ARCHEOLOGIA NUOVA

Dig Days: Save Giza before 2012

By Zahi Hawass

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I thought that the days of the "pyramidiots" were over and that they had finally left us to carry out some serious archaeology in peace. Over the last decade, many people have contacted me thinking they have located lost civilisations and imagining rooms under the Sphinx at Giza giving evidence that would solve these mysteries, but I have worked hard to demonstrate to them that these ideas are not true and to put a stop to this nonsense. In debates with them, I would show them the real evidence of how the Pyramids were constructed and that the Sphinx belonged to the ancient Egyptians, not to Atlanteans or aliens. I have excavated at Giza for a long, long time, and I have discovered a wealth of information about the workmen, nobles and officials who built the marvels at this site and who maintained the religious cults there.

Two years ago, however, I began to hear about those people who believe that in year 2012 evidence will be discovered at Giza and Al-Lahoun that will save the world! I found out that an expedition was working at Al-Lahoun that was funded by those who believe in this hallucination. The expedition leaders collected money from those they had convinced to follow them and began to spend huge amounts of it without keeping records of their expenditure. Even worse was the discovery that they were conducting their work without using any scientific methodology. I had to stop this work! In addition to this, there is no archaeological evidence for the so-called "labyrinth" of Amenemhet III's 20th-Dynasty pyramid that they were trying to find at Al-Lahoun.

Now another team has appeared to deceive the world with a new crackpot theory. They say that Abbas Mahmoud of the National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics (NRIAG) has published an article in a scientific journal that shows there is a temple or a palace in an area near the Sphinx. Our natural response to this is that when a radar survey picks up an anomaly, it does not automatically mean that there is a temple or palace there waiting to be discovered.

The Giza Plateau is in fact full of such anomalies, and we have tested them. Over the last 10 years, for example, several radar surveys have been carried out, especially around the Sphinx and also along the eastern side of the Great Pyramid. Where anomalies were found in the survey near the Great Pyramid, we excavated and found nothing at all. In addition to this, in 1977 the Stanford Research Institute drilled under the right paw of the Sphinx and also found nothing. Later, Joe Shore and others like John Anthony West funded a radar survey of the Sphinx's left paw and discovered anomalies. These findings were also supported by a Japanese team.

These people, who call themselves the Friends of the Giza Geomatrix Team, insist that there is a palace or temple in the area behind the Sphinx. They keep petitioning me and other people in authority to excavate this area, believing it to hold remains from the Third Dynasty. This is a joke. Nothing in this area dates to the Third Dynasty. The oldest evidence we have of human activity on the Giza Plateau dates to the Fourth Dynasty.

Another thing these people do not know is that we have recently drilled into the bedrock around the Sphinx to investigate the rising groundwater level that was threatening the site. We drilled five small holes about 20 metres deep in strategic places around the Sphinx -- two metres away from each of its paws, one between its paws and two at the back of it. Again, nothing was found. We even brought in a drill that could cut down at an angle and drilled from the left paw of the Sphinx all the way across to its right paw. We found nothing.

I cannot understand why these people continue to send these petitions. What they think is there on the Giza Plateau is completely wrong, and even Abbas himself rejected what they wrote at a meeting with the Supreme Council of Antiquities' Permanent Committee. The Friends of the Giza Geomatrix Team have no evidence. How do they think they can excavate through solid rock and, moreover, how can they do this with no credentials whatsoever?

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