In the original burial chamber Col. Vyse had discovered some human bones and the lid of a wooden anthropoid coffin inscribed with the name of Mycerinus. This lid, which is now in the British Museum, cannot have been made in the time of Mycerinus, for it is of a pattern not used before the Saite Period. Radiocarbon tests have shown that the bones date from early Christian times.3
So, what we have here are archaeological artifacts from two quite different periods that are far removed from Menkaure’s time and that have somehow magically found themselves together in Menkaure’s pyramid, having been recovered by Vyse and his team only after other earlier explorers of this pyramid had somehow overlooked them. Why were the bones and coffin not of the same period? Are we to believe there were two intrusive burials from two different periods long after the time of Menkaure? Why, then, weren’t any fragments of coffin or bones uncovered from the other intrusive burial (assuming, of course, that there were two such burials)? Do these events alone not reek of an attempt at deception by Vyse and/or his team, trying to pass off a “discovery” of an ancient Egyptian king that was later found to be false? If we have grounds here in Menkaure’s pyramid to suspect attempted deception, we surely have to ask: Just how does this impinge upon the credibility of Vyse and his claimed discoveries elsewhere at Giza, including the inscriptions he allegedly discovered in the Great Pyramid?
A WITNESS TO DECEPTION
If all of this isn’t bad enough for Vyse’s reputation, then the 1954 handwritten family history of a Mr. Walter M. Allen of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, makes it a whole lot worse. It seems that Walter Allen’s great-grandfather, Humphries Brewer, apparently worked with Vyse and his team at Giza in 1837 and witnessed Vyse’s assistants, Mr. Raven and Mr. Hill, refreshing old paint and making new markings in the pyramid.
Humfrey [sic] received prize for bridge he designed in Vienna over Danube. H. Went to Egypt 1837. British Medical Serv. To Egypt. . . .
They were to build hospital in Cairo for Arabs with severe eye afflictions. Dr Naylor took Humfrey along. Treatment not successful, hospital not built. He joined a Col. Visse [sic] exploring Gizeh pyramids. Rechecked dimensions 2 pyramids. Had dispute with Raven and Hill about painted marks in pyramid. Faint marks were repainted, some were new. Did not find tomb. . . .
Had words with a Mr Hill and Visse when he left. He agreed with a Col. Colin [sic] Campbell and another Geno Cabilia [sic]. Humfrey went back to England late 1837.4
Curiously, while Vyse makes no mention of Humphries Brewer in his published book, he does refer to all the other individuals mentioned in Walter Allen’s family account, including Dr. Naylor with his intention to help the local Arab people with severe eye problems. And as we can see from the Allen family record, it seems that his great-grandfather had a dispute with Vyse before leaving the site. Had Brewer objected to the marks being painted, perhaps accusing Vyse and his team of perpetrating a fraud, then it is hardly likely that a young man barely twenty years old and of little consequence to Vyse would have been mentioned in Vyse’s finished work, his published account. That said, however, even though Vyse may not have mentioned Brewer by name in his book, he may have indicated his presence at the site through the work he would have done in the Great Pyramid. As Vyse notes:
Two quarry-men were sent to blast over Wellington’s Chamber.5
This is precisely the kind of work in which Brewer, a civil engineer, would have been involved. One of these quarrymen, we know from Vyse’s book, was a local Arab man named Daoud, but no mention is made therein of the name of the other—a man with expertise that would have been crucial to Vyse’s ambitions. When he is so meticulous in naming everyone else in his book that was pivotal to his operations, why doesn’t Vyse name the other quarryman?
While all of the above may leave a bad smell, an air of suspicion, it is not actual proof that Vyse perpetrated a fraud within the Great Pyramid. However, the most damning evidence of all comes from Vyse’s own hand, and it shows beyond reasonable doubt that a deception was perpetrated by Vyse and his team within the Great Pyramid.
VYSE'S JOURNAL SPEAKS
In the absence of official scientific tests being done on these painted markings it seemed that the only avenue left to explore to try to determine their authenticity would be Vyse’s handwritten journal from his time at Giza in 1837. I realized that if this document could be located then it might be possible to determine the accuracy of Walter Allen’s account regarding his great-grandfather, Humphries Brewer. If Brewer had been in Egypt with Vyse in 1837, as Allen’s account states, then it was perhaps possible that Vyse made mention of him in his handwritten journal (when they were on good terms) and simply redacted his presence from his published work after their dispute. That was my thinking, and if it turned out to be correct then it would at least offer some corroboration to Walter Allen’s account.
And so, in March 2014, I set about looking for Vyse’s handwritten journal. Thanks to the internet, it didn’t take very long. I had searched for this document on the internet over the years and had always come up empty-handed, but this time the location of this nearly 180-yearold document came up: the Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies, in Aylesbury, England, about 400 miles from home. So my wife, Louise, and I would have to drive a round trip of 800 miles (1,288 km) to have a look at Vyse’s journal. We didn’t know what to expect or, indeed, if we would find anything at all of any great relevance to our quest. However, when we finally arrived at the center in early April 2014, we were not to be disappointed, though not in the way we had first imagined.
Vyse’s handwritten journal consists of around 600 pages of yellowing, folded foolscap pages tied together in a bundle with a thin white ribbon and all contained within a rather unremarkable card folder. Although some of the pages are perfectly clear, the ink on many of the pages is exceedingly faint, browning with age. But this was the least of our problems with the document, as a quick glance of some of the pages would prove. Vyse’s handwriting is almost impossible to read; a scrawling style where many letters are contracted or expanded and where a particular letter can take a different form depending on where it appears in a word. I had experienced doctors’ prescriptions that were easier to read. In consideration of this difficulty, I sought permission to take digital photographs of the journal pages so that we could take them home to analyze at our leisure. Fortunately this wasn’t a problem (as long as we didn’t use flash photography). And so, for the next two days, Louise and I set about the not insignificant task of photographing each and every page of Vyse’s handwritten journal plus some other material in his archive. It wasn’t lost on us that the task to find anything significant from these pages could take months, if not years, to research thoroughly. (Indeed, a clear reference to the name Brewer has not, as yet, been found in Vyse’s journal, although we have identified a few possible candidates that could very well be the name Brewer but that, at the time of writing, have not been confirmed by handwriting experts.)
It always seems to be the case, though, that just when your research seems to have hit the buffers, the “library angel” appears and hands to you exactly what you need, just when you need it—and so it turned out to be the case here. The gods of serendipity were on our side.
Hour after hour we had been turning and photographing the pages, seeing nothing before us but an endless, meaningless scrawl. As Louise turned one of the pages for me to photograph, I noticed that it had some hieroglyphics on it. Very few pages had such content, and so it was easy to catch the eye. But this wasn’t just any old hieroglyphic markings that Vyse had written, it was the cartouche of Khufu, the king Egyptologists believe built the Great Pyramid.
Resting the camera on the table, I took a closer look at the cartouche Vyse had drawn and pointed something out to Louise. We both then looked at each other in stunned silence as the realization and enormity of what we were seeing sank in—for before us was compelling evidence that the cartouche of Khufu, which Vyse claimed to have discovered within the Great Pyramid
, must, in fact, have been forged by him—as a number of people over the years have long suspected. To say we were dumbstruck by what we had uncovered would be an understatement—evidence that proved, beyond reasonable doubt, that Vyse had perpetrated the hoax of all history.
After we returned to our hotel late that evening, not a little exhausted from our day’s efforts, we sat and stared at our laptop screens in bemused silence at the evidence before us, struggling to wrap our minds around its game-changing implications. The irony of what we had found was not lost on us. Here we were, barely able to read a few words of Vyse’s own handwriting and yet the ancient Egyptian script he had so carefully copied into his journal revealed to us the truth of the disputed inscriptions in the Great Pyramid that many have been seeking for decades, if not longer: they had been faked.
ANOMALIES IN THE CARTOUCHES
On the surface, the hieroglyphics within the two cartouches (the oval shapes) in figures 6.2a and 6.2b appear unremarkable. When we look at them a little closer, however, the simple truth they hold quickly becomes apparent.
The cartouche in figure 6.2a is a reproduction of the cartouche that we actually observe today in Campbell’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid; the cartouche Vyse presents in his published book and which he claimed to have found in the monument. But in Vyse’s handwritten journal another, slightly different, cartouche (figure 6.2b) is presented as having been found by him in Campbell’s Chamber. Indeed, in his journal Vyse writes alongside this slightly different cartouche “in Campbell’s chamber.” However, a close examination of the cartouche in Vyse’s written journal shows a clear and highly significant difference between his journal entry and what is actually extant in the chamber, in particular, the small circle at the end (right-hand side) of the cartouche (figure 6.2b).
Figure 6.2a. Reproduction of the Khufu cartouche as it appears (vertically) in Campbell’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid. Note the disc has three small lines.
Figure 6.2b. Reproduction of the Khufu cartouche allegedly from Campbell’s Chamber as presented (horizontally) in Colonel Vyse’s journal on June 16th, 1837. Note the disc does not contain any of the lines as noted in figure 6.2a—it is blank.
Whereas the vertical cartouche in the actual chamber (figure 6.2a) has a circle containing three lines (hatchings), the circle in the horizontal cartouche of Vyse’s handwritten journal (figure 6.2b) presents only a plain disc with no center lines whatsoever. The question has to be asked—why would Vyse draw the cartouche differently in his journal from what we actually observe today in the chamber?
A number of possibilities to try to explain this anomaly have been proposed. Perhaps Vyse simply did not observe the lines in the disc in the chamber when he first made this entry in his journal on June 16th? However, this is unlikely for a number of reasons.
Vyse states quite categorically in his published book that Campbell’s Chamber, in which the Khufu cartouche was found, was “minutely examined” for markings. If the chamber was “minutely examined,” it seems unlikely that Vyse would have missed these markings in the disc.
Vyse manages to observe the two small dots under the snake glyph of the cartouche so one must presume that, having observed this small detail, he would have easily observed the much larger and more prominent lines in the disc glyph.
Vyse had already opened a number of other chambers before Campbell’s Chamber and in those other chambers had found a total of six cartouches of Khnum-Khuf, all of which had a disc with center markings of some kind. As such, when Vyse finally opened Campbell’s Chamber (the last chamber), he would surely have been fully anticipating finding the Khufu disc with similar center markings. Given his experience of the six marked discs found in the chambers below, finding no markings in the Khufu disc would most surely have piqued his curiosity and he would most certainly have double-checked it.
We observe elsewhere in Vyse’s journal that he has drawn the cartouche of Khnum-Khuf with a similar-size disc on the page, complete with center markings (albeit quite faint markings).
This wasn’t the only Khufu cartouche that Vyse drew in his journal without the three hatch lines. There were two such Khufu cartouches in his journal; one entry on May 27th and another on June 16th, 1837—both without the hatch lines. Furthermore, on May 30th, Vyse’s assistant, Mr. Hill, was tasked by Vyse to make a facsimile copy of the Khufu cartouche in Campbell’s Chamber. Mr. Hill’s drawing (which I viewed in the British Museum) contains the three lines in the disc and yet, on June 16th, more than two weeks after Hill’s drawing had been completed, Vyse again enters the Khufu cartouche into his journal with just a plain disc. Why did Vyse make a mistake and then repeat the same mistake, even though Mr. Hill’s facsimile would—presumably by this time—have shown him the three lines in the disc?
And yet, for all of this, in his written journal Vyse renders the Khufu cartouche from Campbell’s Chamber without any of the hatch lines we see in that cartouche today. Perhaps, as some have suggested, Vyse was merely making a rough note of the cartouche in his journal? Again this proposal does not stack up for the following reasons.
Vyse was detailed and meticulous enough to draw the two small dots under the snake glyph (which are actually a mistake and not part of Khufu’s name). If this was merely a rough drawing, why would Vyse be so precise with this small detail under the snake glyph and then be so casual with the more obvious detail within the disc?
Vyse would have been fully aware that he would be using his written journal (including the various drawings he made therein) as the basis from which to write his future book. Accuracy would have been of paramount importance to him and such detail would have been crucial to that accuracy—and especially so given that Vyse was in no way a specialist in this field. Neglecting to copy fairly obvious detail from the cartouche of a king could have caused serious interpretative consequences for scholars back in London, and Vyse would almost certainly have understood that. He wouldn’t have a second chance at this—he had to get it noted correctly the first time.
So, we have to ask: Why did Vyse, against all normal and rational expectation, copy the cartouche from Campbell’s Chamber into his journal and leave out the three lines from the cartouche disc? Why would he copy it down differently from what we actually see in the chamber today when detail and accuracy was paramount? And why would he copy it down this way twice in his journal when, surely, Mr. Hill’s facsimile drawing should have alerted him to the proper spelling?
There is but one rather simple explanation to all of this. The crucial point to understand here is that both these spellings of the Khufu name are, in fact, correct. This is to say that, according to mainstream Egyptology, the name Khufu can be written with either a hatched disc or a plain disc, and numerous examples of both spellings exist in the archaeological record. However, in 1837 this fact wasn’t yet fully understood, and this ambiguity in the spelling of Khufu is what resulted in Vyse having doubts and his subsequent deliberations. If he had sent a facsimile copy of the Khufu cartouche back to London with the wrong spelling, he would have been immediately discovered as a fraudster. If Vyse could be the first to empirically connect the Great Pyramid to Khufu then his name would be immortalized. He had to get it right.
Now, were it only the hatched-disc version of the Khufu disc that was extant in the historical record then the plain disc examples we find in Vyse’s journal could simply have been explained away as an incomplete diary entry; a simple mistake or oversight. But given that the plain disc version of the Khufu cartouche also exists in the archaeological record leads us to an intriguing possibility: Did Vyse originally find an example of a Khufu cartouche with just the plain disc, which he copied into his journal (and presumably into the Great Pyramid), believing this version of the Khufu cartouche to be the correct and only spelling of the king’s name? And did Vyse discover, some time later, that, in fact, there were examples of the Khufu cartouche with hatched discs, leading him to perhaps believe (wrongly) that the plain disc version he had originally
found (and had placed in the Great Pyramid) had simply been an unfinished hatched disc (by the ancient Egyptian scribe who originally created it) and that to render the Khufu name fully and correctly required the plain disc to have hatched lines added? There is compelling evidence from Vyse’s journal that this does seem to have been the case, as we will see shortly.
As can be seen in figure 6.3, in his entry from June 16th, Vyse has drawn two Khufu cartouches on the same page of his journal, both of which he states are from Campbell’s Chamber and yet they have different discs in the cartouche.
However, because there is only one Khufu cartouche in Campbell’s Chamber, they cannot both be right. And so it is that here, on this page of his written journal, lies the very essence of Vyse’s doubt, contradiction, and his deliberation. Here on this page we observe Vyse contemplating a necessary change to what he once believed was the correct spelling of Khufu—the original plain disc version of the cartouche that he had written into his diary and had copied into the Great Pyramid actually required three lines to be added—or so he believed. Here on this page of Vyse’s diary we find the evidence that lays bare the hoax of all history.
Why these deliberations at all—and why now? This controversial diary entry had been made some three weeks after Vyse had opened and entered Campbell’s Chamber—what was it that had occurred to make Vyse suddenly interested and start deliberating the spelling of this cartouche some three weeks after he had found it? A clue is given in the journal entry from June 16th (figure 6.3), when Vyse writes:
The Secret Chamber of Osiris: Lost Knowledge of the Sixteen Pyramids Page 12
