PART TWO of a Two-Part Portrait of Zahi Hawass, Secretary-General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (for Part One, Click Here).
In the first article in this series, we were introduced to the grinning Lion of Egyptian Archaeology, Dr. Zahi Hawass. Seated only one rung below the Egyptian cabinet, his power over the investigation of antiquities in Egypt – some of the oldest on the planet, and by any measure, the repository of reams of knowledge still ungleaned – is absolute. His supporters say he has ushered in a golden age of Egyptian archaeology, and his skill at courting the media has been extremely useful in raising funds for research.
And yet, there are disturbing signs of a capricious and tyrannical streak to the good doctor that bear examination. For example, in 2003, Dr. Joann Fletcher, an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Archaeology at the University of York (U.K.) and Consultant Egyptologist for Harrogate Museums and Arts, and an expert in ancient mummies and their tattoos, hair and wigs, received permission from Hawass to conduct research into tomb KV35 in the Valley of the Kings, which has so often proved to be a treasure trove of mummies. On that expedition, Fletcher claimed to have found the mummy of Nefertiti, a claim roundly dismissed by Hawass, who then had her unceremoniously ejected from the project and the Valley of the Kings, saying only that she had "broken the rules".
While some suggest Fletcher committed no graver error than to go the press before Dr Hawass could, thereby depriving him of the media attention he so craves, others say Fletcher's conclusions were erroneous, she broke the rules, and she deserved censure. In any case, this treatment of a leading Egyptologist was remarkable enough that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation felt moved to a commission a five-part documentary special chronicling the entire episode.
Even stranger are the events surrounding investigations instigated by the German robotics engineer Rudolph Gantenbrink. Hired in 1992 and 1993 to install ventilation fans in the Great Pyramid, he was intrigued by what were often called 'air shafts', blind tunnels ascending on a diagonal from the center of the structure. After convincing the Supreme Council of Antiquities – which would have required Hawass' cooperation, as he was at that time Chief Inspector for the Giza Pyramds -- to allow him to investigate, he deployed a succession of small robots armed with cameras to climb various shafts.
What he discovered in a shaft rising from the Queen's Chamber using his robot Upuat II, and what was broadcast to millions in a subsequent documentary, became known as "Gantenbrink's Door", a smooth stone slab with copper fittings blocking the air shaft. The findings were spectacular, and theories about what were to be found behind the door -- including a hidden chamber -- ran rampant. Hawass, however, condemned Gantenbrink, and his colleague Dr. Robert Bauval, for sensationalism and speculation.
It was later that year that curious events began occurring, as described by authors Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince in their book 1999 book The Stargate Conspiracy. Dr. Hawass was fired, then reinstated a month later, following a scandal over a stolen Fourth Dynasty statue. His immediate superior, Dr Muhammed Bakr, who was then President of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, and the man who had fired Hawass, was himself then fired shortly thereafter. Bakr subsequently complained of a 'mafia' which had been controlling the pyramids for 20 years.
The door remained unopened for another 10 years, until Hawass, by now promoted to his Secretary-General position, coordinated a joint Fox-National Geographic special – Secret Chambers Revealed -- to explore the shaft with a specially designed $250,000 robot called Pyramid Rover, built by the American company i-robot (which three years later was commissioned to develop prototype combat robots for the U.S. Army's Future Combat System). By this point, the original robot genius, and the man who had done more research on the shaft than anyone, Rudolph Gantenbrink, was barred from the project, after disagreeing publicly and privatelyl with Hawass one time to many. Viewers of the special watched in awe, as the robot drilled through the now ironically named Gantenbrink's Door, inserted a fibre-optic camera, and discovered….
...another door. The disappointment was palpable, but Hawass dismissed it, calling the find a major discovery: "I'm really happy we did this, we found another sealed chamber…Laura, this is very important, this is something I am very proud that finally we revealed the first mystery of the Great Pyramid of Khufu…We will study this, we will find out how we can reveal more secrets of the Pyramid, but this is very important".
Shortly afterwards, National Geographic announced the discovery of a third doorin another shaft (the northern shaft), and thus the mystery continues, as does the persistent search for a mysterious hidden chamber.
So we have ample evidence of Hawass acting both peremptorily and even erratically. He is on record as opposing alternative history theories and 'pyramidiots' on the grounds that they slight the proud Egyptian people. He's engaged in public feuds with theorists such as Robert Bauval, Graham Hancock, and John Anthony West for their "far-out theories", and yet has endorsed bizarre and un-historical projects such as placing a golden capstone on the pyramid to celebrate the millennium, a plan which faced objections from academics at the University of Cairo and was ultimately cancelled.
One of the things most worth noting about this proposal is the existence of a Masonic prophecy that a 'New Order of the Ages' will be inaugurated when a gold capstone is placed on top of Khufu's pyramid (this is the meaning behind the truncated pyramid on the U.S. dollar bill). Even stranger, Edgar Cayce, 'the Sleeping Prophet' predicted this same event, saying in one of his prophecies that it would act as a 'symbol' for the rediscovery of the legendary 'Hall of Records' of Atlantis. This will become significant as we explore Dr Hawass' background further, as it appears that he – as well as his highly influential colleague Dr Mark Lehner, about whom Hawass has said "you can sometimes have a brother who is not of your blood" -- has significant ties to the Cayce organization.
Before we look deeper, we need to go back to 1946, when Stanford University founded the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) to conduct commercial research and bring extra funds into the institution. The goal of fully accessing commercial funding was never really achieved, although SRI did become self-sustaining by gaining numerous government contracts. By 1993 it was one of the largest independent research institutes in the world, with 75% of its funding coming from the U.S. Department of Defense.
By the early 1970s, one of the fields in which SRI was heavily involved was remote sensing. It was using these emerging technologies to non-destructively probe the pyramids on the Giza plateau for hidden chambers, while at the same time, it was also conducting extrasensory remote viewing research for the CIA's Office of Technical Services and Office of Research, involving figures such as as Ingo Swann and Uri Geller.
At roughly the same time, a young Mark Lehner was selected by Hugh Lynn Cayce, Edgar Cayce's son and heir, to become the 'inside man' in Egyptology for the Association for Research and Enlightenment, which had been founded by the senior Cayce in 1931. The ARE paid for Lehner to attend the American University at Cairo, and in 1974, according to Picknett and Prince, he wrote: that "the great pyramid was built as a repository of knowledge, and a temple of initiation for the White Brotherhood." It was also in that year that Lehner met Hawass, and the following year, introduced Hawass to his benefactor, Hugh Lynn Cayce.
Only three years later, SRI – now doing resistivity technology studies on the Great Sphinx, and funded by the ARE – discovered subterranean anomalies which appeared to represent cavities. According to Picknett and Prince, this discovery spurred Hugh Lynn Cayce into founding, in 1978, the Sphinx Exploration Project in an attempt to verify his father's predictions about the Sphinx and the Atlantean Hall of Records, and he enlisted not only SRI but the Egyptian Antiquities Organization (the forerunner of the Supreme Council of Antiquities), represented by none other than Mark Lehner and Zahi Hawass. Shockingly, the team discarded their previous non-invasive techniques and began drilling beneath the right paw of the Sphinx. Nevertheless, while some additional 'anomalous chambers' were discovered, there was no Hall of Records.
Nevertheless, Hugh Lynn Cayce was grateful to Hawass for helping Lehner, the Cayce Foundation and the ARE, and doubtless also saw him as a useful person to have on-side. According to Robert Bauval, and as posted on his website, Cayce paid for Hawass' Ph.D, which proved to be the Egyptologist's ticket from being a mere Chief Inspector with a Bachelor of Arts to the powerhouse he has become today.
Can this possibly be true? Can the scourge of pyramidiots, the champion of an Egyptian-only origin for the pyramids and the Sphinx, the battler of alternative history proponents like Bauval, Hancock and West, be a puppet of the Association for Research and Enlightenment? A tool to ensure that Cayce affiliates and no one else is allowed to search anywhere near where secret knowledge kept safe since the sinking of Atlantis is predicted to be located?
It's hard to say. The Hugh Lynn Cayce quote supplied by Bauval is hearsay and as such, fails to meet the standard required for such as shocking claim.
But if true, it would explain a lot. It would make sense of much of Hawass' bizarre behaviour. It would also explain why on his own personal site 'The Plateau', there is information confirming that Hawass delivered lectures at the ARE's Virginia Beach headquarters as late as 1997, and why a lecture on April 4, 2001 (also mentioned on his website) at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles was conducted on behalf of an organization with the suspicious name of American Research Centre, with queries for further information being forwarded to the American Research Centre for Enlightenment, known to have been affiliated with the ARE since the 1970s.
So, can we prove Hawass is a pawn of the New Age Cayce followers who are desperately seeking the lost remnants of Atlantean knowledge? No.
But if he were, he could hardly be doing a better job.
Great work Synthesis! These connections that you reveal here are certainly worthy of serious consideration.
I also knew there was something sketchy going on with Hawass, now it is very clear what that is. Would you care to speculate whether the Cayce group and affiliated organizations are fronting for a more well-known group that wouldn't necessarily have the opportunity to do this openly given current circumstances in Egypt?
Well, let's just call them a Masonic group. There are so many aspects and types of masonry that it is difficult to specify. Obviously, we're not talking about the Freemasons from the local lodge, but rather something much higher up the food chain, so to speak.
Not necessarily. The only reason I bring it up is that there are so many societies that claim heritage from ancient Egypt and incorporate the symbolism and concepts of the pyramids that it doesn't seem outlandish that one or more of these groups would be involved in a plan to co-opt or control the antiquities department through a trusted agent... like Hawass. As custodians of sacred and ancient knowledge, not only would it be important to guide the search for antiquities, but more importantly to prevent revelation of any that they deem secret.
BTW, this article was linked from Red Ice Creations today.
The so-called "Atlantean Hall of Records" are not what being claimed inside the Giza pyramids, it's all the oldest and lost records of ancient times somehow secretly stored inside the pyramids by a small but dedicated team of Alexandria librarians from the great Library of Alexandria. They knew such important old records would be forever lost from looting or stolen or destroyed in fire in the famous Library, so they took most of the important and the oldest ones from the storages, had scribes copied all of them into secondary editions, then quietly took the originals to the safest, driest and darkest places on Earth: inside the pyramids of Giza. Apparently they knew the exact secret routes and placements inside the pyramids, moreover, they must have been doing it for centuries before the rise of Islam. After that, all was lost and forgotten. Or was the secret knowledge passed down from generation to generation among a very small number of men, ending up with Hawass and few others in this current era of scientific and media opportunities?
Just a couple holes :) but a entertaining start on a conspiracy behind Dr. Hawass uncanny discovery success during years when archeological projects have been considerably diminished. He's checked out a few too many books from the Library :)
Well done, Synthesis. I missed this article when you first wrote it, so I'm glad I had the opportunity to read it tonight. I guess I was a little late for the party. :-)
It would appear that the discoveries by little known scientists such as Joe Parr have long proven that the secret nature of the pyramids resides not carved in stone but the resonant frequencies the stones produce that result in the transference of data via intelligent energy rather than hidden archives. This requires elaboration which I will not present at this time. See Joe Par for his findings...
Why would a capstone demarcate a discovery if it did not somehow contribute to the 'circuit' required for the discovery to be made? Psychics do not foretell future events, but they describe possibilities and relationships that can be changed at each step along the way. The capstone does not represent a moment in time but rather an event that will initiate the reanimation of the pyramid complex, as a circuit of tachyon energy, given Joe Parr's findings, if understood and coordinated to, apparently, key calendrical and astrological periods.
The link to Cayce's research is curious and the link the the SRI is frightening given their long heritage of using their research scientist's discoveries for 'questionable' applications. The Lilly Wave comes to mind as a prime example. It is worth noting in Joseph Farrell's recent research, he is also bring attention to artifacts that might have been removed from the pyramid or somehow related the the pyramid's technology that were part of the Sumerian culture. Joe Parr explains why the pyramids were built precisely where they were and both Edgar Cayce and various research scientists and astrologers are placing the construction of the pyramids to about 10,500 years ago. Translated, one of the items is called The Tablets of Destiny whose possessor would have near invincible power. This was hidden and in his opinion might explain the recent looting of Bagdad's Museum of the antiquities. It also might be, in my opinion, the inimitable holy grail or lore which again is likely not a carving, but an energetic record likely pertaining to the human genome if researchers such a Farrell, and Michael Tsarion are correct, or even close!
There is only one pyramidiot and he knows who he is. Certain knowledge cannot be owned.
Synthesis --
You cannot be serious about any kind of secret plan or arrangement between ARE and Hawass. ANYONE who wants any access to the pyramids or other sites HAS to go thru Hawass. That is just how it is. Possibly there is also a lot of pressure on Hawass not just from the Egyptian govt but from global museums and universities to act super-responsibly about these priceless artifacts.
Hawass is a bit of a ham and a power-grabber. He seems to me to be a romantic about Egypt in the sense that he believes the pyramids are a product of EGYPTIAN people and not a master race or aliens or any of that. Putting the capstone on top was an act of a romantic.
I do not know for sure of any funding for Hawass' degree. But obviously ARE has to make nice with him to continue to have any access for their own projects in Egypt. (Hawass' PhD is from U of Penn). The ARE site has no information on Hawass other than the National Geographic press releases. There are no ties to Hawass (BTW I heard him speak at some Milw. Museum Egyptian show) -- Hawass has an enormous speaking schedule and it means nothing if he did speak to a Cayce group or any other pyramidiots...
Mark Lehner was originally a member of ARE, was what you would call a pyramidiot, I guess, then went for a traditional Egyptology degree -- he enrolled in Amer. University in Cairo in 1973. Since then he has distanced himself from any former association with ARE, going so far as to say he no longer believes in any of Cayce's readings, nor that the Sphinx is 10K yrs old, etc. (This is all on the web) So much for that angle.
And as for any link to Illuminati etc -- that is so funny it isn't funny. Cayce was a Kentucky country boy, raised in a very traditional Bible-reading culture, and his intuitive knowledge just doesn't come from associating with Cheney- types or power brokers. You just don't know a thing about Cayce if you think he had any ties to that sort.
Sorry to shoot this one down, Synthesis.
I do enjoy just about everything you've put up on the Vine pages.
Anyone can have an off day?
I don't know too much about any of those other figures. Altho when on a family vacation we did visit the Rosicrucian Museum because we were visiting relatives in California.
There is one long episode in Cayce's life that maybe would be interesting. During the 1920's, Cayce had a Cayce Petroleum Co which he hoped would provide the funds to finance the operation of the hospital in Virginia Beach. The partners did the drilling and Cayce gave the locations to drill.
Anyway, it was a very mixed bag, and ultimately failed with the stock market crash and then the Cayce group lost the hospital. The hospital had been financed at first by Morton Blumenthal, who had benefitted from some readings.) Some sites produced some oil, but a lot produced nothing or the money ran out before reaching the depth specified. (You can read more about it on Henry Reed's site Intuitive-Connections.net where he talks about his 2002 book.)
Reed has been a guest at some ARE functions.
Personally, I think Cayce was probably used by these other partners. They probably stole oil profits from him -- let the leases run out on his company and then re-leased under their own names -- stuff like that. I don't know any of the names of these guys -- they are only referred to as Mr W or Mr. R. But they could have been some well-known oil people. Lots of famous people came to him -- Woodrow Wilson, industrialists, performers. Lots of people looking for buried treasure or wanting to know the outcome of horse races, but that was early in his career when he was unclear on his purpose. Readings then were limited to those needing help with health or personal/marital problems, or those wanting spiritual information. He did not take money for these readings - he had a career as a photographer for a time.
As for where he got the New-Age-y ideas from -- I just came across something that said he worked for Hopper's Bookstore in Hopkinsville, KY as a young person, and that this store carried books on what was then called the occult.
Thanks, Syn, and Minnie. The ways in which the occult surfaces in the everyday power struggles in the world is very interesting. Thanks for the link to Isis Unveiled; maybe I'll finally be able to read right through it:-)
It's amazing what ideas people bring to the grave marker of a dead king...
Giza is the triumph of low tech and high human organization.
I thought Cayce, Blavatsky (sp?) et al were neat when I was about thirteen. I'm almost sixty now and prefer my Egyptology neat.
Nef
I read this over once more, with the comments, and tried finding anything on Cayce and Hawass again. Found something maybe on TheForbiddenKnowledge.com about the Capstone controversy . A capstone was placed on top of an obelisk in Paris, and plans were afoot to put one on top of the pyramid on Dec. 31, 1999 to usher in the new millennium. Plans were cancelled, natch, due to December being the sacred month of Ramadan. But this says that the idea originated with Hawass!! How about that?
Also the article just tosses out the amazing claim that the ARE did actually find something in their dig under the paw of the Sphinx, and then does not tell us a single detail! --
The Edgar Cayce Foundation has, since at least 1973, been involved in various expeditions at Giza to find the 'Hall of Records'. Two of its senior members, Dr. Joseph Schor and Mr. Joseph Jahoda, cause a huge controversy in 1996 when, under the cover of a license to conduct a general survey of Giza to find and repair faults and chasms under the bedrock, they extended their mandate and explored the ground under the Sphinx and claimed to have located a large man-made cavity under the paws at precisely the place Edgar Cayce had indicated . In August 1999 during a conference at the Edgar Cayce Foundation, Dr. Zahi Hawass announced the release of a new license to Joe Schor to conduct more radar soundings to find the Hall of Records under the Sphinx.
Wow.
Aha, found some reference to the find in the ARE publication. In 1998 there is a short sidebar to an article about the age of the Sphinx, in which it says that Schor found "a huge underground room" using radar -- this find it says was announced last year which would be 1997. Depth: 60-80 ft. below surface. Hawass discounted it saying it was probably a natural chamber or chasm. For now, it is called merely an anomaly.
Interestingly it also said that three passageways within the statue had been explored but they all came to dead ends.
I saw a piece of Zahi Hawass here-
God´s own messanger Moses, presenting the fact was lost to him. Part 4 of the same video shows why Zahi Hawass is unfit to be in any responsible role. If information of the inital conditions is fraudulent, what hope do we have in anything?
Hey, Synth, is it commonly known that there are rooms inside the Sphinx, simliar to the rooms inside the Great Pyramid?? Some call them temples or just rooms - supposedly discovered way back in 1912 or 1913. One or 2 of them are inside the head itself.
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