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Know_files/FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS.pdf - D Ank Unlimited

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Graham Hancock – <strong>FINGERPRINTS</strong> <strong>OF</strong> <strong>THE</strong> <strong>GODS</strong><br />

KHUFU<br />

KHUFU<br />

KHNUM-KHUFU<br />

YEAR SEVENTEEN 20<br />

It was all very convenient. Right at the end of a costly and otherwise<br />

fruitless digging season, just when a major archaeological discovery was<br />

needed to legitimize the expenses he had run up, Vyse had stumbled<br />

upon the find of the decade—the first incontrovertible proof that Khufu<br />

had indeed been the builder of the hitherto anonymous Great Pyramid.<br />

One would have thought that a discovery of this nature would have<br />

settled conclusively any lingering doubts over the ownership and purpose<br />

of that enigmatic monument. But the doubts remained, largely because,<br />

from the beginning, ‘a certain smell’ hung over Vyse’s evidence:<br />

1 It was odd that the marks were the only signs of the name Khufu ever<br />

found anywhere inside the Great Pyramid. 21<br />

2 It was odd that they had been found in such an obscure, out-of-theway<br />

corner of that immense building.<br />

3 It was odd that they had been found at all in a monument otherwise<br />

devoid of inscriptions of any kind.<br />

4 And it was extremely odd that they had been found only in the top<br />

four of the five relieving chambers. Inevitably, suspicious minds began<br />

to wonder whether ‘quarry marks’ might also have appeared in the<br />

lowest of these five chambers had that chamber, too, been discovered<br />

by Vyse (rather than by Nathaniel Davison seventy years earlier). 22<br />

5 Last but not least it was odd that several of the hieroglyphs in the<br />

‘quarry marks’ had been painted upside down, and that some were<br />

unrecognizable while others had been misspelt or used<br />

ungrammatically. 23<br />

Was Vyse a forger?<br />

I know of one plausible case made to suggest he was exactly that, 24 and<br />

although final proof will probably always be lacking, it seemed to me<br />

incautious of academic Egyptology to have accepted the authenticity of<br />

the quarry marks without question. Besides, there was alternative<br />

hieroglyphic evidence, arguably of purer provenance, which appeared to<br />

indicate that Khufu could not have built the Great Pyramid. Strangely, the<br />

same Egyptologists who readily ascribed immense importance to Vyse’s<br />

20<br />

The Pyramids of Egypt, p. 211-12; The Great Pyramid: Your Personal Guide, p. 71.<br />

21<br />

Pyramids of Egypt, pp. 96.<br />

22<br />

Secrets of the Great Pyramid, p. 35-6.<br />

23<br />

Zecharia Sitchin, The Stairway To Heaven, Avon Books, New York, 1983, pp. 253-82.<br />

24 Ibid.<br />

293

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