The Nile is clogged with mystery – and inaccuracy. Today, Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities closed the Great Pyramid at Giza. According to The Jerusalem Post, “protesters said various groups, among them Jews, planned to attend a numerologist ceremony on the Giza Plateau.”
Apparently, Egyptians feared that on November 11th, 2011 (11/11/11), the Jews would reclaim for themselves the structures they allegedly built in antiquity, thereby denying the Egyptians their cultural patrimony. Moreover, the Egyptians worried that more than a thousand Jews would crown “the mightiest of the three structures with a Star of David in order to assert the claim that Jewish slaves built the pyramids.” SCA authorities claim that the Great Pyramid is only closed for maintenance, but local rumors – and the presence of Egyptian soldiers patrolling the pyramid – have added to the perception of a Jewish “threat.”
Is this the same country that argued for a more rational democracy? Egyptian claims of Jews desiring to retake “their” pyramids are ridiculous and completely irrational. No sensible individual can believe that there’s a giant conspiracy to “take back” the Great Pyramid – there is no evidence whatsoever for this idea. The ease with which people choose to believe such bizarre theories is astounding.
The reports seem to have two separate threads. One involves an alleged Jewish plot to claim the pyramids. To my knowledge, no one claims that today’s pyramids belong to the Jews, even if some believe that our biblical ancestors built them. The second thread concerns some potentially real and strange rituals that individuals wanted to take place at the pyramid. The Jerusalem Post recounts the story of a Polish numerologist group that wanted to hold some rites today at the pyramids. However, there is no evidence that these occultists are Jews. Presumably, the Egyptian media understood there to be some mystical rites associated with the pyramids and immediately perceived those rituals as a threat. Its members associated this strange ritual, which is involved with structures the Israelites allegedly built thousands of years ago, with today’s Jews. The Jews are simply scapegoats.
The two strands don’t match up factually. For one, there is no importance ascribed to the date 11-11-2011 in Judaism, to my knowledge. Furthermore, the Post reports that “former SCA Secretary General Abdel Halim Noureddin told Al Ahram Jewish Masons have been trying to cap the Great Pyramid since 1931″ with the Jewish star. Noureddin cites no credible sources. The Egyptians seem to have automatically associated “threatening occultists” with “Jews.” This is just another example of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
