In 2016, The Great Pyramid Hoax was first published, and various items of evidence were presented that called into question the claimed discovery in 1837 by British antiquarian and pyramid explorer, Richard W. Howard Vyse, of crudely painted ‘quarry marks’ (including the various royal names of Khufu and other assorted markings) within this monument. This was followed in 2021 with the publication of The Great Pyramid Void Enigma, the Appendices of which presented additional evidence in support of the hypothesis that Colonel Vyse (and his close inner circle) had, in fact, faked many of these painted marks, including all the royal names. This latest article will present even more evidence that has only recently been uncovered and which further supports the forgery hypothesis.
First, though, it might be helpful to present here a summary of the background to all of this, particularly for readers unfamiliar with this centuries-old controversy.
In the Spring of 1837, Colonel Richard William Howard Vyse, following upon the intuition of his colleague and short-time business partner, Giovanni Caviglia, used gunpowder to blast his way into four hidden compartments above Davison’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid. These four chambers, known today as the ‘Chambers of Construction’ or ‘Vyse Chambers’, were similar to ‘Davison’s Chamber’ discovered decades earlier by Nathaniel Davison in 1765, which is located directly above the so-called ‘King’s Chamber’ (figure 1). However, in one very peculiar way, the Vyse Chambers differed from Davison’s, for upon the wall and roof blocks of these four spaces, Colonel Vyse allegedly found many crudely painted red ochre inscriptions and, significantly, the name of the pyramid’s builder, Khufu (along with his other names, Khnum-Khuf and Horus Meddedu).
Figure 1: The Four ‘Vyse Chambers’ of the Great Pyramid (1837).
The importance of this claimed discovery to Egyptology cannot be overstated. These painted markings are Egyptology’s ‘Holy Grail’ since they offer the only empirical evidence that directly connects Khufu to the Great Pyramid. As Egyptologist, Dr Mark Lehner, explains:
“Since nobody had entered from the time Khufu’s workmen sealed it until Vyse blasted his way in, the gang names clinch the attribution of this pyramid to the 4th-dynasty pharaoh, Khufu.” 1
Without these in-situ markings, the ownership and provenance of the monument becomes much less certain, relying only upon the Histories of Herodotus (writing thousands of years after the monument’s supposed construction date) and the so-called Diary of Merer, a recently discovered 4th Dynasty papyrus which is believed by some Egyptologists to document the delivery of stones for the construction of the Great Pyramid ca.2500 BCE. There are, however, many flaws with this interpretation of the papyrus, but alas, it is beyond the scope of this article.
It is understandable, then, that Egyptology and its many adherents are keen to assert the veracity of Vyse’s claimed discovery as it helps lock the monument’s provenance to ca.2500 BCE when it is believed Khufu ruled ancient Egypt. However, as far as we presently know, no formal science has ever been applied to determine whether the painted ‘quarry marks’ are indeed genuine ancient markings or not. Some photographs were taken of them in the 1990s, but for reasons best known to themselves, the Egyptian Antiquities Authority have never made any of them public.
In short, there is no scientific evidence to support the veracity of the painted markings Vyse claimed to have discovered. Consequently, almost from the moment Colonel Vyse first presented his alleged discovery to the world, questions about their authenticity have been raised, first in 1845 by a Prussian Prince, Hermann von Pückler-Muskau (who actually met Vyse at Giza in 1837), and again by other, more modern researchers, most notably Zechariah Sitchin and Alan F. Alford.
The main argument used by those believing the marks to be authentic is that it would have been impossible for Vyse to have faked the chamber inscriptions since no one in 1837 (including the best scholars of the day) really understood what these markings were (quarry gang names according to modern mainstream opinion). And neither, it is asserted, would Vyse have been able to write such markings in their distinctive cursive style since there were no published books at the time showing examples of it, and which would later be understood as an old or early form of ancient Egyptian hieratic script. None of this was known in 1837.
This argument, however, completely falls down if one considers the simple possibility that Vyse may have found a cache of genuine early hieratic markings somewhere outside the pyramid (more on this below), recognised among these markings the name of ‘Khufu’ and, in so doing, decided then to copy all associated markings from this cache into the monument, making sure to also replicate any perceived distribution pattern that might have been evident in the recovery of the painted marks, perhaps from the stones in the northern and southern rubble piles outside the Great Pyramid.
The key to this, of course, would have required that Colonel Vyse, while at Giza in 1837, could identify the correct hieroglyphic spelling of ‘Khufu’. He could hardly choose a king’s cartouche at random and hope that this would be enough to get away with any planned hoax. Identifying Khufu’s hieroglyphic (hieratic) name was vital to any planned hoax.
Although the Colonel’s published account is vague about what Vyse did or did not know when at Giza (he defers almost all of the translations of the markings in his published account to Samuel Birch of the British Museum), a reading of Vyse’s private field notes, however, proves conclusively that he absolutely did know and could identify the hieroglyphic spelling of Khufu while at the Giza pyramids in 1837. With this crucial knowledge, it would then have been a simple task of copying all the painted markings found alongside the name ‘Khufu’ (in the ‘secret cache’) into the monument. He didn’t have to understand any of the markings—only that their proximity to the one thing he could read, the Khufu name, meant that the other markings were clearly related to this ancient king and, as such, could be safely copied from the secret cache into the monument. And neither would it have mattered if any of these markings were praising Khufu’s name or trashing it since they were, after all, self-evidently unofficial markings (graffiti) and not monumental official hieroglyphics.
Notwithstanding the considerable amount of evidence presented in my previous books that strongly implicate Vyse and his closest assistants in this audacious hoax, let us now consider two new items of evidence that present further anomalies, of which fraudulent activity seems to be the simplest and most likely explanation for their occurrence. The first piece of evidence presented below strongly supports the view (first posited by Alan F. Alford) that Colonel Vyse almost certainly had, apriori, access to an authentic source of original hieratic markings (a ‘secret cache’) that had been found external to the pyramid and subsequently copied by him into the monument.
Vyse’s ‘Secret Cache’
One of the sillier arguments against the forgery hypothesis is that it can only be taken seriously if the original source marks (the ‘secret cache’) that Vyse almost certainly had access to and had copied into the four chambers is located and that, in lieu of its discovery, there is somehow no case of fraud to answer. Larry Pahl of the grandly titled ‘American Institute for Pyramid Research’ is just one example of this flawed thinking when he writes:
“I have identified the lynchpin detail of his [Creighton’s] argument, and the bulk of the other evidences rests on this detail. If there is no secret stash, there is no forgery.” (author’s emphasis) 2
This argumentation is not only disingenuous, but also absurd! It is akin to saying police investigators must find the shotgun to prove that a claimed shooting had occurred. Imagine the scene: The victim is lying on the ground with gunshot wounds, there are several empty shell casings around them, there’s blood everywhere, there’s shotgun residue, there’s eye-witness accounts that saw the shooting happen. But since the shooter ran off with the shotgun (the primary evidence), it seems that, in the peculiar world of folks like Larry Pahl, it cannot be determined that a shooting did, in fact, take place; the police would somehow ignore all the other secondary evidence surrounding the crime scene that points to a shooting actually having occurred. Which is, as stated, simply absurd.
Furthermore, by insisting that the theorised original ‘secret cache’ of hieratic signs should be located before the fraud argument can properly be considered, effectively holds the hoax hypothesis to a higher standard of proof than Egyptology holds itself. Egyptology, for example, insists that the stone box in each of the early, giant pyramids was a sarcophagus for the king’s mummified body (the primary evidence). But no mummified king (i.e., no primary evidence) has ever been found in any of these early pyramids. Yet, even without this primary evidence (the mummified king), Egyptology happily insists (due mainly to other items of secondary or circumstantial evidence) that these stone boxes were sarcophagi for kings. This is blatant double-standards and hypocrisy.
That Vyse had access to a secret cache of ancient hieratic signs that had originally been found external to the pyramid and that he kept this discovery quiet simply stands to reason. And this is so because there is simply no way Vyse himself could have concocted these signs or groupings of signs (crew names, etc), nor, as stated, were there any books at this time showing the cursive hieratic writing style. If, then, the chamber markings are indeed fraudulent (as much secondary evidence strongly suggests), then it stands to reason that Vyse must have had access to a source of authentic ancient markings that he kept to himself and his small inner circle, ready to be strategically deployed at the most opportune moment. There’s simply no other way Vyse could have produced something so authentic-looking and orthographically correct without reference to authentic source markings that would serve as his guide or ‘template’.
Equally bizarre is that critics of the forgery hypothesis somehow expect that this original source (the hypothesised ‘secret cache’) would still be lying around today for us to study and thus prove the veracity of the ‘secret cache’ hypothesis. More likely is that Vyse, having copied everything he needed from the ‘secret cache’ (perhaps found on stones in the northern and southern rubble piles outside the pyramid), would have had the source markings destroyed to ensure precisely that there was no evidence of his original source and that no one could then find and compare one set of markings with the other. Indeed, of the stones removed from the rubble piles outside the Great Pyramid, Vyse writes in his private account:
M. 24 [Monday, April 24, 1837]
“. . . blew up stones north front of pyramid . . .” 3
Of course, this activity could also have been for perfectly innocent reasons. While Vyse tells us in his published account of some painted markings he found on stones in the northern and southern rubble piles around the pyramid, there may well have been many more markings (i.e. hieratic crew names and so on) also found in these locations than the few he disclosed in his published account. (It is well known that many other quarry marks of ancient crew names have been found on stones elsewhere around the Giza site, so it is not at all unreasonable to suppose that Colonel Vyse could very well have found others in the monument’s rubble piles).
Blasting these marked stones to smithereens would have been an effective way of destroying any such evidence. As stated, the last thing the Colonel would have wanted would be to leave this secret cache fully intact for someone to study it later and notice that the inscriptions being found on the stone blocks outside the monument were identical to those inscriptions found inside it. The original source would have had to disappear to cover his tracks.
Critics also assert that the posited ‘secret cache’ of original markings (had they been found amid the rubble piles outside the pyramid) would themselves have given Vyse the important discovery that his published journal shows he was clearly desperate to make, so why not simply declare this real discovery to the world? Why risk creating a fraud? Again, they miss the bigger point.
Failing the discovery of Khufu’s true burial (which was Vyse’s stated goal), his next best outcome would have been finding Khufu’s name somewhere inside the monument, thereby becoming the man to show Herodotus correct and to definitively prove that the Great Pyramid had been built by a known ancient Egyptian king and, more importantly, that the pyramid was from a known historical period. Finding Khufu’s name on various stones in the rubble piles outside the monument, while important and of some passing interest, would hardly be the history-defining discovery that ‘finding’ Khufu’s name inside a (hitherto) sealed chamber within the pyramid would bring—this would be a greater and more alluring prize, and almost certainly one that would guarantee the Colonel his coveted place in the world’s history books. Finding some ancient markings on easily accessible stones outside the pyramid (that could have been painted at any time), not so much.
Mr Hill’s Phantom Facs
Before we present this evidence, the reader should keep in mind that we are dealing with hand drawings (from 1837) and not mechanical photographs, so some variance between comparable drawings made by different people will exist from simple human fallibility. It is not unreasonable, however, to expect that those employed by Vyse to survey and copy these markings (Mr Hill and Mr Perring) would have made a reasonable impression in their drawings of the key features of each group of signs present upon each stone. We cannot, of course, expect that comparable drawings between the two men will be identical in every detail, but neither should we expect to find significant differences between them either, especially given the nature and importance of what was supposedly being copied from these four chambers, summarised thus by Vyse himself:
“I considered that facsimiles [of the chamber markings] in their original size would be desirable, as they were of great importance from their situation, and probably the most antient inscriptions in existence.” 4
As Vyse states above, he tasked one of his assistants, Mr Hill, with making 1:1 facsimile drawings of the painted markings that were (ostensibly) upon the walls of the four Vyse Chambers. In total, Mr Hill made 28 drawings from the four chambers, and all of these can be cross-checked with the drawing surveys of John Perring (1837) and Egyptologist Alan Rowe (1931).
But here’s the thing. Mr Hill made a drawing (figure 2) that is entirely missing from the drawing surveys of both Perring and Rowe. This drawing (Mr Hill’s ‘Phantom Facs’) is quite distinctive as its middle sign is quite different to all other versions of this group of signs in these chambers (of which there are several, but each with different orientations and/or scale to the one presented in figure 2).
Figure 2: Mr Hill’s ‘Phantom Facs’. This drawing made by Mr Hill is claimed to have been copied from Campbell’s Chamber in 1837. However, no such drawing is present in the drawing surveys of John Perring (1837) or Alan Rowe (1931). (Note: All of Mr Hill’s facsimile drawings can be viewed – by appointment – in the British Museum, London)
It is highly peculiar that Mr Hill seemingly observed and painted this group of signs from Campbell’s Chamber, but no one else (Perring or Rowe) appear to have seen it as neither of them drew it. These signs are each between 12-18 inches tall, so two men missing them, while possible, seems highly unlikely.
This begs the question: If this group of signs (with the peculiar middle sign) is not present in Campbell’s Chamber (as the separate drawing surveys of Perring and Rowe strongly suggests), then where exactly did Mr Hill copy this group of signs from? Is it perhaps the case that it was intended that this group of signs was to be copied into Campbell’s Chamber (from the ‘secret cache’), but the copier (probably Mr Raven), for reasons unknown, overlooked copying the signs from this sheet onto the chamber walls? It’s one thing for Mr Hill to have perhaps missed copying a group of markings from the chambers (assuming here that the markings are authentic), but it’s an entirely different matter for him to have in his possession, a group of markings that appear not to be present in any of the chambers.
To repeat, if this set of markings (figure 2) is not, in fact, present in Campbell’s Chamber or any of the other chambers (as seems to be the case), then where exactly did Mr Hill copy this group of signs from? What was his source? This anomaly strongly suggests (as simple logic implies) that Colonel Vyse really did have access to a ‘secret cache’ of authentic markings copied from somewhere external to the Great Pyramid. In over-looking copying this drawing into any of the four chambers, Mr Hill’s ‘Phantom Facs’ has effectively given the game away as it presents us with proof, the ‘smoking shotgun’, to the veracity of the ‘secret cache’ hypothesis. In short, if this evidence is correct, then the ‘secret cache’ really did exist.
The Roth Paradox
The second item of evidence to be presented in this article comes to us from the southeast corner wall of Lady Arbuthnot’s Chamber, the third chamber opened by Colonel Vyse.
In her doctorate thesis, Egyptian Phyles in the Old Kingdom, Professor Ann Macy Roth writes:
“In each [Vyse] chamber, the blocks of the north side are marked with one gang name and those of the south side with another, while the end walls [the east and west walls] are divided in half and the blocks are marked with the name of the gang whose name is on the nearest side wall.” 5
As to how and when these marks were supposedly painted onto the quarried blocks, Professor Roth further explains:
“The simplest procedure would have been to fit together a row of blocks that had been quarried from the same area. At this point [i.e., whilst still at the quarry] each of the series of fitted blocks would have been marked with the hieroglyph of the division [i.e., gang name] that was responsible for placing the block…” 6
From Professor Roth’s hypothesis, it seems that the marks painted onto these blocks at the quarry would have essentially served as a kind of ‘postal address’ for the particular work gangs at the pyramid site to whom each block would be delivered for them to set in place – the construction gang working on the pyramid’s northern side would have their blocks marked with the name: the Powerful White Crown of Khnum-Khuf, while the gang working on the monument’s southern (opposite) side would have theirs marked with the name: the Pure Ones of Horus Meddedu (Figure 3a-b).
The Gang, White Crown of Khnum-Khuf, (Northern construction gang)
Pure Ones of Horus Meddedu, (Southern construction gang)
Figure 3a-b: The northern and southern work gang names.
If we consider the painted markings upon each of the walls of the four Vyse Chambers, we do indeed observe such a distribution pattern with the blocks marked with the White Crown gang confined to each chamber’s northern wall while the blocks marked with the Horus Meddedu gang name are confined to each chamber’s southern wall. This distribution pattern Professor Roth speaks of is apparently indicative of the way in which the ancient Egyptians organised their construction labour.
Except there’s a fairly significant anomaly to Dr Roth’s theory.
Aside from the fact that no work gang names seem to be present on any of the blocks in the recently discovered Small Void Chamber above the Great Pyramid’s original entrance, we find markings on a wall block in Lady Arbuthnot’s Chamber that seem entirely contrary to Professor Roth’s hypothesis (figure 4).
Figure 4: Wall markings on southeast corner of Lady Arbuthnot’s Chamber (based on original drawing by J.S. Perring, 1837)
The markings on virtually all of the chamber blocks are presented either upside-down or sideways. In Figure 4, we observe that the markings on this particular block are observed upside-down. To the untrained eye, these markings may look like a jumbled mess, but with closer scrutiny, we discover some very odd but highly revealing facts.
These markings, according to the surveys of John Perring (1837)7 and Alan Rowe (1931)8, are confined to a single wall block, as would be the case as per Roth’s hypothesis. This is significant because this particular wall block contains not just the signs for one gang name, but the partial signs for two gang names (Figure 5).
Figure 5: The block contains the partial names of two different work gangs on either side of the blue dashed line.
This is, of course, a highly irregular situation and would seem contrary to Professor Roth’s theory since, as stated, we should only ever expect to find just one full gang name on each chamber wall block – certainly not two partial names of two different work gangs. But how might this odd situation be explained?
If we imagine the block at the ancient quarry and the scribe attached to this gang is painting the gang’s name (upright) onto the stone, then it is perhaps possible (though unlikely) that the scribe began painting the wrong gang’s name onto the block, perhaps initially believing that this stone was intended for the White Crown gang (Figure 5, left of blue line).
It seems, however, that by the time the scribe had painted the white crown sign, he realised his mistake, stopped painting any further signs for this gang’s name and began instead to paint the correct gang’s name, the Pure Ones of Horus Meddedu onto the remainder of the block (Figure 5, right of blue line).
Except there’s a highly significant problem.
Keeping in mind that the scribe would be painting each gang’s name upright and from right-to-left, then the first sign of the Pure Ones of Horus Meddedu is the large Horus bird sign (Figure 6a, red box). But this is not what the scribe has drawn on this stone. For some bizarre reason, he completely omits drawing the Horus bird sign and, instead, begins the new gang’s name by first drawing the Meddedu symbol (which is actually the second sign of this gang’s name) immediately after the white crown sign (Figure 6a-b).
Figure 6a: Having decided to alter the gang name on this wall to the Pure Ones of Horus Meddedu (signs left of the blue line), the scribe omits painting the first sign of this gang’s name (the Horus Bird) onto the block. The first sign of this name he paints (after the white crown sign) is the second (Meddedu) sign.
Figure 6b: The scribe has omitted the leading signs from one gang name and the trailing signs from the other gang name and thus has seemingly conflated the two abridged gang names, fusing the two together on a single block (above image rotated to upright for ease of reading).
So, from the markings we observe on this wall block, the ancient Egyptian scribe seemingly began by painting the wrong name. When he realised his error, he then compounds his mistake by beginning the correct gang’s name by using the second sign in the name i.e., the scribe entirely omits to paint the first and most important sign of the gang’s name – the Horus bird, the symbol of the king.
The scribe supposedly responsible for painting these markings may have made these two mistakes, thereby creating this anomaly on the block, but the errors he apparently made would have been so elementary that such a scenario seems barely plausible (these gang names would not have been new to the scribe as they have been painted correctly onto several other stone blocks). And neither can this anomaly be explained away with simple block abrasion, scraping away some of the marks. How is it possible for the middle signs to be scraped away and for the remaining signs to then merge themselves together, closing the gap where the missing signs should be?
Notwithstanding the above oddity, what is absolutely clear is that the ancient scribe most certainly did not create the next anomaly we observe with these markings. In 1931, Egyptologist Alan Rowe made his own copy of these particular signs from this wall block in Lady Arbuthnot’s Chamber (Figure 7).
Figure 7: Alan Rowe (lower image) has entirely omitted the white crown sign from his drawing of the marks on this wall block.
A comparison of Alan Rowe’s impression of these markings with the drawing of them made by John Perring appears to show that the white crown sign is no longer present on the wall of the chamber! As we can see (Figure 7), the white crown sign, which is clearly present in John Perring’s drawing of these markings (lower drawing highlighted green), is completely missing from Rowe’s (upper drawing), suggesting its absence now from the chamber wall. If that is indeed the case, then we have to ask: What happened to this sign? Why did it vanish?
Is it perhaps the case that what we may, in fact, be observing with this odd group of signs is but further evidence of an attempt at fakery that went wrong, with a subsequent botched cover-up? Might it not actually be the case that one of Vyse’s assistants had begun painting the wrong gang name onto this side of Lady Arbuthnot’s Chamber, realised his mistake, stopped (upon finishing the white crown sign) and began copying the correct gang’s name for this side (i.e. the Meddedu gang), ensuring to deliberately omit copying the Horus Bird in order to feign block abrasion?
It seems that the faker then departed but later returned with some tools and removed his false start mistake i.e., the white crown sign. However, during his absence, it seems that Mr Perring entered the chamber and made a copy of all the wall markings on this block (i.e., before the faker had removed the white crown false start). When the faker returned, he chiselled away his false start, hence why today we now observe this discrepancy between the drawings of Perring (1837) and Rowe (1931). (A small side note here – this is not the only sign that has seemingly disappeared from this chamber – see: Crime in the Great Pyramid: The Evidence Mounts).
In Conclusion
Here in 2024, many years after this investigation first began, supporting evidence of the Vyse Hoax Hypothesis continues to surface and has been doing so now for several decades. All of which is indicative that the hoax hypothesis is more likely to be true than false. If the opposite were the case i.e. the painted markings were authentic, then it is unlikely that so many anomalies would have been uncovered, nor that they would continue to be uncovered decades later.
Ultimately, the truth to all of this will come down to scientists being permitted to make appropriate tests of the chamber markings (obviously non-destructive tests, if possible). Presently, their authenticity rests solely on the word of Colonel Vyse, a man known to have perpetrated electoral fraud in his earlier life (he paid for votes, which was illegal), though his death prevented any formal charges and likely conviction from occurring. In the face of the mounting anomalies being found in the painted marks in these chambers (and other anomalies in other evidence), the reluctance by the Egyptian Antiquities Authority to have science involved in this issue is surely now an untenable position. In the complete absence of such tests verifying the authenticity of these painted markings, why should the public accept the mainstream position that they are genuine?
The first and simplest thing the Egyptian Antiquities Authority could do is release into the public domain all the photographs of these chamber markings that they made in the 1990s. Without such formal disclosure and transparency, then the questions surrounding the authenticity of the painted wall markings in the Vyse Chambers will simply not go away, and the issue will almost certainly fester like an open sore over Egyptology for a long time to come.
Notes & References:
1 Lehner, Mark, The Complete Pyramids, p. 53.
2 Pahl, Larry, https://www.greatpyramid.org/post/the-great-pyramid-hoax
3 Creighton, Scott, The Great Pyramid Void Enigma, p.285
4 Vyse, Richard Howard, Operations Vol I, p.259.
5 Roth, A.M., Egyptian Phyles in the Old Kingdom, pp.125 -126, (1991)
6 Ibid, pp.128-130.
7 Perring, J.S., The Pyramids of Gizeh (Part I), Plate VI, (1837)
8 Reisner, George, Mycerinus (1931), Appendix (Plan XII), (1931)
Why has this tirade of tired falsehood been published here?
If you take issue with any of the matters discussed, and wish to dispute the veracity of the points raised, you need to engage with them critically, as the author did towards his subject, which is the tirade of tired falsehoods published everywhere by academics.
You have failed to do so, Martin Stower. A glib one-liner like this is a direct insult to both the publisher of this website, the author of the article and the extensively detailed book which he has gifted to the field, and to us, the public.
Martin Stower, your lazy, insulting, stupid comment sucks. Lift your game.
Go on, make an effort. We want to know the truth. Show us all how it is done.
And of course you are aware of (and have critically engaged with) my critical engagement with Creighton’s babbling falsehoods from 2009 on.
Aren’t you?
As otherwise your glib, holier-than-thou posturing here would be precisely the “lazy, insulting, stupid comment” you impute to me.
So go on, “Bob”, make the effort you failed to make here. Show me how it’s done.
Actually, no, I haven’t, “Martin Stower”. I have never even heard of you until I read your sad little (sour grapes methinks!) lazy one-liner here, on this site. The onus is not on me to have somehow heard of you. The onus is on you, as a contributor to this page, to make an actual contribution, here, on this page. That way everyone can see if your criticism makes sense or not.
On the strength of your remarks, and your sad attention-seeking response to my entirely reasonable challenge to you to actually do a little better than that insulting one-liner, for yours and all of our sakes, I have to say the situation is unlikely to change at this end. You will remain unknown and unread. Forever.
However, if you have something constructively critical to offer that lasts longer than a lazy one-liner followed by a, as you say, holier than thou posturing (on your part, with a sulky little demand for attention), then by all means spray it about here, in the traditional manner: you know, take assertions by the author and “correct” them with full references as he has done.
Off you go. Show us how it’s done. I don’t need to, as I like the author’s article and will just happily go along with that for now. I can be persuaded if there are facts he overlooks or has got wrong, and if you are as omniscient as you pretend, it should be effortless for you to do so quite robustly and thoroughly. And politely.
But given the absurd tone of both your remarks, I won’t be holding my breath, and instead expect another toxic reply from a posture of arrogance and ignorance, as that’s all you’ve brought to the party so far. On a site devoted to sharing knowledge and critical reflection, sad little one-liners followed by demands to already know you and your work don’t really cut the mustard, I’m afraid. It just seems sad and amateurish – not up to scratch for a place like this, really.
Prove me wrong – with facts about the article and its errors. Here.
I see that you are still evading the fact that I’ve “critically engaged” with Creighton’s lying rubbish for more than a decade, on which you failed due diligence when you shot your mouth off in the first place. Given which your demand that I “prove” something is mere, empty bluster and very clearly so. And what’s this crap about doing it “here”? Are you too stupid to use Google, or the search facility of GHMB? A bogus stipulation very much in the Creighton mode.
I dare say readers will already have noticed that I use my real, identifiable name. I do not hide behind the anonymity of “Bob” or similar. So your monkey-see monkey-do scare quotes are missed-the-point silly.
A rising tide of blustering verbiage which really says nothing. Now where have we seen that before?
Jesus Christ, mate, you’re unhinged af. Incoherent and empty.
Literally read what you have said, your remarks just keep getting more and more embarrassing – the worst possible advertisement for yourself and your work. What rational person would bother following up your work after reading this shit-show of abuse and attention-seeking? Sad. Clueless. Hello, context. Duh. As I said, your posts here are all I and everyone here will ever read of your work, and so far, this is all you’ve contributed – insults and narcissism. Not a skerrick of information or critique. Absolutely laughable. Worst ad possible. Incapable of rational thought, from what I can see, just tied up in a knot of self-importance and egoistic wankery. What a genius, how could we all be so wrong. lol. Goodbye, hope you enjoyed your moment in the spotlight, a totally wasted opportunity to actually be relevant or helpful to the conversation. Utterly childish.
Goodbye, enjoy the oblivion. You’ve earned it, real hard.
Why would an anonymous reader need to publish their full name? Nothing you have said makes any sense in this context. I’m not hiding behind anything, because who I am is even more irrelevant than who you are. I’m not an expert. I’m nothing but someone who is visiting this site, looking for answers. It is not the case that I should look into you and your work, especially after this lil tantrum of yours. You are here on this site and here on this very page is where the discussion is occurring, where you, not me, you, need to follow up your attack with actual points about the article, not ad-hominems against me and the author. It doesn’t matter who I am. What matters is what is being said, not who is saying it. And, I actually don’t care. I’m here, as a reader on this page. Graham’s page, about Crieghton’s book – not yours.
If you had bothered perhaps making one or even – gasp – two points about the article, I’d be curious and might have a look. That will never happen now, because you’ve demonstrated an utter incapacity to make sense on basic points of reason. And, you come across as extremely unpleasant.
Anyone else heard of this guy and his (apparently obsessive) attacks on Creighton’s work?
Yeah, didn’t think so.
Ok, so I publish my full name, which is Bob (or Robert) plus a surname.
What then? What possible value does that bring to the discussion on this page?
About as much as your name.
Your name means nothing, just like Graham Hancock’s name.
What matters is his work, his conduct, and how he critically engages with the subject, with his audience, and the readers.
You won’t find him ever going “just google my name”, like an arrogant twat.
That is literally what you just did.
You’re literally trying to make this about you, instead of about the subject under discussion, which is, the issue of the dating of the Pyramid and Vyse’s fraud.
You couldn’t make it up. He spams this page with self-regarding blather and then alleges that [i]I[/i] am trying to make this about me. Well, actually, no. He’s the one questioned my bona fides: my response was to that. I did not start talking about myself out of the blue. The self-obsession in evidence here is his. Why would he publish his name? To prove for one thing that he’s not Scott Creighton. To be something other than a contemptible nothing, sniping from the cover of anonymity.
Ok. OK OK ok. Ok. You got me.
My name is – wait for it – Bob (or, Robert, if you prefer) Jones.
Robert Jones. That’s me. That’s my name. Never written a book. Never been to Egypt. Not a scientist, not an academic, although I have worked with academics and seen their shortcomings first hand on many an occasion. But, that’s my business, as a private citizen and as a public reader of this page. Not yours to ask for – but we know your manners by now.
Now that is over with, be so kind as to inform everybody what difference this makes to the discussion? Oh that’s right. It makes no difference at all. It like everything else you have written on this page: a distraction, and an insult, and an embarrassment to yourself.
Ok, so you are ACTUALLY delusional.
If you glance above, NOBODY EVER asked you for your bona fides, because bona fides do not exist, and if dealing with facts, are irrelevant. It’s not about “establishing bona fides”.
That is the entire point you are missing, Martin.
It is about establishing veracity of interpretation of data in one specific case, the article above, and doing so here. Where the argument can be engaged in, in real time, by the audience.
The subject is the dating of Vyse’s forged graffiti, and so far the score is 1,000,000 – 0 in favour of Scott’s position, because he’s got this whole article here, and you haven’t pulled down a single brick in it.
Not one brick in all those words. Just bona fides, or Fido’s bone.
Fetch!
You’re a mental health professional now? I’d get that looked at. Looks like a delusion to me.
Consider a remedial course in English Comprehension.
Graham mentions the Vyse matter in his books. One thing he mentions in connection with this is the fact that some researchers collected samples of one of the markings suspected to be fraudulent. This was date tested in a lab and found to be modern, strongly suggesting fraud by Vyse, making the markings irrelevant with regard to dating the pyramid, being by him, or someone of his time and not an ancient Egyptian. However as the sample was “collected illegally”, i.e. without permission from the tyrant of the plateau, the findings were, apparently, rendered null. Except for the fact that hard science doesn’t lie, whether its samples are collected legally or otherwise.
The matter for academia is not the protocols for collecting samples. Their matter is the dating of the Pyramid.
It is incredible to me that a hard fact of science is tossed out the window by academics simply because the sample was collected illegally. Its legal status is irrelevant to the fact it presents. Unless, of course, that fact is inconvenient and threatens your tenure as an academic whose ego and career are based on the fraud being exposed by it.
Instead of chucking out the claims by Vyse (the only rational response to this episode) and perhaps giving the sample collectors a fine for their acts (along with a medal for doing something no Egyptologist has ever done, legally or otherwise), they instead chuck out the only important fact about the episode, which was that these markings can not possibly be taken seriously as a way of dating the Pyramid.
Sadly typical behaviour. I’d say the truth is worth the transgression, because it yields far more than it does damage to the object.
Some will already be asking, why does “Bob” care so much?
I have started a discussion of this article on GHMB. I invite him to join it. If he really wants to debate the question, he’ll do so, won’t he? If on the other hand he refuses, we’ll be entitled to ask why, as surely there is no impediment to his joining in.
We see that he has made allegations about “academics” without any sign of his feeling a need to justify them, let alone actually doing so. This, if anything, is what’s “typical” here.
Wow. And so it continues to embarrass itself in public, for eternity. Constantly evading the topic, trying to steer the attention upon itself, like a cartoon of a tantrum-throwing baby.
Focusing on identity and ego rather than the topic to hand (Vyse’s fraud and Pyramid dating, the only subject this page exists for). The subject you are obviously too terrified to actually start debating here. Here – not anywhere else.
You have joined Graham’s site to simply express your sadness that nobody pays you any attention. I wonder why that might be the case? Maybe it is because you are incapable of keeping on topic? Obsessed with identity and status, but without anything else to offer? Constantly trying to distract with irrelevant bullshit?
Again, you have brought nothing to this site but bad feelings and childish nonsense. Grow the fuck up.
Answer the questions: provide, here, a point-by-point breakdown of your criticism of this article by Creighton, or fuck off back to the oblivion you so clearly crave. Simply appearing here, insulting the readers and the site host, with unbelievably stupid behaviour like this, would be entertaining if it wasn’t so appallingly cringeworthy.
Is your strange obsession with my identity (and utter inability to engage with the topic) supposed to suggest that “Bob” is somehow Graham Hancock in disguise? If only that were true. No, idiot, I’m just a reader. I’m Australian. I visit this site often because I love Graham’s work and the insights that most commenters bring to the table. The adults, that is. Not you.
Graham has provided more justifications for his criticisms of academic failings of recent centuries than you would be able to count without going off-topic. They are all in his books, thousands of references, mostly relying on the works of scientists and those academics who are true to task and not insecure as fuck, like you. If you had ever bothered reading any of them, you would already know this. But, as you have so thoroughly continued to demonstrate, you probably haven’t even picked one of them up yet, and if you did, you would be focusing on literally everything except the points being made.
You’ve just embarrassed yourself on one of the most important pages for this material that exists. Well done, Champ.
By all means, keep coming back for more. I can do this all year if need be.
And here you are “proving” that you’re not a coward-troll by doing more of the same: spamming this page with your jejune self-righteous blather, sniping from the cover of anonymity. Who’s trying to make this all about me? You are—and very obviously so. Careful, troll: your projection is showing. Such an effusion as we see above scarcely merits the dignity of the tag “ad hominem”.
I notice that your pants-pissing cowardice includes ducking my invitation to join the discussion on GHMB. Don’t go supposing that no one else will.
Ah. No, you see, a troll is someone who simply appears to insult everyone and then demand attention whilst failing to engage with a single point in the article in a rational or reasonable, let alone polite, way.
That’s you, not me.
All I have done is point this out, as you seem too stupid to be aware of it. You do seem to be spectacularly self-unaware. Thank me later.
And as for the paranoid delusions about my identity – irrelevant for the purpose of critiquing an article – simply enquire of our webmaster whether or not the person posting as Bob is or is not Scott Creighton, and you may be relieved, and your bizarre paranoid delusions dispelled. Why would the author of an article not respond using his own name, when that surely has more weight, especially to fuckwits obsessed with status and presumed googlability? Wouldn’t someone like that simply say “google my name” like you did? Except presumably Scott doesn’t need to, because he just had an article published here, and I’d wager that gets insecure trolls like you all hot and bothered under the collar. So yes, you just got trounced by a total nobody, not a troll (that’s you), but a humble reader who thinks your contribution to this page is retarded beyond belief, and is calling it out, and will continue to do so, ad nauseam, forever. Expect it and by all means keep embarrassig yourself. OR, just engage with a single point in the article you are able to refute. Just one. Come on, we’re all rooting for you now.
For your information, Ocker Boy: I get on quite well with Australians. Foulmouthed included.
It’s gutless wonders and would-be mindreaders I have contempt for.
You’re the one pissing his pants and running away from a discussion in a far more suitable forum. Just to make it easy for you, here’s a link:
https://grahamhancock.com/phorum/read.php?1,1333069,1333069#msg-1333069
NO U, actually.
The challenge remains – simply demonstrate the error of a single point in the article above, here, on this page. Not by distracting with irrelevant links.
You haven’t, because you can’t. And now, it is clear, you won’t, even if you could, because you are an arrogant arsehole. And it just keeps getting worse.
And as for gutless, you are the one evading the actual discussion, which, 26 comments on, you have still failed to provide a single attempt at engaging with the article, or disproving a single point, here, in real time, on this page. Brainless, gutless, and ballless.
(To Bob, 29th February 2024 at 2:12 pm)
” Graham mentions the Vyse matter in his books. ”
To be precise, Vyse is mentioned in “Fingerprints of the Gods” (Mandarin 1995/6): 320-1; and in “Keeper of Genesis” (1997: 106-9), in sections that demonstrate the extent to which Hancock had been influenced by Sitchin at that stage.
” One thing he mentions in connection with this is the fact that some researchers collected samples of one of the markings suspected to be fraudulent. ”
No, Hancock never mentioned this in 1995, 1996 or 1997 (or in “Magicians of the Gods,” where Vyse is mentioned only once.)
The reason for this was that the attempt by the “researchers” you mention, presumably Dominique Goerlitz and Stefan Erdmann, to remove samples from crew-marks in the relieving chambers of the Great Pyramid, did not take place until some time between 2006 and 2013.
” This was date tested in a lab and found to be modern, ”
No, the fragments of paint removed by Goerlitz and Erdmann from the crew-marks were not date-tested in a lab. The Institut Fresenius, to whom the samples were given, said that the fragments were too small to work with. Eventually, they were returned to the Egyptian authorities.
” strongly suggesting fraud by Vyse, making the markings irrelevant with regard to dating the pyramid, being by him, or someone of his time and not an ancient Egyptian. However as the sample was “collected illegally”, i.e. without permission from the tyrant of the plateau, the findings were, apparently, rendered null. ”
No, those reasons are incorrect. Whether the samples were collected legally or illegally, they were in any case too small to work with.
There is no evidence demonstrating that Vyse or members of his team forged the crew-marks. No one knew anything about the ancient Egyptian methods of organising labour-forces; they did not know that some work-teams used names incorporating royal names or cartouches; and few people could even recognise any of these names at the time.
The idea that there was some kind of secret cache showing all these names, that Vyse and his team found and copied, is ludicrous.
Merrell,
Thank you for your kind reply. I am not exactly sure where in Graham’s books the sample issue is mentioned as I gave my GH books to an elderly friend, a retired doctor, some years ago, for which she was very grateful. I now only have audiobooks of his work, and it will take me some time to find it again. Possibly it was in America Before? Anyway, I am pretty sure the samples were, in fact, tested, BUT if they were not, then quite obviously this can all be instantaneously settled right now if a single academic had the intellectual balls to bother testing the graffiti legally (or otherwise, I have to say) once and for all so that it can be finally proven once and for all time that Vyse was a forger, or not. The excuse “but we KNOW Vyse wasn’t a forger” is not scientific – it is like saying “we KNOW Clovis was first!” or saying “we KNOW no civilisation like we see evidence of in Gobekli Tepe existed prior to 5000BC existed” or “we KNOW Atlantis was a stupid fairy tale” or “we KNOW there is no such thing as little people like homo floriensis, or large people like Denisovans, existed” or saying “we KNOW there are no ruins offshore in the ten million square miles of prime real estate submerged in 11500BC under a hundred meters of brine contains absolutely no possible evidence of human cultural development despite it being the most obviously likely place for said development during the period before submersion” and it is also like saying “we KNOW there was no great flood because only bible freaks believe in that and we are rationalistic atheists in tweed suits” when the submersion of that land actually is in itself the actual flood being referred to not just in biblical but also in literally every single other main cultural heritage on earth; and the other endless bullshit academic archaeologists come out with, despite failing to predict – yes FAILING TO PREDICT a single fucking thing in a hundred and fifty years. Did they predict the discovery of Gobekli Tepe? NO. Did they predict the discovery of Denisovans or Homo Floriensis? NO. Did they predict a single thing? Ever? No.
Graham did. He predicted more evidence would be found for high culture during more ancient times than allowed for by academia and he was proven spectacularly right time and again with all these things.
So, off you go. Get a sample of the graffiti in that chamber and test the fucking thing so we can all tick the appropriate box and move on to the next question. I’ll lay down a hundred bucks it is found to be anachronistically recent, and Vyse, as most but sadly not all can see, was a forger.
“Graham mentions the Vyse matter in his books.”
Which of his books have you read? Have you read this one?
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=nP7-It_ol84C&pg=PR34&dq=%22martin+stower%22
As I said, Graham (Graham Hancock, author of many books) mentions this in his books. I wasn’t talking about you. Specifically, those mentioned, but probably others I have not read yet either.
If you have something to contribute to the discussion, do so. Here. On Graham’s website. Where we – you, me, and the audience – all happen to be now. Here. Grahamhancock.com. Address each point you differ on in the article by Creighton above.
Demanding people “google your name” and then even more pathetically inserting links to more google self-referential onanism just looks even more desperate than you did before you began typing. Before anyone here knew you existed.
Stop being you, Martin. Just stop it. Be better. Engage with the article above, here, point by point, like a normal rational human being who genuinely wants to share knowledge. Or, keep turning everyone off yourself and academia in general by demonstrating the exact problem this market exists to expose.
Do I really need to explain this to you? Of course I do! You’re a thickhead!
We are entitled to infer (for obvious reasons) that your reading of Graham Hancock’s books (you mentioned them, no one asked you) was neither comprehensive nor attentive—remarkable when we remember that you also managed to find in them things which are actually not there.
You clown!
Just one of your deficits being a failure to understand the difference between what you say and what you show in saying it. We see you (again) for what you are in your behaviour here.
Scott has made fun of the name of my nonprofit institute and made fun of me but has not answered the charge I lay at his feet in my review of this book. His book is the hoax. Read my review… https://www.greatpyramid.org/post/the-great-pyramid-hoax
You should perhaps read Graham’s books. He discusses the fraud by Vyse very thoroughly. Claiming this book is a hoax is defamatory and libellous. A hoax is something done deliberately to deceive for profit or other advantage. This book was not written with that motive, and neither was this article. What evidence do you have to claim otherwise?
ANYWAY, BACK TO THE TOPIC.
Samples of the graffiti was collected illegally but nonetheless proved (hard and fast) to be from Vyse’s time, not ancient Egyptian times, after scientific dating (which does not depend upon legality of sample collection). This dating has never been disproven, merely ignored. This basic fact is not accepted by academia because permission from academics to collect the samples was not obtained beforehand – and we all know, don’t we, just how touchy the precious little darlings can be if their delusions of relevance are not indulged. But the subject is not legality of sample collection. It is the dating of the graffiti. That is the only issue being discussed here, now.
And, just like Martin Stower, and now you, academics of the wrong type always focus on irrelevancies (i.e. legality of sample collection) instead of the actual knowledge being gained (the true dating of the graffiti, and therefore, of the pyramid). Always a distraction technique, an evasion, a slippery squirm and dodge to avoid confronting the fact THEY GOT IT WRONG and then built careers on falsehood their own IQ failed to detect.
Anyway, back to the topic, namely, the dating of the pyramid via eliminating frauds such as Vyse, who has done mankind an immense disservice by his pathetic deception, which stupid, acritical gonzos have failed to come to grips with for over a century.
I read it on Amazon, I believe soon after it first appeared there, in 2021. Thank you for your valuable contribution.
This article is about two raw observations made by Scott Creighton and his idea how to explain them. The way to dispassionately, rationally, and formally rather than ideologically encumbered, approach this is by first asking yourself if the raw observations are correct. This is a fundamental premise of science where different parties/observers must first agree on an observation before coming to terms as to what they mean. The two observations made by Scott are a) A hieroglyphic name of a gang on the north wall of Campbell’s Chamber that appears nowhere else according to the way illustrator J. R. Hill copied it down, and b) An ostensible fusion of two gang names on a block near the southeast corner of Lady Arbuthnot’s Chamber making this look like a mistake.
Are these two observations anomalies to the main model that these are authentic quarry marks by workers who worked for Khufu? If they are not, there is no further debate needed. You cannot argue over the meaning of observations that are not agreed on. If you don’t agree with Scott Creighton that these two set of marks are anomalous compared to the overall context of marks in the chambers, then there is no rational way to come to terms with his model to explain these anomalies. It becomes a mute issue.
Only if one agrees with the observations is there any basis to move forward to either agree, or not agree with Scott’s idea how to explain them. One may come up with other explanations. As soon as you have more than one way to explain raw observations that participants agree on, they must come to terms. In science this comes down to model vetting by falsification. You cannot prove a model to be true, you can only falsify all others proposed. In science, “truth” is what’s left standing after model vetting. That “truth” is ever subject to new paradoxes, anomalies, and other new observations not born out by its predictions.
The scientific method remains the only valid way thus far discovered to discover new knowledge. There is no exception to this. One cannot out-argue a model based on agreed-upon observations without falsifying evidence that contradicts the model the proponent is proposing.
No matter how you fall on this issue, in the end a lot of it has to do with incomplete information. In this case especially the problem is access to the original data. What is needed are clear photos of all marks from the chambers whose provenance is assured. Instead, at hand are mostly epigraphic survey illustrations made at a time when the language of the ancient Egyptians had barely begun to be understood. There was no photography to eliminate subjectivity in copying original data. The few photos and films available publically are not of sufficient quality to address all concerns by all parties to this dispute.
Without the original data, the dispute highlighted here will not end. It is a synthetic dispute in a sense that the needed data could be had since they have been long discovered, but are in the hands of a monopoly that controls access and that has a vested interest in the narrative that comes out of Egypt. Nevertheless, if a credentialed research team with funds petitions Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities access is possible.
To state the simple and obvious: Scott Creighton has not been in the chambers and he has made no “raw observations”. His “observations” are as theory-laden and shaped by confirmation bias as anything ever has been or could be. Pretending that his “observations” are “raw” is “ideologically encumbered” and likewise pretending that the outcome of doing so is or can be “ideologically unencumbered”. To pretend that Creighton’s rubbish is in any way “scientific” is either abysmally stupid or barefaced lying: in either case it is culpably misleading.
I’m putting you on notice, Manu Seyfzadeh: I’ve had enough of your holier-than-thou posturing in the realm of philosophy of science and I’ll be exposing it whenever I see it and whenever I have the patience to do so. I am not going to stand by and allow you to mislead people, as you have tried to do here.
Oh my goodness, he’d better watch out! The late, great Martin Stower is putting him on notice!
A vapid content-free wanker who begins the comments section with literally the most insulting and pathetic cry for attention ever published, before embarrassing himself publicly with utter absence of a single engagement with a single point in the article, has just put someone on notice! Look out, you might get a total non-engagement with any of the points in the article, along with sour grapes that nobody already just knows who he is, along with snotty demands that you google his name! LOL
Are we all quaking in our boots yet?
You mean at your tantrum, “Bob”? Nope.
Your incontinent urge to hurl insults is not making this all about me, of course. Whatever happened to your pretence that you wanted to discuss the issue? I notice again that you’ve copped out of joining the discussion on GHMB. Now why is that?
Those with insight will be asking, what exactly is wrong with you?
Can someone just please date-test the graffiti scientifically
Me din-din’s gettin cold
Thank you
Have you any proposals on how to get the Egyptian authorities to agree to this?
I know!
How about Martin Stower adopts a pseudonym – out of fairness, so he is not unfairly disadvantaged, if he believes that that is what not having a googlable author’s name means – and, instead of being a pompous knob, he instead relies purely on the quality of his discourse and the points he makes about the article by Scott Creighton above?
With purely (or puerly) neutral starting points, the light of reason will surely pour forth from his serene countenance, albeit behind a non-googlable author’s name, his superior point of view established finally despite the total absence of anything so far, and the merits of the case can be judged without bias one way or the other. Without ego (sorry, but yes, that is actually what this means), and without distortion. Pure reason. Critique away!
Such a fair-minded, kind, omniscient scholar will surely see the clarity of such an exercise, and the benefit to all mankind.
It took me seven Ph. D’s to come up with this solution, but I’m offering it here, for free. Use it for good.
Allow me to explain: an anonymous nothing with an ego problem bigger than I will every have (going by the name “Bob”) presumed to lecture me on my failure to “engage” with Scott Creighton. In which case it was surely legitimate to point out that I had so “engaged” for more than a decade. I used my name (in preference to a pseudonym) so that people brighter than “Bob” seems to be could make the connection with that prior engagement. Why (actually) the hell should I be expected to repeat it all for people too lazy to look? I hope I have made this sufficiently clear and simple for you.