Review of Ancient Aliens S20E17: “Egypt’s Giant Tombs”

​So long ago that everyone eventually forgot the story had to be invented, early Christians claimed that the monstrous, seemingly supersized animal-headed gods depicted on the walls of Egyptian temples were the infamous Nephilim of Genesis 6, understood to be giants, much as pagan writers had speculated that the carvings represented the Titans. Due to the influence of the Book of Enoch, Late Antique Christians believed Egypt to have been the home of the Watchers and the Nephilim, whom Enoch visited in the far deserts, a claim the monk Annianus seemingly placed in his now-lost fifth-century world history. Stories spread in medieval times that Moses had slain a giant in Egypt whose body became a bridge over the Nile. Islamic writers spoke vaguely of two races of Egyptian giants, the native descendants of Cain (i.e. Nephilim) and a branch of the family from Arabia, called the ’Ādites, who invaded under Shaddad ibn ’Ād and built pyramids. However, Muslim writers, insisted, Egypt’s native Christians, the Copts, denied that the ’Ādites had ever conquered Egypt.

​Nevertheless, all these giants were wiped out by the Flood, washing away the corrupt, evil race from antediluvian times. This rather baroque mythology (which I have greatly simplified—it runs a hundred pages in the Akhbār al-zamān of c. 950 CE), lost much of its theological detail and historical complexity over the centuries until, by the time Frederic Louis Norden wrote his Voyage d’Egypte et de Nubie ​in 1755, the story had been bastardized into a, more of less literal, tall tale: “A tradition prevails amongst inhabitants of Egypt, that it had formerly been peopled by a race of giants; by whom have been raised the pyramids, spacious palaces, and temples whose remains are the object of our present attention.”
 
The “Giant” tombs Ancient Aliens looks at tonight have not been the tombs of “giants” for very long, and each time they appear on Ancient Aliens​, they suddenly have a new purpose and meaning. As I discussed in 2018 when the show suddenly reversed course and declared the sarcophagi of the Apis Bulls to be those of Nephilim alien giants, the claim is both recent and of unpleasant origins:

Next, the show gawks at the oversized sarcophagi of the Apis Bulls, made of granite and housing the bodies of the bulls (or forgeries thereof—sometimes they were composite taxidermy creations), though the show both denies that this is the case and also accepts the cult of the Apis Bull as predynastic. Tsoukalos cites Herodotus, Strabo, and Eusebius as supporting his belief that Egypt’s golden age dates back 10,000 years or more. He probably doesn’t actually know that Eusebius believed the Egyptians were liars and that no kings were in Egypt before Menes, the first pharaoh of the First Dynasty, whom the Egyptians considered the first human pharaoh after the gods and demigods. The segment—right down to the claim that the sarcophagi feature “perfect” ninety degree angles—is lifted from a claim circulating in Christian extremist circles last year that the sarcophagi actually belonged the Nephilim—the giant sons of the Watchers. Ancient Aliens simply substituted “giant” extraterrestrials for the Nephilim, having equated the two in the previous segment. Tsoukalos seems to completely forget that in 2013 he completely accepted that the sarcophagi held bulls, and that his show claimed them to be air-tight star gates to another dimension, not Nephilim tombs. The show spends some time alleging that sarcophagi of all kinds were made of granite to make use of its quartz for electrical reasons—causing mummies to transform into beings of pure energy—claims similar to those we have heard in previous episodes about supposed piezoelectrical wonders in Egypt.

​At least back then, the claim only took a few minutes. This time, we have an hour, and a whole new fantasy of what might have been in the box: gigantic genetically engineered chimeras.

A 19th century engraving of the Serapeum, with an Apis bull sarcophagus visible at left.

​Segment 1
We open with Auguste Mariette and his nineteenth century work exploring and excavating in Egypt, leading to his discovery of the sarcophagi of the Apis bulls in the Serapeum at Saqqara. The twenty-four sarcophagi were empty, twenty-three with open lids and one still apparently sealed, but still empty. The show suggests it is inexplicable that no bulls were found in the sarcophagi.

​Segment 2
The second segment repeats part of the first about the Serapeum and then marvels at the size and weight of the sarcophagi, with Ramy Romany, the show’s pet Egyptologist, declaring their 70-ton weight “impossible” to move. (In reality, they were moved with levers and rollers, and lowered into place by filling the vault with sand, setting them atop the sand, and then removing the sand, lowering the boxes.) Robert Schoch alleges that they are “precisely” carved to a “thousandth of an inch” with “incredibly perfect” right angles. Giorgio Tsoukalos asserts that the basalt cannot be cut with ancient tools, so they had to be “vitrified” with advanced liquification technology. The show alleges that the Egyptians recycled much more ancient “stone boxes” for Apis bulls, their original purpose being unknown.
 
Auguste Mariette also found a wooden sarcophagus with a human-shaped mummy inside made from bull bones. The show denies that Khaemweset built the lesser vaults of the Serapeum as archaeologists concluded, but instead claim he merely restored a set of vaults built at the start of the Apis bull cult in 3200 BCE, but they do not bother to provide any evidence to support the redating.

​Segment 3
The third segment discusses the Apis bull cult, from its earliest traces under Menes c. 3200 BCE down to the Greek syncretic version under Serapis. The show claims that before Menes, space aliens ruled over Egypt. David Childress and William Henry say that the sarcophagi are too big even full bulls, so they must have held something else. So, we flash to the discovery of similar sarcophagi at the Bucheum, where the Buchis bulls were buried. There, among the bull mummies, one unusual mummy was uncovered, and it turned out the bull-shaped mummy wasn’t a bull but a false mummy made up of random animal parts. Ancient Aliens doesn’t bother to tell you that this mummy is very late, from the Greco-Roman period. The show, instead, claims the bones all belonged to one hybrid monster, and they assert that the sarcophagi were vaults to lock up “genetic mutations by extraterrestrials.” Their repeated refrain that bodies could not be violated in burial is false, at least for animals, since we have many smaller mummies that appear to be animals but are random collections of bones.

Segment 4
The fourth segment discusses traces of radiation found in the Serapeum sarcophagi. Chris Dunn alleges that the boxes once held radioactive nuclear material, while the show’s other talking heads suggest the boxes used the piezoelectric effect to generate electricity. According to real science, while the Serapeum does indeed have the highest recorded levels of radiation, radiation can be found in many tombs.

​Segment 5
The fifth segment claims the boxes are “activated by sound” and their quartz crystals produce a “harmonic vibration” that will “affect human consciousness.” Schoch says that being near the boxes can produce “psychic experiences.” The narrator adds that such psychic energy could help people to communicate with beings from other dimensions, or to teleport to other planets. The show alleges that the Greeks said the Apis bull was created by a “flash of lightning,” so we are really talking about teleportation, but the actual story is that a flash of light came down from heaven and entered a virgin cow, thus impregnating her (Herodotus, Histories 3.28). By leaving out the cow, the show tries to create a “portal” out of a virgin birth. (Lighting as a divine fertilizer was widespread in Antiquity; Alexander was said to have been born when lightning impregnated his mother [Plutarch, Alexander 2], as was a Chinese emperor. Zeus fertilized as a fire, and Plutarch reported that lightning fertilized fields [Sympos. 4.2].) 

​Segment 6
The final segment compares the oldest known Egyptian mummy to the Serapeum’s tombs to argue that the Serapeum tombs are vastly older and made use of fantastical technologies. Tsoukalos argues that humans are lazy and would never build anything large and carefully made without a “pressing reason,” and apparently religious faith isn’t reason enough for him. He also repeats Erich von Däniken’s claim about “guardians of the sky” being responsible for ancient Egyptian wonders. It’s too long to get into here, but as I have discussed for the past 11 years, old Erich misunderstood al-Maqrizi’s history of Egypt, written in the 1400s, for an ancient Egyptian text and badly translated into English a German translation of the “Watchers” from the Book of Enoch as “Guardians of the Sky” and used them to refer to the “angels” given in al-Maqrizi.