Did Zahi Hawass LIE About the Osiris Shaft? | The Evidence He Can't Hide — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00Hello my beautiful people. Have I got a
2. 0:03wild update for you today? So, buckle up
3. 0:06buttercup because what I'm about to tell
4. 0:08you is crazy. And I know you're going to
5. 0:11love it because it involves one of our
6. 0:14very favorite people, Dr. Zahi Hawass.
7. 0:18My book my book my book my book. Huge
8. 0:20credit on this one goes to Jimmy
9. 0:22Corsetti over at Bright Insight who
10. 0:25broke this story wide open this week
11. 0:28over on X. His video is what into
12. 0:31looking at all of this and we'll link it
13. 0:34in the description below. Go watch that
14. 0:36one as soon as you're done watching this
15. 0:38one. So, the Osiris Shaft. If you've
16. 0:43never heard of the place, you're not
17. 0:44alone. It sits underneath the causeway
18. 0:47of the Khafre Pyramid at Giza. The only
19. 0:50way in is a locked unmarked gate and the
20. 0:53public doesn't get to see it without
21. 0:55going through a very expensive
22. 0:58permitting process.
23. 0:59Three vertical shafts cut straight into
24. 1:02bedrock stacked on top of each other. By
25. 1:05the time you get to the bottom, you're
26. 1:06about 98 ft underground. The air is bad
27. 1:09and you're standing at the edge of a
28. 1:11flooded chamber with an island in the
29. 1:14middle. On that island, two massive
30. 1:17stone sarcophagi. The little one on the
31. 1:20bigger one weighs about 12 tons. That
32. 1:23name, the Osiris Shaft, was given to it
33. 1:27by Zahi Hawass himself who excavated it
34. 1:30down to the lowest level in 1999. And
35. 1:33the reason he called it that is the
36. 1:35layout, an island tomb encircled by
37. 1:38water, matches a description written
38. 1:40down 2,500 years ago by the Greek
39. 1:44historian Herodotus. For centuries,
40. 1:47scholars assumed Herodotus made it up.
41. 1:49Then Hawass pumped out the water in 1999
42. 1:53and lo and behold, there was.
43. 1:56Fast forward to last Friday, May 15th,
44. 1:592026. Piers Morgan hosts a debate
45. 2:02between Hawass and Jimmy Corsetti.
46. 2:05And this time Jimmy comes in with a very
47. 2:08specific question.
48. 2:10What happened to whatever was inside the
49. 2:13sarcophagus at the bottom of the Osiris
50. 2:15shaft? Because back in 1999, Hawass was
51. 2:19on a Fox special teasing the discovery.
52. 2:22Talking about the tomb of the god
53. 2:24Osiris. Talking about a sarcophagus they
54. 2:27just opened. And then for 26 years,
55. 2:30nothing. No press conference, no
56. 2:33artifact on display in the Cairo Museum
57. 2:36that anyone can point to. Just radio
58. 2:39silence.
59. 2:40So Jimmy asks his question. And Hawass
60. 2:44answers it. He says, When I opened that
61. 2:47sarcophagus, it was completely empty.
62. 2:50He goes on to explain that the whole
63. 2:52thing was symbolic. That Osiris is a
64. 2:55myth. That there was never anything in
65. 2:57there to begin with. And then he says
66. 2:59this. This is the first time I hear
67. 3:02about the mummy found in the
68. 3:03sarcophagus. Completely empty.
69. 3:06First time hearing about it. On national
70. 3:08television. From the man who personally
71. 3:10led the excavation.
72. 3:12Okay. Got it. However, after that show,
73. 3:16Jimmy did what most people watching that
74. 3:18interview didn't do. He did a little
75. 3:20digging and found a specific academic
76. 3:23paper. It's called The Discovery of the
77. 3:25Osiris Shaft at Giza. Author,
78. 3:29Zahi A. Hawass, Supreme Council of
79. 3:32Antiquities.
80. 3:34Published in 2007, hosted to this day on
81. 3:37Harvard's Giza Archives. And on page 390
82. 3:41of that publication, in plain academic
83. 3:44English, the paper says, "Quote, the
84. 3:47remains of a skeleton were discovered in
85. 3:49the sarcophagus.
86. 3:51End quote."
87. 3:52So,
88. 3:53not empty. It had a skeleton. Plus two
89. 3:56schist amulets in the shape of Osiris.
90. 3:59Plus heart scarabs. Plus Jed pillar
91. 4:03amulets. Plus red polished pottery. All
92. 4:06of it documented, measured, and
93. 4:08published under his own name.
94. 4:10So,
95. 4:11which Zahi Hawass do we believe? The one
96. 4:15in the 2007 academic paper who cataloged
97. 4:18a skeleton and a small museum's worth of
98. 4:21grave goods? Or
99. 4:23the one on Piers Morgan last week who
100. 4:26said the box was empty and that this was
101. 4:28the first time he's even hearing about a
102. 4:31body?
103. 4:32They can't both be true.
104. 4:35Now, I want to be careful here because
105. 4:37Jimmy's video is already racking up
106. 4:40hundreds of thousands of views and the
107. 4:41comments are running in a direction that
108. 4:43I'm sure you can guess.
109. 4:46But let's give Hawass the most generous
110. 4:49read possible.
111. 4:51There's a real linguistic distinction
112. 4:53between a mummy and a skeleton. A mummy
113. 4:56is preserved soft tissue, bandages,
114. 4:59embalming, the whole production.
115. 5:01Skeleton is just bones.
116. 5:03So, when Hawass said no mummy,
117. 5:05technically, he could be drawing that
118. 5:08line.
119. 5:09That argument works for about 10 seconds
120. 5:12because he didn't just say no mummy. He
121. 5:16said the sarcophagus was completely
122. 5:18empty. A skeleton
123. 5:20isn't empty.
124. 5:22A skeleton with amulets and scarabs
125. 5:24around it is really, really not empty.
126. 5:28The simpler explanation, in my humble
127. 5:31opinion,
128. 5:32is that maybe the skeleton was properly
129. 5:35cataloged back in 1999, moved to
130. 5:37storage, and Hawass on TV is just kind
131. 5:41of running his mouth, speaking in broad
132. 5:44symbolic sense. That happens. People
133. 5:47oversimplify on television all the time.
134. 5:50Of course, after what we're about to
135. 5:52talk about, you may find that
136. 5:55explanation a little harder to swallow.
137. 5:58Because here's the question that
138. 6:00explanation doesn't answer.
139. 6:02Where's the skeleton right now? Where
140. 6:04are the amulets? Where are the scarabs?
141. 6:06Where is the red polished pottery? Where
142. 6:08are the four engraved pillars that flank
143. 6:12that chamber? Because if everything was
144. 6:14properly handled, somebody somewhere can
145. 6:17point to a museum case and a catalog
146. 6:20number and put this to rest in about 10
147. 6:23minutes. But so far, nobody has. Now, I
148. 6:28love Jimmy's work. We did a whole video
149. 6:31a while back on the lost city of
150. 6:33Atlantis and the mountain of evidence
151. 6:35pointing to the Reshat structure in the
152. 6:37Sahara as its real location. Jimmy's
153. 6:40work was part of what got us interested.
154. 6:44We went really deep on that one, pulling
155. 6:46in research from a bunch of other
156. 6:48sources in addition to Jimmy to really
157. 6:50cover it thoroughly. So, I'll drop a
158. 6:53link to that one in the description. If
159. 6:55this video is your first taste of this
160. 6:58kind of story, that one will absolutely
161. 7:01scratch the itch. But anyway, back to
162. 7:04Jimmy. The legwork he did finding that
163. 7:071999 Fox TV special and pulling that
164. 7:102007 paper is journalism that nobody
165. 7:14else was doing. Jimmy floats the idea
166. 7:17that the Osiris Shaft might actually be
167. 7:19the lost tomb of Khufu, the pharaoh who
168. 7:23supposedly built the Great Pyramid. And
169. 7:26his reasoning is that Herodotus
170. 7:28described an underground tomb encircled
171. 7:30by water and said it was the resting
172. 7:33place of Cheops, which is the Greek name
173. 7:36for Khufu.
174. 7:37Here's where, on the surface, the dating
175. 7:40seems to create a problem.
176. 7:42According to the official record, Khufu
177. 7:44reigned in the fourth dynasty, roughly
178. 7:472589 to 2566 BC, about 4,600 years ago.
179. 7:52But, the sarcophagus, the amulets, the
180. 7:54scarabs, all those artifacts in the
181. 7:56lower chamber are dated stylistically to
182. 7:59the 26th dynasty, roughly 664 to 525 BC.
183. 8:04That's a gap of close to 2,000 years.
184. 8:07So, at first glance, this looks like a
185. 8:10slam dunk against the Khufu theory.
186. 8:13Except,
187. 8:15stop and ask yourself a question.
188. 8:17Who dated those artifacts? Who examined
189. 8:21them? Who published the paper that's the
190. 8:23only academic source on what was found
191. 8:26down there? The same man who just told
192. 8:30Piers Morgan the box was empty. The same
193. 8:33man whose own paper he was contradicting
194. 8:36on national television.
195. 8:38The same man with a documented history
196. 8:41of antiquities accusations.
197. 8:44We don't have an independent team that
198. 8:46has examined these artifacts. We have
199. 8:48one man's word, and that's the same man
200. 8:50whose word we just spent 10 minutes
201. 8:54establishing we can't take it face
202. 8:56value. So, the dating that supposedly
203. 8:59rules out Khufu is only as reliable as
204. 9:02the man who reported it. And right now,
205. 9:05that's not very reliable at all.
206. 9:09Let's get back to our friend Zahi,
207. 9:11because we're not done with him yet.
208. 9:14Did you know that in 2011 he was forced
209. 9:17out of his position as Egypt's Minister
210. 9:20of Antiquities? The Smithsonian wrote a
211. 9:22long piece on it in 2013.
212. 9:25According to that reporting, the
213. 9:27prosecutor general banned him from
214. 9:30leaving Egypt while he was being
215. 9:32investigated on dozens of charges.
216. 9:35He was accused of wasting public money
217. 9:37and exposing Egyptian antiquities to
218. 9:39possible theft by shipping them overseas
219. 9:42without permission.
220. 9:44The Guardian ran a follow-up in 2014
221. 9:47when he was accused of helping German
222. 9:50hobbyists steal samples from the Great
223. 9:53Pyramid. Of course, he denied it and he
224. 9:56was never convicted of anything. Now,
225. 9:58obviously, that little legal hiccup
226. 10:00didn't bother him because he came back.
227. 10:03He's back on Piers Morgan. He's back on
228. 10:06Joe Rogan. He's back on the tour
229. 10:08circuit. And just to put the stakes in
230. 10:11perspective, a 2011 estimate put the
231. 10:14Egyptian antiquities black market at
232. 10:17somewhere between two and six billion
233. 10:19dollars per year, with a B. So, we're
234. 10:23not talking about hobbyist collectors.
235. 10:25We're talking about an industry with the
236. 10:27financial firepower to make almost
237. 10:30anything disappear.
238. 10:32Am I accusing him of looting the Osiris
239. 10:35Shaft? Nope. I have no evidence of that
240. 10:39and neither does Jimmy. What I am saying
241. 10:42is when the public record on someone
242. 10:44includes formal accusations of
243. 10:47facilitating antiquities theft and that
244. 10:50same person publicly contradicts his own
245. 10:53published findings about what was inside
246. 10:56of sarcophagus, the question of where
247. 10:58the contents actually went stops being a
248. 11:01conspiracy theory and starts being a
249. 11:03reasonable thing to ask. However, here's
250. 11:07where I have to say something Jimmy
251. 11:09didn't quite say out loud on Piers
252. 11:12Morgan, but I think is the real heart of
253. 11:16this story.
254. 11:17Zahi Hawass isn't a neutral observer.
255. 11:20He's built his entire career on a very
256. 11:22specific narrative, that the dynastic
257. 11:25Egyptians built the pyramids, that
258. 11:28they're the direct ancestors of modern
259. 11:30Egyptians, and that anyone suggesting
260. 11:33otherwise, whether it's an alternative
261. 11:35history researcher, Afrocentric
262. 11:37scholars, or genetic researchers asking
263. 11:39inconvenient questions, is a fringe
264. 11:42crank not worth taking seriously.
265. 11:46For roughly two decades, he personally
266. 11:49controlled who got to dig in Egypt, who
267. 11:51got to test the mummies, and who got
268. 11:53published. That's not a conspiracy
269. 11:56theory. That's the public record of how
270. 11:58the Supreme Council of Antiquities
271. 12:00operated under his leadership.
272. 12:03Now, think about what would happen if
273. 12:05the lowest chamber of the Osiris shaft
274. 12:08actually contained something that didn't
275. 12:11fit that story. What if it was Tutu?
276. 12:15What if Herodotus was right all along?
277. 12:17Because if Tutu was buried down in that
278. 12:19shaft, then he wasn't buried in the
279. 12:22Great Pyramid. And if he wasn't buried
280. 12:24in the Great Pyramid, then the Great
281. 12:26Pyramid wasn't his tomb. And if it
282. 12:29wasn't his tomb, then the entire
283. 12:31foundation of mainstream Egyptology,
284. 12:34that the Dynastic Egyptians built the
285. 12:36pyramids as tombs for their pharaohs
286. 12:39about 4,600 years ago, starts to wobble.
287. 12:42Boulders wobble, but they don't fall
288. 12:44down. The Great Pyramid becomes
289. 12:46something else.
290. 12:47Maybe something older. Maybe something
291. 12:50built for a different purpose. Maybe
292. 12:52something built by somebody else
293. 12:54entirely. We don't know. But, every one
294. 12:57of those possibilities is a
295. 12:58career-ending earthquake for the man who
296. 13:02has spent his whole life defending that
297. 13:04standard story.
298. 13:06If anything down in that chamber pointed
299. 13:09in any of those directions, the man with
300. 13:12the most powerful motive on planet Earth
301. 13:15to make it disappear would be the exact
302. 13:17same man who led the excavation,
303. 13:20controlled the chain of custody, and
304. 13:22just told Piers Morgan the box was
305. 13:25empty.
306. 13:27That doesn't prove he did anything
307. 13:28wrong. I want to be clear about that.
308. 13:31But, in any other field, when a witness
309. 13:33has a documented motive to lie about a
310. 13:37specific topic, you weigh their
311. 13:39testimony on that topic with extra
312. 13:42skepticism. That's how courtrooms work.
313. 13:45That's how journalism works. That's how
314. 13:47science is supposed to work. And it's
315. 13:50the standard Hawass's own testimony
316. 13:52should be held to right here. So,
317. 13:56here's my two cents. The questions that
318. 13:58deserve answers are simple.
319. 14:01Where are the skeletal remains right
320. 14:03now?
321. 14:03What institution holds them? What's the
322. 14:05catalog number? Where are the amulets,
323. 14:08the scarabs, the four engraved pillars?
324. 14:11And why did you tell Piers Morgan the
325. 14:13box was empty when your own paper says
326. 14:15it wasn't? And why, in 26 years, has no
327. 14:20independent team been allowed to verify
328. 14:23what's actually in storage?
329. 14:25That's it.
330. 14:26That's the whole ask. If there are good
331. 14:29answers, great. Let's hear them. Let's
332. 14:32see the storage facility. Let's see the
333. 14:34museum case.
334. 14:36And if there aren't good answers, well,
335. 14:39then we have a problem. Because we're
336. 14:41talking about the lowest chamber of a
337. 14:44structure that matches a 2,500-year-old
338. 14:48description by Herodotus sitting
339. 14:50underneath the Giza Plateau in the
340. 14:53country that's produced more looted
341. 14:55antiquities in the last two centuries
342. 14:58than possibly anywhere else on Earth.
343. 15:02Go watch Jimmy's video. The link is in
344. 15:05the description. He goes deeper into the
345. 15:07receipts than I can in a 10-minute
346. 15:10reaction. And the man earned every view
347. 15:13that video is going to get. He's doing
348. 15:16the work nobody else is doing right now.
349. 15:18So, I hope you guys found this little
350. 15:21tidbit of archaeological soap opera
351. 15:23drama worth the watch. If we actually
352. 15:27get any answers, I'll let you know.
353. 15:30You guys are the best. I love you all.
354. 15:34Thank you for being here and supporting
355. 15:36us. And a special shout-out to our
356. 15:38members who saw this one first.
357. 15:41Membership gets you early access to
358. 15:44stories like this one. Plus,
359. 15:45members-only content outside our regular
360. 15:48weekly videos. Links in the description
361. 15:51if you want in.
362. 15:53The question
363. 15:54the question that And the man earned
364. 15:58geological soap opera
365. 16:00Be careful out there.
366. 16:03And I'll
367. 16:04see you soon.
368. 16:06>> [laughter]
369. 16:07>> Be careful out there.
370. 16:10And I will see you here again
371. 16:12on the in-between.