Herodotus, the Father of Lies, gives us the classical account of the Great Pyramid of Cheops. We know that Herodotus spent time in Egypt, and it is a fair surmise that the stories he collected about the country and its extraordinary monuments were current there and not his own inventions. He may have been lacking in historical discernment and careless about facts, but Herodotus loved a good story which, very often, turned out to be true or at least based on truth. It is Herodotus who reports to us that the Great Pyramid was built by the pharaoh Cheops who was buried beneath it. This means the pyramid is a construction of the Fourth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom and gives it a date of approximately 2500 BC.
This dating was assumed but unconfirmed until the modern era. By the time colonial scholars stopped the looting and degradation of Egyptian antiquities the pyramid had been stripped of anything dateable, and the entire building was free of any identifying inscriptions. This was until Howard Vyse - later a member of British parliament and notorious for his "gun powder archeology" - blasted his way into the upper structures of the so-called King's Chamber in 1835 and there uncovered an array of ancient graffiti or "quarry marks" on stones. One such item of graffiti contains the cartouche of pharaoh Cheops (Khufu) in an inscription that reads "the gang, Companions of Khufu..." It was the first, and to date, only confirmation of Herodotus' account and is the whole basis for dating the pyramid to that pharaoh's reign; we have hard physical evidence to support a written report which itself records a story that the Egyptians themselves would tell. Accordingly, all subsequent studies of the pyramid, and in fact the whole time line of modern Egyptology, rides on this piece of evidence.
But it is not beyond dispute. There remain many who question the date, as well as whether Cheops was involved and whether or not the pyramid was built as his tomb, or any tomb. Letters from Vyse's fellow archaeologist, the Italian Giovanni Caviglia, raise questions about Vyse's integrity with Caviglia claiming that Vyse was so intent on making a famous discovery he tricked Caviglia so that he, Vyse, could take the glory. It has been suggested that perhaps Vyse - running out of time and money - forged the graffiti marks in his quest for fame. This view has especially been promoted by those who would like the time frame of ancient Egypt and the pyramids to be different than what has now become the settled orthodoxy. There is an alternative school of thought that would have the pyramids of Giza much, much earlier but Vyse's graffiti, confirming Herodotus, stands in the way. They think that it is simply too good to be true that, in a vast building completely devoid of all other inscriptions, Vyse discovered the one name supplied by Herodotus - it was like finding Cheop's signature on the building. "Cheops was here!"
The skepticism about Vyse's "quarry marks" is so rife in certain quarters that of recent times some amateur archeologists violated security and stole flakes of the red paint in which the graffiti was written with the intention of having it tested. They acted, they said, out of frustration, because the Egyptian authorities refused to conduct such tests. You cannot date stone. That is the problem. You can only conduct carbon dating - approximate as it is - on organic materials. since the paint is an organic material, it can be dated. This seems never to have been done. Without such tests can we really be sure that the graffiti is contemporary with the building's construction? It seems sloppy science to build the whole edifice of modern Egyptology on a date determined by a single piece of graffiti. The graffiti confirms Herodotus, but can we confirm the graffiti?
This problem is underlined by another curious discovery. A man named Dixon who uncovered and opened an "air shaft" from the Queen's Chamber in the nineteenth century reports that he found three objects among the rubble in the air shaft - a stone ball, a metal hook and a piece of cedar wood. Since these items were in a concealed shaft we can be certain that they had been there since ancient times, or at last since the shaft was sealed and hidden. The ball and hook are curious, but the piece of wood is important because it is organic and can be dated. Dixon sent these items back to England. Today, the ball and hook survive but the piece of wood has disappeared. It was last seen in the archives of the University of Edinburgh. Strangely, it has also dropped out of many accounts of the Dixon relics which typically mention the ball and hook but not the wood. (Readers can see the relevant wikipedia articles as evidence of this.) The piece of wood is gone and it is as if it never existed. There goes another chance to obtain a scientific dating of the pyramid.
The question of dating is an acute one for some people because, to them, the standard chronology does not make sense. In particular they are confounded by the archeaological record that seems to suggest that the enormous sophistication of the Great Pyramid emerged out of nowhere in the Fourth Dynasty. They have trouble believing that the Old Kingdom Egyptians went from adobe huts to pyramid-building in a remarkably short space of time. Moreover, the Egyptian's own records - preserved in stone - relate an entirely different chronology, notably claiming that there was a civilization earlier than their own. Their lists of pharaohs extend back much further than has been confirmed by archaeology. This fact has given rise to a small industry of theory and speculation - ranging from considered to crack-pot - at odds with mainstream Egyptology. Perhaps most notable has been the work of John Anthony West, whose 'Magical Egypt' series has advanced what he calls a 'symbolist' reading of ancient Egypt. West posits that the monuments of Giza are far older than the Fourth Dynasty and were not built by Cheops. Herodotus may be right that Cheops had himself buried beneath the Great Pyramid, but, West maintains, the pyramid was not built for that purpose. Indeed, he questions whether it was any sort of tomb at all. He thinks the idea that a mummy was interred in the structure and its spirit somehow wafted up to the heavens through the so-called "air shafts" is an archaeologist's fantasy. He thinks it was built earlier, and for entirely different but unknown reasons.
Much depends, therefore, upon Vyse's graffiti. If it is authentic - and can be explained in no other way - then it confirms the Herodotean narrative and conventional Egyptology stands on solid ground. If it can be shown to be a forgery, or explained some other way, then all bets are off. The curiosities, contradictions, mysteries, conundrums and riddles of the Great Pyramid abound and hardly fit comfortably into any time line. And whenever it was built, we are still at a loss to give a convincing and agreed account of just how it was built. Egyptology of any ilk is a hotch-potch of educated guesses.
For what it is worth, the present author - a big fan of Herodotus - likes nothing more than seeing the Father of Lies proven correct yet again. For that reason alone he is not suspicious of a piece of graffiti that matches what Herodotus relates. Herodotus' storytelling style of historiography is as likely to preserve true tales as it is exaggerations and fancies. It is far from inconceivable that the story of Cheops and the pyramid he collected in Egypt preserves a true tradition handed down among the Egyptians since Old Kingdom times. Perhaps other details in Herodotus' account are accurate as well? It is worth noting, though - as skeptics have - that he describes Cheops being buried beneath the pyramid on an artificial island amidst a subterranean stream diverted from the Nile. This plainly fanciful description conforms in no way to anything so far found beneath the Great Pyramid, 'secret' and 'hidden' chambers notwithstanding.
On the face of it, it is hard to deny the Vyse discovery. For a start, Vyse would have been utterly incapable of forging hieroglyphs. He had the cartouche copied and sent to London to one of only a very small number of scholars who could at that time read Egyptian hieroglyphics. Vyse had no idea what it said until it was decyphered. As for his integrity, he made a lengthy rebuttal to the allegations of his Italian companion and seems to have come out smelling of roses. Gunpowder archeology yes, but there is no basis for depicting him as a charlatan. Even more, the actual location of the graffiti in the upper chambers above the King's Chamber would seem to make it physically impossible for Vyse to be guilty of such a fabrication. Carbon dating of the red paint would be nice, but even without it the weight of evidence is that the "quarry marks" are both ancient and authentic. Matching them to Herodotus, the natural conclusion is that the pyramid was built by Cheops. There might be some other explanation for the markings, but the natural conclusion is plain.
We do have reason to be cautious. When a stash of old scrolls were discovered near the Dead Sea after the Second World War, scholars immediately matched the discovery to a text in Pliny the Elder who reported a community of the Essene sect near there. On the basis of that match between text and artifact scholars excitedly declared the scrolls to be the lost library of the Essenes. For decades, scholars studied the Essene books and the Essene rituals. As it happens, all of this was almost certainly wrong. The Dead Sea Scrolls are not the lost library of the Essenes. The connection between text and artifact was misleading. It is quite possible that we are somehow being misled by the apparent congruence of the account of Herodotus and the discovery of Howard Vyse. It is, after all, very slender evidence - a scribble on a rock and hearsay from the Father of Lies. You would hope our knowledge of the Great Pyramid might rest upon a firmer foundation than that. It is surprising how many 'facts' of history actually rest upon much less. For now, though, the connection seems solid. Somehow we must explain the manifold mysteries of the Great Pyramid within that time frame and attributed to that pharaoh.
Harper McAlpine Black
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