Customer Reviews

Tutankhamun: The Exodus Conspiracy: The Truth Behind Archaeology's Greatest Mystery

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This is an interesting new angle on the Tutankhamun story. Supposedly Howard Carter found some papyri in the tomb shortly after its discovery. These papyri supposedly contained new information on the early history of the Jewish people. And supposedly this information would place in doubt the historic claim of the Jewish people to the land of Israel.

On one level this is a rather entertaining book because its an archaeological mystery story with sidelights into the occult. On a deeper level it doesn't really hold much water. Regardless of the origin of the ancestors of the Jewish people (and this book has some intriguing material on that subject) nothing can deny that Jews did live in Israel/Judea for many hundreds of years.

Furthermore, thinking about those papyri, the authors can give very little real evidence that they ever really existed, or if they did,that they really contained the explosive material the authors maintain they did.

So, the book is well written, contains some interesting archaeological information on the early history of the Jews and their religious beliefs, and also provides some previously unknown (at least to me) insights into the occult beliefs of Lord Carnarvon and others involved in the tomb's discovery. But as to how accurate it is, and how much stock to place in its theories, I'm much less willing to state an opinion. Buy it if you like mysteries, but look elsewhere for serious archaeological/historical analysis

Collins and Ogilvie-Herald present a very plausible investigation into, not only the real story of the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb, but also the significance of his 'lost' papyri. The level of research, detail and presentation is quite impressive and this alone makes the book worth reading, whether or not you agree with their conclusions.

With regard to Mr. Crowe's review:

There is nothing in the text of this book that supports such rubbish as the "Holocaust denial movement". He seems to have picked one bad apple off the tree and made a meal of it, perhaps in support of his own agenda, fixation and witch hunt.

As for Mr. Cerny's review, I doubt he even read the work in its entirety.

There is nothing in the book about a clerk overhearing anything. The person that recorded Carter's story was his North American lecture agent, Lee Keedick, President of the Keedick Lecture Bureau, who was never in Egypt. It is doubtful that Cerny even bothered to read the work in its entirety before submitting his review.

I have read several books on the subject, but this one is completely different because the author approaches the issue with a true scientific spirit trying to verify every single point he makes in the book including the SHOCKING details never before disclosed about Lord Carnarvon Kin. Finished it off in 2 nights. A must for anyone interested in the matter

Hatem A Tawfik, MD

Even though I sound skeptical about this book being a work of good scientific research, I did enjoy it as reading like historical fiction. There are too many books that clearly and succinctly cover the areas this book does, with facts to back up the prose, which is not sufficient here for me to believe that there was a secret paprii that Carnahan had completely distorting history as we have had it thrust at us. It is a fact that history is in the eye of the beholder, but this goes beyond what I can accept as fact, but I did enjoy it. I recommend this book to anyone who can read it with a grain of salt, some speculation and just plain enjoyment for the manner in which the history of this time has been manipulated.

The authors' point is that archeologist Howard Carter, famous for his find of the tomb of Tutankhamun, possessed a certain papyri containing a true story of biblical Exodus. The contents were so politically explosive that it was suppressed. How they support such a claim?

A clerk in the British Embassy in Cairo supposedly heard Carter's discussion with viceroy, when the archeologist threatened revealing the secret. Although Carter's demands were not met, the papyri remained unknown.
The Embassy' clerk was Carter's promoter during his trip to the States, and so had a good reason to invent the story. There are otherwise no mentions of the enigmatic scroll whatsoever, either from Carter himself, his relatives, other member of the expedition or the translator.

To prove that Carter was capable of hiding an extremely valuable papyri - something hardly probable for this ambitious scholar - authors resort to attacks on his personality. In particular, they hint at Carter taking some artifacts from the tombs he found. But this common practice among archeologists cannot be equalized with stealing and doesn't impede Carter's integrity as a scholar.

The rest of the book is the heap of irrelevant facts, assembled to demonstrate scholarly credentials of the authors and attach credibility to their wild conjecture. Pursuing this end, authors routinely label most far-fetched assumptions as "doubtless."
Real level of the research is indicated by the bibliography, which is extremely short and lists mostly the books of other alternative historians. There are almost no primary sources listed, probably because the authors are unacquainted with them.
Authors equalize Egyptian worship of sun god Aten with Judaic monotheism. They don't see plenty of differences beyond superficial resemblance. In a characteristic example, they note similar positioning of the altars in both religions! This is plainly ludicrous, since west orientation is characteristic of many cults as well. They identify Moses with Egyptian priest Osarsiph, only repeating what was written by Manetho two thousand years ago and disproved as soon by Josephus, not to mention many later scholars.

Authors assert that Carter's papyri proved Jews to be the Egyptian lepers, who thus have no claim to the Promised Land. Of course, no basis for such conjecture is offered in the book. It ends with lengthy discourse on the conspiracy theory, elaborating on English and Jewish leaders dragging America in the Second World War.

I am sorry to say I saw this book on a book list and asked my then girlfriend to buy it for me...what a waste of birthday wish. The author spends FAR too much time explaining the book of Exodus, offering no new insights whatsoever.

to the main subject of the book. As many know the chronology of the Pharaohs is an area that needs much work and as pointed out in this book and many others the co-reign of Pharaohs isn't well documented.

Here is the problem with this work; there is better evidence to place Hatsheput at the time of Solomon and Amenemhet IV as the Pharaoh of the Exodus.

This work is worth the time to read the many stories of the main characters in finding Tutankhamun tome and about thier beliefs, life and times.

I confess that I am a fan of conspiracy theories. While they are usually a load of horse-apples I enjoy the cleverness of some of them and how they intertwine established facts with possibilities. What separates the great conspiracy theories from the poor ones are the former's ability to make plausible jumps from established evidence to take you somewhere that you hadn't expected. Unfortunately, this requires a high level of understanding in the evidence. This is most assuredly not the case here. The facts used to establish a framework to hang the conspiracy on are flimsy and insubstantial and many require one to have little knowledge of the background of the practices, since many of the inferences drawn by the author simply don't fit a more complete understanding of the practices involved. In a sense, the author's arguments simply can't stand up to any involved examination which is usually a sure sign that the author doesn't know much about the evidence he is trying to use. This requires the reader to be as ignorant as the author for the book to work. Beyond that, the attempt to use this fabled piece of papyrus to show the Jews as having little laim to the modern state of Israel betrays an axe to grind, in this case an admittedly dull one.