QUOTE
Yet, strangely, just a few hundred
meters away to the west is something curious marked on a map of the
plateau made in 1837 by John Shae Perring (1813-1869), the
British engineer and anthropologist who worked alongside Col Richard William
Howard Vyse (1754-1853), the British
soldier and anthropologist who investigated the monuments of Giza at
this time. It refers to 'Excavated tombs and pits of bird mummies'
in connection with an accompanying drawing showing a north facing
entrance to an east-west running ridge, as well as several chambers
in a line each side of a north-south corridor.
Other smaller rooms are also shown at
the southern end of the cave-like catacomb. Further investigations
by my colleague Nigel Skinner Simpson turned up only one reference
to this presumed sepulchral monument of unknown age in Vyse's three
volume opus OPERATIONS CARRIED ON AT GIZA (1837).
Volume I, page 238, states:
3rd May 1837.
I examined the rocky ground to the
westward of the Great Pyramid and the tombs and buildings to the
north of the second. Foundations might everywhere be traced
under the sands; and shafts lined with unburnt bricks amongst
which probably a cartouche might be found which would determine
the date of the constructions. Portals and sepulchral chambers
had been formed in the northern ridge of the mountain.
The entrance of one of the largest
was supported by square pillars, and contained a mummy pit. The
interior consisted of two ruined chambers which had formerly
been adorned with painted stucco but were filled with the sands
of the desert. A staircase descended from these apartments to a
lower range of excavations and shafts where fragments of mummies
and of embalmed animals were to be found beneath the sand. Part
of a large bird which had been preserved with great care was
brought out."
Sadly, Vyse makes no other references to
this underground maze of tombs and pits, and so we learn no more
about the 'part of a large bird ' that was removed, or why Perring's
map refers to 'bird mummies' in plural. Yet it implies that this was
some kind of catacomb similar to those found at nearby Saqqara, one
of which was found to contain tens of thousands of hawks sacred to
the god Horus.
These had been deposited as votive
offerings over a several-hundred year period, c. 750-350 BC. She to
whom were they offered at Giza? If not Horus, who is associated with
the plateau in his form as Horemakhet (Harmakhet, Harmachis), ‘Horus
in the Horizon', and is a name also for the the Great Sphinx - then
Giza's 'tombs and pits' might well have been sacred to the falcon
god Sokar.
However, Vyse's statement that part of a
'large bird' was removed does tend to imply an avian specimen larger
than the common hawk, kestrel or falcon. And why was this bird
catacomb to be found beyond the northwest corner of the plateau,
facing out towards the northern skies? It is a frustratingly,
baffling enigma.
UNQUOTE