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REVIEW
OF THE 1999 QUESTING CONFERENCE
Report by conference organiser Andrew Collins.
The 1999 Questing Conference held on 23 October was a complete success.
Around 820 people packed the spacious Logan Hall at the Institute of
Education, off Russell Square, to see some of the top writers in the
ancient mysteries field deliver dynamic lectures which will be remembered
for years to come.
Opening Address
In the opening address
I previewed the day and spoke of how in 1993 I first learned that the
Great Sphinx might be thousands of years older than had previously been
thought. If this was true, it lent weight to the stories related in
Egyptian creation texts such as those found on the walls of the Ptolemaic
temple of Edfu in southern Egypt. These spoke of a strange world which
existed at sep tepi, the First Occasion, and which was inhabited by
divine individuals with names such as Shebtiu, Falcons or Eldest Ones.
They were said to have constructed the first sacred enclosure and temple
on the edge of the Place of Reeds, a site close to a primeval mound,
or island, set in the middle of a lake named as the Waters of Nun. E.A.E.
Reymond, an Egyptologist from Manchester University, who made a study
of the Edfu Building Texts during the 1960s, was convinced that they
preserved the memory of a proto-dynastic community that had existed
somewhere in the vicinity of Memphis, the Old Kingdom capital. These
divine beings were also said to have built a deep underground structure
known as the Underworld of the Soul, entered through something named
as the Place of the Well located on the lake island. I linked this idea
in GODS OF EDEN to the modern concept of the so-called Hall of Records
thought by many to exist beneath the plateau at Giza.
Books by top authors such as Graham Hancock, Robert Bauval, Colin Wilson, Michael Baigent, John Anthony West and myself have attempted to demonstrate the greater antiquity of Egyptian civilisation, and these have met with great success. Yet recently books have appeared which seriously criticise the findings, methodology and personal politics of the `alternative Egypt' field. Of these books, by far the most important is Ian Lawton and Chris Ogilvie-Herald's mammoth work GIZA-THE TRUTH, published in August 1999.
Although it has been condemned as a personal attack on the integrity of the authors and researchers its features, what it does provide is an important overview of all the counter claims and criticisms being leveled against the alternative theories which concern Giza's monuments. For example, it presents the very latest evidence which determines that the Great Sphinx could not possibly be any older than the Fourth Dynasty - the time-frame in which it was built according to conventional Egyptology.
GIZA - THE TRUTH also points out that the contextual relationship of the Sphinx in respect to surrounding temples, causeways and pyramids makes it blatantly clear that it could not be any older than the necropolis' principal building phase around 4500 years ago. Furthermore, the book also suggests that although the erosion on the Sphinx and Sphinx enclosure is very likely to have been caused by salt erosion and water precipitation, there is every reason to assume that this could have occurred in dynastic times.
Lawton and Ogilvie-Herald
are not claiming that they have all the right answers, or that there
are not genuine enigmas surrounding the foundations of Egyptian civilisation.
Indeed, they support the idea of a shamanistic basis to the earliest
neolithic cultures along the Nile. What they have done is present an
opposing view I feel should be read and absorbed by anyone who possesses
an interest in the mysteries of ancient Egypt. We should take stock
of these criticisms before moving forward into new areas of discovery.
Read Andrew's reports on the next lecture or choose from below:
Yuri Stoyanov
Christopher Knight and
Robert Lomas
Robert Bauval
John Lash
David Rohl
Michael Baigent
Colin Wilson
Andrew Collins
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