In March 1996, however, Dr. Hawass changed his mind, declaring in the Egyptian Gazette that Gantenbrink’s find was of huge interest and that the door would be opened in September 1996 by a multinational team led by the Egyptian geologist (and NASA consultant) Dr. Farouk El Baz. Rudolf Gantenbrink would not be involved and ‘another robot’—not Upuaut—would be used to explore the shaft. Participating in the exploration would be a ‘Canadian’ contingent.[714]
The Canadian element, ‘Amtex’, is headed by Peter Zuuring, a wealthy Dutch-Canadian businessman, who told us that he had shown the Egyptians how the door could be opened ‘relatively inexpensively ... We’re working with Spar Aerospace to design a miniature arm with tools that could first tap the door, knock it and try to lever things a little bit to see if there’s anything loose. But I think ultimately we’ll go straight through.’
In two conversations, Souring told us that he thought it unlikely that the project could start as early as September 1996: the following year, he said, 1997, was far more likely. The objective, which might take some time, was to raise the huge sum of ten million dollars to promote a staged ‘live opening’ of the door on international television networks. ‘I’m working with a private guy who is a personal friend of Hawass and we are absolutely going to drum this thing to death. Whatever the event we are going to stage, it will be televised live.’[715]
The Great Sphinx
In 1993-4 (see Chapter 2 and Chapter 5) Dr. Zahi Hawass appeared to be adamantly opposed to the notion that the Sphinx might be far older than ancient Egypt—and thus the work of a lost civilization. The reader will recall that the EAO official was particularly incensed by the NBC television film, The Mystery of the Sphinx, that was made about the work of John Anthony West. In addition Hawass had been personally responsible for expelling John West and his research team from the Sphinx enclosure. The team included the geologist Robert Schoch, a Professor at Boston University, and the seismologist Thomas Dobecki (who was to identify a large rectangular chamber concealed in the bedrock at a depth of about twenty feet beneath the front paws of the Sphinx).
The NBC documentary linked the Sphinx to Atlantis and suggested that the chamber that Thomas Dobecki’s seismograph had detected beneath its paws might contain some sort of ‘time capsule’ of Atlantean wisdom and history. Hawass called these claims: ‘American hallucinations. West is an amateur. There is absolutely no scientific base for any of this. We have older monuments in the same area. They definitely weren’t built by men from Atlantis. It’s nonsense and we won’t allow our monuments to be exploited for personal enrichment. The Sphinx is the soul of Egypt.’[716]
An article in the Egyptian press responding to the NBC film quoted Dr. Hawass on his further reasons for expelling John West and his team from the Sphinx enclosure: ‘I have found that their work is carried out by installing endoscopes in the Sphinx’s body and shooting films for all phases of the work in a propaganda ... but not in a scientific manner. I therefore suspended the work of this unscientific mission and made a report which was presented to the permanent commission who rejected the mission’s work in the future.’[717]
The NBC film was produced by Boris Said (see Chapter 2) and partially financed by investments from members of the Association for Research and Enlightenment (ARE). Headquartered in Virginia Beach in the United States (see Chapter 5), the ARE is a multimillion dollar organization that exists to promulgate the teachings and prophecies of the American psychic Edgar Cayce, who died in 1945. Prominent amongst Cayce’s pronouncements were many statements—some of which were reported in the NBC film—to the effect that the Sphinx had been built in 10,500 bc by the survivors of Atlantis who had concealed beneath it a ‘Hall of Records’ containing all the wisdom of their lost civilization and the true history of the human race. Cayce prophesied that this Hall of Records would be rediscovered and opened between 1996 and 1998. He connected the opening to the second coming of Christ and asserted that the contents of the Hall would not be shared with the general public until many years after it had first been entered by ‘three who would make of the perfect way of life.’[718]
In 1995 John West and Professor Robert Schoch of Boston University (in cooperation with the prestigious Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory, better known as PEAR) put in an application to the Egyptian authorities to resume their research. Their application was ignored.
At the end of March 1996 the Egyptian authorities granted a one-year license to a new team to conduct surveys around the Sphinx and the Giza necropolis using seismic equipment and ground-penetrating radar. This team, which claimed academic sponsorship from Florida State University (and reportedly involved the participation of four geologists from that university), was largely financed, through the Schor Foundation of New York, by Dr. Joseph Schor, an American multimillionaire. Dr. Schor is a life-member of the ARE and was one of the two ARE members who met us at Virginia Beach with Charles Thomas Cayce in May 1994 (see Chapter 5). Later that month he wrote to us of his great personal interest in corroborating ‘the Cayce records which indicated that the culture which led to the building of the Pyramids dates from 10,500 bc.’ He also stated his wish ‘to further delineate that civilization.’[719]
On 11 April 1996, when we informed Joseph Schor that we intended to write about these matters in the London Daily Mail, he threatened us with a libel action and stated: ‘We do not work for the Edgar Cayce group ... The major purpose of the Schor Foundation and the Florida State University is to aid in the preservation and restoration of the Pyramids and Sphinx. In addition we are surveying the underground of the Giza Plateau to find faults and chasms that might collapse. This will increase the safety of the plateau because chasms and faults can be collapsed or roped off for the protection of tourists and plateau personnel.’[720]
On 14 April 1996 Dr. Zahi Hawass gave a rather different account, mentioning hidden tunnels around the Pyramids and the Sphinx. He made no mention of the question of public safety but hinted that ‘excavation of the tunnels would reveal many clues regarding the establishment of the Giza pyramids.’[721]
Nor did that question appear to be the main thrust of a short video, Secret Chamber, in which Dr. Hawass took part. Filmed on location in Cairo in November and December 1995, the video was produced and written by Boris Said and, according to him, financed to the tune of one hundred thousand dollars by Joseph Schor. In this video, as we reported at the end of Chapter 5, Dr. Hawass is shown scrambling into a tunnel under the Sphinx. When he reaches the bottom he turns to face the camera and whispers to the viewer: ‘Even Indiana Jones will never dream to be here. Can you believe it? We are now inside the Sphinx, in this tunnel. This tunnel has never been opened before. No one really knows what’s inside this tunnel but we are going to open it for the first time.’[722]
The narrator of the video drives home an interesting point: ‘Edgar Cayce, America’s famous “Sleeping Prophet”, predicted that a chamber would be discovered beneath the Sphinx—a chamber containing the recorded history of human civilization. For the first time ever we’ll show you what lies beneath this great statue—a chamber which will be opened, live, for our television cameras.’[723]
In July 1996, after worldwide protest over the activities of the Schor Foundation and Florida State University at the Sphinx, Dr. Hawass claimed on South African radio that he had halted the project: ‘I found that their work is not following the correct steps ... I wrote a letter to them saying that they cannot do work again because they are not really following the correct work.’[724]
That same month, however, rumors began to circulate that the team had identified nine further tunnels or chambers under the Giza Plateau. In all of them, apparently, their remote-sensing equipment had identified objects made of metal.
By the end of August 1996, despite Hawass’s statement, team members still appeared confident that their project would go ahead and Boris Said was reputed to be negotiating with major television networks in the United States for an
exclusive documentary on the Sphinx.
The Edgar Cayce legacy
As we saw in Chapter 5, Edgar Cayce (known in America as the ‘Sleeping Prophet’ because he gave his psychic ‘readings’ in a trance-like state) believed himself to be a reincarnated priest called Ra-Ta, a survivor of Atlantis who had settled in Egypt in 10,500 bc. Throughout the 1930s, until his death in 1945, he used the contacts made through his ‘readings’ to ‘pick up players’—artists, bankers, businessmen, university professors and even politicians—who were all convinced that in their ‘past lives’ they too had played a role in the unfolding drama of Atlantis.[725]
One of these players, perhaps the most active the ARE would know, was Cayce’s eldest son, Hugh Lynn (1907-1983), a graduate of Harvard University who took over the management of the newly founded ARE in 1931 when he was just twenty-four years old. With youthful enthusiasm, he vowed that one day an ‘ARE sponsored expedition’ to Giza would vindicate his father’s prophecies concerning the Hall of Records.[726]
Perhaps Hugh Lynn had been inspired by the so-called ‘Baraize Expedition’ to the Sphinx which was already well underway in 1930 when the ARE was founded. Led by the then Director of the Egyptian Antiquities Department, a French archaeologist named Emile Baraize, this expedition stripped off the ancient skin of ‘repair blocks’ from the lower parts of the body of the Sphinx. While removing some of the blocks from the rump of the statue, Baraize came across the entrance to a tunnel. Then, for some extraordinary reason, he resealed the mouth of the tunnel with rock and cement and never reported the matter. With Baraize at the time was a young Arab boy called Mohamad Abdel Mawgud—whose descendants still live at Giza.[727]
The Baraize expedition ran from 1926 to 1936. But it was not until 1972 that Hugh Lynn Cayce, by then in his sixties, finally set in motion the plan that he had long ago conceived for getting the ARE into mainstream archaeology at Giza. His first move was to recruit a ‘college dropout named Mark Lehner’ (the ARE President thought he recognized the young man from a past life), and then arrange for him to take a post-graduate degree at the American University in Cairo. Today the Visiting Professor of Egyptology at the University of Chicago’s prestigious Oriental Institute, we saw in Chapter 5 how Lehner became the ARE’s ‘man’ at Giza, participating during the 1970s and 1980s in almost every important project undertaken around the Pyramids and the Sphinx.
Despite a number of setbacks experienced by the ARE as a result of these projects, an official biography reports that Hugh Lynn Cayce ‘had no sense of defeat ... He would stay with the search as long as it took, building alliances with other groups and individuals. One of the latter was the Egyptian Chief Inspector at Giza, Hawass, who he had met through Lehner in 1975. In 1980, Hawass accommodated the ARE by conducting an excavation in front of the Sphinx temple ...’[728]
In October 1980 Mark Lehner made contact with Mohamad Abdel Mawgud, the ‘young Arab boy’ (by now in his sixties) who had seen Emile Baraize seal up the tunnel under the Sphinx in 1926. Together with Ahmed Al Fayed, Abdel Mawgud’s son, Lehner was permitted by Zahi Hawass to remove the seal and enter the tunnel. But again, apparently, nothing was found. The tunnel reached a ‘dead end’ in the bedrock underneath the Sphinx.[729]
Soon afterwards Ahmed Al Fayed went to settle in Virginia Beach and in due course joined the staff of the ARE. Hawass also traveled to the United States at about this time to expand his formal education in Egyptology. As Hugh Lynn Cayce’s biographer reports: ‘If Zahi Hawass was to advance within the [Egyptian] government to further his own career and open doors for Hugh Lynn’s project, he could do it best on the wings of higher education at an American Ivy League college.’ Just before he died Hugh Lynn Cayce was to explain how: ‘I got him [Zahi Hawass] a scholarship at the University of Pennsylvania in Egyptology, to get his Ph.D. I got the scholarship through an ARE person who happens to be on the Fulbright scholarship board. He [Hawass] had aided Mark [Lehner] to work on the Sphinx and I am very appreciative.’[730]
Interviewed on South African radio in July 1996 Hawass responded to an earlier interview given by ourselves in which we had mentioned his apparent connections with the Edgar Cayce Foundation. He accused us of lying, stated that we were merely claiming these things to make ourselves famous, and insisted that he discredited Edgar Cayce, adding emphatically: ‘The Edgar Cayce theory is wrong.’ The interviewer (John Robbie of Radio 702, Johannesburg) then read out on the air the passage quoted above from Hugh Lynn Cayce’s biography in which the former ARE President claims to have been instrumental in obtaining a Fulbright scholarship for Hawass. Hawass replied: ‘That’s not true. I met him, I lectured to the Edgar Cayce Foundation many times. He was such a nice man. I never believed his theories. He never supported a fellowship for me to study outside at all. He just once attended a dinner that I invited him to in Cairo with one of the Fulbrights ... but he did not support any study. The Egyptian government supported my studies for five years and the Fulbright supported my studies at the University of Pennsylvania for two years. It had no support from such an organization like that.’
Hawass was then asked about Secret Chamber, the short video referred to above made by Boris Said in November and December 1995 and financed by Joseph Schor. The interviewer pointed out that this video makes positive reference to Edgar Cayce and his prophecies and includes an appearance by Zahi Hawass in which the Egyptian official stated that a tunnel under the Sphinx is about to be opened. ‘How come you’re involved with that?’ asked the interviewer.
Hawass: This is not true! I’m a public figure and I get interviews every day! Every day if you come to my office you will see almost three TVs from all over the world. I ... my interviews always explain my discoveries. This video is talking about the tunnel that I found inside the Sphinx based on my work. It is not by the work that is done here, it’s by Florida University. It is not by Cayce or anything! And we found even that Florida University are not following the scientist’s steps therefore I wrote a letter two months ago that those type ... even the universities, the universities are not following the exact steps that they supposed to do.
Interviewer: It seems a coincidence ... it seems a coincidence, Dr. Zahi, that the Cayce prophecy talks about tunnels under the Sphinx. You’ve discredited it. You’ve banned various researchers according to The Message of the Sphinx—people like John West who are trying to do work on this theory—and now you seem to be taking it over yourself. Is that true?
Hawass: No! I’m not taking over myself.. . If there is evidence, actual evidence from an institution, to tell us there is something under the Sphinx we’ll excavate it. But all of it is just hallucination! We cannot run after hallucinations at all.
Interviewer: But in that video, where you are actually filmed in a tunnel under the Sphinx, you indicated that this might lead to something very, very exciting ... I saw that myself, Zahi!
Hawass: If I did found ... I told you! I excavated this tunnel. And I did excavate it and I’m excavating it. If it leads to something important, we’ll announce it. You know what I’m saying? I’m not denying that ... Maybe it will lead to something exciting.
The interviewer asked Dr. Hawass why he had not taken legal action against us, the authors of The Message of the Sphinx, ‘because they make some serious accusations against you.’ Hawass replied: ‘You know, if I make legal action against them I will make them famous. But I will never, err, make them famous.’[731]
On 15 August 1996, in an interview with the Egyptian Gazette in Cairo, Dr. Hawass made an oddly similar remark concerning the Japanese team from Waseda University, led by Professor Sakuji Yoshimura, who in 1988 had used advanced technology to identify a hidden chamber inside the Great Pyramid and another beneath the left forepaw of the Great Sphinx. ‘I believe these teams were not serious enough,’ stated Dr. Hawass, ‘and their equipment was not well tooled. The members of these teams were merely interested in acquiring fame.’[732]
Mars and Giza:
Strange
connections and synchronicity
In our research we have stumbled across a tangled web of clues, connections and overlapping interests appearing to suggest that American scientists with links to NASA may have quietly involved themselves, since at least the 1970s, in covert ‘expeditions’ to unveil the secrets of the great pyramids and the Great Sphinx of Giza. The story, oddly enough, appears to be running in parallel with research stemming from the existence of curious pyramidial structures (and a gigantic Sphinx-like ‘Face’) that were photographed on Mars by NASA spacecraft during the 1970s.
In 1971 NASA’s Mariner 9 probe took the first ever photographs of strange ‘pyramid’ structures on Mars on a region of the planet known to astronomers as Elysium. Dr. James Hurtak, a graduate in remote sensing technology (and an acquaintance of Mark Lehner’s) was one of the earliest researchers to show interest in the Elysium ‘pyramids’—which were officially dismissed by NASA as ‘tricks of light’. In 1975, despite NASA’s apparent indifference, Hurtak predicted that further finds of similar structures, including a Sphinx-like monument, would be made on Mars and that they would all prove to be connected in a great cosmic blueprint to the Giza monuments in Egypt.[733]
Hurtak is an active campaigner against the secrecy of the United States military and related agencies with regard to UFO ‘cover-ups’ and other similar issues. He also claims to have had close links with researchers at California’s prestigious Stanford Research Institute, America’s second largest scientific think-tank (which has an annual budget from the United States government of over three hundred million dollars). The SRI’s projects have included the ‘Remote Viewing Program’ (started in 1972), funded by the CIA as an intelligence-gathering exercise, which recruited top psychics to ‘remote view’ enemy military installations and other sites.