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by
Michael Lohr
In 1999, a team of Belgium and German archaeologists, while excavating
an Egyptian burial chamber on the Giza plateau, halfway between the Chefren
Pyramid and the Sphinx, discovered a tunnel that led below the chamber
to a small causeway, at the end of which was a solid granite capstone
sealing off an apparent tomb. Zahi Hawass, director of the Giza site for
the Egyptian Antiquities Authority, was alerted to the discovery and immediately
stepped in to supervise the dig.
At the end of a causeway that connects the tomb to Kharfre’s
Pyramid, they discovered a circular door made of chocolate basalt, at
the base of which read in hieroglyphs that this was the “tomb of
the god Osiris.” Upon reading this, two teams of superstitious Egyptian
workers immediately stopped working and left the site. (In Egypt, it is
common practice to not disturb the artifacts of the ancients. One can
only imagine their panic when they discovered they were about to open
the sealed tomb of a legendary god of their ancestors.)
According to sources, the tomb’s door had a golden seal
placed around the rim of the capstone. This gold, when tested, was dated
to between 3844 BC to 4400 BC, well before the supposed establishment
date for the Egyptian Upper and Lower Kingdoms and the invention of hieroglyphics
in 3300 BC. But when journalists from the BBC and London Times asked about
these odd results, no one in authority would address it.
Hawass eventually hired men from the Egyptian army to open
the tomb’s capstone and proceed with the excavation. Once the stone
was removed, they found a vertical shaft that dropped 95 feet down into
the cold, dark earth. Once the team repelled down the shaft, they discovered
a large, granite sarcophagus with a hieroglyph-inscribed lid submerged
under three feet of water, in the middle of a stone circle that was divided
into four quadrants with each dividing line aimed to the north, south,
east, and west.
The tomb was also surrounded by four hieroglyph-inscribed
pillars situated at each point of the compass. From each cardinal point
was a tunnel filled to the ceiling with sand and debris that led presumably
under the Giza plateau. There was supposedly nothing found in the sarcophagus
except for a small stone tablet that said, “Osiris was resurrected
from the dead by Isis, who then ascended into the heavens.”
Evidence
of a Cover-Up
Why would the ancient Egyptians go to the trouble of carving out a complex
tomb, seal it up, yet never place a mummy or treasure there? Certain people
believe that Hawass may have uncovered some unusual artifact that, if
revealed, would stand traditional archaeology and perhaps even history
on its head.
Several artifacts were reportedly found about the chamber,
but a list was never released to the public. Later, in an interview with
the British newspaper The Guardian, Hawass said that the artifacts retrieved
dated the lower tomb, the so-called Osiris tomb, to the New Kingdom, around
1550 BC. Then a report released in 2003 by the Egyptian Antiquities Authority
stated that the tunnels leading away from the tomb actually went nowhere,
a view that was challenged by a group of Egyptologists in the September/October
2000 issue of Archaeology magazine. Surprisingly, neither Hawass nor any
of his associates have ever responded to the charges that the tunnels
do indeed proceed farther along under the Giza plateau, a silence that
was very much out of character.
Additionally, during the dig, it was rumored that the Giza
plateau was closed to the public, guarded by both U.S. and Egyptian military
units. Why were the U.S. and Egyptian armies placed on high alert while
this excavation was going on? Surely, they were not mobilized just to
deter thieves from raiding the tomb. This was an unprecedented move, for
never before were American and Egyptian armies mobilized to protect an
archaeological excavation, which suggests that more is going on here than
the Egyptian authorities are willing to admit.
Thus far, no outside entities, including historians and archaeologists,
have been permitted to inspect the Osiris tomb, the Egyptian authorities
citing that the Osiris tomb was “closed due to dangerous instabilities
in the chamber ceiling” or high water levels, a move that supports
the idea that there is something unusual about this tomb that Hawass wants
to keep secret.
Odd Hieroglyphs
In a related story, it was revealed by Fox television on their March,
1999 special “Opening The Lost Tombs: Live From Egypt” that
odd hieroglyphs had been discovered in the ruins of an Egyptian temple
dedicated to the goddess Hathor. An undercover Fox journalist took photos
of this anomalous series of glyphs, which are strangely similar in shape
to a modern helicopter and a space ship, and smuggled them out Egypt,
much to the chagrin of Dr. Hawass and the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities,
who attempted to have the photos extradited back to Egypt, sight unseen.
Once the photos were released on national television as part
of the Fox television special, Egyptian authorities attempted to spin
the event by saying that the helicopter-like glyph was actually part of
the name of a Pharaoh. But upon closer inspection, hieroglyphic experts
determined that the glyphs were designed differently from name glyphs
and that these hieroglyphs are potentially new “letters” to
the ancient Egyptian alphabet. The dispute over these discovered glyphs
continues to rage, with both sides passionately defending their positions.
For all the inexplicable events going on in Egypt, one cannot
help but wonder what the truth of the matter is. If some wondrous discovery
was made in the tomb of Osiris at the Temple of Hathor that could rewrite
history, no doubt that government agencies would hesitate to release this
information to the public. Unfortunately, this serves no one but conspiracy
theorists. We can only hope that more information and additional photographs
will soon be released to the public so that we may finally put an end
to the speculation.
from
issue #13
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