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Giza: The Truth : The People, Politics, and History Behind the World's Most Famous Archaeological Site
The first responsible assessment of the entire range of theories behind Giza, this exhaustively researched book plunges into the history of recent explorations of the legendary site. Essential background information necessary to place recent expeditions and political wranglings in context is integrated with the true stories behind the explorations over the last 30 years, including the authors’ clandestine trips into the secret chambers of the Great Pyramid. This book also exposes apparent cover-ups and conspiracies and delivers the truth about one of the world’s most important ancient monuments.
592 pages, Paperback
First published August 26, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 28, 2023
Dunque, l'edizione italiana colleziona una serie di errori di battitura che possono benissimo essere il record italiano, per il resto si parte presto con il solito resoconto storico dei precedenti esploratori dove non manca certo Al-Mamun, Belzoni, Caviglia, Howard-Vyse. Non che mi potessi aspettare di più dall'autore, ma anziché dare dettagli più tecnici, non ci si può che perdere in piccole beghe tra gli egittologi.
In egittologia, del resto, ce ne può essere soltanto uno. Ogni lavoro viene firmato da una persona soltanto e questa è la peculiarità di questa branca della scienza moderna.
Per cui, sotto con i retroscena scabrosi (à la Harmony) degli screzi tra Gantenbrink, Hawass, Bauval, Hancock, Sitchin vs. il mondo (dei suoi lettori), Howard Vyse e Caviglia, eccetera.
Piccolo inciso, su quello che è stato scoperto con Upuaut, il robot cingolato di Gantenbrink, non c'è stato aggiornamento dal momento che lo scritto è del '99/2000, quindi si rimane sulle ipotesi di Ankh e quant'altro.
Si valutano inoltre le varie ipotesi sulla costruzione della piramide (poteva mancare la levitazione acustica?) e purtroppo manca la parte migliore della teoria della rampa interna, sviluppata dall'architetto francese Jean-Pierre Houdin proprio durante la scrittura del libro.
Ancora, non capisco dove ci sia lo stupore di come risuona la pietra nella piramide, nessuno riesce mai a capire che c'è della matematica dietro qualunque cosa? Non hanno mai provato una campana tibetana?
In egittologia, del resto, ce ne può essere soltanto uno. Ogni lavoro viene firmato da una persona soltanto e questa è la peculiarità di questa branca della scienza moderna.
Per cui, sotto con i retroscena scabrosi (à la Harmony) degli screzi tra Gantenbrink, Hawass, Bauval, Hancock, Sitchin vs. il mondo (dei suoi lettori), Howard Vyse e Caviglia, eccetera.
Piccolo inciso, su quello che è stato scoperto con Upuaut, il robot cingolato di Gantenbrink, non c'è stato aggiornamento dal momento che lo scritto è del '99/2000, quindi si rimane sulle ipotesi di Ankh e quant'altro.
Si valutano inoltre le varie ipotesi sulla costruzione della piramide (poteva mancare la levitazione acustica?) e purtroppo manca la parte migliore della teoria della rampa interna, sviluppata dall'architetto francese Jean-Pierre Houdin proprio durante la scrittura del libro.
Ancora, non capisco dove ci sia lo stupore di come risuona la pietra nella piramide, nessuno riesce mai a capire che c'è della matematica dietro qualunque cosa? Non hanno mai provato una campana tibetana?
March 24, 2023
The 1990s were a weird time on the Giza Plateau. Far-fetched ideas about the pyramids have been springing up for centuries, but after a period when relatively little attention was given to such ideas, three events converged in 1993–1994 to renew public interest in them. Robert Schoch argued that patterns of water erosion on the Great Sphinx indicate it is thousands of years older than the conventional dates for it; Rudolf Gantenbrink investigated the enigmatic "air shafts" in the Great Pyramid of Giza and found a puzzling roadblock; and Adrian Gilbert and Robert Bauval published their hypothesis that the pyramids at Giza were arranged to reflect stars in the constellation Orion. These developments got wrapped up with long-standing ideas about Atlantean influence on ancient Egypt, championed by John Anthony West and Graham Hancock, and the Egyptian government reacted with hostility, most notably by denying Gantenbrink permission to investigate further. Hancock and Bauval then published The Message of the Sphinx: A Quest for the Hidden Legacy of Mankind, which drew together all the arguments from the "alternative Egyptology crowd", and their followers started accusing the government of conspiring to hide the truth.
At the end of the decade, Lawton and Ogilvie-Herald wrote this book to cut through this acrimonious atmosphere. As advocates of many unconventional beliefs about history, they have sympathy for those who challenge the conventional wisdom, but they don't have a preexisting commitment to the specific claims by the alternative Egyptology crowd. Their list of acknowledgements is impressive; they seem to have talked to every significant figure in the controversy.
In Part One of this book, they describe the history of the exploration of the site, the major questions about it, and the most influential fringe beliefs about it. In Part Two, they describe studies of the monuments in the late 20th century, and how the alternative beliefs about them evolved in the same period. In Part Three, they describe how the controversy erupted and played out in the 1990s.
The authors are both fair-minded and incisive. As they say, "Context is king in dating these edifices, and this context is rarely given a fair hearing by alternative researchers." After examining the context in great detail, the authors conclude that the conventional story about the monuments is largely correct. They devote considerable attention to the question of when the Great Pyramid was first opened—AD 832 under Caliph al-Mamun, or earlier?—a subject that even Mark Lehner and Zahi Hawass' otherwise thorough book about Giza (Giza and the Pyramids: The Definitive History) glosses over. They note how offensive the claims about Atlantean influence are to the people of Egypt, who take great pride in their ancestors' accomplishments, and that that offense explains much of the government's hostility. They point out that the 10,500 BC date for the Sphinx, which became a sort of orthodoxy in the alternative Egyptology crowd, originates with the mystical claims of Edgar Cayce, and how Hancock and Bauval's fixation on it leads them to twist their evidence. But Lawton and Ogilvie-Herald don't simply defend the powers that be. Although they conclude that the known technology of the Old Kingdom is enough to explain most of the pyramid construction process, they remain open to some of the unknown technologies posited by the alternative crowd. They're also open to Colin Reader's hypothesis that the Sphinx, in some hypothetical original form, is of Predynastic date and thus a few centuries older than generally thought. They remain sympathetic to Gilbert and West, who are less attention-seeking than Hancock and Bauval, and they point out that Hawass, who was then the government inspector for Giza, worsened the situation with his own thirst for publicity.
Today these squabbles may seem like a tempest in a teapot, but although the furor died down more than 20 years ago—when the attention of American and Middle Eastern audiences was forcibly diverted elsewhere—the positions championed by Hancock and Bauval are still the most popular fringe hypothesis about Giza. In any case, if you're interested in the persistent questions about Giza, it's good to have a comprehensive and fair-minded guide to those questions and to a period when those questions flared into mass-media controversy.
At the end of the decade, Lawton and Ogilvie-Herald wrote this book to cut through this acrimonious atmosphere. As advocates of many unconventional beliefs about history, they have sympathy for those who challenge the conventional wisdom, but they don't have a preexisting commitment to the specific claims by the alternative Egyptology crowd. Their list of acknowledgements is impressive; they seem to have talked to every significant figure in the controversy.
In Part One of this book, they describe the history of the exploration of the site, the major questions about it, and the most influential fringe beliefs about it. In Part Two, they describe studies of the monuments in the late 20th century, and how the alternative beliefs about them evolved in the same period. In Part Three, they describe how the controversy erupted and played out in the 1990s.
The authors are both fair-minded and incisive. As they say, "Context is king in dating these edifices, and this context is rarely given a fair hearing by alternative researchers." After examining the context in great detail, the authors conclude that the conventional story about the monuments is largely correct. They devote considerable attention to the question of when the Great Pyramid was first opened—AD 832 under Caliph al-Mamun, or earlier?—a subject that even Mark Lehner and Zahi Hawass' otherwise thorough book about Giza (Giza and the Pyramids: The Definitive History) glosses over. They note how offensive the claims about Atlantean influence are to the people of Egypt, who take great pride in their ancestors' accomplishments, and that that offense explains much of the government's hostility. They point out that the 10,500 BC date for the Sphinx, which became a sort of orthodoxy in the alternative Egyptology crowd, originates with the mystical claims of Edgar Cayce, and how Hancock and Bauval's fixation on it leads them to twist their evidence. But Lawton and Ogilvie-Herald don't simply defend the powers that be. Although they conclude that the known technology of the Old Kingdom is enough to explain most of the pyramid construction process, they remain open to some of the unknown technologies posited by the alternative crowd. They're also open to Colin Reader's hypothesis that the Sphinx, in some hypothetical original form, is of Predynastic date and thus a few centuries older than generally thought. They remain sympathetic to Gilbert and West, who are less attention-seeking than Hancock and Bauval, and they point out that Hawass, who was then the government inspector for Giza, worsened the situation with his own thirst for publicity.
Today these squabbles may seem like a tempest in a teapot, but although the furor died down more than 20 years ago—when the attention of American and Middle Eastern audiences was forcibly diverted elsewhere—the positions championed by Hancock and Bauval are still the most popular fringe hypothesis about Giza. In any case, if you're interested in the persistent questions about Giza, it's good to have a comprehensive and fair-minded guide to those questions and to a period when those questions flared into mass-media controversy.
April 21, 2025
Grounded, detailed, and refreshingly clear.
A steady hand through a tangled topic. This one doesn’t shout — it clarifies, and that’s a gift in the Giza debate.
A steady hand through a tangled topic. This one doesn’t shout — it clarifies, and that’s a gift in the Giza debate.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews