Partial transcript from the Q&A portion of a talk given by
Graham Hancock in Toronto, Saturday, June 13, 1998


What I and my colleagues have been told by Zahi Hawass the Chief
Inspector of Antiquities at Ghiza, who we've had a radical
change of relationship with compared to the past two years, is
that an attempt will be made to open the door in the southern
shaft in the Queen's chamber before the end of this year. And
that he is open now to, and the antiquities organization as a
whole are open to, proposals for investigations under the
Sphinx.

The problem is that there's such a lot of bogus so-called work
being in this field. We have an example of an expedition that
has been claiming, for the past year, to have official
permission from the Egyptian authorities to look for the Hall of
Records in Egypt. This organization calls itself 'Operation
Hermes' and they do not have official permission. The Egyptian
authorities three days ago [June 10, 1998] issued a statement,
'For The Record', saying that they do not have permission to
look for the Hall of Records.

What has happened is that myself, Robert Bauval and James
Anthony West were locked, for more than two years, in a direct
face to face conflict with Zahi Hawass over precisely these
kinds of matters and it de-generated into the most horrific
slanging match where we would say really nasty things about him
and he would say really nasty things about us. But we didn't
know him.

During last year a bit of a breakthrough began to occur. Zahi
had the opportunity of closing down John's [Anthony West] study
focused in Egypt and he didn't do so even though John had been
his staunchest opponent up till now. Robert and Zahi met in the
summer of last year and I had my first meeting with Zahi in
December - the first of many. He spent six hours with me at the
Sphinx, explaining his point of view and I have come to the
conclusion that, whatever Zahi is, he's not lying and I don't
think he's covering anything up. I think that he's passionate
about his Pyramids and that he genuinely wants the best for
them.

What we've agreed to do is to hold a series of public debates.
It's the first time, as far as I know, that heretics and
orthodox Egyptologists have got together in front of the public
and debated things like the meaning and antiquity of the
Pyramid and The Sphinx.

We had the first debate, which was very surreal, on a cruise
ship off Alaska a month ago. It was attended by about three
hundred people and the next debate will be held with a much
wider gathering of Egyptologists and other scientists. Zahi will
be there, Mark Lainer from Chicago, Ed Krupp from the Griffiths
Observatory, Farouk al Baz an Egyptian geologist will be there
all arguing the orthodox side. On the un-orthodox side I, John
West, Robert Bauval and Robert Shock will be busy putting out a
lot. We hope a large of people from the 31st of January for the
first week of February, 1999. This will be in Ghiza.

Now, this is part of an on-going dialogue which precisely
concerns the need for responsible and honest and open work,
which makes no false claims, to be carried out looking for
possible chambers around the Sphinx and inside the Great
Pyramid. It's very important that that work gets done. But, I
believe that the only way for it to get carried forward is
through a process of dialogue with the Egyptian authorities and
an absolute respect for their code of conduct - their laws on
these matters. Those laws are that no expedition may take place
unless it's directly connected to a university.

I think that's healthy. Otherwise you would just have zillions
of people swarming all over the place with all kinds of toys and
that can't be good for a monument like the Sphinx.

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