explanation is that it was intended as the King's burial site, but Khufu then changed his mind and had the Queen's Chamber built and then changed his mind again and had the King's Chamber constructed as his final resting place. But these explanations do not sit well (actually, they're pretty ludicrous) with a structure that otherwise employs optical precision in its construction. There is at least one otherwise orthodox Egyptologist (Dr. Rainer Stadelmann) who has misgivings on this score.

It then occurred to me that if in some way the pyramid is intended as a gigantic 'musical' instrument, the unfinished pit may have served to tune it. In a stringed instrument, tuning is achieved by tightening frets; in a wind instrument by adjusting reeds, in a drum by adjusting the tension on the drumhead. But obviously this won't work with a stone pyramid. (In megalithic barrows, it's achieved by strategically placing stone baffles. )But, it seemed to me, hollowing out a chamber until the desired frequency was produced might work.

This was, and remains, highly speculative of course. If it can be proved it isn't about to be proved (or disproved) by me. It needs someone knowledgeable in these areas, and that person hasn't turned up yet, so while I've talked about this hypothesis on my trips I've never published anything about it (I take enough flak as it is!). And I can appreciate that there are major problems involved. How does 'tuning' the pit affect the resonance of the King's Chamber for starters?Etc. , etc.

But when I learned (from reading Robert Bauval's original THE ORION MYSTERY back in 1993) of the apparent stellar alignments of the 'air shafts' the problem took another turn. The basic importance accorded to astronomical/astrological factors in the siting of temples and pyramids is now, I think, solidly established. Could the pyramid be tuned quite literally to the stars, rather than the human voice - or both?The Egyptians went to a massive amount of trouble to incorporate those finely finished shafts into the core masonry of the pyramid Starting from the premise that the Egyptians had some very good, unsuperstitious reason doing everything they did, this did not seem implausible -- just undemonstrable . . . but in fact no more undemonstrable than the tombs-and-tombs-only hypothesis. Were the ancient Egyptians aware of some sort of subtle 'star energy' or 'star waves' that our instruments have not yet detected?

I pondered this aloud on radio recently on the Coast-to-Coast radio show with Linda Moulton Howe (see the transcript on >www. earthfiles. com<). Could the star channels function as reverse or negative antennae amplifying or otherwise concentrating such waves or energy?This radio ponder produced the following email from Paul Suklovich, a listener.

> Notes:From Suklovich Hi, John!

FYI - the "negative of an antenna" is a WAVEGUIDE for GigaHz and higher freq.

A hollow tube - which has dimensions of multiples of the frequency to bounce it

down the pipe without loss, colliding .

Measuring the pipe can deduce the freq. or the multiple.

Fiber optic cable is an example with a flexible round "glass" pipe.

--paul s. <

A 'wave guide'? Is this potentially a fruitful line of inquiry? I have no idea. I offer it for what it's worth.

Meanwhile, back at SECRET CHAMBERS REVEALED we have our sealed-off star channels leading from the Queen's Chamber, each plugged with a little limestone, copper fitted block. Does the copper have something to do with it?To the best of my knowledge, there is nothing like this anywhere else in Egypt. But asking a presently unanswerable and interesting question is not part of the Fox/Nat. Porn. agenda. Not when you can actually prove that ancient Egyptian workers ate fish. And why seal off these channels while those leading from the King's Chamber lead directly to the pyramid's exterior? The discovery that the second QC shaft is sealed off at an equidistant point within the core masonry makes me think that Marshall Payn's hypothesis (see Preview) may well be correct:that these QC star shafts terminate at what formerly was the exterior face of the pyramid at an earlier stage of construction. Since there is compelling evidence demonstrating that the Khafre Pyramid was built in at least two stages, and the Red Pyramid is built over a much earlier megalithic chamber, this remain plausible

But every plausible explanation put forward regarding the Great Pyramid proliferates into a new set of questions. Why star shafts only here?And if astronomy/astrology are major factors in the original building the Great Pyramid, what role do they play in the other pyramids of the Giza Plateau and Dahshur?I believe there is some sort of Unified Pyramid Theory that applies to all five; they seem an organic complex stylistically, related to each other, but to nothing else in Dynastic Egypt. (cf. TRAVELER'S KEY TO ANCIENT EGYPT, pp. 94-97. ) Could these pyramids represent planets as well as stars? (There is at least one researcher exploring this possibility. I am not convinced that his argument is correct, but it may be worth pursuing.

To get back to the dating: while I believe the present pyramids are correctly dated to the IVth Dynasty, they are either superimposed upon, incorporate or replace previously existing structures which may or may not have been pyramids themselves. On this note, it is unfortunate that many alternative researchers continue to cling to the story, put forward by Zecharia Sitchin, that the roughly daubed graffiti in the 'relieving' chambers above the King's Chamber are forgeries placed there by Howard Vyse early in the 19th century. They are not. They are real and they are ancient. (I've been up there, Sitchin has not). As evidence they are, in my opinion, as conclusive as OJ's glove at the scene of the crime. On the other hand, if you're a member of the OJ jury you won't accept such evidence. But if, indeed, Khufu's contribution was a massive but nevertheless just a final stage of augmentation/restoration this might help account for the otherwise near-inconceivable feat of building the Great Pyramid from scratch in just 20 years or thereabouts.

Meanwhile, there are plans for further exploration of those star shafts. Judging from the extensive advertising space sold, SECRET CHAMBERS REVEALED was a huge commercial success. This scholarly travesty was, after all, a video equivalent of the world's oldest profession -- which has been, since its inception, lucrative for all who pursued it. It's occurred to me that the script might have been written by Rupert Murdoch himself. So it's likely that somewhere along the line, we may be treated to a sequel: SON OF SECRET CHAMBERS REVEALED. At long last we may finally know what kind of fish the workers ate, and how they cooked it.

>New Hunt Planned for Clues to Pyramid Doors

Thu Oct 24,10:15 AM ET

CAIRO, Egypt (Reuters) - Archeologists will scale one of Egypt's ancient pyramids in December to hunt for clues about the purpose of mysterious doors blocking two shafts in the edifice, Egypt's antiquities chief said Wednesday.

Zahi Hawass said if the shafts stretching from a room inside the pyramid of Cheops did not emerge on the surface, it would show that the passages lead to burial chambers hidden behind the doors, which might be probed from the inside "within one year. "

"If they (the shafts) do appear from the outside, they are symbolic doors. If they don't appear, they are not symbolic doors (and) there are burial chambers hidden," Hawass told reporters.

He said part of the surface of the 4,500 year-old pyramid would be cleaned by brush to look for signs of outlets to the shafts, which measure 8 by 8 inches.

Both shafts were explored in September using a robot which drilled through a door with copper handles 213 feet up one of the passages before inserting a camera on live television only to reveal a second stone slab blocking the way.

"The second one is not a door," Hawass said. "It's like a screening -- something that's hiding something. If you look at it, it has cracks. "

Enough for now. The questions are many, the answers are few. In a future update I hope to address some of the questions raised by the notion of that lost civilization in apparent possession of a high science in certain ways more advanced than our own. This will lead to a consideration of the Vedic concept of the Yugas, and the near-universal belief in a distant 'Golden Age'.

Postview afterthoughts:

1. A number of respondents to my Preview expressed disappointment, even outrage once the program was shown. In his website essay Bauval quotes an academic Egyptologist to the same effect. There can be no doubt this was the standard Establishment reaction. The show was an embarrassment to the entire academic community. This is good!Compared to SECRET CHAMBERS REVEALED, anything alternative, Von Danikin, pyramidology, the pyramid as hydraulic ram pump, it doesn't matter what... by comparison it looks like solid scholarship. That is, for us, a significant victory. What we need are more SECRET CHAMBERS REVEALED, not less! And the worse, the better!

One respondent asked if my initial attack on the National Pornographic Society was motivated by 'bitterness or just my usual sarcasm'. This was an interesting reaction. Upon reflection, I can say it was neither. It was provoked simply by a healthy academic appetite. Sacred Cow makes the best hamburger.