The Secret Chamber Robert Bauval, London (Century), 1999. £16.99.

Robert Bauval is renowned for claiming that the three large pyramids of Giza were a symbolic representation of the three stars of Orion’s Belt. He argued that this was a deliberate plan executed by the ancient Egyptians with all the implications that it implied. His ideas first appeared in 1989, in the Oxford journal, Discussions in Egyptology, and in 1994, in The Orion Mystery.
    That the pyramids of Giza are laid out using astronomical considerations is not in doubt. Even archaeologist Dr. Mark Lehner, the contemporary expert on Giza, concedes this. But Orion? Here opinion diverges.
    Bauval has been widely attacked for daring to voice his ideas: latterly in a BBC Horizon documentary. Astronomer, Dr. Edwin Krupp, accused Bauval of deception: the photograph of the Pyramids, he said, was printed upside down in an attempt to make them fit the stellar theory. But this accusation was wrong. The BBC producer knew it but still included it in the film. Astronomer and former Head of the Department of Astronomy at Glasgow University, Professor Archibald Roy, pointed out that this accusation was totally ‘unfounded’. In other words, the criticism of Bauval was motivated not by scientific enquiry, but by prejudice.
    One can, therefore, understand why Bauval, in his latest book, The Secret Chamber, spends some time detailing the background to the disputes in which he has been embroiled. The book gives exhaustive treatment to the ebb and flow of ideas and egos and their entanglement to the detriment of discovery. One obtains a much clearer idea of what is at stake, and why Bauval’s ideas elicit such hostility.
    However, during the course of this book Bauval ventures into Freemasonry. Here he is on less familiar territory and a number of errors emerge. For example, he claims that fifty of the fifty-six signatories of the USA Declaration of Independence in 1776 were Freemasons. In fact, only nine can be proved so; another ten were possibly so.
    Nevertheless, Bauval gives a brief but fascinating account of Egyptian Freemasonry following Napoleon’s invasion in 1798 and the subsequent masonic involvement in both archaeology and politics until its banning in 1964 following an espionage scandal. It becomes apparent that Egyptology and Freemasonry is a subject that could usefully receive a much more comprehensive treatment.
    The book remains an antidote to the ‘conspiracy of Giza’ works which have recently appeared. Its weakness lies in its self-indulgence, both in structure and content. And, unfortunately, it does not tell us much of the `secret chamber’ which its title promises.
    Michael Baigent