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I've also read Lehner's excoriation of Reisner's decree in 1985 which clearly and neatly exposes Reisner's pure fabrication....

Such fabrication was necessary for Reisner to be able to keep the Egyptological narrative self-consistent....

...But, similar to Reisner, I know of no attempt by Engelbach to restrain others from making such leaps in logic. And I think Reisner's is the bigger transgression since he clearly was all-in on driving the hoax right at the start, unlike Engelbach who seemed to take a more passive stand to simply allow such claims to be made about the stele.

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"We already knew that the contents of the box had been gathered up from the original tomb [based on how it was found], and that the original tomb had been broken into by thieves [because it was now there]."

"The chipping of the upper edge of the coffin and the lower edge of the lid had been noted when the tomb was first opened [when Reisner and co opened it] and understood as proving that the coffin had been closed and opened again before deposition in the secret tomb [this is how they "understood" it]."

"I reached the conclusion that the deposit was a reburial brought here from another tomb...[Right or wrong we all come to "conclusions" i.e. "opinions" do we not?]"

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"In a preliminary statement I set forth the facts as known at that time and outlined the various possibilities arising from the known facts...I never doubted that the mummy was in the coffin [but as he notes later he was wrong]...In my preliminary statement I had mentioned every possibility except the one which lay patent before us. There was no mummy in the coffin. It had seemed to me inconceivable that Cheops should have ordered the remains of his mother's burial transferred to Giza and hidden under a hundred feet of masonry unless the body, the most essential part of any burial, had been brought along with the coffin."

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Specifically, Mark Lehner, one of our best known modern Egyptologists, objects to Reisner's conclusions on a number of grounds. For example, he thinks that the robbers would have smashed the lid of the sarcophagus, as so often happened, rather than carefully lifting it off of the sarcophagus. Furthermore, it is difficult to believe that the robbers would have missed easily portable valuables such as the silver bracelets. Lehner also thinks that, were Hetepheres to have been buried originally at Dahshur, a theory for which there is really no evidence, the reburial should have taken place there as well. He also finds it difficult to believe that a shaft of such depth could have been dug secretly at Giza, and finally, he points out that it is hard to imagine Khufu knowingly allowing his mother to be reburied with broken pottery and violated funerary equipment.

Hence, Dr. Lehner has suggested an alternative theory for this tomb. He believes that Hetepheres died early in her son's reign, and was buried in this hastily dug shaft, similar in style to 3rd Dynasty tombs. He thinks that a superstructure was begun for the tomb, also in the style of the 3rd Dynasty, but was then abandoned when Khufu's cult was changed and the plan of the eastern field was modified because Khufu's upper temple would have interfered with it. Instead, he built the three small pyramids, referenced as G 1a, b and c. Dr. Lehner then believes that the queen's body was taken from G 7000x and reburied with new funerary equipment inside either G 1a or G 1b.

Dr. Lehner addressed and refuted Reisner's theory point by point, coming up with alternative explanations that fit his own theory. For example, he suggests that the basalt fragments found in the offering niche might be tools, and proposes that the limestone boulder might have been thrown into the niche to crush the skull and therefore invalidate the offering. He further suggests that the copper tools found in the burial chamber were left by the workmen who pried the lid from the sarcophagus to remove the body of the queen. On the grounds that the damage to the sarcophagus included chipping on the lid all the way around, he also believes that the sarcophagus could have easily been damaged in G 7000x.

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Mark Lehner's good friend and old associate at Giza and now head of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, Dr. Zahi Hawass, doubts both theories. He asks the questions, if Hetepheres were originally buried at Dahshur, then where is her first tomb, and how could her burial equipment been moved all the way from Dahshur to Giza in secret? If instead, G 7000x was her first burial, as Dr. Lehner suggests, then why was it left in such disorder? Indeed, he wonders why the queen mother would be buried in such haste, and why would Khufu's officials have needed a completely new set of funerary equipment? Most importantly, he wonders why the Queen's body would be reburied elsewhere, while leaving her canopic material behind?

Hence, Dr. Hawass presents yet another theory to this mystery. He believes that Hetepheres was originally buried in G 1a, the northernmost of the small pyramids. It was Dr. Lehner who pointed out that the portable canopy and furniture found in G 7000x would have fit almost perfectly into the burial chamber of G 1a, which makes more sense if it was originally designed to go there rather than placed hurriedly into G 7000x. But then, why would it have later been moved into G 7000x.

He explains that, during the First Intermediate Period there was a considerable amount of vandalism taking place on the Giza Plateau, and points out that evidence suggests that much of Khufu's complex was destroyed during this time. He therefore believes that Hetepheres' burial could have been disturbed at this time, and her body stolen by thieves looking for jewels. He thinks that it is possible that afterwards, priests connected to Khufu's cult might have moved what remained of her burial equipment to hide it from further pillagers. He suggests that, since the style of G 7000x points to a date in the 3rd Dynasty, or even the 2nd, is could have been dug much earlier and abandoned before Khufu's complex was even begun. Thus, the priest would have found and used this ancient shaft to protect what was left of the burial of this important queen.

Dr. Hawass also points out that this would explain the reversal of the objects suggested by Reisner, since it would be more reasonable for such a reversal to occur if the equipment were moved only a short distance, item by item. He thinks that the offerings were also moved, being damaged in the process, and that the basalt chips found with the offerings were more likely from the destroyed pavement of Khufu's upper temple, and the limestone debris was probably residue from his vandalized temples. Furthermore, he points to the lack of an official seal over the entrance to the shaft, which might account for a later burial.

To his credit, Dr. Hawass points out holes in his own theory, suggesting that his theory does not completely explain the queen's missing body. Likewise, he agrees with Dr. Lehner that robbers would be more likely to have broken the lid, and of course, there is the matter of various small objects that robbers would have likely have taken, including the jewelry box mentioned above.