SECRET CHAMBER Revisited! I will, from time to time, begin a discussion relevant to the main theme of this forthcoming book (to be published by Inner Traditions in Autumn 2014). Discussion 7: Media Smear Campaign called by Zahi Hawass against me begun in May 1997 to last attack on 10 December 2013. Why? And more disturbingly, why the anti-Semitic undertone of these media attacks? The story (in brief): Since the late 1990s Zahi Hawass is suspected to have ‘collaborated’ with several high-flying tour operators who regularly organized ‘spiritual tours’ to Egypt for various New Age and esoteric groups such as the Rosicricians of San Jose and AMORC, the British Freemasons, the Shriners of the USA, and even more exotic groups such as the ‘Sisterhood of Isis’ and suchlike societies who believe is the ‘spiritual’ connections with ancient Egypt. Three Cairo-based operators with business connection in the USA who regular contracted with these groups and close colleagues and friends of Hawass were Mohammad Nazmy owner of Quest Travel, Abass Nadim owner of Vision Travels, and Ahmed Fayed owner of Guardian Travel for the ARE/ECF. Oddly, both Abass Nadim and Admed Fayed died an untimely death in 2002 from massive heart attacks, while Mohammad Nazmy survived a massive heart attack in April 2008 when he, too, was only 50 years old. I knew, on a casual basis, Nadim and Fayed. In 1995 I help Nazmy set up Quest Travel and, on an ad hoc basis, was a speaker/host of some of his tours. The author and ‘Age of the Sphinx’ researcher John Anthony West had/has a long collaboration with Quest Travel. Ironically and paradoxically, as if enacting the proverbial ‘good cop, bad cop’, in May 1997 Hawass called a press conference in Cairo and asked the press correspondents of the international media to help him ‘declare war’ on the ‘high priests’ of the New Agers who, according to him, were myself, Graham Hancock and John A. West.]. Several foreign correspondents of highly influential international newspapers, including The New York Times, The Times of London and The Independent, obliged Hawass by mounted a concerted smear campaign against Hancock and me (see Robert Bauval & Ahmed Osman, Breaking the Mirror of Heaven, Inner Traditions Publishers, 2012, pp. 56-60). Steve Negus of the London Times, in an weird article titled ‘Egypt Plagued by New Age Pyramidiots’ (22 June 1997) announced to the world that, “As dawn breaks over the pyramids, chanting new age worshippers dance naked in the empty desert… Egyptians are beginning to suspect that a sinister agenda lies behind the increasing numbers of outlandish foreigners who claim to be in search of pharaoh’s ancient wisdom… Hawass is particularly incensed by the writing of Robert Bauval…” Leslie Downer of The Independent, in an article titled ‘Pyramidiots’ (The Independent, 30 August 1997), followed suite but seemed to throw everyone in the same pot: “At night, once the pyramids are closed and the ordinary tourists have left, come the organised tours of New Agers, seeking ancient secrets and enlightenment at pounds 18,000 a head…As the Millennium approaches, a locust plague of New Agers…are descending on Egypt from all over the Western world in a last-minute rush to get in on the secret of life, the universe and everything…the Egyptian director of the pyramids, Dr Zahi Hawass, agreed to let them enter (in the Great Pyramid) for a fee. …New Agers are not poor. They tend to be well-educated professionals, prepared to pay for whatever they want. At least one tour operator is said to charge $30,000 (pounds 18,750) a head for a three-week tour taking in the sacred sites from Luxor, Karnak and Aswan to the pyramids at Giza. The tour operators justify their prices by claiming that it costs a great deal to persuade the authorities to open the pyramids for the night… One of the leading tour companies is (Quest Travel) is run by Mohammed Nazmy, a suave Egyptian with an American accent and a mobile phone… He has several batches of New Age tourists shuttling up and down the Nile (who) paid… about $4,500 (pounds 2,800) a head for their trip. ‘I welcome them all here, booms Dr Zahi Hawass, Director of the Pyramids. The Cayce Foundation, the Rosicrucians, the Red Shriners, the New Age, the Eleven Eleveners, the Twelve Twelvers... the New Agers are wonderful people. They have a belief inside. …They are believer [sic]. What annoys me are the crazy ideas of certain individuals. I call them the Pyramidiots…’ The high priests of the doctrine argue their case in mind-numbing detail. Chief among them are authors Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval, whose latest volume, Keeper of Genesis, not only lays out the New Age case but also devotes several chapters to rubbishing Dr Hawass and his Egyptologist colleague, the American archaeologist Mark Lehner… If you are an amateur, you cannot work in the pyramids, explodes Dr Hawass. According to our law, only scholars should work around the Sphinx and the pyramids…We cant let people make holes here and there. We have to protect the Sphinx…when it comes to protecting the monuments, I have to. In the Egyptian and Arab newspapers, however, the smear campaign against me by Hawass took a very disturbing and nauseating anti-Semitic tone. Mohsen Arichie, writing in the English language Egyptian Gazette (16 May 1997) under the curious front page banner title ‘Nauseating Headache over Great Pyramids’ Monster Guard (i.e. the Sphinx): ‘The ancient Egyptians are probably turning in their tombs following growing calls by some Western and Jewish scientists about the real builders of the Great Pyramid and the world-famous monster, the Sphinx . . . Some of these theorists went so far in their zeal to excavate under and inside the Great Pyramid that they snapped at and insulted Dr. Zahi Hawass, director general of the Giza antiquities when he refused to listen to their lousy suggestions. . . . The Orion-inspired theorists (i.e. Robert Bauval) scanned the Sphinx and the Pyramids with a special camera in 1992 and insisted that the extraterrestrial beings left data and secrets of their visit in Egypt . . . the theorists (are) Graham Hancock and a colleague named Robert Bauval. . . Hawass was also attacked by unknown theorists in Chicago and South Africa . . . The Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni explained that such ridiculous claims wanted to deprive Egypt of its glorious ancient history. He also mocked an Israeli attempt to attribute the ancient Jews as the real builders of the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx . . . [Hawass] didn’t exclude the possibility that the commotion was suggested by Israel after its humiliation . . .’ Mona Salem AFP, writing in the Middle East Times (8 May 1997) under the banner title ‘Egypt Strikes back at Pyramid Theorists’, reported that, “Egypt is waging war to protect the pyramids and the Sphinx from an ‘oeganized campaign’ by Israel and foreign amateur archeologists, officials here say. “…we must face up to this even if it triggers a crisis with Israel..” Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosni told the weekly Rose Al Youssef. “This is piracy. Our history and our civilization must be protected, but the Isreali want to take over Everything!... we must counterattack with full strength because this is how they took Palestine!...” Hawass told a news conference on 7 May that these allegations are part of an organized campaign against the symbol of Egyptian civilization. “A group of people are making an organized campaign. There are some people pushing them” Hawass said, referring to Israel… Hawass identifies them as Robert Bauval… Graham Hancock (and) John Anthony West…” This bizarre, not to say xenophobic, anti-Semitic attacks by Hawass and Hosni against me and my books (incidentally, I am not a Jew, and I never claimed that ‘Jews built the pyramid’ in any of my book or articles) went on even after the 25th January 2011 Revolution deposed them. In the Al Ahram, Egypt’s and the Arab world’s top newspaper, in an article under the banner ‘Hosni and Hawass (accuse) American book that says pyramids were built by Jews’ (12 April 2012), these ex-minsiters go on to name me as the author, and further accuse me of being a ‘Belgian Jew from Alexandria’. Even more recently, on 10th December 2013, Hawass was interviewed in the popular Arab newspaper Al Masry Al Youm under the banner ‘Belgian-Egyptian Jew from Alexandria pays Germans to steal cartouche of Khufu in the Great Pyramid, Hawass names me as the culprit and states: “let me be clear that Robert Bauval paid the Germans to steal the cartouche…” Notwithstanding the facts that I am not a Jew (not that it matters either way to me!), and that I never claimed that the ‘Jews built the pyramids’, and that I am not in cahoots with the ‘Israelis’ or the ‘Zionists’, it also goes without saying that I definitely did not pay the ‘Germans’ (or anyone else) to ‘steal the cartouche of Khufu’! And those who wish hard evidence of these facts are welcome to visit my Blog where certified birth and Catholic baptism certificates and other documents are available for perusal. May I add that in very special (and very private circumstances!) I have even provided photographic evidence of my non-circumcised penis as ‘conclusive proof’ of my Christian Catholic disposition. As an aside, let me also state that I do not follow any religious movement. I am, for all intent and purpose, an blend of agnostic and Deist.
Posted on: Wed, 29 Jan 2014 07:53:28 +0000
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