|
The Shaft, The Subway
& The Causeway
Part 2
Contents
Return to Main Index
page 1│ page 2│ page 3│ page 4│ page 5│
page 6│
page 7│
page 8│
page 9
The Boris Said Connection...
 In
the autumn of 1997, I started hearing stories about a "well" in a
shaft under the causeway linking the Sphinx to Khafre's pyramid.
This "well" had been much publicised in forums such as the american
Art Bell 'Coast To Coast' radio show. It sounded to me like the
location being talked about was the place mentioned by Selim Hassan
although there were certainly discrepancies in the descriptions. Art
Bell visited the Giza plateau in late 1997. He was given carte
blanche by Dr Hawass (then Director General of the Giza Plateau and
Saqqara, now Undersecretary of State and Secretary-General of the
Supreme Council of Antiquities) to go anywhere he wanted on the Giza
plateau. Bell published photographs of his visit (sadly no longer
available) on his website, the first three of which were captioned
as showing him at the "well" and descending the ladder into the
shaft. He apparently declined the opportunity to visit the lower
levels.
In September 1997, a documentary film maker named Boris Said
appeared on Bell's radio show to talk about his recent work at Giza.
According to Said, one evening back in 1992 he was taking a stroll
on the Giza plateau when he came across one of the plateau guards
who offered to show him something interesting for twenty dollars.
When Said agreed, he was taken to the shaft in the causeway. They
went down a rusty iron ladder into the depths of the shaft and at
the bottom, entered what seemed to be a large cavern filled with
water to within two metres of the ceiling. (The construction of the
Aswan Dam is said to have raised the water table at Giza by around
eight metres) He was told that the water in the chamber was so pure
that from around 1965, it was used as a well for twenty years. Below
the surface film, the water was very clear so Said dove down into it
to take a closer look at the chamber. To the east end, he spotted
what seemed to be a pile of stones with some of them moved to one
side.
This interested him because he had heard
an old story of two boys going down the shaft to the chamber,
finding a pile of stones and moving some of them to see what was
concealed beneath. According to Said, in ancient times, stones were
often piled up over the entrances to underground tunnels and
sarcophagi as a form of protection.
In December 1995, Said entered into a joint venture agreement with
Dr Joseph Schor. Schor was working under a five year permit,
renewable annually, to conduct acoustic and radar surveys on the
Giza plateau . Schor supplied one hundred thousand dollars for the
venture as the financial sponser and was responsible for all
scientific aspects of the work. Said was to be in charge of filming
the work for a documentary programme for which he required his own
photographic permit. It is worth noting that in April/May 1996 as
part of the work, ground-penetrating radar detected what seemed to
be a tunnel approximately two metres wide and about three metres
below the surface emerging from the tail of the Sphinx and heading
in a westerly direction under the causeway towards Khafre's pyramid.
In November 1996, Said returned to the shaft and on descending it
found that it had an intermediate level at a depth of about twenty
six metres. He had not noticed it in 1992 and came to the conclusion
that some exploration work must have been done by persons unknown in
the intervening period. The implication was that some kind of wall
or barrier had been removed. He noticed two disturbed stone
sarcophagii and an iron pump at this newly revealed level. The shaft
continued for another fifteen metres to the chamber where he found
that the water level had dropped by around five metres since his
last visit. The chamber was quite spacious and clearly man-made
judging from the appearance of the vertical walls, cut steps and
right-angles.
Said next returned to the chamber in February 1997 to take some film
of the location. His team scraped away at the dirt on the floor to
clear a level area for the camera tripod. To their surprise, it
quickly became apparent that a smooth hard surface was becoming
exposed. Eventually, they uncovered a complete sarcophagus lid. Said
says ancient texts contain many references to the use of a
sarcophagus lid to cover the entrance to a sacred chamber or a
secret tunnel so they decided to investigate further using
ground-penetrating radar. This seemed to indicate that the lid was
around thirty inches thick. Two and a half metres below the lid it
detected a two and a half metre wide anomoly with what looked like a
domed ceiling. This anomoly descended at a twenty five degree angle
and headed in the direction of the Sphinx two hundred and seventy
five yards away. The alleged tunnel emerging from the tail of the
Sphinx and heading under the causeway now starts to assume a new
significance.
The lid had been uncovered by removing three or four inches of
surface material by hand and penknife etc. Said wanted Schor to ask
Dr Zahi Hawass (Director General of the Giza Plateau and Saqqara) to
investigate further, for example by digging a hole to enter the
tunnel. Said said that he was unaware that Schor's permit was
revoked at the end of 1996 and they were operating under his
photographic permit, and that for this reason Schor was reluctant to
take the find to the Egyptian authorities. Following this
disagreement, Said and Schor parted company. Schor funded the
venture and so had legal title to the film shot by Said, however
Said had exclusive marketing rights meaning Schor would be unable
use it in a commercial venture. As a result, it is very unlikely
that Said's film taken at the time will ever see the light of day.
Said uploaded photographs of the shaft and chamber to his Magical
Eye website to accompany the programme. Some exterior shots of the
location showed team members descending into a different shaft. Said
stated in the interview that this was a deliberate ploy to put
others off the true location of the shaft at the time.
Unfortunately, the photographs are no longer available on-line.
Said's account as related on the Art Bell show contains some
puzzling elements. It is hard to see how he could have missed the
second level chamber on his 1992 visit because he must have crossed
it to reach the shaft to the third level. Also, how much could he
have seen swimming underwater in what was presumably a dark flooded
chamber thirty metres below the ground? In another account, in his
"Behind the scenes with the Magical Eye team on the Giza plateau"
video, Said states that the sarcophagus lid was uncovered in
November 1996 and that nothing further was done until the team
returned in February 1997. There is also doubt as to whether Schor's
permit was actually revoked as claimed by Said on the Art Bell radio
show. Notwithstanding these points, Said played a major part in
raising the profile of what would come to be known as the "Tomb of
Osiris".
Sadly, Boris Said died of liver cancer on the 24th March 2002. His
ex-colleague and friend John Anthony West has written an
obituary which is well worth
reading for a look back at Said's colourful life.
Go Back
Enter Dr Hawass...
In May 1998, during a conference set up by Art Bell as part of an
alaskan cruise, Dr Zahi Hawass made an announcement about a new
discovery at Giza, saying that a shaft had been found about thirty
yards below the second pyramid and that a new sarcophagus was found
along with tunnels and a giant cavern. The tunnels were underwater
so divers were used to conduct a preliminary search. At some point
in the future, Hawass told the audience, an attempt would be made to
pump out the water so that the investigation can proceed. Hawass was
apparently very excited when speaking about this discovery.
Notwithstanding the possible confusion between "below the second
pyramid" and "under the causeway", this report seemed to be talking
about the same location.
The discovery surfaced again when John Anthony West, an attendee and
presenter at the Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E)
conference held at Virginia beach in August 1998, gave a report on a
presentation by Dr Hawass at the same conference. West reported that
Dr Hawass had recently excavated a deep shaft found under the
causeway midway between the Khafre pyramid and the Sphinx. The shaft
was over a hundred feet deep, and opened into a kind of pillared
chamber. In the middle there was a huge sarcophagus half submerged
in water. By its style, Hawass placed the sarcophagus in the Saite
Period (around 600 BC) and thought that the whole complex was
reminiscent of the description given by Herodotus for the supposed
tomb of Khufu. Hawass did not think it was Khufu's tomb but he did
believe it might be a (or the) Tomb of Osiris, and in some way
connected at least symbolically with the Oseirion at Abydos.
A press release on Dr Hawass's own website
The Plateau reported that he would
give two major lectures in December 1998 about the water shaft
located under the causeway of Khafre's pyramid. It said Dr. Hawass
excavated the water shaft and through diligent research established
that it was the tunnel described by Herodotus when he visited Giza
over a millenium [sic] ago. According to Dr Hawass, Herodotus said
that a tunnel close to the Great Pyramid contained a sarcophagus
with Cheop's mummy inside. The shaft was described as opening in the
causeway connecting the Sphinx to the Khafre's pyramid. The press
release said that Dr. Hawass would describe in his lectures how the
shaft was scientifically analysed. Dr. Hawass did indeed present two
lectures to the National Geographic Institute in early December
1998, but contrary to what he had earlier stated in his own press
release, he made no mention of the shaft under the causeway.
As 1999 progressed, it became obvious that Hassan, Hawass and Said
were all talking about the same location. In brief, according to Dr
Hassan, the shaft descends to a rectangular hall in the eastern side
of which is another shaft. This second shaft descends to another
chamber which in turn has a third shaft in the eastern side leading
to a colonnaded hall. This final shaft and hall were flooded. There
was a clear similarity with the pillared chamber mentioned by Hawass
in his A.R.E. presentation. For some reason, Boris Said only
mentioned two levels, namely the intermediate level containing the
two sarcophagi and the flooded chamber at the bottom of the shaft,
equating to Hassan's flooded third level, but again it was clear he
was talking about the same location.
The "Tomb of Osiris" (as it was now called by Hawass) featured in
the "Opening The Lost Tombs" FOX TV Special transmitted on the 2nd
March 1999 (see
page 5). The illustrations of the
location were inaccurate compared to the actual layout; presumably
there was some "artistic license" to show the interiors of the
chambers more clearly. Doctor Hawass subsequently posted an article
entitled
The Osiris Shaft on his website and
featured the location in his 1999 lectures, for example at the
University of Pennsylvania on the 11th April (see page 7) and on the
9th December at the National Geographic Institute in Washington D.C.
News of the discovery spread and on the 17th June 1999, the Egyptian
State Information Service posted an item entitled
Osiris' Tomb near Cheops' Pyramid, excavated.
This still left the little problem of how H. Spencer Lewis
associated the location with an alleged network of underground
passages and chambers linking the Sphinx with the pyramids in the
appendix to his book "The Symbolic Prophecy of the Great Pyramid".
Go Back
|