Robert Bauval (born 5 March 1948) is an Egyptian writer and lecturer, perhaps best known for the fringe Orion Correlation Theory regarding the

Giza pyramid complex The Giza pyramid complex (also called the Giza necropolis) in Egypt is home to the Great Pyramid of Giza, Great Pyramid, the pyramid of Khafre, and the pyramid of Menkaure, along with their associated pyramid complexes and the Great Sphinx of G ...

Early life

Bauval was born in

Alexandria, Egypt Alexandria ( ; ) is the List of cities and towns in Egypt#Largest cities, second largest city in Egypt and the List of coastal settlements of the Mediterranean Sea, largest city on the Mediterranean coast. It lies at the western edge of the Nile ...

, to parents of Belgian and Maltese origins. He attended the British Boys' School in Alexandria (now El Nasr Boys' School) and the

Franciscan The Franciscans are a group of related organizations in the Catholic Church, founded or inspired by the Italian saint Francis of Assisi. They include three independent Religious institute, religious orders for men (the Order of Friars Minor bei ...

College in

Buckinghamshire Buckinghamshire (, abbreviated ''Bucks'') is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England and one of the home counties. It is bordered by Northamptonshire to the north, Bedfordshire to the north-east, Hertfordshir ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

. He left Egypt in 1967 just before the

Six-Day War The Six-Day War, also known as the June War, 1967 Arab–Israeli War or Third Arab–Israeli War, was fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab world, Arab states, primarily United Arab Republic, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan from 5 to 10June ...

, during the presidency of

Gamal Abdel Nasser Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein (15 January 1918 – 28 September 1970) was an Egyptian military officer and revolutionary who served as the second president of Egypt from 1954 until his death in 1970. Nasser led the Egyptian revolution of 1952 a ...

. He has spent most of his engineering career living and working in the

Middle East The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...

and

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

as a construction engineer.

Writing career

In late 1992, Bauval had been trying to obtain a translation of ''

Hermetica The ''Hermetica'' are texts attributed to the legendary Hellenistic figure Hermes Trismegistus, a syncretic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth. These texts may vary widely in content and purpose, but by modern con ...

'' by

Walter Scott Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832), was a Scottish novelist, poet and historian. Many of his works remain classics of European literature, European and Scottish literature, notably the novels ''Ivanhoe'' (18 ...

. He then came across a new edition printed by Solo Press with a foreword by Adrian Gilbert. Bauval contacted Gilbert after being interested in his foreword concerning a link between an Alexandrine school of

Hermes Trismegistus Hermes Trismegistus (from , "Hermes the Thrice-Greatest") is a legendary Hellenistic period figure that originated as a syncretic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth.A survey of the literary and archaeological eviden ...

and the pyramid builders of the

Fourth dynasty of Egypt The Fourth Dynasty of ancient Egypt (notated Dynasty IV) is characterized as a "golden age" of the Old Kingdom of Egypt. Dynasty IV lasted from to c. 2498 BC. It was a time of peace and prosperity as well as one during which trade with othe ...

. They went on to write ''The Orion Mystery'' together, which became an international bestseller.

BBC Two BBC Two is a British free-to-air Public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's second flagship channel, and it covers a wide range of subject matte ...

broadcast a documentary on Bauval's ideas around the time of the book's publication. He has co-authored three books with

Graham Hancock Graham Bruce Hancock (born 2 August 1950) is a British journalist and author who promotes pseudoscientific ideas about ancient civilizations and hypothetical lost lands. Hancock proposes that an advanced civilization with spiritual technology ...

, including 2004's ''Talisman: Sacred Cities, Secret Faith'' in which the two put forward what sociologist of religion David V. Barrett in a review in ''The Independent'' described as a factually incorrect and unconvincing "mess of a book" based upon indiscriminate use of source material culminating in "promulgating a version of the old Jewish-Masonic plot so beloved by ultra-right-wing conspiracy theorists.

Orion Correlation Theory

Bauval is specifically known for the Orion Correlation Theory (OCT), which proposes a relationship between the fourth dynasty

Egyptian pyramids The Egyptian pyramids are ancient masonry structures located in Egypt. Most were built as tombs for the pharaohs and their consorts during the Old Kingdom of Egypt, Old and Middle Kingdom of Egypt, Middle Kingdom periods. At least 138 identi ...

of the

Giza Plateau The Giza Plateau () is a limestone plateau in Giza, Egypt, the site of the Fourth Dynasty Giza pyramid complex, which includes the pyramids of Pyramid of Khufu, Khufu, Pyramid of Khafre, Khafre and Pyramid of Menkaure, Menkaure, the Great Sphinx o ...

and the alignment of certain stars in the

constellation A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms Asterism (astronomy), a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object. The first constellati ...

of Orion. However, 20 years before Bauval's book ''The Orion Mystery'' suggested that the Giza Pyramids were aligned to Orion's belt, James J. Hurtak pointed out such a correlation in 1973 (published in 1977). One night in 1983, while working in

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in West Asia. Located in the centre of the Middle East, it covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula and has a land area of about , making it the List of Asian countries ...

, he took his family and a friend's family up into the sand dunes of the Arabian Desert for a camping expedition. His friend pointed out the constellation of Orion, and mentioned that Alnitak, the most easterly of the stars making up Orion's belt, was offset slightly from the others. Bauval then made a connection between the layout of the three main stars in Orion's belt and the layout of the three main pyramids in the Giza necropolis. The Orion Correlation Theory has been described as a form of

pseudoarchaeology Pseudoarchaeology (sometimes called fringe or alternative archaeology) consists of attempts to study, interpret, or teach about the subject-matter of archaeology while rejecting, ignoring, or misunderstanding the accepted Scientific method, data ...

. Among the idea's critics have been two astronomers: Ed Krupp of Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, and Anthony Fairall, astronomy professor at the

University of Cape Town The University of Cape Town (UCT) (, ) is a public university, public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university status in 1918, making it the oldest univer ...

, South Africa. Krupp and Fairall independently investigated the angle between the alignment of Orion's Belt to North during the era cited by Bauval (which differs from the angle in the 3rd millennium BCE, because of the

precession of the equinoxes In astronomy, axial precession is a gravity-induced, slow, and continuous change in the orientation of an astronomical body's Rotation around a fixed axis, rotational axis. In the absence of precession, the astronomical body's orbit would show ...

), and found that the angle was somewhat different from the 'perfect match' claimed by Bauval and Hancock: 47 to 50 degrees, compared to the 38-degree angle formed by the pyramids. Krupp also pointed out that the slightly-bent line formed by the three pyramids was deviated towards the North, whereas the slight "kink" in the line of Orion's Belt was deformed to the South, meaning that a direct correlation would require one or the other to be inverted. Indeed, this is what was done in the original book by Bauval and Gilbert (''The Orion Mystery''), which compared images of the pyramids and Orion without revealing that the pyramids' map had been inverted. Krupp and Fairall find other problems with the claims, including the point that if the Sphinx is meant to represent the constellation of Leo, then it should be on the opposite side of the Nile (the 'Milky Way') from the pyramids ('Orion'), that the vernal equinox around 10,500 BCE was in

Virgo Virgo may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Virgo (film), a 1970 Egyptian film * Virgo (character), several Marvel Comics characters * Virgo Asmita, a character in the manga ''Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas'' * ''Virgo'' (album), by Virgo Four, ...

and not Leo, and that the constellations of the

Zodiac The zodiac is a belt-shaped region of the sky that extends approximately 8° north and south celestial latitude of the ecliptic – the apparent path of the Sun across the celestial sphere over the course of the year. Within this zodiac ...

originate from Mesopotamia and were unknown in Egypt at the time.

''Atlantis Reborn'' documentary

On 4 November 1999, the BBC broadcast a documentary entitled ''Atlantis Reborn'' which tested the ideas of Robert Bauval and his colleague, Graham Hancock. Bauval and Hancock afterwards complained to the BSC (Broadcasting Standards Commission) that they had been treated unfairly. A hearing followed and in November 2000 the BSC ruled in favour of the documentary makers on all but one of the ten principal complaints brought by Hancock and Bauval. The BSC dismissed all but one of the complaints, with the one being upheld being in respect of an omission of their rebuttal of a specific argument against the Orion Correlation Theory. In regard of the nine remaining complaints, the BSC ruled against Hancock and Bauval, concluding that they had not been treated unfairly in the criticism of their theories concerning carbon-dating, the Great Sphinx of Egypt, Cambodia's Angkor temples, Japan's Yonaguni formation and the mythical land of Atlantis. The BBC offered to broadcast a revised version of the documentary, which was welcomed by Hancock and Bauval. It was broadcast as ''Atlantis Reborn Again'' on 14 December 2000. The revised documentary continued to present serious doubts about Bauval and Hancock's ideas, as held by astronomer Anthony Fairall, Ed Krupp of the Griffith Observatory, Egyptologist Kate Spence of Cambridge University and Eleanor Mannikka of the University of Michigan.

Works

*''The Orion Mystery'' (with Adrian Gilbert) (1994) *''Keeper of Genesis'' (with Graham Hancock) (1995) *'' The Message of the Sphinx'' (with Graham Hancock) (May 1997) *''Secret Chamber'' (1999) *''Talisman: Sacred Cities, Secret Faith'' (with Graham Hancock) (2004) *''The Egypt Code'' (Oct 2006) *''Black Genesis: The Prehistoric Origins of Ancient Egypt'' (with Thomas Brophy PhD) (April 2011) *''The Master Game: Unmasking the Secret Rulers of the World'' (Sept 2011) *''Breaking The Mirror of Heaven: The Conspiracy To Suppress The Voice of Ancient Egypt'' (with Ahmed Osman) (July 2012) *''Imhotep the African: Architect of the Cosmos'' (with Thomas Brophy) (Sept 1, 2013) *''The Vatican Heresy: Bernini and the Building of the Hermetic Temple of the Sun'' (with Chiara Hohenzollern and Sandro Zicari PhD) (March 2014) *''Secret Chamber Revisited: The Quest for the Lost Knowledge of Ancient Egypt'' (11 October 2014)

References

External links

*Ed Krupp article
"Pyramid Marketing Schemes"
*Jaromir Malek article
"Orion and the Giza pyramids"

interview with Robert Bauval (video) {{DEFAULTSORT:Bauval, Robert Living people 1948 births Egyptian writers Afrocentrists Atlantis proponents El Nasr Boys' School alumni