Here is an open letter to Hancock and Bauval from Michael J. Brass Lecturer at the University of Capetown. Hancock and Bauval have never replied to.
Dear Mr Robert Bauval and Mr Graham Hancock,
Over the past few months open, critical opposition has erupted between yourselves and me. I am writing this letter in the vein hope of bringing some much needed clarification both to the background of the position I hold and the reasons thereof.
My specialist research area is human evolution. I have no formal qualifications in the archaeological sub-discipline of Egyptology and nor have I claimed so. The knowledge I have concerning Ancient Egypt comes from the books and journal articles I have read, the Egyptologists I am in communication with and the application of archaeological practices and theory from human evolution to Ancient Egypt (which prehistorians like Professor Fred Wendorf and Associate-Professor Andy Smith, amongst others, also do). In 1995 I was informed that a book called "Fingerprints of the Gods" (FOG) had been published. I subsequently purchased it. I was interested in propositions presented that Antarctica had housed the lost civilisation of Atlantis; that certain maps, like the Piri Reis map, were based upon more ancient copies dating back a few thousand years and portray Antarctica free of ice; that the Olmec Heads display African features; that certain architectural features and myths from South America can be dated back to 10 500 BC; that the mammoths died out in a cataclysm around 10 500 BC; that the ice age had continued until around the epoch of 10 500 BC when the earth's crust shifted dramatically; that domesticated grains were found at Wadi Kubbaniya by Professor Fred Wendorf dating back to c. 10 500 BC, which are claimed in FOG to be remnants of a failed experiment in domestication fuelled by Atlantean teachers in the local populations; that the Sphinx dates to 10 500 BC; and that the Giza pyramids represent exactly the belt stars of Orion as they appeared in 10 500 BC.
I subsequently purchased "The Orion Mystery", watched the documentaries featuring yourselves and John West which appeared on the South Africa pay channel M-Net's documentary program, Carte Blanche. I also heard of a published academic response to "The Orion Mystery", published in KMT (1996) by Robert Chadwick, which I obtained a copy of. Referenced was Dr Jaromir Malek's review of "The Orion Mystery", which Dr Malek kindly volunteered to send me a copy of. Upon further investigation, I found Chadwick's article to be fatally flawed in a number of aspects [NOTE: 11 November 2001. I have reinvestigated Chadwick's article and found my previous criticisms to be invalid. I hold Chadwick's article to be a critical blow against the Orion Correlation idea]. I settled on publishing my response in the magazine "Quest for Knowledge" because at the time I felt it was the easiest route to make my objections publicly known. In hindsight, I committed a grievous error by doing so and I regret not having chosen my other option of first submitting my article to KMT as a formal response. It is a lesson I learned the hard way: when faced with a choice between a prestigious academic publication and a common magazine, the correct method is to opt for the former (I have gone into this point in greater depth in my article on peer-review journals).
A couple of months after "Quest for Knowledge" published my article in a two-part series, Mr Bauval contacted me via e-mail and requested permission to include my article, either as a whole or in part, in a forthcoming book. This book was meant to be an updated version of "The Orion Mystery" but, for reasons already documented by Mr Bauval, the book evolved instead into "The Secret Chamber". I granted permission, with the proviso that I see the relevant sections prior to publication. As "The Secret Chamber" progressed, the focus of the book changed further to the extent it was no longer feasible to include my article; this was a position I fully understood.
By this time I was heavily into researching ancient Egypt. For this, credit has to go to Mr Hancock for having stimulated my interest, as I am aware he has done for many others. Mr Bauval's work heightened my investigations into ancient symbolism and behaviour, not only with Ancient Egypt but also in regard to human evolution. For these two reasons I will always be grateful in some respects to you two. It is quite ironic, in my opinion, after this closer investigation of the archaeological and astronomical evidence, stimulated by yourselves, that I should land up being one of your most vocal critics.
As I advanced in my archaeological training and research, and from discussions with other professional archaeologists and astronomers, fundamental flaws were revealed in your arguments.
FOG's statements regarding Antarctica, the pole shifts, the ancient maps, the mammoths and South America have been disproved. The arguments raised by Mr Hancock on BBC Horizon regarding his dismissal of radiocarbon dating are spurious at best which reveal a distinct lack of knowledge and research on this particular subject and its application thereof. With regard to FOG, "Keeper of Genesis" and the Carte Blanche documentaries, the Sphinx has no cultural, geological and archaeological context at 10 500 BC when, contrary to FOG and your statements in the Carte Blanche documentaries, the Western Desert was in the tail-ends of an arid phase and did not posses a lush savannah-like environment. FOG contends that grindstones in the western desert were used in processing found domesticated grain, dated to the epoch of 10 500 BC. In this contention FOG relies upon Michael Hoffman's summary in "Egypt Before The Pharaohs" (1979) of Professor Wendorf's published work from the late 1970s at Wadi Kubbaniya. Mr Hancock failed to conduct follow-up research and consequently failed to take note of Professor Fred Wendorf's study published in 1988 entitled "New radiocarbon dates and Late Palaeolithic diet at Wadi Kubbaniya, Egypt". Although the latter study, in which Professor Wendorf reports on his research into his original claims and finds then to be without substance, has now been in the public realm for 13 years and has been pointed out on Mr Hancock's website message board on numerous occasions, I have yet to see Mr Hancock make a public retraction of his statements in FOG. This lack of acknowledgement gives lie to Mr Hancock's claim that if he was ever proven wrong on a subject then he will admit as such in the public realm.
The astronomers Dr EC Krupp and Professor Tony Fairall have raised objections to the strict correlation drawn in "Fingerprints of the Gods", "The Orion Mystery" and "Keeper of Genesis" between the Giza pyramids and the belt stars of Orion. In these books, and in the Carte Blanche documentaries, it was repeatedly stated that only in 10 500 BC do the angles of the Giza Pyramids and the angles of the belt stars of Orion match with exacting precision. As Tony Fairall's examination revealed, together with his response to Mr Bauval's criticisms of the BBC Horizon production, the angles are not an exact match and the discrepancies are significant. Mr Bauval, your critique of Associate-Professor Fairall's arguments have included a statement that the differences in the angles involved are within human eye tolerance levels. As much as you seem to criticise some people, with regard to the precision laying out of the Giza pyramids, as not being qualified in engineering so you are not qualified in astronomy and astronomical calculations for citings for stars and their use in precision layouts of buildings. I passed your comments on to Associate-Professor Fairall who responded that if you are correct in your statement, then the Ancient Egyptians must have had very poor eyesight.
Mr Bauval e-mailed me soon after Professor Fairall's critique was first published and requested qualification on various aspects, as I was in contact with Professor Fairall and was familiar with his criticisms. Despite having provided the requested clarifications on numerous occasions, Professor Fairall's argument was misrepresented in "The Secret Chamber". I note that it was after the publication of Professor Fairall's criticism that the "exact angle" argument ceased to be in usage and it was supplanted by the claim that the discrepancies were "insignificant" and that the real significance lies in the visual symbolic relationship between the Giza pyramids and Orion's Belt, as expressed on BBC Horizon. This change in tract whenever valid criticisms are put forward which rebut Mr Bauval and Mr Hancock's arguments smacks of desperation.