Dig days
The Giza Conspiracy

By Zahi Hawass

Zahi HawassIf you check the Internet, you will see many strange things written about the Giza pyramids. The authors, mostly American and European, are under the impression that we are secretly digging inside the pyramid of Khufu. They believe we are hiding things that will reveal the existence of a lost civilisation, and that we have discovered tunnels leading from the pyramids.

A few years ago, we closed the Great Pyramid for conservation and restoration. We decided to clean the five relieving chambers that top the king's chamber, and to do this we moved stone rubble from the grand gallery. On the Internet I found many stories about our involvement in a conspiracy, suggesting we were digging inside the pyramid without telling anyone. They even claimed that one of the Giza inspectors had found, inside one of the five rooms, an important object which connected the pyramid to a lost civilisation. I had, supposedly, fired the inspector who found the object.

Another story concerns an American who is interested in writing tales about a link between the pyramids and Mars. He says that my dear friend Farouk El-Baz, who works in the Remote Sensing Department at Boston University, found evidence on Mars to prove that the people who lived there built the pyramids. Because El-Baz was my friend, he claimed, he hid all the evidence.

A story that always makes people laugh is the one about an American who came to see me a few years ago. He said he wanted to see my bathroom. I couldn't understand why he would want to, but when he returned he asked if he could take a photograph of it. When I asked him why, he said that many people believed that every day at noon I left my office and climbed into a tunnel in the bathroom. This tunnel led to the Great Pyramid, where I hid evidence discovered there. I could return without anyone having seen anything.

"Did you see any tunnels in my bathroom?" I asked him. He replied that he had not. So I asked, "What are you going to do now?" He said he would publish photographs of the bathroom on the Internet. This man came to Egypt believing the rumours about a conspiracy, but after living in Egypt and seeing some of our discoveries, he found out the truth. He is now one of our leading supporters.

Another American came to Egypt to tell me that the David Scroll was hidden inside the Pyramid (it actually does not exist), and that he knew where it was. I looked at him, but he seemed normal. I told him, "I have no time to waste with you." The man truly believed he was right, and that I was the one who was holding up his investigation. He wanted revenge, so he went to the village of Nazlet El-Samman to meet a guard I had fired from the Sphinx area. The guard had been dismissed because he had insulted one of the archaeologists who worked at the Sphinx. The American visitor videotaped and recorded a false interview with the former guard -- who also wanted revenge for having been fired -- which he then took to the police and the district attorney. He wanted revenge on me because I had not let him discover what he was looking for. He accused two women from my office of cutting the shoulder of the Sphinx, said I had tried to bribe him, and indicated that the Minister of Culture would take this as an excuse to fire the chairman of the then Egyptian Antiquities Organisation. It took the district attorney two years to realise that this was a conspiracy, and that the American only wanted to take revenge and make a disturbance. What is even funnier is that this man is currently a dockworker unloading boxes from ships. He always attempts to attend my lectures in Los Angeles, and I have to insist that he be removed. In reality, the stone fell from the Sphinx at 1:30pm one afternoon after a week of rain, as was witnessed by a German news reporter.

These stories show there are people who still believe the pyramids were built by a lost civilisation. Some of these people could be dangerous, as they really believe we are hiding artifacts from the lost civilisation of Atlantis. We always make prompt announcements of our discoveries; there are no hidden digs. If you'd like more information on what is really happening at Giza, just keep checking this Web site. We will keep adding the true information to it and you can keep informed of the real facts of the discoveries at Giza.

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