National Geographic aired a special today on Fox, mixing interesting prerecorded footage on how the logistics of building the pyramids were handled (by skilled workers augmented by seasonal labor, well fed and treated, not slaves). What mars this show are the two “live” publicity stunts, opening a 4500-year sarcophagus and drilling a hole through an obstruction in a narrow shaft leading from the Queen’s Chamber.

I had a feeling of déjà vu: I remember seeing a documentary on TV about a German engineer who designed a robot, “Upuaut” to explore that same shaft. I only caught the National Geographic special halfway through, but there did not seem to be any credit given to the truly original work done by the Upuaut project. There are other unpleasant aspects to this show, such as the frequent name-dropping with the two featured archeologists, and the on-screen histrionics of one of them, an Egyptian who is also his government’s chief official archeologist (not to mention the conflicts of interest between his official position and the one he holds with National Geographic).

Even the presenter’s pompous final words rankle: “We still stand on sacred ground, home to the world’s first great civilization”, as if that distinction did not in fact belong to Uruk and Susa, in ancient Sumer and Elam in Mesopotamia (modern-day Irak and Iran).

A quick search on Google found an interesting page on this subject. All in all, this is a rather unpleasant spectacle of self-aggrandizement and boosterism, and I am rather disappointed by National Geographic’s unseemly behavior.

I do not agree with most of the latter website’s flights of fancy. Napoléon Bonaparte started Egyptomania with his 1798 expedition to Egypt, and ever since, all sorts of pseudo-mystical fantasies have grown around the supposed cosmic significance of the pyramids. Indeed, one can read Martin Gardner’s excellent book Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science to see how Jehovah’s Witnesses were originally an apocalyptic sect who thought the shape of the great pyramid’s main shaft predicted history and the coming end of the world. When the apocalypse failed to occur, twice, they moved on to slightly more mainstream beliefs…

On a lighter tone:

• A hilarious cartoon on User-Friendly.
• Terry Pratchett’s Pyramids, set in the Discworld but with thinly veiled references to Egypt.
• P.J. O’Rourke’s great article on Egypt in The Atlantic