from the West 3: Egypt Part Two

More about pyramids...

Last week’s blog …from the WEST introduced the amazing Egyptian civilisation. Of all the seven ancient “Wonders of the World”, the only one remaining is the Great Pyramid of Khufu.

If you read the scholarly publications, then it appears that the representatives of the Academic tradition have the Egyptian civilisation well in hand. No loose ends. In the last hundred years however, some maverick scholars have begun poking holes in accepted doctrines, and raising some awkward questions.

Before we get started on the mavericks, we should pay homage to the creators of the modern exoteric understanding of ancient Egypt.

Emperor Napoleon

The expedition of Napoleon marked the beginning of the scientific study of Egypt, now known as Egyptology. In 1798 with more than 50,000 men and 154 scientists aboard 300 ships, the Emperor of France landed in Alexandria on July 2. Twenty days later he defeated the Turks at the Battle of the Pyramids, and then in August 1798, he founded the Institute of Egypt in Cairo.

Champollion

Napoleon’s army of scientists took home with them lots of loot. Including an artefact known as the Rosetta Stone. Actually, the British got hold of this when they defeated the French in Egypt. It is currently housed in the British Museum and is the most visited item in the museum. 

The Rosetta stone turned out to be a turning point in understanding ancient Egypt. It had three copies of a decree written in ancient Greek, Demotic Egyptian (a sort of script used to write the Egyptian language) and Hieroglyphs - the mysterious picture symbols found carved into so many ancient Egyptian monuments. In 1822 the French had their revenge upon the English for making off with the Stone when Jean-Francoise Champollion deciphered the mysterious hieroglyphs whose meaning had been lost for thousands of years. This was an amazing breakthrough. For the first time Europeans could understand the ancient Egyptians in their own words.

The first egyptologists told the world that the pyramids were tombs for the pharaohs. In this view, the pharaohs were despotic tyrants who used slave labour to construct huge monuments to their own ego. Even the unrelenting efforts of hundreds of archaeologists, scholars and explorers, modified the edges of this view, but did not change the core of it.

Richard Williams Howard Vyse

Howard Vyse was the archetypal Victorian gentleman explorer. Determined to make discoveries in the Great Pyramid, he used gun powder to blast through five chambers above the roof of the King’s chamber. He did manage to discover the chambers, but managed to irreparably damage the Great Pyramid at the same time.

Following this triumph he turned his attention to the pyramid of Menkaure. With his trusty gun powder technique he blasted his way into a central chamber where he found a large mummified bird and a stone sarcophagus Of course he shipped the sarcophagus off to England (more “stuff the British stole “) - alas the ship carrying to Britain sank and this irreplaceable archaeological treasure was lost.

Vyse’s ingenuity and ability with gun powder was not lost to his army superiors: they promoted him to general. 

The era of gun powder archaeology gave way to the era of professional archaeologists. 

Howard Carter

One of these professionals was Howard Carter who made the most spectacular discovery of all when he entered the tomb of Tutankhamen, a pharaoh of the fourteenth century BC. Carter discovered an incredible array of treasure. There were 5,398 items found in the tomb, including a solid gold coffin, face mask, thrones, archery bows, trumpets, a lotus chalice, two Imiut fetishes, gold toe stalls, furniture, food, wine, sandals, and fresh linen underwear. Howard Carter took 10 years to catalog the items.more than 5000 items of gold, Art and precious materials. 

It should be noted that Tutankhamen was not buried in a pyramid!

…Next time, the exoteric picture, and the first cracks…