Howard-Vyse, Gunpowder and Plot...

Hi ATS,

In the months of March-May 1837, Colonel Richard William Howard –Vyse blasted his way into a series of hitherto unopened chambers within the Great Pyramid. Within these chambers Howard-Vyse claimed to have found ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, including the name of ‘Khufu’.

Egyptologists, having done no independent scientific verification as to the authenticity of these inscriptions, accept them unreservedly as definitive proof of Khufu’s hand in constructing the Great Pyramid. But just how safe is their acceptance of Howard-Vyse’s testimony? Is there anything that should give them any cause for concern? Consider the following fraud allegations made against Howard-Vyse:


Fraud allegation #1:

In the UK Parliamentary election of 1807, R.W. Howard-Vyse stood as a candidate (in place of his father) in the Honiton constituency. His share of the vote in the constituency was unprecedented, almost 50%. The share of the vote for the third placed candidate was also unprecedented, having plummeted to only 13% from a normal for the third placed candidate of around 28%. As a result of this outcome, the third placed candidate, Mr Philip Staple raised a petition in the UK Parliament accusing R.W. Howard-Vyse of electoral farud. (Note: the petition is written in Old English. Many of the ‘f’ characters should be read as ‘s’).





Given that such a result was never repeated in this constituency it does seem that something untoward occurred in the 1807 election in this constituency and that Mr Staple’s charge against Howard-Vyse should have been upheld by Parliament and Howard-Vyse convicted and jailed for electoral fraud.


Fraud allegation #2:

In volume 1 of his book, ’Operations at Gizeh’, Colonel R. W. Howard-Vyse writes the following:

10th Apr – Perring, Mash and Hill go to Cairo. Vyse comments: “A slanderous paragraph, intended to be inserted in the English newspapers, was this day shown to me, which accused Colonel Campbell of having improperly laid himself under obligations to the Pacha by obtaining the firmaun; and which implied the Colonel and myself intended to make our fortunes under the pretence of scientific researches…” R. W. Howard-Vyse

There is no mention by Howard-Vyse of who made the above accusation or the precise nature of the accusation.


Fraud allegation #3:

In 1954, Mr Walter Allen of Pittsburgh, PA, was researching his family history with his mother. He discovered that his great grandfather, Humphries Brewer, had spent some time in Egypt in 1837, working for Colonel R.W. Howard-Vyse at the Giza Pyramids. From Walter Allen’s notes it seems that his great grandfather fell out with Howard-Vyse and his team as a result of them painting ‘marks’ into the Great Pyramid. Walter Allen’s record of his discussion with his mother of their family history is reproduced below:



Given the number of allegations of fraud made against R.W. Howard-Vyse (three that we know of) and there are suspicions of other fraudulent activity in his investigations of Menkaure’s Pyramid at Giza, is it safe to accept Howard-Vyse on his word that the inscriptions he claims to have found in the so-called ‘Relieving Chambers’ of the Great Pyramid are authentic? Surely, given such serious charges having been made against Howard-Vyse it now becomes essential that consensus Egyptology, rather than simply accepting the word of someone whose integrity has been so obviously questioned so many times, takes action to have the inscriptions in these chambers scientifically tested .

Scott Creighton

Originally posted by Scott Creighton
Hi ATS,

In the months of March-May 1837, Colonel Richard William Howard –Vyse blasted his way into a series of hitherto unopened chambers within the Great Pyramid. Within these chambers Howard-Vyse claimed to have found ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, including the name of ‘Khufu’.

Egyptologists, having done no independent scientific verification as to the authenticity of these inscriptions, accept them unreservedly as definitive proof of Khufu’s hand in constructing the Great Pyramid. But just how safe is their acceptance of Howard-Vyse’s testimony? Is there anything that should give them any cause for concern? Consider the following fraud allegations made against Howard-Vyse:


Fraud allegation #1:

In the UK Parliamentary election of 1807, R.W. Howard-Vyse stood as a candidate (in place of his father) in the Honiton constituency. His share of the vote in the constituency was unprecedented, almost 50%. The share of the vote for the third placed candidate was also unprecedented, having plummeted to only 13% from a normal for the third placed candidate of around 28%. As a result of this outcome, the third placed candidate, Mr Philip Staple raised a petition in the UK Parliament accusing R.W. Howard-Vyse of electoral farud. (Note: the petition is written in Old English. Many of the ‘f’ characters should be read as ‘s’).





Given that such a result was never repeated in this constituency it does seem that something untoward occurred in the 1807 election in this constituency and that Mr Staple’s charge against Howard-Vyse should have been upheld by Parliament and Howard-Vyse convicted and jailed for electoral fraud.


Fraud allegation #2:

In volume 1 of his book, ’Operations at Gizeh’, Colonel R. W. Howard-Vyse writes the following:

10th Apr – Perring, Mash and Hill go to Cairo. Vyse comments: “A slanderous paragraph, intended to be inserted in the English newspapers, was this day shown to me, which accused Colonel Campbell of having improperly laid himself under obligations to the Pacha by obtaining the firmaun; and which implied the Colonel and myself intended to make our fortunes under the pretence of scientific researches…” R. W. Howard-Vyse

There is no mention by Howard-Vyse of who made the above accusation or the precise nature of the accusation.


Fraud allegation #3:

In 1954, Mr Walter Allen of Pittsburgh, PA, was researching his family history with his mother. He discovered that his great grandfather, Humphries Brewer, had spent some time in Egypt in 1837, working for Colonel R.W. Howard-Vyse at the Giza Pyramids. From Walter Allen’s notes it seems that his great grandfather fell out with Howard-Vyse and his team as a result of them painting ‘marks’ into the Great Pyramid. Walter Allen’s record of his discussion with his mother of their family history is reproduced below:



Given the number of allegations of fraud made against R.W. Howard-Vyse (three that we know of) and there are suspicions of other fraudulent activity in his investigations of Menkaure’s Pyramid at Giza, is it safe to accept Howard-Vyse on his word that the inscriptions he claims to have found in the so-called ‘Relieving Chambers’ of the Great Pyramid are authentic? Surely, given such serious charges having been made against Howard-Vyse it now becomes essential that consensus Egyptology, rather than simply accepting the word of someone whose integrity has been so obviously questioned so many times, takes action to have the inscriptions in these chambers scientifically tested .

Scott Creighton

edit on 10/5/2013 by Scott Creighton because: Fix typo.

Errata - 'Honiton' should read 'Beverley'. Honiton was the constituency Howard-Vyse stood as a parliamentary candidate at the subsequent election of 1812 and which he won by default after one of the candidates--Mr Graves--failed to turn up having "...allowed himself to be waylaid at Taunton."

Scott Creighton

Very interesting thread Scott….

I would guess that most people do not know the story of the markings in the relief chambers and the apparent deception carried out by Mr Vyse…. If they did surely this thread would have garnered more attention….!!

Let’s hope this comment brings it back into the mainstream for others to join in….

These markings are the reason for attributing the construction of the Great Pyramid to Kufu…. Should they be proved to be fake then the whole subject re-opens to discussion….

PA

reply to post by Scott Creighton


Giving you a bump Scott, great information!!! I want to see where this goes.

sulaw
reply to post by Scott Creighton

 

Giving you a bump Scott, great information!!! I want to see where this goes.

Glad you liked it.

Cheers,

Scott

Scott...

I've been reading further into the actual inscriptions in the chambers above the "Kings" chamber.... I must admit it is fascinating.... turns out all the transcriptions found were a mixture of hieratic styles from several different periods of history... but none of these period were the same period Khufu was purportedly alive.... Furthermore, all the marking contained the same grammatical error, a particular glyph shown as a sieve in the cartouche of Khufu..... Just so happens, coincidentally, that this same error in translation was represented in the only decent Hieroglyphic reference material available at the time.... Wilkinson's "Materia Hieroglyphica"...... It goes without saying that no royal inscriber or recorder would ever make the heinous error of representing his kings name wrong!! Coupled with the fact that the large majority of Egyption builders/stone masons etc had very little if any linguistic writing skills....

Personally I don't think we even need the results of the tests to prove Vyse forged these marks...

Scott and all others... have a read of this article.... VERY VERY interesting...

Describes the situation and timeline in great detail.....

www.bibliotecapleyades.net...

Some highlights:-

"How sure can we be of our accusations, a century and a half after the event?

Sure enough. For, as most forgers, Mr. Hill made, on top of all the other embarrassments, one grave mistake: a mistake that no ancient scribe could have possibly committed.

As it turned out, both source books by which Vyse-Hill were guided (Wilkinson's Materia Hieroglyphica and then de Laborde's Voyage) contained spelling errors; the unsuspecting team embodied the errors in the pyramid's inscriptions.

Samuel Birch himself pointed out in his report that the hieroglyph for Kh (the first consonant in the name Kh-u-f-u), which is (representing pictorially a sieve), "appears in Mr. Wilkinson's work without distinction from the solar disk." The Kh hieroglyph had to be employed in all the cartouches (spelling Khnem-Kh-u-f) which were inscribed in the two lower chambers. But the correct sieve symbol was not employed even once. Instead, the consonant Kh was represented by the symbol for the Solar Disk: whoever inscribed these cartouches made the same error as Wilkinson had made... .

When Vyse and Hill got hold of de Laborde's book, its sketch only deepened the error. The rock carvings depicted by him included the cartouche Kh-u-f-u on the right, and Khnum-kh-u-f on the left. In both instances, de Laborde—who admitted to ignorance of hieroglyphics and who made no attempt to read the symbols—rendered the Kh sign as a void circle

"His depiction thus served to enhance Vyse's and Hill's notion that the crucial cartouche of Kh-u-f-u should be inscribed in the uppermost chamber with the symbol for the Solar Disk (146a). But in doing so, the inscriber had employed the hieroglyphic symbol and phonetic sound for RA, the supreme God of Egypt! He had unwittingly spelled out not Khnem-Khuf, but Khnem-Rauf; not Khufu, but Raufu. He had used the name of the great God incorrectly and in vain; it was blasphemy in ancient Egypt.

It was also an error inconceivable for an Egyptian scribe of the times of the Pharaohs. As monument after monument and inscription after inscription make clear, the symbol for Ra and the symbol for Kh were always correctly employed—not only in different inscrip-tions, but also in the same inscription by the same scribe.

And, therefore, the substitution of Ra for Kh was an error that could not have been committed in the time of Khufu, nor of any other ancient Pharaoh. Only a stranger to hieroglyphics, a stranger to Khufu, and a stranger to the overpowering worship of Ra, could have committed such a grave error.

Added to all the other puzzling or inexplicable aspects of the discovery reported by Vyse, this final mistake establishes conclusively, we believe, that Vyse and his aides, not the original builders of the Great Pyramid, caused the red-painted markings to be inscribed."


Fascinating article......

PA

Scott Creighton

In 1954, Mr Walter Allen of Pittsburgh, PA, was researching his family history with his mother. He discovered that his great grandfather, Humphries Brewer, had spent some time in Egypt in 1837, working for Colonel R.W. Howard-Vyse at the Giza Pyramids. From Walter Allen’s notes it seems that his great grandfather fell out with Howard-Vyse and his team as a result of them painting ‘marks’ into the Great Pyramid. Walter Allen’s record of his discussion with his mother of their family history is reproduced below:

There's a full transcription of the notebook entry here, and also a long thread on the Graham Hancock forum.

I find the controversy over the authenticity of the name
as good a topic to start the day with as any.
my compliments on the article

kh, u... f.
u...

-kb

originally posted by: PerfectAnomoly

...

I've been reading further into the actual inscriptions in the chambers above the "Kings" chamber....

There's more on Scott's latest ideas about this subject here.

It seems that there's some disagreement with his suggestions, though.