Ancient and Modern Egypt

Egyptologists have had a worrisome start to 2011. It’s hard to feel sorry for the undemocratic Mubarak regime that was overthrown last month, but sudden and chaotic political change has had unfortunate side effects. The Egyptian army protected the country’s historic sites for the first ten days of the uprising, and then shifted their focus to other priorities. This left the Tourist Police and unarmed security guards with the job of protecting all those sites, which has sadly been a logistical impossibility. Robbers have been able to steal priceless artefacts including statues of Tutankhamen from the Egyptian Museum. Tombs have been destroyed. Storage warehouses containing antiquities have been looted.

Another unexpected turn of events was the resignation this week of Dr. Zahi Hawass, a government minister who has been in charge of the Giza Plateau for almost 20 years. When I started writing The Sphinx Scrolls I quickly learned that Dr. Hawass controlled all archaeological digs and research at the pyramids and the Sphinx. He seemed to be strongly patriotic, and would usually refuse permits for any ‘New Age’ inspired excavations that might find signs that these great monuments were not built by Egyptian Pharaohs. In particular, the search for a possible ‘Hall of Records’ at the Sphinx, has made slow progress.

Since the existence of such a repository of ancient knowledge is key to my novel, I’ve had mixed feelings about the difficulties researchers have had in trying to establish whether such a thing exists. On the one hand, it would be fascinating if permission would be granted to excavate the fissures and chambers that ground penetrating radar surveys have identified close to and under the Sphinx. On the other hand, it might take away some of the magic of my novel if a time capsule of lost knowledge were discovered. After all, the Nag Hammadi Library was found in a mostly legible state after almost two millennia, so it’s possible for properly sealed texts to survive far longer in the dry conditions of the Giza Plateau. On balance, of course, I’d be delighted if the chambers could be opened up and investigated, and for any long hidden knowledge to be discovered.

If the exit of Dr. Hawass results in a more liberal replacement in that role, and if that opens the way for archaeological digs that have hitherto been refused, and if those digs actually find something unexpected about the history of humanity (and that’s a lot of ifs…), then I’d have to rewrite the end of my novel. Might take me a few months, but it’s not that big a deal. I won’t mind. It’s far harder for humanity to rediscover the wisdom it may once have possessed. If our ancestors took the trouble to write some advice for us and put it in a very safe place, I think we should take the trouble to find it and read it. And that, in a nutshell, is what my book is about.