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_Questing Conference 2001_

_ALTERNATIVE HISTORY
FORBIDDEN ARCHAEOLOGY

_A YEAR OF MIXED EMOTIONS_

_Lecture by Andrew Collins for the 15th Questing Conference at Conway
Hall, red Lion Square, London WC1, on Saturday, 3 November 2001._

_Since the broadcast of the HORIZON programmes which called to question
the works of individuals such as Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval in 1999,
we have seen a huge decline of media and publishing interest in
alternative history and forbidden archaeology. Very few books on these
subjects have appeared on the bookshelves, and publishers have been
reluctant to take on new books promoting such ideas. Many of the key
authors who had previously written best-sellers in this field have found
themselves out of a job, forcing them to either accept new life styles or
publish their books themselves. On the other hand, new authors with fresh
ideas have found it impossible to get their theories into print. It is a
sad situation, yet one that we hope is about to undergo a new
renaissance._

_REDATING THE SPHINX - Again! _

_Ten years ago Robert Schoch, a geologist from Boston University, changed
the whole face of Egyptology by claiming that the Great Sphinx, situated
on the Giza Plateau, might be many thousands of years older than
conventional Egyptology had always believed. The theory was promoted most
obviously by Graham Hancock in his 1995 book FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS._

_Yet since that time much more has come to light about the antiquity of
the Great Sphinx and the other monuments of the Giza Plateau. Although
there is strong evidence to suggest that the carved leonine monument was
in place during the reign of the pharaoh Khufu, a generation before its
assumed construction by his successor Khafre, sometime around 2550 BC, new
evidence amassed by my colleague Chris Ogilvie Herald now suggests that
the weathering effects which determined Schoch's redating of the monument
might have been produced much later than was assumed. There is ample
evidence that flash floods and severe rain storms occurred with frequency
during the Old and Middle Kingdoms, and that this, coupled with the saline
erosion of the soft limestone each morning, contributed greatly to its
appearance today. Thus there is no need to assume that the water-worn
elements of the Sphinx occurred thousands of years before the commencement
of Dynastic Egypt. Chris is writing up this new evidence for an article
that will appear shortly on the GIZA: THE TRUTH website, maintained by his
co-author of the book of this name Ian Lawton. _

_CUBA AND THE MYSTERY OF ATLANTIS - The Plot Thickens_

_As many of you will know last year I wrote a book entitled GATEWAY TO
ATLANTIS, which posited the view that Plato's fabled island empire of
Atlantis was located in the vicinity of Cuba, the largest of the islands
of the Caribbean. Imagine my delight when in May 2001 I received
notification that an underwater 'city' had been found off Cuba the
previous summer by a Canadian scientific research team, headed by
Russian-born oceanographer Paulina Zelitsky. Whilst searching for sunken
galleons off the west coast of the Cuban mainland in July 2000 a vast area
of rectilinear features, several kilometres in area was detected by
hi-tech sonar equipment on a deep-sea shelf 700 metres beneath the
surface. According to reports coming out of Havana, where the company,
Advanced Digital Communications (ADC) are based, the 'city' is said to
resemble the groundplan of the Mesoamerican city of Teotihuacan, located
north of Mexico City._

_I tracked down Advanced Digital Communications in Havana and began a
series of nail-biting communications with Paulina's husband Paul
Weinzweig, who was at a loss to explain the significance of their
extraordinary discovery. Already it was being suggested by the US media
that they might have found the true location of Atlantis, a conclusion
that Paul and Paulina were ill-prepared to handle before being given
enough time to absorb the contents of my book._

_I learnt that no real progress would be made on the project until Paulina
and her experienced Cuban crew were able to examine the underwater
features using remote operated video recorders (ROVs), which would obtain
the necessary video footage to further the matter one way or another. If
this operation proved successful, then the next stage would be to send
down to the sea-bottom one- or two-man submersibles, like those featured
in the recent BBC series 'The Blue Planet'. At a depth of 700 metres, over
half a mile down, this was the only real option available._

_The response to the discovery was extraordinary. America's ever-popular
radio programme The Art Bell Show broadcast several Atlantis specials,
while its 'science reporter' Linda Moulton Howe delivered near weekly
bulletins. She even reported that media rights for the whole Cuba-Atlantis
project had been sold exclusively to National Geographic, which is simply
untrue. Despite various discussions with different interested parties, no
such exclusivity deal has been signed. However, those who are let in on
the current states of affairs in Cuba have been asked to sign
nondisclosure agreements, which I was also asked to do back in July.
Effectively, this means that I cannot report on the present situation,
other than to speak about material which is currently in the public
domain, or to state my reaction to what has taken place so far, without
revealing why._

_All I can say is that for a few brief days in late July I felt like
Howard Carter, after his long search to find the tomb of Tutankhamun.
Shortly afterwards, I emphasised that for the underwater features off Cuba
to stand any chance of being accepted as of possible archaeological
significance, then their ROVs would have to produce footage which
confirmed that any structure found bore clear and unmistakable evidence of
being artificially constructed. Individual blocks, whether cut or uncut,
and of any shape, were simply not enough, and any walls discovered must be
shown to be artificial and not simply a freak of nature, like the features
discovered off the island of Yonaguni, Japan, in the second-half of the
1990s._

_YONAGUNI - A Case of Mistaken Identity_

_Over the past five years Masaaki Kimura, Professor of Geology at The
University of Ryu Kyu in Japan, has championed the theory that the much
publicised stone features found at Yonaguni represent a man-made structure
created by an unknown culture some 10,000 years ago. In a book, and at the
lectures he presents, he shows still images which he offers as evidence of
his discoveries. Unfortunately, from these pictures alone there is very
little evidence to justify his claims._

_Furthermore, Dr Robert Schoch of Boston University, who was asked to
inspect the underwater site, which lies in around 100 feet of water,
concluded that it was purely a nature feature shaped by geological
processes. He did not, however, rule out the possibility that mankind
might not have made use of the site, although it was certainly not a
building construction._

_In response, Professor Kimura reported the existence close to the site of
a retaining wall of loose stones, held up by larger boulders. He also
claims to have recovered two smaller artefacts, one of which is a stone
idol and the other an inscribed stone bearing a strange script which
resembles symbols found on various unknown artefacts discovered in the
Americas. I have examined both artefacts, and in my opinion, the inscribed
stone is a fishing weight, complete with trawling hole. Any marks on it,
which include a simple cross, are simply the result of personal doodlings
by the fishermen involved. The other object appears simply to be a large
boulder fractured in such a way as to produce simulacra that resembles an
animal of some kind._

_To me, only one piece of evidence points towards a human presence on the
Yonaguni site and this is a line of bore holes photographed on the upper
surface of a submerged rock face. These are typical of drilled holes made
in uncut rock in an attempt to fracture the stone for use in building
construction._

_So the Canadian research team working off the coast of Cuba must produce
compelling evidence that the deep-water features they have discovered are
of artificial construction. All I can say is that people will have to be
patient, as there is unlikely to be any public announcements emerging out
of Cuba for the foreseeable future, and so, in the meantime, the search
for Atlantis continues._

_ATLANTIS OFF GIBRALTAR - A Frenchman's Claim_

_The discoveries made in Cuba in 2000 did not make the British press
(although there is some suggestion that the story appeared in business
bible THE FINANCIAL TIMES). Yet one theory which drew considerable media
interest was the claim by a French geologist to have found Atlantis off
the coast of the Gibraltar._

_Professor Jacques Collina-Girard, from the Mediterranean University in
Aix-en-Provence, made this startling discovery when engaged in mapping the
coastline of Western Europe as it appeared at the end of the last Ice Age.
He noticed, lying in deep water beyond the Strait of Gibraltar, a
submerged archipelago or group of islands. The largest of these, named as
'Spartel', is reported to be nine miles long and three miles wide.
According to Professor Collina-Girard, this tiny island is Plato's
Atlantis. That is if we are prepared to accept that Plato's purported
source for the story, the Greek legislator Solon, wrongly converted the
dimensions of the city given to him by an old priest from the temple of
Sais in Egypt. Moreover, we are asked to accept the idea that Plato's
claim that the island was destroyed by 'volcanic activity', the text
states actually 'earthquakes and floods', was merely an embellishment to
make the account more dramatic. According to Collina-Girard, all it did
was sink quietly beneath the waves when the sea-level rose up to '425
feet' after the melting of the ice fields in c. 9000 BC, Plato's chosen
date for the disappearance of Atlantis._

_The French professor cites no other evidence for the island of Spartel
being the lost island empire of Atlantis, other than the fact that at the
end of the last Ice Age the Straight of Gibraltar was longer and narrower
than it is today, and would have contained a harbour-like inland sea like
the one mentioned in Plato's account. Furthermore, no evidence of a human
presence has so far been discovered on the sunken island, or any of its
neighbours, even though Professor Collina-Girard speculates that
Palaeolithic man might easily have travelled across the Straight to the
island of Spartel._

_In an article for the scholarly magazine NEW SCIENTIST in September 2001,
the French professor is quoted as saying: 'The texts are the origin of a
lot of speculation about Atlantis. Curiously nobody has really taken
seriously the most obvious location.'(cf. Chapman, James, Daily Mail, 20
September 2001, p. 37)_

_As the author of a definitive benchmark on the subject of Plato's
Atlantis, I feel able to comment authoritatively on the claims of the
French professor. Firstly, the location of Plato's Atlantis. Sure, the
Athenian philosopher tells us in his work the TIMAEUS, written c. 350 BC,
that Atlantis lay beyond the Pillars of Hercules, the ancient name for the
legendary rocks which stood each side of the Straight of Gibraltar. _

_However, Plato did not necessarily mean that his Atlantic island was
situated there, only that it was placed outside of the Mediterranean.
Indeed he states that it stood before something called the 'Opposite
Continent', which lay beyond the Atlantic sea, and that voyagers could go
via 'other islands' from Atlantis to the Opposite Continent, over which
its kings held dominion. This suggests that the island of Atlantis was far
out in the Atlantic Ocean, and plausibly even in the vicinity of the
Bahamas and Caribbean. Furthermore, he states that where Atlantis once
stood was now an impassable sea, making navigation to the Opposite
Continent impossible. Other writers contemporary to Plato also speak of
this impassable sea, adding that it is an area of great calm and is
covered in seaweed. There seems little doubt that what all these writers
had been describing, whether knowingly or not, was the Sargasso Sea, the
vast region of sea-weed which lies between the Azores in the Mid-Atlantic
and the Bahamas in the west. No way could it be construed as having lain
in the vicinity of the Straight of Gibraltar. In addition to this, the
size of the island of Spartel makes little sense of Plato's description of
the Atlantean island, which was said to have been dominated by a plain
3000 by 2000 stadia, beyond which were mountain ranges on three sides
which came right down to the sea. This implies an island in the region of
600 by 400 kilometres in size with mountain ranges which came right down
to the sea. The view that Solon, the Greek legislator whom Plato states
first heard the Atlantis story when in Egypt, misread the figures for the
dimensions of the city is often employed by supporters of the
Aegean-Atlantis theory to demonstrate that Atlantis was either Crete or
the volcanic island of Santorini, blown apart in a volcanic explosion
around 1400 BC. It is proposed that Solon mislead the hieroglyphs for 1000
and 100, which were in fact only 10 and 1, meaning that Atlantis was 100th
the size originally given in Plato's account. Yet this theory is strongly
denied by Egyptologists, who say that no such confusion can have
occurred._

_Moreover, as I have pointed out in my book GATEWAY TO ATLANTIS, although
Plato tells us that the story came via Solon from Egypt, there is no
reason to assume this was the case. The TIMEAUS, and its sequel the
CRITIAS, both written around 350 BC, were fictional dialogues between
characters which lived a generation or so before Plato's time. With the
view of attempting to bolster the antiquity of the Atlantis legend, he is
more likely to have used Solon's name to bolster the potential of the
story. Moreover, Egypt's connection to the Atlantis account probably
derived from it being considered to be the guardian of ancient wisdom
'hoary with age' which was sought out by all great philosophers and
writers of the Greek world. Textual evidence from the dialogues themselves
suggests more strongly that the story derived from Carthaginian sources,
whose mariners were exploring the Atlantic Ocean as early as 600 BC. We
know also that they were responsible for the creation of many other
classical legends concerning what was to be found in the outer ocean.
These included stories regarding the Islands of the Hesperides, the
Elysium Fields and Okeanos, the ocean river which was said to encircle the
ancient world. Even the myth of Atlas, the Titan who was said to have
ruled the lands and seas of the far west, almost certainly derived from
Carthaginian legends attached to Mount Atlas, located in the Atlas
mountain range in north-west Africa._

_What also makes little sense is the French professor's assertion that
around 9000 BC, the alleged date for the destruction of Atlantis, the
Straight of Gibraltar enclosed an inland sea resembling Plato's
description of Atlantis. Plato speaks only of a series of three waterways
encircling the Temple of Poseidon located at the centre of the Atlantean
city. Never does he say that the island itself was surrounded by an inland
sea._

_In summary, it seems more likely that Plato constructed his Atlantis
account from stories and rumours reaching the Mediterranean world via
Carthaginian and Iberic Phoenician voyagers who were frequenting Atlantic
islands either before or during his own age. I have proposed that the
destruction of Atlantis is a memory of the submergence of low-lying
landmasses which existed in the vicinity of the principal Caribbean
islands and were remembered in the folktales of the indigenous peoples of
this region. Moreover, it seems certain that Plato's description of the
main Atlantean island reflects the topography of Cuba, which appears to
have been known to ancient mariners through transatlantic journeys. No
other theory fits the evidence better. _

_PHOENICIANS IN THE ATLANTIC - More Discoveries from the Canary Isles_

_If Professor Collina-Girard wanted to find new evidence for the existence
of Atlantis he would have been better citing the archaeological features
discovered recently off the island of Lanzarote in the Canaries by
underwater explorer Pippo Cappellano. He has detected and filmed
rectilinear stone foundations of unquestionable man-made manufacture in
around 20-22 metres of water. Pictures of his discovery appear in a recent
issue of HERA magazine._

_Although the Canaries have been proposed occasionally as the site of lost
Atlantis, there is no reason to assume that these structures do belong to
Plato's lost island empire. Since they lie only at a depth of 20 or so
metres, they would have been above sea-level as recently as the time of
Christ, like the lost city of Heraklion found recently off the coast of
Alexandria in Egypt. This is thought to have submerged as a result of a
natural cataclysm as recently as AD 600. More likely is that the
underwater features off Lanzarote represent evidence for the presence in
the archipelago of a proto-Phoenician, Iberic Phoenician or Carthaginian
sea-port during the first or second millennium BC._

_Only recently, Canaries archaeologist and historian Pablo Atoche Peña has
released new evidence of a Phoenician and Carthaginian presence in the
Canary isles as early as 500 BC. This lends weight to the idea that these
maritime peoples regularly made journeys to the archipelago, and perhaps
used them as a staging post into the outer ocean. From here the Canary
Current takes a vessel towards the islands of Cape Verde, before sweeping
it westwards upon the North Equatorial Current towards the Caribbean. In
100 BC the Roman geographer Statius Sebosus recorded that it was 40 days'
sail between the Gorgades, unquestionably the Cape Verde Isles off the
West African coast, and the Hesperides, the 'islands in the west' said in
classical tradition to have lay beyond the ocean river. Surely this is a
reference to transatlantic journeys made either during or before his age,
most probably by Carthaginian and Phoenician voyagers. Thus a line of
transmission for information between the Caribbean and the Mediterranean
world during the first-century BC supports the view that Atlantis laid in
the outer ocean, conceivably in the Caribbean._

_[1]VISAGE LIKE A VIPER - The Mystery of the Maltese Skulls_

_Moving on to another subject now, HERA magazine has recently published a
thought provoking article on two mystery skulls found on the Mediterranean
island of Malta, which are being seen as evidence of an unknown human
species with extremely long heads. Editor Adriano Forgione, who has
travelled to the museum in Malta where the skulls are housed, believes
that they might constitute evidence for the existence of the fallen
angelic race known as the Watchers, found in pseudepigraphical works such
as the enigmatic Book of Enoch. He cites the fact that another
Enoch-related text, called the Testament of Amram, speaks of a Watcher
with a visage like a viper, while collectively the Watchers are referred
to as 'serpents', and their Nephilim offspring as 'sons of serpents'. He
thus deduces that this abstract term might refer to the facial features of
the Watchers and their offspring resembling that of serpents, in other
words their heads were elongated in form. _

_The skulls, which are thought to be contemporary with the megalithic
monuments on the island, and are thus at least 5,000 years old, are
certainly elongated. However, the conventional view would be that they
were artificially deformed in early childhood, using boards and wrappings.
At such an early age the skull is still malleable and can be shaped in
accordance with either religious or sectarian beliefs. This practice is
found among ancient cultures world-wide, although in particular among the
peoples of the Americas, and also in the Near East, the most obvious
location for Eden, the home of the Watchers in Enochian literature.
Adriano is certain, however, that these skulls are not artificially
deformed, a fact confirmed by the Maltese archaeologists who have examined
them._

_The Watchers and Nephilim, and their human origins, is the subject of my
books FROM THE ASHES OF ANGELS (1996) and GODS OF EDEN (1998). I pointed
out the importance of the Testament of Amram to the physical appearance of
the Watchers in the first of these titles, and this idea has been repeated
many times since that time (in HERA magazine particularly)._

_I would like to see the Maltese skulls in question as evidence of an
early race, connected with the megalithic builders of the eastern
Mediterranean and linked in some way with the Watchers of the Book of
Enoch. Yet only time will tell whether the skulls are either natural or
deformed using artificial processes. Clearly, before any final judgements
can be made further scientific opinions are required from experts in the
field of human physiognomy._

_DAUGHTERS OF AKHENATEN - Deformed Heads or Not?_

_Adriano in the above mentioned article has also pointed out that the
Maltese skulls resemble very closely the shapes of the heads of the
daughters of Amarna king Akhenaten, who ruled c. 1350 BC. Carved busts and
painted reliefs show the young princesses with excessively long heads,
while the pharaoh himself is shown from Year Four of his reign with an
elongated head and serpent-like facial features. What earthly reason made
him decide to portray his daughters in this grotesque fashion? The answer
seems to lie in religious and spiritual ideals adopted by Akhenaten at
this time. Before Year Four of his 17-year reign, he was portrayed like
any other New Kingdom pharaoh. Yet all this changed when he rejected the
traditional polytheism of Egypt in favour of the sole veneration of the
invisible source of life expressed by the rays of the sun disk, Aten. The
two events coincided with each other and are thus intrinsically linked in
some way. Thus we have no need to assume that Akhetaten, who also had
himself depicted with female breasts and hips, actually looked this way.
Of course, this possibility cannot be ruled out, especially as it has been
shown that the faces of some native Egyptians from Middle Egypt, where
Akhenaten's gleaming white city of Akhetaten was located, resemble those
of the pharaoh as depicted in the distinctive art style of his reign._

_It seems to be quite another matter for the daughters. The grotesque
extension to the length of their skulls suggests either some kind of rare
medical condition, perhaps caused through constant interbreeding within
the family, or deliberate head deformation. We certainly know that this
practice was to be found among the Mitanni, or Hurrian, peoples of the
Near East, and that it dates back to at least the time of the Halaf and
Ubaid cultures who inhabited the region, c. 5500-3500 BC. Indeed, various
figurines of serpent-headed individuals found among Ubaid graves in Lower
Iraq have been used to support the contention that the Anunnaki, or
builder gods, of Sumerian and Akkadian mythology belonged to this earlier
culture. In one set of texts known as the Kharsag Tablets these gods of
heaven and earth are described as serpents, or to have eyes like serpents.
This reminds us of the descriptions of the Watchers and Nephilim in
Enochian literature, who are thought to have inhabited the same region as
the ancestors of the Sumerian and Akkadian races. It is a matter I have
discussed at length in FROM THE ASHES OF ANGELS._

_It is my opinion that the original Watchers of Eden were long-headed
individuals who were a shamanistic elite that entered the Near East around
9500 BC and founded the earliest proto-Neolithic communities, which
thrived on the Upper Euphrates river and other parts of the Near East
(modern Kurdistan) through to the rise of Sumer and Akkad, c. 3000-2000
BC. Yet their memory became distorted over the millennia, with them
changing from people with faces like serpents to serpents themselves. The
same thing would appear to have happened among the Maya peoples of Central
America, who deliberately deformed their heads in order to resemble their
first ancestors whom they saw as walking serpents. This same process was,
I believe, practised among the Halaf and Ubaid peoples of ancient Iraq,
who saw their own original ancestors as serpent-faced or serpent-like
individuals._

_As for Akhenaten's daughters, I believe there is a very strong
possibility that their heads were deformed during early childhood. Why
exactly remains unclear, although it might well relate to their father's
spiritual beliefs concerning the original ancestry of Egyptian pharaohs,
who were themselves seen as descendants of the gods of the First Time. Yet
until we find the mummy of any one of Akhenaten's royal daughters, and see
for ourselves the shape of the skull, the matter can be taken no further._

_THE SEARCH FOR NEFERTITI - Nic Reeves and the Amarna Royal Tombs Project_

_This takes us nicely on to the final topic of discussion, the current
search by British Egyptologists to find the tomb of Akhenaten's wife
Nefertiti in the Valley of the Kings. The Amarna Royal Tomb's Project was
founded in 1998 after permission was given by Egypt's Supreme Council of
Antiquities for a British team to begin exploration of the Valley, the
first time that a concession of this sort has been granted since the days
of Howard Carter. Founder Nicholas Reeves asked his colleagues Professor
Jeffrey Martin and Ian Shaw to join him in a search for what he believes
to be a previously unknown Amarna tomb, which he has deduced either
contains, or once contained, the mummified body of Queen Nefertiti. She
disappears from the Egyptian records in Year Eleven/Twelve of her husband
Akhenaten's reign, although Reeves considers that she returned to rule
Egypt for three-brief years under the name Smenkhkare. Since a co-regency
of anything up to two years existed between Akhenaten and Smenkhkare, the
latter went on to rule in his right for less than one year before he
himself was superseded by the boy-king Tutankhamun, c. 1349 BC._

_Reeves is looking for his Amarna royal tomb somewhere between KV56, the
so-called Gold Tomb where in the early twentieth century British
Egyptologist Edward Ayrton found gold fineries belonging to a wife of Seti
II, and KV9, the former resting place of Ramesses VI, located directly
above and adjacent to Tutankhamun's tomb (KV62). Indeed, the latter
escaped discovery only because the huts built by the workman employed in
the construction of KV9 were placed on spoil which covered the entrance to
Tutankhamun's tomb; these were only removed during Howard Carter's final
year of exploration in 1922. Yet more crucial to this whole debate is a
minor tomb opposite to KV62 and KV9, known as KV55. On its discovery in
1907, under the sponsorship of American millionaire Theodore Davis, it was
found to contain an Amarna mummy placed there under the most unusual of
circumstances. Its coffin, wrappings, canopic jars and so-called magic
bricks all bore different names, which had either been scrubbed out or
replaced with another, creating a nightmare when it came to identifying
the mummy. Initially it was thought to be that of Queen Tiye, Akhenaten's
mother, due to the presence in the tomb of the remains of a gilded shrine
which bore her name. Yet when it was realised that the body was male, many
Egyptologists decided that it must be Akhenaten himself, since the magic
bricks bore his name. Yet examinations of the skeleton by such well-known
Egyptologists as Rex Engelbach and G. Elliott Smith - as well as R. G.
Harrison of Liverpool University, who examined the body in 1963 - showed
that the person could not have been any more than 30 when he died. Since
Akhenaten is not thought to have been any younger than 40 when he
disappears in Year Seventeen of his reign, then the body in KV55 did not
belong to him. The only Amarna king that fits the description is
Smenkhkare, who is known to have reverted the royal court back to the
southern capital Thebes during his reign, and whose name appears on items
found in KV55._

_Yet Nicholas Reeves ignores these facts and has resurrected the idea that
the body in Tomb 55 is that of Akhenaten. He concludes this because of the
evidence offered by the presence around the coffin of the magic bricks and
the fact that a recent re-examination of the body from KV55 by two
Egyptian pathologists has determined that its owner was nearly 40 at the
point of death. Lastly, he cites the shaky theory that Nefertiti was
Smenkhkare as further proof of his assertions. Since the body found in
Tomb 55 is clearly male, then it cannot be Nefertiti. So if it is
Akhenaten, then Nefertiti/Smenkhkare is, according to Reeves, still out
there somewhere, awaiting discovery in the Valley of the Kings. This is
the line of reasoning of those behind the Amarna Royal Tombs Project. _

_However, there is no reason to question the earlier findings of
experienced scientists such as R. G. Harrison, who also examined
Tutankhamun in 1968 and determined that the boy-king was related directly
to the body in Tomb 55, either as brother/brother, or father/son.
Moreover, there is every reason to conclude that Smenkhkare was indeed a
male of the species. For instance, we know that his queen was Merytaten,
Akhenaten's oldest daughter, who had previously become her father's chief
wife after the disappearance of Nefertiti in Year Eleven/Twelve of his
reign. Smenkhkare and Merytaten are shown together in bas reliefs found at
the site of Akhenaten's city at Tel el-Amarna. After she became
Smenkhkare's wife, Akhenaten chose his second oldest surviving daughter,
Akhesen-pa-aten, to become his next chief wife. After her father's death,
she went on to become queen to Smenkhkare's successor, Tutankhamun. All
this supports the contention that Smenkhkare was a separate individual to
Nefertiti. Otherwise we must explain why this former queen of Akhenaten
should have wanted to legitimise her own claim to the throne - whilst her
estranged husband was still alive and ruling Egypt - by taking his eldest
daughter and chief wife as her 'queen'. It makes no sense whatsoever.
Furthermore, a large fat, and clearly male, gold ring once belonging to
Smenkhkare is to be found next to a smaller silver ring belonging to
Nefertiti in Birmingham's Department of Egyptology. Did Nefertiti decide
not only to marry a woman, but also to wear large masculine rings after
her ascent to the throne of Egypt?_

_In addition to these facts, we now know that much of the funerary ware
and equipment in Tutankhamun's tomb was second hand, and came originally
from the tomb of Smenkhkare. This includes the second coffin's
anthropomorphic lid, which, although often said to be the likeness of
Tutankhamun, is actually Smenkhkare, since it is inscribed with his
prenome Nefernefruaten. His mature, male features tend to confirm that
Smenkhkare was a man (as does a life-size statue of Smenkhkare to be seen
in the Louvre). Does it also not make sense to conclude that these
priceless objects found in Tutankhamun's tomb were pilfered from Tomb 55,
which lies just 50 metres across the Valley. Indeed, the entrances to the
tombs are directly opposite each other. _

_So far the Amarna Royal Tombs Project, which is now into its fourth
season in the Valley of the Kings, has unearthed precious little to
convince prospective financiers that Nefertiti's tomb awaits discovery. A
shard from an Amarna style canopic jar, an ostracon bearing the image of
an Amarna-style priest and a few other coffin fragments are all they have
to show for four years of hard work. Although I applaud the work of the
team - which includes some of Britain's finest Egyptologists - I do hope
that they revise their views on exactly whom they seek beneath the spoil
heaps of the ancient valley. Otherwise, they might end up a little
disappointed when finally they discover their hoped-for Amarna royal
tomb._

I would like to thank the speakers for their time and effort, and those
that helped make the Questing Conference a success. This list includes
Grace Carey; Jason Digby, Robin Crookshank Hilton; Carina Fearnley,
Catherine Hale; Rodney and Joan Hale; Hannah Hardiman; Paul Kyffin; Ian
Lawton; Amber McCauley; Johnny Merron; Lisa Mundy and Matthew Adams; Chris
Ogilvie-Herald; David Panter; Tony Pitcher, Yuri Raven; Colin and Cathy
Stallard; Nigel Skinner-Simpson; Pandora Stevens; Tim, Richard Ward and
Paul Weston. A special thanks goes out to Nigel Foster of the Global Café,
Marcus Allen and staff at NEXUS magazine, Caroline Wise and Steve Wilson
of Atlantis Bookshop and not forgetting my partner Sue Collins. Apologies
to anyone I have forgotten. All I can add is that if you missed it, then
you really did miss something special. Make sure that next year don't miss
out. If we can have delegates from the United States, South Africa,
Holland, France, Switzerland and Portugal, there is no reason why you
shouldn't be there. The date and venue for next year's event will be given
soon. Make sure it is a date in your calendar. With best wishes, Andrew
Collins