It was the latter that interested the two Russians most. As they and I measured our words, the reason for the meeting began to emerge from their line of questions. What could I tell them beyond what is in the books? Do the Sumerian texts describe the weapons used in the Pyramid Wars? Would I name the mountain which in my opinion is the true Mount Sinai? Where precisely was the wiped out spaceport? Do the Sumerian texts provide a clue regarding what kind of nuclear explosion it was? Did I know that the mysterious sand found by the French was from the Sinai peninsula? Did I hear the rumors that the sand was radioactive?
They (I hoped) learned little from my evasive answers (the Cold War with the Soviet Union was still raging); I thought that I had learned a lot from them: Something significant, some important secret, had to do with the enigmatic sand discovered in the “Queen’s Chamber” passage; and the Soviets saw a nuclear connection to the Anunnaki spaceport in the Sinai.
These were implications that had to be pursued.
When the lecture sessions of the conference for which I came were over, the participants embarked on their tour & sightseeing program; I decided to stay behind and rejoin the group only for the flight back. My first undertaking was to visit the ARCE office-cum-library in Cairo. It had been six years since the French had found the sand, and I was curious what had transpired since then.
Yes, I was told, there have been reports about the sand, but no direct information regarding the results of the tests conducted in France; it was Egyptian tests of the sand samples that they retained that showed it was similar in its makeup to sand found in the Sinai, in the area of el-Tor (an ancient port on the Red Sea that served Egyptian mining of turquoise in the Sinai). Why would the Pyramid’s builders haul sand from a hundred miles away when sand is plentiful right there in Giza? My guess, they said, was as good as anyone’s. They gave me the address of the EdF in Paris to whom I could write (I later did, but never received a straight answer).
Is it true, I asked, that sections of the Pyramid—like the Queen’s Chamber—have been off limits? Yes, now and then. They tipped me off that the best time to poke around inside the Great Pyramid was right after the official closing time, when the Pyramid’s guards keep it open for about an hour to accommodate visitors who stay to meditate after the crowds are gone.
The ARCE library had a copy of a book-report written by the two French architects; it dealt with the architectural aspects of the Great Pyramid, but had nothing about the sand tests. I also found in the library a detailed report written (in English, in 1987) by Prof. Sakuji Yoshimura and three other professors of Waseda University about the Giza findings of the Japanese researchers. Part 6 dealt with their “Non-destructive Pyramid Investigation by Electromagnetic Wave Method.” I was especially interested in the pages dealing with the Queen’s Chamber, and the ARCE librarian allowed me to make photostatic copies.
The Japanese reported that the existence of an elongated cavity in the Horizontal Passage to the Queen’s Chamber “has been confirmed, as well as the presence, in the cavity, of quantities of sand, in agreement with the French microgravimetric measurements” (emphasis mine). The report disclosed that there was also indication of a hidden cavity in the Queen’s Chamber itself in the western wall—but its extent could not be defined due to unexplained “turbulent reflections” that disturbed the readings.
Those revelations were in line with beliefs held by various previous explorers that the builders of the Great Pyramid offset its immense weight by strategically placed gabled arches and cavities. The Japanese, who suspected a cavity behind the western wall of the Queen’s Chamber, noted in their report that the eastern wall of that chamber, where the ceiling was gabled, contains “a niche which was symbolically corbeled.”
The reference was to a well-known feature in the Queen’s Chamber known as The Niche (as shown schematically in fig. 29). It is usually considered to have been a wall recess for holding a statue, of a god or of a king. Past visitors to the chamber could see damage to the Niche’s stone masonry caused by varied burrowing efforts (starting, it is believed, with Al Mamoon’s men) to find out what might lie behind it (fig. 30). The opening has been known to extend inward, as a tunnel, a short distance (the 1971 comprehensive study Secrets of the Great Pyramid by Peter Tompkins states that “treasure seekers have hacked a passage through the back [of the Niche] for several yards”).
The Niche and its opening, cleaned of debris (plate 3), were the obvious feature of the Queen’s Chamber when I visited it on previous occasions (in addition, prominent are the openings of “air shafts” in the north and south walls). Now again in Cairo, I wondered why the Niche did not arouse the curiosity of the French or the Japanese: Neither of them made any mention of exploring in the eastern wall; and that was odd.
Figure 29
Figure 30
The next day I entered the Great Pyramid in time for the extra “quiet hour.” I made my way up the Ascending Passage. At the junction to the Horizontal Passage there was a gate of metal bars that was not there on previous visits—but it was open (fig. 31). Advancing half-crouching through the low and narrow Horizontal Passage that leads to the Queen’s Chamber (for most of its length, it is less than 4 x 4 feet high and wide) I looked for the three holes bored in the western wall by the French, but couldn’t find them. I reached the lighted Queen’s Chamber, where it is possible to stand up. There was no one there—but someone was watching: I noticed surveillance video cameras at two corners of the ceiling; one was pointed toward the entrance to the Chamber, the other to the Niche in the eastern wall. And the hole in the Niche was now covered by a wire mesh in a wooden frame (plate 4).
Figure 31
There was something else new there: SAND. On the exposed ledge of stone masonry in front of the covered opening there was a small pile of sand. It looked like ordinary sand, but it was an unusual sand: mixed into it were blue-green granules. A mineral? Plastic? I could not tell. The words in the Reuters 1987 report about the unusual sand discovered by the French having been “mixed with minerals” flashed back in my memory; so did the Russians’ queries about radioactive sand.
Was that what I was seeing? Where did it come from? There was no sand on the floor or anywhere else. I managed to remove the covering in its wooden frame, and shined my flashlight into the squarish opening; I saw a dark tunnel-like space. Did the sand come from inside there? I couldn’t tell.
What was I to do? It was eerie enough to be alone in the belly of the pyramid, engulfed by complete silence but watched by unknown eyes. I was seized with a fear that someone, routinely or on purpose, would shut the metal barrier at the passage’s entrance and lock me in, at least for the night if not for longer. I had in my jacket’s pocket several of the hotel’s message envelopes, so I used one to shovel some of the peculiar sand into another, and took it with me. I believe I remembered to put the covering back. Cold-sweating, I reached the gate at the passage’s entrance; it was open. I rushed up and out—relieved, but bewildered: Who was digging behind the Niche, and what lay there, deeper inside?
Back in New York I tested the sand with a regular radiation reader; there was no unusual radiation level. The Department of Geology at the University of Cincinnati analyzed the sand, at my request, in May 1993, finding its quartz grains unusually coated with iron oxide; the “blue minute flakes” appeared to be shavings of “an artificial or man-made material” (e.g., plastic); there was no mention of radioactivity.
So the Queen’s Chamber mystery remained: Where did the sand come from? Why was it mixed with the peculiar granules? Was it the same sand “mixed with minerals” as was reported in the French borings? Why was it all kept a secret?
It was a new puzzle. Yet, when a few years later an opportunity arose to find answers, an even greater mystery was encountered.
3
THE SECRET CHAMBER
If you look up the word Destiny in the dictionary, you will find it explained as Fate; if you look up Fate, you will read that it means Destiny.
But the ancient Sumerians made a great distinction between the two: Destiny, NAM, was not only predetermined, it was also final and unavoidable—as human mortality, for example. Fate was changeable, was subject to free choice: By being just, by following moral commandments, for example, one could live longer; Fate was NAM.TAR, a destiny that could be “twisted” and postponed (though not avoided).
I have pondered more than once which one it was—Fate or Destiny—that, unrealized by me, started in 1992 a chain of unforeseen events that led, step by step, to a major discovery and almost to my death.
The international conference at which I lectured in 1992 was arranged by an outfit called Power Places Tours. As I later learned, a competitor of theirs, a Mr. Abbas Nadim, sneaked into the conference hall and took note of the speakers. Contacting me back in the USA, he introduced himself as an Egyptian tour operator with an office in Los Angeles. He invited me to be a “Tour Scholar” on tours organized by his company, Visions Travel & Tours.
I told him that what I really wanted was to have my own tours, leading my own fans to sites of my choice. No problem, he said; I have the best contacts in Egypt; where do you want to go? I told him that I wanted to go to the Sinai, in search of the true Mount Sinai—for which I’d need a helicopter. I did not expect to hear from him again, for everyone told me that with the Sinai (returned to the Egyptians by Israel in a peace treaty) still a military zone, private helicopter flights were out of the question. To my surprise, he called after a while to say it could be done. The result was an April 1994 Egypt & Sinai “In the Footsteps of the Exodus” Tour—the first tour group allowed by the Egyptians into the Sinai, and to do so through a previously military tunnel under the Suez Canal.
Abbas—everyone called him just by his first name—did obtain for me a helicopter, but the planned landing with it on the Mount could not take place (those and subsequent adventures connected with Mount Sinai are described in The Earth Chronicles Expeditions). In Egypt proper, he arranged for us to see archaeological sites indicated by me that were usually excluded from tourist itineraries. But we could not enter the Queen’s Chamber; it was out of bounds due to the “Gantenbrink Affair”: The previous year a German engineer, Rudolph Gantenbrink, who was hired by the Egyptians to install a ventilating/dehumidifying system in the Great Pyramid, brought in a tiny robotic rover equipped with headlights and a camera and sent it up a shaft in the Queen’s Chamber’s southern wall (seen in plate 3; another one of two misnamed “air shafts” is in the opposite northern wall). The very narrow shaft is channel-like, about eight inches square. On the way up the robot found that the channel was blocked by a stone plug. The discovery made worldwide headlines; it also infuriated the Egyptian authorities, who accused Gantenbrink of unauthorized explorations and premature disclosures. The result was a ban on entry to the Queen’s Chamber . . .
We tried nevertheless, but the metal door leading to the horizontal passage was indeed locked. We’ll go in next time, Abbas assured me—and we did.
The next time was a “Peace Tour” in February 1995—Egypt, Sinai, Jordan, and Israel—an itinerary made possible by the signing of a peace treaty between Israel and Jordan. In the Sinai, Abbas had to obtain for me another helicopter; in Egypt, the visit had to include entry into the Queen’s Chamber. He achieved both.
How he had obtained the helicopter, I was not supposed to ask. The admission to the Queen’s Chamber was attained with the help of the new Chief of the Giza Plateau Antiquities—none other than my early recommender Dr. Zahi Hawass, with whom Abbas had become personally friendly.
At the time admission to the Great Pyramid was allowed “By permit only,” and the Sphinx was completely out of bounds, due to a Restoration Project (overseen by Dr. Hawass) that required extensive scaffolding while the Sphinx was being covered with new masonry from head to tail. Many have suspected that the Sphinx Restoration Project was really a cover-up—figuratively and literally, a way to put an end to the mushrooming speculation about the age of the Sphinx and the suspected “cavities” in and around it.
But not only was our group allowed to enter the Sphinx enclosure, stand between its paws, and explore around it—Dr. Hawass himself came to welcome us (fig. 32), and let me peek into a just-discovered chamberlike “cavity” in the back of the Sphinx (fig. 33, with my wife). It was a gracious gesture for which I later sent him a letter of thanks, enclosing press clippings showing him escorting America’s First Lady and her daughter at these Sphinx discoveries.
From the Sphinx we walked to the Great Pyramid; we were the last group to be let in. Once inside the Queen’s Chamber, I was astounded by changes to the Niche’s hollowed-out opening and to its covering—as this photo (plate 5), when compared to previous ones, shows. It was obvious that someone was conducting some work there. Was it part of the previous year’s ventilating efforts, or did someone continue to tunnel deeper inside?
I asked Abbas to send the group back to our hotel, but stay with me for a while longer. I also asked one of the group, John Cogswell, a veteran of the first journey, to stay behind. Once all others had left, I told the two of them the story of the sand, and of the visible changes in the Niche. “I would like to find out what’s inside, where the tunneling leads to,” I said; “because if the sand came from inside, there could be a ‘cavity’ there—a secret chamber.”
Figure 32
Figure 33
The challenge was irresistible. We removed the framed wire covering, shined our flashlights in, strained to see what’s inside; we couldn’t see much beyond several feet; but what we could see was astounding: Lengths of plastic pipes were strewn about (plate 6) and even a discarded bottle; someone had been doing some unreported work inside!
John Cogswell, an attorney, a graduate of Yale University in history, and a former U.S. Marines officer, volunteered to climb in. Crawling with flashlight and camera, he shouted at intervals to let us know he was OK. Then we could barely hear him. For a while Abbas and I began to wonder whether something went wrong. Then we heard Cogswell again, and saw the light of his flashlight moving toward us (plate 7).
When he re-emerged at long last (plate 8), catching his breath he shouted to us: “There’s a secret chamber in there!”
Excitedly, he told us what he had found. I sketched on a cover of my Briefing Notes what he was describing (fig. 34); he later sent me a professional sketch showing him inside the secret chamber (fig. 35). But the best way to tell the whole story is to quote his own words in a sworn affidavit that he prepared as a historic record:
AFFIDAVIT OF JOHN M. COGSWELL
In early February 1995 I was on a Visions Travel tour featuring Zecharia Sitchin. Our first stop was to see the Giza pyramids near Cairo, Egypt. There was hardly anyone at the pyramids when we arrived. As I recall, we were the only bus and there were a few vendors around peddling their wares. We entered the pyramid and looked around. Part of our visit included the Queen’s Chamber.
When we entered the Queen’s Chamber, we noticed a hole in the lower part of the niche, on the left as one enters. After everyone left except Zecharia Sitchin, Abbas Nadim and myself, I removed a few boards in the area of the niche to clear the entry way. I then took a flashlight and crawled in the hole. I crawled along for about 15 feet when a tunnel veered to the left. Along this way, I noted some old black plastic pipe that was badly damaged. The tunnel during this first stage of the journey was approximately 2.5 feet square. I took photos. After the first 15 feet, the tunnel veered to the left approximately 30–45° and continued for about another 15 feet. As I went on, the tunnel got roomier. At the end, I entered into an area roughly circular in nature and approximately 10–12 feet in diameter from the waist up and approximately 12 feet high. It was not a finished room but appeared to be a room created by the removal of building stones. I saw the building stones which were not removed on my left as I stood up. These stones were as high as my waist and made the diameter below my waist approximately 6–8 feet in diameter. The stones were unfinished. The c
eiling of the room was uneven.
Figure 34
Figure 35
I am told by Zecharia Sitchin, who was present at the time, that I reported seeing black on the upper ceiling stones in one area, though today I no longer recall having made this statement. I recall drawing a sketch of what I had witnessed on a paper of Zecharia Sitchin. He subsequently xeroxed the paper and added certain language. A copy of this paper is attached.
There were present with me during this adventure Zecharia Sitchin and Abbas Nadim. No one else was present. I took photographs and have attached them to this affidavit with a legend pertaining to the view of each of them. In order to give one a sense of what I experienced, I have asked a local artist, Michelle Wayland, to do an artistic rendering from the pictures, Zecharia Sitchin’s paper, this affidavit and my memory. A copy of this is also attached.
Signed this 28th day of January 2004.
Cogswell accompanied the affidavit with several photographs. The first one reproduced here (plate 9) represents a look backward to the entryway after crawling in, showing lengths of plastic pipes and a ribbed plastic (?) container lying on the tunnel’s floor. The second one (plate 10) is near the entrance to the secret chamber (note the blackened lintel stone). Next (plate 11) is looking into the chamber. Plate 12 shows the chamber’s upper part and its (blackened) ceiling. The next photograph (plate 13) shows the chamber’s walls and some of its ceiling stones. Plate 14, taken on the way back, shows the tunnel’s stonework toward the exit.
The Cogswell photographs and his verbal description suggest that the chamber and the tunnel to it had been excavated in earlier times; they might have even been part of the original construction. His description divides the tunnel into two different segments. The first is narrow and runs straight from the opening in the Niche for about 15 feet; the continuation veers there to the left and is roomier. This second section runs for about another 15 feet, reaching the chamber. Does this mean that the two segments were dug at different times, or that the original builders attempted concealment? Did the builders, as in other known instances (like the barrier found in the shaft by the Gantenbrink robot), intentionally put up a barrier or two—at 15 feet where the tunnel veers left, and by erecting the wall of the Niche itself ? Did they insert a layer of sand behind the barrier(s), as the French have found in the cavity in the Horizontal Passage leading to the Queen’s Chamber?
Journeys to the Mythical Past Page 4
