Why did two German 'hobbyists' deface a cartouche of Khufu inside the Great Pyramid and what does it have to do with Atlantis?
EXACTLY what drove two men to hack away at an inscription inside the Great Pyramid? Atlantis. It's a tale of cranks, conspiracies and an ancient cartouche.
Archaeology
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EXACTLY what drove two men to pretend to be archaeologists and hack off pieces of the Great Pyramid? Atlantis. It's a tale of cranks, conspiracies and an ancient cartouche.
The Great Pyramid of Khufu (also known as Cheops) on the Giza Plateau is the largest pyramid in Egypt and the only surviving example of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
The cartouche? It's an ancient red-pigment scribble deep inside the Great Pyramid said to be the linchpin in identifying who it was actually built for. Is it an authentic ancient Egyptian depiction of his name, or a 19th century fraud by a British adventurer seeking fame and fortune?
The conspiracy? That the academic world is colluding to conceal the true age and nature of the Great Pyramids. They're not monumental structures built to contain the tombs of Egyptian Pharoahs: They're really 20,000-year-old Atlantean power stations.
The cranks? Two men who took advantage of Egypt's internal chaos to gain access to the pyramid's inner septa, chip away at its stone slabs and scrape pigment off the cartouche to "prove" their alternative version of the history of the world.
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In November, Egyptian authorities expressed their outrage at the defacing of their nation's greatest monument. Minister of State for Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim vowed to hunt the vandals down and take retribution for the assault on their heritage.
Enter Dominique Goerlitz and Stefan Erdmann.
Variously described as archeology students from Dresden, amateur archaeologists and "hobbyists", the pair have now reportedly apologised, saying they "meant no harm" in chiselling off samples from within the Great Pyramid.
They said they hoped Egypt's antiquities minister and the Egyptian people would accept their apology and offer to pay compensation.
It appears their apology has not been accepted.
Instead Antiquities Minister Mohamed Ibrahim appears determined to press ahead with a committee of experts formed to investigate what they call illegal secret excavations.
So exactly what happened to evoke such outrage, and why?
SEEKERS OF THE 'TRUTH'
The men behind the "sampling" of the Great Pyramid insist it was all in the name of science. Real archaeologists are outraged.
But are these 'seekers of truth' all they purport to be?
It appears any archaeological qualifications they may claim are self-granted.
Dominique Gorlitz is a motivational speaker and ex-high school teacher specialising in the fields of biology and sport. His only claim to Egyptology fame appears to be a failed attempt to cross the Atlantic in a boat built to a modified form of those found in excavations at Giza. It sank part-way into the voyage.
Stefan Erdmann is an esoteric author who writes about a broad range of counterculture conspiracy theories. His books include The Cheops Lie, Hitler lived in Argentina, and Banks, Bread and Bombs which purports to expose the secret world governments of the Freemasons, Illuminati, Knights Templar and … George W. Bush.
How did they get permission to enter the Great Pyramid?
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The Egyptian government isn't exactly sure. They're continuing to investigate if and how the pair managed to get access to film for a documentary in the months leading up to the overthrow of the previous government of Mohamed Morsi. They assert no permission was ever granted for taking samples or other archaeological work and have expressed doubts about the extent of access actually approved.
Either way, Minister of State for Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim told Al-Ahram Weekly that he has issued a complaint with Interpol about the men, instigated an airport watch for them, ordered the suspension of all cooperation with the university they were supposedly associated with and penalised the tourist agency which took them to the Giza Pleateau.
He said a "silly trick" was behind the means by which the pair gained access to the pyramid and stated it was "not a quarry" for amateur archaeologists.
But Gorlitz and Erdman are being hailed as heroes by believers. Internet chatrooms are overflowing with praise for what they perceive as brave but illegal act necessary to expose the lies of true archeology.
The 'Cartouche of Khufu' showing evidence of the crime of the two Germans. #Egypt #Heritage pic.twitter.com/7MzYvIvmCm
— Monica Hanna (@monznomad) December 22, 2013SECRET SAMPLES
At the heart of the scandal is 200 milligrams of pigment and rock said to have been scraped from inside the Great Pyramid and spirited away to laboratories in Germany.
Why would Egyptian authorities get upset about 200 milligrams when the pyramid weighs 5.9 million tonnes?
The illegal act was targeted at a crucial piece of ancient graffiti in one of the inner chambers, as well as stone from part of the main burial chamber.
These specimens, Gorlitz says, have since been handed to Dresden University for analysis and dating.
Gorlitz told the Cairo Post that they did not enter the Great Pyramid with the intention of taking samples. "The decision was made when we were inside," he said.
Erdmann has told the German magazine Der Spiegel that the scraping was not from the cartouche itself, but rather a marking made with the same pigment nearby. The samples had later been taken from Egypt to the Fresenius Institute in Dresden to be examined, he said.
"We are currently conducting mineralogical investigations of the samples that Erdmann brought us. Where they come from we do not know," a spokesman for the Fresenius Institute told Der Spiegel.
EGYPTIAN UPRISING
Ahmed Said, a professor of ancient Egyptian civilisation at Cairo University, stated that the claim by the Germans that the Great Pyramid had been built before the reign of the Fourth Dynasty Pharaoh Khufu was "nonsense".
"It is an act of destruction and a break with all norms and international conventions," he said.
Mohamed Abdel-Maksoud, head of the ancient Egyptian department at the Ministry of Antiquities, said he had asked the German government to take legal procedures against both men.
"This occurrence has ruined the scientific reputation of all German archaeologists," he said.
The incident also has prompted an urgent review of security around the famous Giza pyramid complex.
A formal inquiry into the incident began its work early this month, with the aim of determining exactly what damage has been done and what motivated these secret excavations.
A formal statement by Egypt's Heritage Task Force reads:
" The apology to the Egyptian people by the two self-declared German archaeologists Dominique Goerlitz and Stefan Erdmann is late and not convincing. It only comes after legal procedures have been started in both Egypt and Germany... It seems obvious the persons in question only want to avoid legal consequences, as there has been sufficient time for an apology before legal action was taken but nothing happened."
The statement asserts that one or both of the German documentary makers is being investigated for illegally taking samples from the Sawwara and Dahshur temples in 2006. It rejects the "spur of the moment" argument behind the taking of the samples as the tools necessary for the task had been carried into the Pyramid.
" Egypt's Heritage Taskforce wonders why visitors should bring metal tools to a world heritage site without the intent of using them. Egypt's Heritage Taskforce therefore rejects the letter of apology as incomplete and questions its honesty," the statements reads.
MYSTIC MOTIVATION
Looming behind the international incident is a counterculture industry driven by conspiracy theories built up around a supposed ancient race of spiritualists whose empire spanned the globe.
And, of course, there's a pending documentary and book titled Das Cheops Projekt (The Cheops Project).
"Who was really behind the construction of the Great Pyramid?" a promotional blurb reads.
" With new dating methods Dr. Dominique Goerlitz and the author Stefan Erdmann want to reveal this secret. The new documentary of Frank Hoefer accompanies the two researchers on their examination to Egypt and many experts will give their statements."
The Great Pyramid is supposed to be among the last remaining traces of the vast "Atlantean" empire - if it can be established that they are really much older than 4600 years.
Official dating of the Great Pyramid, Erdman and Goerlitz assert, is solely based on a single red graffiti-cartouche in the upper vault of the Great Pyramid's King's Chamber.
And they believe the cartouche to be a fake.
"Despite this examination, which shall clarify the age of the (cartouche), the amazing differences between the pyramids of Giza and other Egyptian buildings are shown," the promotional web-page reads. "You will see that builders must have used hi-tech to achieve the remarkable amount of precision and that the size and position of the pyramids are no coincidence but planned according to astronomical orbs."
The pair dismisses all other evidence of construction work on the pyramids dated to the reign of Khufu 4600 years ago as simply being signs of a "renovation".
The documentary also sought to examine a "discovery" by Erdman from an earlier visit in 2007. He noticed "strange dark areas" on the granite beams in the ceiling of the Great Pyramid's burial chamber. "No experts seemed interested," he bemoaned, explaining that the marks support his idea that the pyramids had technical functions.
Establishing the age of both these elements would determine the truth of their ideas, they assert.
Thus the illegal samplings.
STATE OF THE SCIENCE
Contrary to common belief, archeology is not a rock-solid science. Much of what they understand to have happened in the past shifts and evolves as new - verified - clues are added to the almost infinite assembly of incomplete jigsaw puzzles.
At the core of this scandal is a "controversy" built up around the scant evidence linking Pharaoh Khufu to the Great Pyramid.
Most specifically, it's the aforementioned red-ochre cartouche.
The inscription which reads "the gang of Khufu" was found in 1837 by Sir Richard Vyse, a British soldier and adventurer who used gunpowder to blast his way into the inner chambers of the Great Pyramid.
At the time it was believed to have been left there by the pyramid's builders.
Sir Richard's critics asserted the cartouche was a forgery by the rough-and-ready adventurer in order to justify yet more investment in his treasure-hunting schemes.
But Professor of ancient Egyptian civilisation at Cairo University Ahmed Said says there is now plenty of evidence to support the age of the cartouche - and it's not from the reign of Pharoah Khufu himself.
Professor Said says the cartouche contains the king's short name and not the full official version as is used during a Pharoah's reign. It also was written in a cuneiform script, not the long-form of Khufu's time, most likely by a visitor during the Middle Kingdom era - long after the chambers had been looted.
So was Pharaoh Khufu the builder?
Most likely.
Khufu is believed to have been the second pharaoh of Egypt's Fourth Dynasty. His reign is poorly understood, but there are a few mentions of him in much later accounts by historians from Ancient Greece, among others.
Most of what we know about him comes from the fragmented remains of his extensive necropolis, which stood at the foot of the Great Pyramid itself.
Among the strongest surviving physical evidence that the Great Pyramid was built by Khufu are some extraordinary scraps of papyrus found preserved near the Red Sea, at a place called Wadi al-Jarf.
Among the recovered texts is a three-month portion of the "Diary of Merrer" which outlines his life as an overseer of the construction of the Great Pyramid.
This explanation does not satisfy Gerlitz and Erdman.
WHAT NEXT?
After returning from Egypt, the group posted clips from their documentary online. These showed their expedition inside the Great Pyramid and detailed the difficulties they had faced in accessing the red cartouche.
So why haven't we seen the documentary on the History, Discovery or National Geographic Channels yet?
They don't have enough cash to finish it.
Funded through a crowdsourcing program, the project has so far fallen far short of its $85,000 goal.
"With the elaborate film shootings and the expensive and the hard to get permissions to film in Egypt we could get the important samples (documented)," their promotion states. "This was privately pre-financed. More financial resources are necessary to bring the documentary to an end in short period of time. Especially the expensive lab analysis of the samples are only possible with a five digit amount of euros."
The crowdsourcing page has since been withdrawn.
As have most of the videos showing clips of Gerlitz and Erdman.
But the video company's promotional page remains.
Perhaps we'll get to see their story yet.
Until then, enjoy the uproar on social media.
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