Page 296 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

quarry marks were quick to downplay the significance of these other,
contradictory, hieroglyphs, which appeared on a rectangular limestone
stela which now stood in the Cairo Museum.
25
The Inventory Stela, as it was called, had been discovered at Giza in the
nineteenth century by the French archaeologist Auguste Mariette. It was
something of a bombshell because its text clearly indicated that both the
Great Sphinx and the Great Pyramid (as well as several other structures
on the plateau) were already in existence long before Khufu came to the
throne. The inscription also referred to Isis as the ‘Mistress of the
Pyramid’, implying that the monument had been dedicated to the
goddess of magic and not to Khufu at all. Finally, there was a strong
suggestion that Khufu’s pyramid might have been one of the three
subsidiary structures alongside the Great Pyramid’s eastern flank.
26
All this looked like damaging evidence against the orthodox chronology
of Ancient Egypt. It also challenged the consensus view that the Giza
pyramids had been built as tombs and only as only. However, rather than
investigating the anachronistic statements in the Inventory Stela,
Egyptologists chose to devalue them. In the words of the influential
American scholar James Henry Breasted, ‘These references would be of
the highest importance if the stela were contemporaneous with Khufu;
but the orthographic evidences of its late date are entirely conclusive ...’
27
Breasted meant that the nature of the hieroglyphic writing system used
in he inscription was not consistent with that used in the Fourth Dynasty
but belonged to a more recent epoch: All Egyptologists concurred with
this analysis and the final judgement, still accepted today, was that the
stela had been carved in the Twenty-First Dynasty, about 1500 years after
Khufu’s reign, and was therefore to be regarded as a work of historical
fiction.
28
Thus, citing orthographic evidence, an entire academic discipline found
reason to ignore the boat-rocking implications of the Inventory Stela and
at no time gave proper consideration to the possibility that it could have
been based upon a genuine Fourth Dynasty inscription (just as the New
English Bible, for example, is based on a much older original). Exactly the
same scholars, however, had accepted the authenticity of a set of dubious
‘quarry marks’ without demur, turning a blind eye to their orthographic
and other peculiarities.
Why the double standard? Could it have been because the information
contained in the ‘quarry marks’ conformed strictly to orthodox opinion
that the Great Pyramid had been built as a tomb for Khufu? whereas the

25 James Henry Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt: Historical Documents from the
Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest, reprinted by Histories and Mysteries of Man Ltd.,
London, 1988, pp. 83-5.
Ibid., p. 85.
26
27 Ibid., p. 84.
28 Ibid., and Travellers Key to Ancient Egypt, p. 139.

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