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Whilst browsing on the notoriously pseudo historical subreddit called r/CulturalLayer I came across this post, that leads to another post on a popular Russian blogging website called livejournal.

Scrolling through the post, it seems that the author thinks that famous ancient Egyptian monuments were only built back in the 19th century by a group of malicious forgers (the theory probably goes in the tradition of the Tartaria conspiracy theory).

Here are some machine-translated excerpts from the blog post:

Below [the inscription "ADUXKULL 1823"] is the name of the German writer, landscape architect (!) (and also, let's add, a representative of the history creators workshop) MUSKAU, who was in Nubia in 1837-38

Image showing "ABDUXKULL" and "MUSKAU" inscriptions

There are other inscriptions. The Spaniard or American ALFRED ARAGO was noted on the "base of the rock", but frozen, in 1807.

Image showing "ALFRED ARAGO" inscription

On the shin of Amon (far left in the trinity of gods and equated with the gods of Ramses), CC BLACK is clearly read - there is no need to guess the nation, the surname of the Italian ending in MOZI is higher, and the year is 1820.

Image showing "CC BLACK" inscription

The author then proceeds to explain why he has a problem with the existence of these graffiti-apparently Abu Simbel was only starting to be dug up in the 1850s yet most of these inscriptions are from before that time period and they were also on spots that would be deep under sand.

Why couldn't scientists, travelers, tourists who didn't exist at that time do it? Everything is simple. The colossi were almost completely under the sand. In the 50s they were dug up, starting from the left one - Amon. The right side of the Ramses was filled up until the last moment of clearing.

As proof he includes some pictures of the temple being almost completely under the sand, for example:

Photo of monument with sand covering half of one figure and all except the face of another

The author rejects the possibility of a sandstorm (albeit not conclusively at all)

Could sandstorms have brought the colossi after the 1830s. Of course not. There is almost no sand in the upper reaches of the Nile; it must be purposefully brought in for these colossi and for bedding for today's tourists.

What are the rational explanations for these graffiti?

IMSoP
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BAngOs
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    They look like graffiti. – Jerome Viveiros Oct 18 '22 at 09:52
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    Please give the actual text from the website (which you _machine translated_, see 'frozen 1807' expression…), and include the original images (which should be easy, as they seem _already_ to be hosted on imgur!) What's _needed_ is the actual claim/argument 'put forward'! Please _quote_ that claim. – LangLаngС Oct 18 '22 at 11:46
  • OK, the edit leaves me confused as to what the claim might be. I understood this as claiming the graffiti are *signatures* of the builders. But with the edit to clarify them as graffiti, is the claim now that graffiti from travelers indicates the age of the temple? – Jerome Viveiros Oct 18 '22 at 14:37
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    As Abu Simbel *was* covered in sand, what is the relevance of "there is no sand" in the discussion? – Weather Vane Oct 18 '22 at 15:45
  • The question is unclear: 1) What is the name of the German writer which is supposedly below? 2) [Alfred Arago](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q21578760) (1816-1892) wasn't Spanish or American but French and the date on the rock clearly isn't 1801, more like 1867. – Weather Vane Oct 18 '22 at 16:00
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    @WeatherVane Having just retrieved the actual text from the machine translation, I can answer the first (and have done so in editorial brackets): the "below" is referring to a previous sentence, omitted from the quote. It's "below one name, is another name". – IMSoP Oct 18 '22 at 18:13
  • @IMSoP thank you, and that's a fine question edit. – Weather Vane Oct 18 '22 at 18:15
  • @phoog the sandstorm hypothesis can explain everything it seems. Underneath the "BLACK 1820" graffiti there is a graffiti that, as pe rauthor, says 1803, that is before Abu Simbel was found by explorers in 1813. And it seems weird to think that Abu Simbel was being uncovered and covered by the forces of nature with nobody noticing until 1813. – BAngOs Oct 18 '22 at 20:28
  • @phoog (continued) even the 1820 date located on one of the legs of the figures seems weird, as according to a painting from 1820, the legs couldn't be seen https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Abu_Simbel;_two_temples_seen_from_across_the_Nile_river._Col_Wellcome_V0014703.jpg. The sandstorm hypothesis can explain graffiti from the 1830s or ones from late 1820s,however a lot still seems unexplained. It also seems weird that there are graffiti before 1813 or 1817 (when the temple was dug up a little bit) Edit: for the first comment I meant "can't explain everything" not "can" – BAngOs Oct 18 '22 at 20:32
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    @JeromeViveiros the temple was discovered in 1813 and according to the author, only fully dug up in the 1850s. Many graffiti by the travelers contain dates that are dated before 1850s, therefore the author is confused by how they managed to write under the sand. Thus, his theory is that the buildings are a 19th century fake (an idea which he tries to prove in other articles that I found that are not under discussion) and that the graffiti were put by the supposed builders of the temple, later the temple was allegedly covered by sand again to make it feel ancient and then staged to be dug up. – BAngOs Oct 18 '22 at 20:42
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    If the wind can deposit sand then it can take it away too. If the temple had been *built* lately it's unlikely that could have escaped notice. To say it was *in secret* is an absurd conspiracy theory. You'd need to explain why anyone would go to the time and expense of employing thousands of workers, and keep it all secret: surely if someone built Abu Simbel in 19C they would *want* it to be known? For what purpose? Just to fool archaelogists later? The whole idea is silly, and the simple explanation is the shifting sands of time. – Weather Vane Oct 18 '22 at 22:30
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    @WeatherVane indeed. Dunes migrate. The depth to which some object was buried would be expected to increase and decrease periodically without human intervention as dunes move across it. – phoog Oct 18 '22 at 23:35
  • @WeatherVane the photo was taken in 1856, how is it 1867? Though according to the reddit post Arago visited Egypt back in 1867. Maybe the photo is wrongly dated? – BAngOs Oct 19 '22 at 07:37
  • That would put Frank Mason Good (1839-1928), photographer, at 17 years of age. However [this page](https://www.kedem-auctions.com/en/content/frank-mason-good-%E2%80%93-collection-photographs-palestine-%E2%80%93-19th-century-0) states *"He is known mainly for the photographs he took during his travels in the Middle East in the 1860s and 1870s."* – Weather Vane Oct 19 '22 at 08:27
  • Regarding "In the now-deleted digital version of an issue of the Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Middle East" in the reddit post, it's not deleted. The association reorganized their website. That bulletin is still on the web, but it has been moved. That websites reorganize themselves should not be a surprise. It happens with great regularity. – David Hammen Oct 19 '22 at 13:29
  • "There is almost no sand in the upper reaches of the Nile" seems like a trivially disprovable claim. – barbecue Oct 20 '22 at 19:38

1 Answers1

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What are the rational explanations for these graffiti?

The explanation is simple: Some people like to mark things with their name graffiti. I don't have a reference for this (and references are important at this site), but it's rather obvious. Graffiti has been used since time immemorial to mark everything from trees to bridges to monuments. Daniel Boone carved his name onto many trees after killing a bear. Sir William Rowan Hamilton famously carved i2=j2=k2=ijk=-1 onto the Broom Bridge. People have defaced Mesa Verde National Park with their names. The list of sometimes famous (and other times infamous) graffiti goes on and on.

The author then proceeds to explain why he has a problem with the existence of these graffiti-apparently Abu Simbel was only starting to be dug up in the 1850s yet most of these inscriptions are from before that time period and they were also on spots that would be deep under sand.

The Abu Simbel complex was rediscovered in 1813, and sufficiently uncovered in 1817 to allow entry into the complex. The 1850s claim is false.

There are other inscriptions. The Spaniard or American ALFRED ARAGO was noted on the "base of the rock", but frozen, in 1807.

The Reddit article linked to in the question claims that that graffiti is dated 1867, not 1807. Page 21 of issue 17 of the Bulletin of the Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Near East (ASTENE) also lists the date as 1867 and also attributes the graffiti to Alfred Arago. Alfred Arago was a French painter who was born in 1816. The 1807 claim is false.

What are the rational explanations for these graffiti?

Getting back to this key question, and getting back to my main response, the easy answer is that some people like to deface important things. The people who defaced the Abu Simbel temple in the 19th century were not the first to do so. There are Phoenician graffiti and ancient Greek graffiti on the temple that date back thousands of years. The author of the false claim that the Abu Simbel temple was built in the 19th century conveniently omitted reporting these much older graffiti.

David Hammen
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  • While I agree with the gist of this answer, I don't think the conspiracy theorist is claiming that graffiti *per se* is unlikely to date from that period. Rather, they are disputing the dates of this graffiti relative to the uncovering of the monument. So the details of when it was uncovered, and the incorrect reading of the dates, are the important points. For that, saying "somebody on Reddit says it's 1867" is very weak; a much stronger refutation was made in comments, if a good reference can be found: the graffiti is likely that of French painter Alfred Arago, who was born in 1815. – IMSoP Oct 19 '22 at 11:41
  • This also doesn't address the supporting claim that a photo was allegedly taken in 1856 (by a photographer born in 1839 and apparently not active in the Middle East until the 1860s-1870s). – Weather Vane Oct 19 '22 at 12:17
  • @IMSoP I found a much better reference for the Alfred Arago graffiti and added it to the answer. – David Hammen Oct 19 '22 at 12:27
  • @WeatherVane I didn't address that photo, but I did find it at alamy.com, https://www.alamy.com/abu-simbel-egypt-1850s-by-francis-frith-image448320951.html?irclickid=xgX1M7w-OxyNTBbVQLwX40NvUkDVi71FRUpywE0&utm_source=77643&utm_campaign=Shop%20Royalty%20Free%20at%20Alamy&utm_medium=impact&irgwc=1, which owns the photo, attributes it to Francis Frith, and as being taken in the 1850s. It was you who attributed it to Frank Mason Good. Frith as a photographer traveled to Egypt and Sudan in the mid to late 1850s. – David Hammen Oct 19 '22 at 12:43
  • It was the OP's reddit link that attributed [this photograph](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Abou_Simbel_LCCN2004671976.jpg), which actually isn't the one with the Arago graffiti. It says about the Arogo photo "The other graffiti is from an old photograph, as the Library of Congress states, taken between 1856 and 1860:" – Weather Vane Oct 19 '22 at 12:50
  • @WeatherVane The obvious answer is that the US Library of Congress has misdated the photo taken by Good. Good started as an assistant to Frith. Frith took his photo in the 1850s, when the temple complex was still covered with a good amount of sand. Later Good took his photo when he visited Egypt a decade after Frith did, when much of the sand had been removed. – David Hammen Oct 19 '22 at 13:05
  • @WeatherVane that is the photo. Zoom below the legs of the drawing of a man raising his hands that is to the left of the falcon headed god. It says "Alfred Arago 1867". The photo was taken allegedly in 1856, but this would redate it to a later period. – BAngOs Oct 19 '22 at 17:12
  • I see, although in the Wikimedia Commons repository it isn't very clear. Here, David Hammen's mention of Frith links to a different picture on Alamy, taken from a different angle. – Weather Vane Oct 19 '22 at 17:20
  • @BAngOs The easy explanation is that the photo in question was not taken in 1856. The Frith photo and the Good photo, the latter of which shows the 1867 graffiti, were obviously taken at different times given the amounts of sand present (or not). The Library of Congress obviously made a mistake on their timestamp on the latter photo. I can't prove this, but it's fairly obvious. This would not be the first or last time the Library of Congress has misdated something. – David Hammen Oct 19 '22 at 17:59
  • The US Library of Congress has over 173 million items in its archives. The probability that all of the descriptions of those items is correct is zero. This misdated photo an honest mistake. On the other hand, changing 1867 to 1807 as the author of the key linked article did was very dishonest. – David Hammen Oct 19 '22 at 18:06
  • ...and that is a far more plausible explanation than a conspiracy to construct Abu Simbel in 19C to seem much older and employ 100s or 1000s of workers and somehow escape the notice of the chroniclers of the day. A fake Abu Simbel, for what purpose? – Weather Vane Oct 19 '22 at 19:41
  • It seems like the best conclusion that satisfies Occam's razor. The author is also wrong on the chronology of how Abu Simbel was dug up. According to the wiki, the entrance of the temple was cleared by Giovanni Belzoni in 1817, and by cleared up it also includes the legs of the figure on the far left.In 1818-1819 the temple was being dug up again as per this painting https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O146305/excavation-of-the-great-temple-watercolour-linant-de-bellefonds/ where the legs of the far left figure are uncovered by half and it would be reasonable to assume some more work was done. – BAngOs Oct 19 '22 at 20:50
  • (continued) in 1827,the explorer E. W. Lane in his book "Description of Egypt" shows that the legs of the far left figure have been almost completely covered once again (figure 154 of the 2000 American University of Cairo reprint). This was probably due to a sandstorm that the author wrongly rejects as a possibility, yet one was recorded in Abu Simbel in 1969, and was so powerful that it damaged one of the statues (The New York Times "Big Statue at Abu Simbel Is Damaged by Sandstor", May 13 1969). By 1830s the figures on the far left are represented as fully cleaned up (as per David Roberts) – BAngOs Oct 19 '22 at 21:00
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    (continued) by 1850s the entire temple was completely cleaned up. To note, the figure closer to the left on the right side of the temple is usually shown on pre 1850s paintings with the upper body being mostly cleaned while the legs were still hidden, with this I note that no graffiti were found by the author on the legs of the figures on the right. In conclusion, I sort of answered my own question, but there is nothing unexplainable for any of the graffiti, the author just didn't research the excavations. Thanks everyone for participating in the discussion @WeatherVane – BAngOs Oct 19 '22 at 21:06