The Stargate Conspiracy

by Lynn Picknett

  Is the New Orthodoxy not so new after all, but merely older, occult ideas repackaged? Obviously there is nothing wrong with presenting an eager public with old, mystical concepts, be they from AMORC or Freemasonry. But if this is the case, why do they seem to be unwilling to acknowledge it?

  Hancock and Bauval’s driven attempts to forge a link between the ancient Egyptian First Time - tep zepi — and the Age of Aquarius creates a sense of expectancy in their readers. Everything they have written so far appears to us to be geared to making that connection, with the distinct impression that soon a great secret will be revealed, and that they are its guardians. In other words, Hancock and Bauval seem to be a part, wittingly or unwittingly, of a programme designed to climax at the time of the Millennium and the first years of the twenty-first century.

  Hints about the nature of that agenda may be gleaned from the increasingly messianic tone of their recent postings on the Internet, as in that from Robert Bauval on 29 July 1998:

  The millennium is rushing in. There is much work to do for all who feel part of the same quest, namely to bring about a new and much needed spiritual and intellectual change for this planet. Giza, without a doubt, has a major role to play.112

  And from Hancock on 14 August 1998:

  Poised on the edge of the millennium, at the end of a century of unparalleled wickedness and bloodshed in which greed has flourished, humanity faces a stark choice between matter and spirit - the darkness and the light [our emphasis].113

  In our view, this messianic fervour is no accident: Hancock and Bauval, like other individuals and groups, appear to be working to a private programme fuelled by a very real missionary zeal.

  Millennium magic

  In October 1998, Bauval announced the creation of his ‘Project Equinox 2000’, based around a group of twelve authors (plus himself) whom he refers to as the ‘Magic 12’. The membership of this group was not fixed at the time of writing, but it originally included Graham Hancock, John Anthony West, Andrew Collins and, of course, Robert Temple. Other names mentioned by Bauval in this context are Colin Wilson, Michael Baigent, Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas.

  The idea is that the Magic 12 are to hold a series of conferences in different locations around the world on the key astronomical days of the year 1999 — the equinoxes and solstices. The locations have been selected as the major Hermetic sites of the world, including Giza, Alexandria, Stonehenge and San Jose (headquarters of AMORC). Bauval states that the ‘principal objective is to perform a global ritual’ symbolising the return of the magical Hermetic tradition to Egypt.114 The year’s events will culminate at midnight on 31 December 1999, when, from a specially erected platform in front of the Sphinx, Bauval and his 12 companions will deliver a ‘message to the planet’. He also says that this event will mark the ‘return of the gods’ to Egypt.115

  Whether or not the Great Ennead comply with Bauval’s stage directions and time their return to coincide with the climax of his announcement, one can only reel in amazement that Dr Zahi Hawass has actually granted permission for this event to take place in front of the Sphinx. The likes of Coca-Cola or IBM would have been happy to pay millions to have secured what must essentially be the prime advertising spot of the big Millennium party. So why has Bauval been given it?

  An intrinsic part of the planned spectacular is a twelve-hour concert, complete with state-of-the-art laser displays, designed and presented by Jean-Michel Jarre. It is scheduled to begin at sunset on 31 December 1999 and end at sunrise on 1 January 2000, encompassing Bauval’s midnight ‘Message to the Planet’. Industry rumour has it that Jarre’s current recording, ready for release in late 1999, is a follow-up to his 1980s album Equinox, and, like Bauval’s project, it will be called Equinox 2000. The common name suggests some degree of co-ordination between the two.

  Bauval’s Project Equinox 2000 is funded by Concordium, a non-profit foundation based in New York that sponsors research into alternative technology and philosophies that may, in Bauval’s words, ‘bring enlightenment and spirituality to the world’.115 116He has also established the ‘Phoenix Experiment Base’ in the Sphinx village, Nazlet-al-Samman, in order to monitor all activity at Giza until the Millennium.

  There is no harm in providing the best Millennium show of all against such a stupendous backdrop, nor in wishing the planet love and peace. But let us not forget that an intrinsic part of the Millennium show is the announcement of the return of the ancient Egyptian gods. This may be merely some poetic turn of phrase or a kind of metaphor, but — as we shall see - part of the plan we have uncovered demands that the gods are real, and that they are returning.

  The belief that the second coming of certain ancient gods — and the accompanying global transformation — is imminent is by no means confined to Robert Bauval and Graham Hancock. In the new edition of The Sirius Mystery Robert Temple suggests that the ancient amphibious gods, the Nommo, who are now in suspended animation somewhere in orbit around Saturn, are about to return to Earth. He says darkly that ‘these matters ... may affect us all sooner than we think.’117

  In the minds of this new breed of Aquarian missionaries, the imminent momentous events will either take place at, or focus on, the Giza plateau.

  2

  High Strangeness at Giza

  Everything about Giza today is a mass of contradictions. At any given moment there are dozens of rumours and counterrumours about clandestine excavations, all manner of cover-ups and — by far the most exciting — secret discoveries that will somehow transform the world. Activity and rumour have escalated according to some kind of programme designed to culminate at the Millennium. But who lies behind this campaign? And can we successfully sort out the truth from the rumours about Giza?

  Officially, nothing much is happening on the Giza plateau except that the Great Pyramid was closed on 1 April 1998 for ‘cleaning’, which seems reasonable, because the many thousands of tourists leave an incredible amount of grime and condensation on the venerable stone of the interior. A build-up of breath and sweat could cause a dangerous deterioration of the pyramid; besides, some renovation work was clearly needed — to improve the temperamental lighting system, for example. But in addition to cleaning and electrical work it was suggested, from many sources — some considerably more reliable than others - that other activities were going on at Giza: secret tunnelling, inside the Great Pyramid and elsewhere on the plateau; clandestine searches by shadowy groups for fabled hidden chambers and ancient secrets; conspiracies galore. With some cynicism, we turned our attention towards Giza, although we were in for something of a shock.

  There is a certain hypocrisy in the official Egyptian attitudes to visitors to the Great Pyramid. Many tourists are frequently derided - with good reason, for American and European New Agers seem to regard the pyramids as their own and show a marked reluctance to allow the Egyptian authorities, or anyone else, to try to limit their enthusiasm for meditating inside, outside or even on top of the pyramids at any time of the day or night. They arrive in Egypt with the firm intention of planting their flag and seizing the country as their own, the jewel in the crown of New Age colonialism. They clamber and chant everywhere regardless of local feeling: a decade ago a party of 350 trooped into the Great Pyramid for a group meditation for the so-called ‘Harmonic Convergence’ - a huge number, considering the small and cramped King’s Chamber, and the oppressively ‘close’ atmosphere within that massive stone bulk, particularly when it hosts such a massive influx of people.

  It is freely acknowledged that ‘metaphysical’ groups are in fact allowed into the Great Pyramid after the Giza plateau has been closed to the public each night — for a fee. In fact, in December 1997, when Dr Zahi Hawass announced the forthcoming closure of the pyramid, he specifically said that this arrangement would continue.1

  But not all visitors to the Great Pyramid keep their eyes either shut in meditation or glued to a guidebook. Several seasoned and knowledgeable travellers have reported evidence of ongoin
g work in the ‘relieving chambers’, a series of low vaulted chambers, about 3 feet high, above the King’s Chamber. (They are generally taken to have been built specifically to relieve the pressure of the thousands of tons of rock that would otherwise have pressed down far too dangerously on the roof of the King’s Chamber, although recently some doubts have been expressed about this being the purpose of these chambers.2) Such rumours of this and other clandestine work in the pyramid proved too tantalising, so we, together with writer-researcher Simon Cox, hastened off to Egypt, arriving there the day before the Great Pyramid was closed for what was then described as an eight-month ‘cleaning and restoration’ programme. However, the Great Pyramid did not re-open on 1 January 1999, and the Egyptian Cultural Centre in London have since told us that it may never be reopened to the public.

  Tunnel vision

  One unexplored chamber in Giza is known: assuming Gantenbrink’s door really is an entrance, then it must open on to something. But what? As with everything else at Giza these days, there is a political background to the story.

  The German robotics engineer made the discovery on 22 March 1993, the day after Zahi Hawass had been dismissed because of a scandal over a stolen Fourth Dynasty statue (although Graham Hancock has suggested that his dismissal was in fact somehow connected with Gantenbrink’s work).3 The man who dismissed Hawass, Dr Muhammed Bakr, President of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, was himself sacked three months later. He claimed that a ‘mafia’ — which had controlled everything at the pyramids for the last twenty years - was responsible 4

  Hawass himself was only out of office for about a month, and was reinstated in April 1994. He had spent that time in California, which may be significant, for — as British writer-researcher Chris Ogilvie-Herald wrote in Quest for Knowledge magazine, of which he was then editor - Hawass’s reinstatement ‘was said to have been brought about by American intervention’.5

  After Robert Bauval had released the news of Gantenbrink’s discovery to the media on 16 April 1993, the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo officially reacted to Gantenbrink’s discovery by dismissing it as unimportant (perhaps a case of sour grapes?). Dr Bakr went considerably further; at first he even dismissed it as a hoax.6

  Gantenbrink was refused permission to continue with his work, because of the breach of protocol in the way the news of his discovery was released to the press. As described in the previous chapter, Gantenbrink places the blame for this fairly and squarely on Robert Bauval, but this has not prevented Graham Hancock from portraying Gantenbrink as a martyr to the cause and a victim of the Egyptological establishment — nor from hinting that this was part of some conspiracy. He wrote in Nexus magazine in late 1996: ‘The official reason given by the Egyptian Antiquities Organization ... was that Gantenbrink leaked the news of the discovery to the British press and thus, apparently, broke a “rule” of archaeology.’7

  After the publicity surrounding the story of the discovery, nothing happened about the shaft or chamber until 1996, when a new — Egyptian — team was established to take the investigation further. This was to be led by a close friend of Zahi Hawass, a specialist in remote sensing (the use of satellite- or aircraft-borne technology to scan the Earth’s surface, or beneath it), an Egyptian geophysicist who worked for NASA on the Apollo moon landings named Dr Farouk El Baz. A Canadian company called Amtex became involved and equipment worth $1 million was flown to Giza. The intention at the time was to open Gantenbrink’s Door on live television, but nothing came of it.8 In January 1998 Hawass promised that Gantenbrink’s Door would be opened by May of that year.9 Not only did this historic moment fail to materialise, but no explanation has ever been given for the non-event.

  A particularly persuasive and persistent rumour has circulated that a tunnel was secretly being dug in order to reach ‘Gantenbrink’s Chamber’ from the lowest of the relieving chambers above the King’s Chamber, which is named ‘Davison’s Chamber’ after the British diplomat Nathaniel Davison, who officially discovered it in 1765, although there is some evidence that its existence was already known.10 (The other relieving chambers were discovered by Colonel Howard Vyse in 1837, who named them after prominent figures in contemporary British society, such as Wellington and Nelson.) Entry to Davison‘s’ Chamber is difficult: a somewhat inadequate wooden ladder is propped up against the 27-foot (8.7-metre) wall of the upper end of the Grand Gallery, but it stops short of the top. The last few feet have to be climbed using a rope, followed by an uncomfortable wriggle through the tunnel into the chamber itself. Davison’s, like all the relieving chambers, is only about 3 feet high and is obviously impossible to stand up in, with a rough and very uneven floor made of the granite roofing slabs of the King’s Chamber. Never intended to be seen, the builders took no trouble to make them smooth.

  Was a tunnel really being dug southwards from Davison’s to Gantenbrink’s Chamber, as we had heard? Dozens of rumours concerning Egypt are circulating at any given time. Many of them emanate from people with only the slightest familiarity with concrete facts about Giza. The source of this particular rumour, though, was Thomas Danley, an acoustics engineer and NASA consultant for two space shuttle missions, who specialises in ‘acoustic levitation’ (raising objects through the use of sound and vibration). In October and November 1996, he participated in a project of the somewhat controversial Joseph M. Schor Foundation, together with a film crew led by American documentary producer Boris Said. They were going to perform acoustic experiments in the Great Pyramid on camera and had official permission to spend four nights there.

  Given this golden opportunity, Danley and his team went up into Davison’s Chamber, where he noticed that a tunnel originally dug in the early nineteenth century seemed to have been reopened. The excavation was first made by Giovanni Battista Caviglia (1770-1845), one of the most unusual characters of nineteenth-century Egyptology. A ship’s captain from Genoa, he was also a Hermeticist and occultist. He became convinced that the pyramids contained great arcane secrets. He carried out major excavations all around Giza between 1816 and 1820, the first large-scale digs ever undertaken in that area.

  Interestingly, Caviglia wanted to dig a tunnel from Davison’s Chamber to intersect the southern air shaft from the Queen’s Chamber because he thought that a hidden room would be found at that point.11 Astoundingly, Gantenbrink’s discovery in 1993 seems to have proved him right. Caviglia’s excavation was abandoned after they had tunnelled for only about 10 feet, probably because of the appalling conditions in which they had to work. The tunnel was subsequently refilled with rubble and largely forgotten. However, in November 1996 Danley crawled into it and found that it had recently been extended some 30 feet beyond the end of the original Caviglia tunnel - work that was obviously still in progress. He also found bags of rubble being stored in the upper relieving chambers. Danley showed this find to the Egyptian inspector assigned to accompany the team, and was disconcerted to discover that he knew nothing of any such tunnelling, though he agreed to report it to his superior - Zahi Hawass. Danley also reported what he had seen on the Internet and on American radio on his return from Giza.12

  On a subsequent visit in February 1997, Danley saw that a new power cable now ran up the wall of the Grand Gallery and into the tunnel leading up to Davison’s Chamber, indicating that work was continuing up there out of sight. When we visited the Great Pyramid with Simon Cox in the spring of 1998, we saw for ourselves that a video camera had been installed at the top of the Grand Gallery, not pointing back down, as it would if intended merely to check on the upcoming tourists, but angled so that it would record anyone climbing up the ladder into Davison’s Chamber.

  In July 1997, an American ‘independent Egyptologist’ named Larry Dean Hunter visited the pyramid to check Danley’s story. He was sent there by Richard Hoagland (most famous for his championing of the Face on Mars, and a major player in the unfolding story of our investigation).13 Hunter did not actually climb up into Davison’s Chamber, but photographed
the cable, video camera and some canvas bags full of rubble at the top of the Grand Gallery. Strangely, all he came back with were photographs of those bags and a stray limestone chip, which could have come from anywhere. What he, and Hoagland, hoped to achieve by this is unclear, yet because of the publicity Hoagland generated for this non-story, it has actually eclipsed Thomas Danley’s first-hand account of ongoing work in Davison’s Chamber. (Curiously, Hoagland’s website posting makes no mention of Danley at all.)

  Hunter also involved Mohammed Sherdy, assistant editor of the El Wafd newspaper. As Zahi Hawass denied that anything was going on in the relieving chambers apart from some ‘cleaning’ work, Hunter surmised that something was seriously amiss. Either work was going on that the authorities knew nothing about, or the authorities did know and were covering it up. But, in a meeting with Hunter and Sherdy in his office in July 1997, Hawass produced a faxed letter from film-maker Boris Said - who had been in charge of Danley’s team - denying any knowledge of the situation.14 Sherdy later said that he had been allowed access to Davison’s Chamber — but reported that he saw no tunnel.

  Nothing at Giza is simple. In an interview in January 1998, Said confirmed that a ‘new tunnel’ was being dug from Davison’s Chamber, but added — somewhat confusingly — that he saw nothing sinister in that, although he stopped short of offering any explanation of its purpose. He also said: ‘They [the Egyptians] are tunnelling all over the plateau.’15

  Many would ask why the Egyptians should not be digging - secretly or openly - at Giza? It is their land and their heritage, not a colony of the West. Few foreigners would object if they excavated beneath other Egyptian landmarks, such as the great Citadel, built by Saladin, which overlooks Cairo. The problem is that the monuments of ancient Egypt are acknowledged as belonging to the whole world: even President Hosni Mubarak said as much in print in 1998.16 Anything that happens at any of the ancient sites - Karnak, Luxor or Giza — must be made known internationally as soon as possible according to an unwritten agreement. Ancient Egypt belongs to everyone, and every time anyone seriously stirs its dust, we should all know about it: this is the general understanding that underpins all excavations and major discoveries. Where notable finds are concerned, Egyptology is a common currency that transcends politics, so evidence of secret tunnelling, not just in any ancient site, but in the Great Pyramid itself is of colossal significance.