Bauval Robert - Breaking the Mirror of Heaven: The Conspiracy to Suppress the Voice of Ancient Egypt

This is a book that needed to be written... and I cant imagine a better writing team to have taken on the challenge. Robert Bauval and Ahmed Osman have expertly untangled the history of the Egyptian Antiquities Organization, in all its guises, and successfully exposed the trauma of the Zahi Hawass years. This is a story that should be read by all those interested in Egyptology and everyone who cares passionately about Egypt... a tour de force in modern historical investigation.

DAVID ROHL, EGYPTOLOGIST, HISTORIAN, BROADCASTER, AND AUTHOR OF A TEST OF TIME

Egyptology has lied to us for too long. Now a meticulous investigation by two top authors reveals the disturbing truth. This book is dynamite.

GRAHAM HANCOCK, AUTHOR OF FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

Due to Robert Bauvals influence, as well as that of many other great authors, false beliefs on the origins of civilization will be studied well into the future. The observations and approaches in Bauvals books are dazzling.

JAVIER SIERRA, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE LOST ANGEL AND THE SECRET SUPPER

Breaking the Mirror of Heaven is a hugely important book. In a time when we can all see the rise of idiot experts, this book focuses our attention on the political games that are played with the honest interpretation of our past. Self-serving individuals seek to bury new information by pretending that claimed academic rank outweighs cold evidence. Bravo, Robert and Ahmed, for such a delightful and persuasive blow for reason.

CHRISTOPHER KNIGHT, COAUTHOR OF THE HIRAM KEY AND CIVILIZATION ONE

Writing this book has been a special experience for me. Having studied and researched the history of ancient Egypt for nearly three decades, it was now extremely rewarding to have the opportunity to write a book about the birth and rise of modern Egypt and the biographical events of one of its most colorful and controversial figures in Egyptology, Zahi Hawass, the world-famous chief of Egypts Antiquities. I hope you will enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it with my coauthor, Ahmed Osman. My gratitude goes to my wife, Michele, for her love, her ever-enduring patience, and her tolerance for sharing living quarters with an author who is gestating a manuscript. This is the eighth time she has had to go through such intellectual pregnancy, but as always she has done it with grit and good cheer. Special thanks go to my brother Jean-Paul Bauval for also being a good friend and neighbor, and to my children, Candice and Jonathan. It has often been the case in my writing career that an exceptional person comes along to be my intellectual and spiritual haven from the long hours of solitary grind an author inevitably goes through. This time my good fortune was to meet Maria Fernandez Garcia. Thank you dear Maria; you are a true friend.

ROBERT BAUVAL

We also give thanks to Pauline and Fiona Bauval (Torremolinos), Gary Evans (England), Andy Collins (Avebury, Wiltshire), Sherif el Sebai (Cairo), Tamer Medhat (Cairo), Yousef and Patricia Awyan (Nazlet el Saman, Giza Pyramids), Gouda Fayed (Sphinx Guest House, Nazlet al Saman), Hillary Raimo (New York), Richard (Fuzzy) Fusniak (Cambridge, England), Geoffrey and Therese Gauci (Sydney, Australia), Juliano Fernandez (Uruguay), Naco Ares (Madrid), John (Nany) and Josette Orphanidis (Athens), and many other friends, Facebook friends, and colleagues too numerous to list here. A big thank you also goes to our U.S. publisher Inner Traditions Bear & Company, especially our editor Mindy Branstetter for her professionalism and friendship. As ever, we are eternally grateful to our readers around the world for their support and for their loyalty over the years. Without you all this hard work would have no meaning or satisfaction.

ROBERT BAUVAL

AND

AHMED OSMAN

Switch on your TV, and theres Zahi Hawass... turn on a different show and there he is again.... The affable archaeologist is here, there and everywhereon CNN, the BBC, the History Channel, the Learning Channel, the National Geographic Channel and your local PBS outlet, to name but a few.

I am already famous and powerful. What I do I do for Egypt. It is the first time that Egypt has been correctly explained to the public.... No one in the history of archaeology has helped Egypt more than I.

NEVINE EL-AREF, QUOTING ZAHI HAWASS, ZAHI HAWASS: A HAT IS A HAT, AL-AHRAM WEEKLY

Never before in the history of archaeology has one man reached such notoriety as did Zahi Hawass, Egypts ex-head of antiquities. Molded by the American media mill into a real-life Indiana Jones, complete with Stetson hat and denim shirt, and marketed globally as the superstar of Egyptology, Hawass became a household name, in league with his friend and compatriot, the actor and heartthrob Omar Sharif. Vilified and feared, loved and adored, Hawasss public profile fluctuated from charismatic and passionate to bully and megalomaniac. Hardly known outside Egypt before the 1990s, Hawass shot to international fame after being handpicked by Rupert Murdochs Fox TV and turned into a sort a no-nonsense-cum-kick-butt hero of archaeologyor, as more poetically minded critics saw him, a sort of oriental Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of virtual archaeology or, better still, a cross between a peacock and a scorpion. Hawass was promoted as the defender of Egypts history, a fearless knight in shining armor fighting off battalions of enemies whom he labeled pyramidiots, theorists, foreigners, amateurs, followers of Seth, Jews, and Zionists. With creative editing, however, Hawasss persona came across on television as charismatic and passionate. The American television-weaned generation lapped it all upand so did Hawass himself. Lulled by a false belief that his marriage with American media would last forever, reassured that the close relationship he enjoyed with Susanne Mubarak, Egypts first lady, would always protect him no matter what, and fooled by the daily flattery showered upon him by his office staff, his colleagues, his peers, and his numerous fans around the world, Hawass began to believe in his own larger-than-life image. He felt invincible. No one and nothing could stop him. Like an alley cat with nine lives, and perhaps a few more to spare, he brushed aside his critics and rivals and deflected scandal upon scandal like water off a ducks back. Yet those who had crossed his path and tasted his wrath knew better. They had seen his true colors. Nevertheless for a long time, they, too, were neutralized, their voices muffled by the local press controlled by Hawasss powerful mentors and the mass media apparatus controlled by Fox TV and other affiliates of the Rupert Murdoch empire.

But for all tyrants, sooner or later the proverbial rug is pulled from under their feet; tyrants must fall from the precarious and dangerous heights they ascend to. In the case of Hawass, it took, quite literally, a revolution. And even then, the entrenchment of his position was such that it also took several resignations and reinstatements from his ministerial post to bring him down, ironically at the hands of his own peoplethose thousands of employees in the antiquities services who protested outside his office and in the iconic Tahrir Square with angry shouts of Thief! Thief! and banners with slogans of American Puppet and Traitor. On July 19, 2011 (ironically the Great Day of Renewal in ancient Egypt when the Star of the Nile rose at dawn before the sun), Hawasss star dimmed and was finally extinguished as he stepped out for the very last time from the headquarters of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) and was besieged and nearly lynched by an angry mob of SCA employees. Now like all prominent members of the old regime, Hawass is under a strict travel ban awaiting investigation on a multitude of charges including misappropriation of funds, theft of antiquities, corruption, and mismanagement.