Page 295 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

KHUFU
KHUFU
KHNUM-KHUFU
YEAR SEVENTEEN
20

It was all very convenient. Right at the end of a costly and otherwise
fruitless digging season, just when a major archaeological discovery was
needed to legitimize the expenses he had run up, Vyse had stumbled
upon the find of the decade—the first incontrovertible proof that Khufu
had indeed been the builder of the hitherto anonymous Great Pyramid.
One would have thought that a discovery of this nature would have
settled conclusively any lingering doubts over the ownership and purpose
of that enigmatic monument. But the doubts remained, largely because,
from the beginning, ‘a certain smell’ hung over Vyse’s evidence:
1 It was odd that the marks were the only signs of the name Khufu ever
found anywhere inside the Great Pyramid.
21
2 It was odd that they had been found in such an obscure, out-of-the-
way corner of that immense building.

3 It was odd that they had been found at all in a monument otherwise
devoid of inscriptions of any kind.

4 And it was extremely odd that they had been found only in the top
four of the five relieving chambers. Inevitably, suspicious minds began
to wonder whether ‘quarry marks’ might also have appeared in the
lowest of these five chambers had that chamber, too, been discovered
by Vyse (rather than by Nathaniel Davison seventy years earlier).
22
5 Last but not least it was odd that several of the hieroglyphs in the
‘quarry marks’ had been painted upside down, and that some were
unrecognizable while others had been misspelt or used
ungrammatically.
23
Was Vyse a forger?
I know of one plausible case made to suggest he was exactly that, and
24
although final proof will probably always be lacking, it seemed to me
incautious of academic Egyptology to have accepted the authenticity of
the quarry marks without question. Besides, there was alternative
hieroglyphic evidence, arguably of purer provenance, which appeared to
indicate that Khufu could not have built the Great Pyramid. Strangely, the
same Egyptologists who readily ascribed immense importance to Vyse’s

20 The Pyramids of Egypt, p. 211-12; The Great Pyramid: Your Personal Guide, p. 71.
21 Pyramids of Egypt, pp. 96.
Secrets of the Great Pyramid, p. 35-6.
22
23 Zecharia Sitchin, The Stairway To Heaven, Avon Books, New York, 1983, pp. 253-82.
24 Ibid.

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