In an area well-known for its abundance of Aboriginal petroglyphs, the set of rather unusual rock carvings were first recorded in the 1970s, and have been the topic of debate ever since. The consensus amongst Egyptologists who have visited and studied the glyphs is that they are a hoax, and one filled with several inconsistencies and errors. However, that hasn’t stopped many local residents from maintaining their belief in their authenticity.

Mind you Egyptologists still public claim the pyramids were tombs and built by Khufu.  They also claim that it was the Egyptians who built the Pyramids with slaves. They say The Great Pyramid is dated with all the evidence,  to 4,600 years, which was the reign of Khufu and hence it must be his tomb (roll eyes). The Great Pyramid of Khufu is one of 104 Pyramids in Egypt with superstructure, and there are 54 Pyramids with substructure. 

Geological and astrological evidence has crushed this theory to a million pieces yet that is still their official stand. 

So lets ignore the Egyptologists nay Sayers and look at the evidence that says these glyphs are real.

For decades now, locals of the New South Wales Central Coast have debated the authenticity of a series of hieroglyphs carved into a hidden rock face in the Brisbane Water National Park. Many believe they have Egyptian origins. 

Intrepid explorers have scrambled up the tight gap between two sandstone rock faces, emerging into a narrow passage, to examine the hieroglyphs. The symbols are familiar to anyone with an understanding of ancient Egypt and include an image of Anubis, the name of King Khufu enclosed in the customary cartouche, and many other symbols.

The glyphs are not signposted, so you have to search for them. After a short bushwalk and clambering through rocks you’ll discover sandstone walls covered in ‘ancient’ carvings of hieroglyphic symbols. There’s almost 300 of them! You and your kids will be able to spot carvings of birds, fish, beetles, people and more.

No-one knows who made them or when, although some suspect it was returned soldiers camping in the bush following World War II.

Aboriginals are known to record their history and knowledge in song.

What if Ancient sea faring explorers from the Mediterian / Middle East Area came to Australia to learn from, and trade with the Australia’s oldest and wisest people. What if the Australian Aboriginals knowledge of Lore is quite extensive and valuable to other nationalities.   Now what if these explorers were Phoenician NOT Egyptian. 

_Rubbish I hear you say- the Phoenicians write using a form of writing called cuneiform not hieroglyphics.  Which is true of course as anyone who has read anything about ancient Mesopotamia.  However, Before circa 1000 BCE Phoenician was written using cuneiform symbols that were common across Mesopotamia. The first signs of the Phoenician alphabet found at Byblos are clearly derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics, and not from cuneiform.

The earliest writing, dating to the end of the 4th millennium BCE, has been found in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Writing involves the use of a system of signs or symbols to represent the spoken language. In Mesopotamia, scribes recorded commercial transactions on clay tablets. In Egypt, hieroglyphics were inscribed in stone and written on papyrus. The earliest writing took the form of pictographic signs in which pictures were used to represent words and objects.

In Mesopotamia, the pictographs became more stylized over time and eventually developed into wedge-shaped linear signs known today as cuneiform. The word cuneiform means “wedge-form” and is used to describe the wedge-shaped script formed by pressing a rectangular-ended stylus — a writing stick made out of reed, wood, metal or bone — into wet clay. Cuneiform signs could represent either whole words or phonetic syllables consisting of vowel-consonant groupings.

The cuneiform script was first developed by the Sumerians, but in the 3rd millennium BCE the Akkadians began using the script to write their language. The Akkadian language and the cuneiform script were used by the Babylonians and the Assyrians. Cuneiform continued to be used into the first century CE. In Egypt, writing took the form of hieroglyphics which, like cuneiform, began as a pictographic script and later developed into a system of syllables. Unlike cuneiform, however, the hieroglyphic pictographs were never stylized into linear symbols and use of hieroglyphics continued until the late 1st millennium BCE. At the same time, though, the Egyptians developed a cursive style of writing called hieratic in the earlier periods and demotic in later times.

Throughout Mesopotamia, Egypt and Canaan, writing was primarily rendered on stone, clay tablets or papyrus. Writing could be inscribed on almost any material, however, including potsherds, metal or wax pressed over a wooden board to form a writing tablet. One other important medium for writing was the cylinder seal. Cylinder seals were cylinders made of a hard material like stone or baked clay, which were engraved with a design. When the seals were rolled over wet clay, they created an impression of the engraving. Cylinder seals were used to mark door locks and closed containers of goods, and were also used to seal legal documents or the clay envelopes containing the documents. They were generally associated with specific individuals and often carried inscriptions containing the name of their owner.

Although writing began in the 4th millennium BCE, alphabetic writing was a much later development. In contrast to the earlier writing systems, alphabetic writing consists of a system of signs which each represent a single sound of speech, rather than syllables or whole words.

The earliest known alphabetic inscriptions are called Proto-Canaanite and date from 1700 – 1500 BCE. Proto-Canaanite, which may have been an adaptation of Egyptian hieroglyphics, developed into the first true alphabetic writing system: Phoenician. The Phoenicians occupied an area that is part of modern Lebanon, Syria and Israel. Their 22 letter alphabet consisted of pictures of objects but, rather than using the pictures to represent whole words as with pictographs, each letter represented the first sound of the word for the object. The Phoenician alphabet, like earlier Egyptian hieroglyphics, included only consonants, not vowels. This alphabet developed into old Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek and, eventually, the Roman alphabet we use today.

So if the writing is NOT Egyptian but Phoenician, that would explain the variances from true Egyptian Hieroglyphs. -What do you think?

Plus there’s also the Aborigines themselves that say foreigners visited for thousands of years and took rocks from the earth (Perhaps, gold and silver) and learnt from them , but something happened 400 years before Captain Cook and they were told not to return.  Being respectful of their teachers and perhaps ashamed of whatever it was that got them banished, they did not return.

 

The other side of the Argument

The Gylphs have been investigated, and it is not consistent with an ancient Egyptian origin.[1][2]

• The Gosford glyphs (the most prominent and promoted of the “evidence”) were ‘discovered’ in the 1960s, or perhaps a little later, and there are accounts by witnesses of “additions” being made after that date[3][4][5] I
• In any case the geology, weathering pattern, the freshness of the carvings, and comparison with known local Indigenous carvings would suggest a recent carving date, not an ancient one.[6][7][8]

The glyphs themselves when translated are historically inaccurate, out of time and place, and replete with errors of fact. Names and dates are just wrong, or random, or just meaningless.[9][10]

• And if you think about it, even if it was indistinguishable in style and technique from any particular temporally-valid and cohesive style and technique of ancient Egyptian stonework and hieroglyphics, and it’s not, where is the evidence of allied ancient Egyptian occupation?
  • Of people living their ancient Egyptian lives, of craftspeople and their tools, of an encampment, of track-ways to the water?
  • Or of Australian Indigenous people interacting with and recording their observations of these odd visitors?

It doesn’t exist. It’s as though it was all “magicked” into existence.

• And how, and why, did they manage to take vessels built for the Nile, or for short sea journeys, across the entire width of the open Indian Ocean?
• Let alone to keep going to the far eastern side of a massive continent?
• And why wait so long before stopping and carving?

And how was this done without being noticed by the locals, and without leaving any other trace? The Europeans didn’t manage to escape attention, centuries later. And they left evidence.

• Even if they followed coastlines all the way, where did they stop and replenish supplies, and why is there no evidence of that? Anywhere
• Why did they go nowhere else? What propelled them to go directly to Australia, and then call it quits?
• Yet not even write it up back home.

Now if any of this criticism can be compellingly rebutted, I’m all for it. I’d love to have an ancient Egyptian archaeological site on my doorstep.

But until then, it’s a fantasy.

Footnotes

[2] Egyptologist debunks new claims about ‘Gosford glyphs’

[3] Image on photobucket.com[

4] Encyclopedia of Dubious Archaeology: From Atlantis to the Walam Olum[

5] New Kariong Glyphs Evidence Fails to Excite[6] Kariong – when were the glyphs found?[7] All things Woy[

8] The Gosford Glyphs Hoax, Part 4[

9] The Gosford Glyphs Hoax, Part 3

[10] The Gosford Glyphs Hoax, Part 2

Like all Ancient Mysteries I often find the ones that are the closest to the truth has the most evidence to the contrary.  I say “Thou protest too much!!”

Anyway I’d love to hear what you think.  Weigh in on the conversation.  Was Australia all alone and inhabited for 60,000 years by one single people with no visitors or do you think there was trade and the songs and artifacts of the Aborigines plus the interesting rock carving and glyphs left by others proves visitors were welcome and did come.