The Message of the Sphinx AKA Keeper of Genesis

by Graham Hancock

  Problems with permits

  During the latter part of 1992 and the early part of 1993, while Upuaut II was being designed and built in Munich, Rudolf Gantenbrink arranged for a television crew to come with him to Egypt to film his forthcoming exploration of the Queen’s Chamber shafts. When he and the crew (including the film-maker Jochen Breitenstein and an assistant, Dirk Brakebusch) arrived in Cairo on 6 March 1993, however, the exploration and filming were delayed by something that at first appeared to be only a minor administrative problem: the German Archaeological Institute had not yet obtained the necessary filming permits from the Egyptian Antiquities Organization. When no permits were forthcoming, Gantenbrink reports that first Dr. Stadelmann and then he himself approached Zahi Hawass, the EAO’s Director-General of the Giza Pyramids, who granted ‘verbal permission’ for the filming to go ahead.[260]

  Accordingly, the exploration began.

  Discovery

  Mid-March 1993 was a crucial period for Rudolf Gantenbrink in his work inside the Great Pyramid—all the more crucial because: (a) the whole operation had cost him a great deal of money (including $250,000 in research-and-development costs for the robot alone); (b) it was being filmed at personal expense for a commercial documentary and (c) a deadline for the completion of the film had been set for the last week of March.

  It was at around this time, says Gantenbrink, that Stadelmann recalled Uli Kapp and withdrew the official support that the German Archaeological Institute had previously accorded to the exploration of the shafts.

  Perhaps other men would have stopped and gone meekly home at this point. Gantenbrink is far from meek. Feeling that he was on the verge of a breakthrough, he decided that he was going to forge on—with or without Stadelmann’s support.

  The crucial figure was now Zahi Hawass, whose personal authority on the site provided the whole ‘official’ sanction and backing for Gantenbrink’s work. However, Hawass’s undocumented ‘verbal permission’ actually counted for a great deal on the Giza plateau. Indeed it was as good as a signed and sealed mandate to the lowly ghafirs guarding the entrance to the Great Pyramid and was taken at face value not only by Gantenbrink and his team but also by a young inspector from the EAO, Muhammad Shahy, who had been assigned to work with the Germans.[261]

  So Gantenbrink reasoned that he would still be able to go in and out and work undisturbed in the Queen’s Chamber. This he successfully did, making rapid progress with the robot in the exploration of both the northern and the southern shafts.

  Early on the morning of 21 March 1993, just before starting the day’s work as usual, he paid a visit to Zahi Hawass at his office on the Giza plateau. There, to his consternation, he learned that the Director of the Giza Pyramids had been suspended from his post on account of an unrelated scandal concerning a missing Fourth-Dynasty statue.[262] (Hawass was not to be reinstated as Director of the Giza Pyramids until April 1994.)

  This unexpected turn of events could not have come at a more vital moment—for by 21 March 1993 Upuaut II was deep inside the southern shaft of the Queen’s Chamber and was, in Gantenbrink’s opinion, very close to whatever lay at the end. The exploration, however, was to go on. Destiny had fixed an amazing rendezvous for Gantenbrink on the next day, 22 March, coincidentally the spring equinox.

  With him in the Queen’s Chamber on that fateful day were Jochen Breitenstein, Dirk Brakebusch and Muhammad Shahy.[263] By 10 a.m. Gantenbrink had managed to manoeuvre Upuaut II a distance of 170 feet up the shaft. At about 180 feet a sharp settlement in the floor of the shaft created a dangerous obstacle that threatened to halt progress but that was eventually surmounted. Then, barely an hour later, at 11:05 a.m., after crawling a total distance of 200 feet into the shaft, the floor and walls became smooth and polished and the robot suddenly—and one might almost say ‘in the nick of time’—reached the end of its journey.

  As the first images of the ‘door’ with its peculiar metal fittings appeared on the small television monitor in the Queen’s Chamber, Rudolf Gantenbrink immediately realised the massive implications of his find. This was archaeological history in the making[264]—an exciting and significant new discovery inside the world’s most famous and most mysterious ancient monument. And it was interesting to note that under the lower western corner of the ‘door’ there was a little gap beneath which the red laser spot projected by Upuaut was seen to disappear. The urge to look under the ‘door’ and see whatever might lie beyond it must have been almost unbearable. The gap, however, was far too small for Upuaut’s camera to be able to peer into. A fibre-optic lens would need to be added if that was to be done, but rigging it would take days, perhaps even weeks, to organize.

  After the initial excitement had died down, Gantenbrink’s first instinct was to make doubly certain that the unique video images that he had been looking at on the screen had been properly recorded. Once he was satisfied that the recordings were excellent, he and his team packed the tapes, together with the rest of their gear, and returned to their base at the Movenpick Hotel.

  For several days after 22 March nothing happened, with no official announcement of any kind being made to the press by the German Archaeological Institute. The reason, it seems, was that Dr. Stadelmann could not make up his mind as to what form, exactly, such an announcement should take. During this hiatus, Gantenbrink and the film crew decided to return to Munich. They naturally took along all their equipment, including the twenty-eight videotapes shot during the exploration. A few days later, at the beginning of April 1993, Gantenbrink sent us a copy of the tape showing the discovery of the ‘door’.

  We passed this tape on to the British media.

  Much ado, then nothing

  The first major story appeared on the front page of the London Independent on 16 April 1993:

  Archaeologists have discovered the entrance to a previously unknown chamber within the largest of Egypt’s Pyramids. Some evidence suggests it might contain the royal treasures of the Pharaoh Cheops [Khufu], for whom the Great Pyramid was built 4500 years ago. The contents of the chamber are almost certainly intact. The entrance is at the end of a sloping passage 65 metres long but only eight inches (20 cm.) wide and eight inches high ... According to the Belgian Egyptologist Robert Bauval, the passage points directly at the Dog star Sirius, held by the ancient Egyptians to be the incarnation of the goddess Isis. Other small passages in the Pyramid appear to point to other heavenly bodies—the Belt of Orion and the star Alpha Draconis, which at the time was in the area now occupied by the Pole Star ...

  The reaction to the Independent’s front-page splash was electrifying. Dozens of reporters from all over the world wanted to interview Gantenbrink within hours and that same evening Britain’s Channel 4 TV News covered the story in depth. Dr. I. E. S. Edwards made a rare appearance in this report and created something of a sensation by telling millions of excited viewers that ‘a statue of the king gazing towards the constellation of Orion’ might be found behind the mysterious ‘door’. ‘But it’s a wild guess—we have no precedents,’ he was quick to add.

  But wild guess or not, and still with no clear statement emanating from Cairo, the international media had a field day:

  ‘PYRAMID MAY HOLD PHARAOH’S SECRETS’ ran the front page of The Age in Melbourne; ‘SECRET CHAMBER MAY SOLVE PYRAMID RIDDLE’ shouted The Times in London; ‘NOUVEAU MYSTERE DANS LA PYRAMIDE’ Le Monde announced excitedly in Paris; ‘PYRAMID MYSTERY’ reported the Los Angeles Times; ‘VIVE LA TECHNIQUE: PORTE POUR KHEOPS!’ cried Le Matin in Switzerland.[265]

  It was almost as though the cult of the Pyramid had suddenly come to life again. At any rate the story continued to run for many more weeks in dozens of regional newspapers and several international magazines.[266] Everyone, it seemed, wanted to know what was behind the little ‘door’, and why the Pyramid’s shafts were directed towards the stars ...

  The first official riposte came from the German Archaeological Institute, through Reuters in Germany, on 16 April 1993. Mrs. Chri
stine Egorov, Stadelmann’s secretary—here presented as the Institutsprecherin—firmly pronounced that the very idea of a possible chamber at the end of the shaft was nonsense. The Queen’s Chamber’s ‘air-channels’, she explained, did not head in the direction of anything at all and the purpose of Gantenbrink’s robot had been solely ‘to measure the humidity of the Pyramid’.[267]

  Soon afterwards, a second report went out on the Reuters wire, this time quoting Dr. Stadelmann: ‘I don’t know how this story happened but I can tell you this is very annoying,’ he fumed. ‘There is surely no other chamber ... there is no room behind the stone.’[268]

  Political games

  In the years that followed Gantenbrink made repeated efforts to get his exploration of the Queen’s Chamber shafts restarted, arguing that there was no need to speculate as to whether or not the ‘door’ was really a door, or whether there might or might not be a chamber concealed behind it:

  I take an absolutely neutral position. It is a scientific process, and there is no need whatsoever to answer questions with speculation when questions could be answered much more easily by continuing the research ... We have a device (ultrasonic) that would discover if there is a cavity behind the slab. It’s nonsensical to make theories when we have the tools to discover the facts.’[269]

  One of the main problems that Gantenbrink faced was that he did not belong to the Egyptological profession but was regarded by the leading academics at Giza as a hired technician—which meant, by definition, that his views were assumed to have no merit. He explained how, after discovering the slab-door in March 1993, he had been all but ignored and the find handled with indifference: ‘I was scheduled to meet the Minister of Culture about the discovery, but it never happened. A press conference was scheduled. It never happened.’[270]

  In late 1994, Gantenbrink announced in Paris that he was willing to supply the robot to the Egyptians and even train an Egyptian technician at his own expense so that the exploration could resume, but a few weeks later he was politely rebuffed by the EAO’s Chairman, Dr. Nur El Din: ‘Thank you for your offer to train the Egyptian technician [Nur El Din had written] ... unfortunately we are very busy for the time being, therefore we will postpone the matter.’[271]

  ‘The search for truth’, Gantenbrink commented in January 1995, ‘is too important to be ruined by a silly political game. My only hope is that they will soon reach the same conclusions.’[272]

  Breakfast with Gantenbrink

  On 19 February 1995 we arrived in Egypt and the next morning had breakfast with Rudolf Gantenbrink at the Movenpick Hotel in Giza.

  He had been in Egypt for most of the previous week, still trying to obtain permission to resume his exploration of the Queen’s Chamber shafts, and was returning to Munich later that morning. During his visit, he told us, he had finally managed to have a face-to-face meeting with Dr. Nur El Din.

  ‘What was the response?’ we asked.

  Gantenbrink shrugged his shoulders: ‘Encouraging.’ But he looked less than encouraged.

  We then asked if he had been back inside the Queen’s Chamber on this visit.

  ‘No,’ he replied, ‘I prefer not to go there.’

  He could not bear the thought, he told us, of returning to the site of his great discovery without his robot, purposelessly, like a tourist. ‘I will go back in the Queen’s Chamber with Upuaut and complete the exploration of the shafts,’ he said proudly, ‘or I won’t go back there at all.’

  Select groups

  That same month—February 1995—one of the most prosperous and active members of the Association for Research and Enlightenment spoke to us by telephone from the United States about plans that were in hand for furthering the quest for the Hall of Records at the Giza necropolis:

  The next three years are going to be super years ... We sort of have ‘96 set up for our little expedition to the Sphinx—with underground radar. 1996 was when Zahi said we’d be able to go. We’ll do more ground-scanning and most of all we’re going to get to love and understand the people around us, and the various groups, and work with them ... and I figure that by ’98 we’ll hit something.[273]

  We learnt in the same conversation that the same individual had been keeping a close watch on events surrounding the hidden door in the Great Pyramid during the two years since Rudolf Gantenbrink’s project had ground to a halt. He claimed to have been informed that the Egyptian authorities would soon make an attempt to reach the door with their own robot in order to insert a fibre-optic camera beneath it and to see whatever lies beyond. Our informant also said that he had been invited by ‘Zahi’ to be amongst the select group of witnesses present inside the Pyramid when this moment eventually comes: ‘He promised me a one-month’s advance notice before they do anything ... Something’s definitely going to happen. He’s not sure when. He had delays—I think with the robot—but they’ll get it done ...’[274]

  But what exactly will get done? By whom? With what motive? How certain is it that the public will be properly informed about any further discoveries that might be made? And how reliable and comprehensive are the orthodox Egyptological interpretations of such discoveries likely to be?

  One thing at any rate seems certain: Rudolf Gantenbrink, whose inventiveness and daring led to the original discovery of the door at the end of the Queen’s Chamber’s mysterious southern shaft, is unlikely to be present. In September 1995 it was reported to us that the Egyptian Antiquities Organization had issued notification to the German authorities advising that they did not wish to pursue the exploration in the Great Pyramid.[275]

  Burial

  After reviewing the scholarly goings on concerning the possible geological antiquity of the Sphinx and the ‘anomalies’ located in the bedrock beneath it, the case of the iron plate in the southern shaft of the King’s Chamber, and the case of the relics found in the shafts of the Queen’s Chamber, we are frankly not surprised by the case of Gantenbrink’s ‘door’. Here, too, orthodox academics have participated in the burial of research that promises new insights into the Giza monuments and—more than three years after the discovery—the ‘door’ still remained unopened.

  We have no opinion as to whether or not it might lead to a ‘Hall of Records’—‘records’ on papyrus scrolls to do with the ‘religion’ of the builders as Zahi Hawass speculated in 1993 during his year of absence from his post as Director of the Giza Pyramids.[276] Our own research has convinced us, however, that the shaft in which Rudolf Gantenbrink made his remarkable discovery is linked to an archaic system of beliefs and rituals that envisaged the monuments of the Giza necropolis as an ‘image of heaven’.

  In Parts III and IV we will attempt to decode this image and learn its meaning.

  Part III

  Duality

  Chapter 8

  The Clues of Duality

  ‘Newton ... was the last of the magicians ... Why do I call him a magician? Because he looked at the whole universe and all that is in it as a riddle, as a secret that could be read by applying pure thought to certain evidence, certain mystic clues which God had laid about the world to allow a sort of philosopher’s treasure hunt to the esoteric brotherhood. He believed that these clues were to be found partly in the heavens ... partly in certain papers and traditions handed down by the bretheren ... By pure thought, by concentration of mind, the riddle, he believed, would be revealed to the initiate ...’

  John Maynard Keynes, The Royal Society, Newton Tercentenary Celebrations, 1947

  We saw in Parts I and II how the astronomical character of the architecture of the Sphinx and of the Giza Pyramids has failed to interest Egyptologists and has not been taken into account in their analysis of the function and significance of the monuments. This, in our view, has resulted in a number of serious misinterpretations of the available evidence—perhaps the most flagrant examples of which, at the level of physical exploration and research, have been the chronic neglect of the four astronomically aligned shafts of the Great Pyramid and the lo
ng and shocking period of inactivity over the matter of the ‘door’ in the southern shaft of the Queen’s Chamber.

  We hinted at the end of Part I that the logic of all these shafts, and of the ground-plan and symbolism of the Pyramids and the Sphinx, appears to be connected to certain very powerful religious and cosmological ideas set out in ancient Egyptian funerary and rebirth texts and in the so-called ‘Hermetic’ writings. These express the philosophy ‘as above, so below’ and advocate the drawing down to earth of cosmic powers as an essential step in Mankind’s quest for knowledge of the divine and immortality of the soul: ‘And I, said Hermes, will make Mankind intelligent, I will confer wisdom on them, and make known to them the truth. I will never cease to benefit thereby the life of mortal men; and then will I benefit each one of them, when the force of nature working in him is in accord with the movement of the stars above.’[277]