Ancient Egypt has always fascinated people, not only by the size of the monuments they left for us to marvel at, but for many other reasons such as its reputation among the ancients, transmitted to us by so many writers, for wisdom, artistic ability and by the curiosity induced by its peculiar writing system.

One of the major drawbacks Egyptology has had since it started its auspicious existence as a science in 1831, when J. F. Champollion was appointed the first professor of this discipline at the Collège de France, shortly before he died, has been the periodical appearance of charlatans of one or other kind who trying to attract attention to themselves (and perhaps make some money as well), inflict on the public all sorts of strange ideas, which sadly appeal to people’s imagination much more than the sober conclusions of serious scholars.

Everything started with the ancient Greeks who, as Serge Sauneron explained so well in one of his books, interpreted the reticence by Egyptians of the Late Period to talk too much about their country to these inquiring strangers, so different to them, as an encouragement to speculate and attribute to the ancient Egyptians fantastic deeds, far exceeding the also wonderful but no so exaggerated reality.

The legend of the lost continent of Atlantis and its great civilization was born, to which later writers assigned the role of the first civilized settlers of Egypt, where they brought their knowledge and traditions after their continent sank into the ocean.

Few laymen realize that this kind of ideas that refuse ancient peoples the right to their own past and explain it as the influence of colonizing outsiders, actually reflect a form of racism and ignore the enormous amount of evidence that points in another direction, showing those accomplishments to be the result of the achievements of the very community they so lightly relegate to the role of passive imitators of other people's culture and technology.

The ancient Romans, in spite of a certain contempt for a people they had so easily conquered and who Juvenal had immortalized displaying his ignorance rather than his ingenuity, as seeming to worship the common vegetables in the garden, could not ignore the magnificent monuments in that country that spoke of an undeniable past greatness and reluctantly accepted some of the stories passed on by the Greeks and were also intrigued by the mystical experiences of the ancient Egyptians. Thus, temples devoted mainly to the great goddess Isis could be found all over the vast Roman empire.

When a cloak of darkness fell over ancient Egypt, after the Christian Roman emperors banned the use of the hieroglyphic writing system in the country and its pagan priests, the last stronghold of the old ways and traditions, were persecuted and chased south into the Sudan, the ground was fertile for more strange stories to appear about this civilization.

Mystical (and unsuccessful) attempts to translate the ancient writing system in the Renaissance led to the loss of reputation by otherwise respected scholars such as A. Kircher and others. Some writers, based on the Bible (or rather, using the Bible to their own ends) claimed that monuments such as the pyramids were granaries or according to Piazzi Smyth, the symbol of divine revelation and extraordinarily accurate mathematical calculations.

The fact that Petrie, one of the founders of modern archaeology, caught one of the followers of these strange theories actually sawing off some of the stone inside the Great Pyramid so as to make the monument fit the theory, did not deter the believers who up to the present day write book after book (often bestsellers) on the subject.

The discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922, which dazzled the world with its stories of buried gold, strange statues and inscriptions, and especially the mummy of the young king, brought about a hunger for sensationalist news about the discovery, which unscrupulous journalists tried to placate with fantastic stories of imaginary curses and mysterious deaths. Again, the fact that the main culprit of the desecration, Howard Carter, and some of his closest assistants, seemed unaffected and lived long, happy lives, did not deter the followers of the new myth from trying to deceive the public with their biased and deliberately misleading accounts of the facts surrounding the discovery of the tomb and its aftermath.

More recently, with the advent of the so-called "New Age" and the associated tide of irrational beliefs, other theories flourished, such as old mystical ones and others like that of "Pyramid Power", according to which mainly the Great Pyramid at Giza could somehow generate energy that could preserve food, sharpen knives and benefit human health. For a time millions of books on the subject were sold and the fact that the University of Guelph in Canada, pestered by the repeated challenges and inquiries, carried out a series of tests and found all those allegations to be false, did not seem to affect the brief popularity of the appealing theory.

We will not refer here to the truly fantastic stories of little green men and other alien creatures in ancient Egypt, sphinxes in Mars or that the ancient Egyptians used a sort of synthetic material rather than natural stone to build their pyramids and the like because very few reasonable people seem to take them seriously.

Nowadays, with the increasing development of the media and the need for interesting stories to tell people, there are very favourable conditions for the appearance (or rather the re-enactment) of more attempts to deceive the public and capture their interest through stimulating their imagination in spurious ways.

Egyptologists have always welcomed the contributions of scholars from other fields to Egyptian archaeology and due to the increasingly more multidisciplinarian nature of our discipline, such valuable input has improved our knowledge by leaps and bounds because they deal with fields of expertise that Egyptologists are not usually familiar with.

But when medical doctors, engineers, chemists, architects and many others go off on tangents of their own, without realizing that history and archaeology are disciplines with their own methodology and body of knowledge that has to be considered, those people end up most of the time spreading doubtful or downright unacceptable theories, while they could have made useful contributions if they had worked with the close supervision of professional egyptologists who could have pointed out the historical or archaeological shortcomings of their, to them, "scientifically sound" views. When egyptologists almost unanimously reject some of those claims, these people should take a new hard look at their findings before they start talking or writing of "orthodox academic short-sightedness".

In the same way as egyptologists would be very ill-advised to barge into another field of research and announce dramatic discoveries without the proper qualifications and without consultation with leading experts in that field in order to avoid making fools of themselves, scholars from other disciplines should perhaps act in such cautious and reasonable manner when they attempt to make contributions to Egyptology.

Other amateurs argue that they should be allowed to participate in archaeological work in Egypt in view of the mistakes sometimes made by the professionals now and in the past and also in view of the good use made by archaeologists of the notes made by tourists or other untrained visitors, but what these people suggest is similar to allowing amateurs to help in the work for instance, of medical doctors as nurses treating sick people or of engineers building bridges or of conservators working in the preservation of masterpieces like the Sistine Chapel or of paintings by the great masters with the excuse that doctors sometimes make mistakes as well as engineers and conservators... To them, what would seem unacceptable and even dangerous in other disciplines, should be allowed and encouraged in Egyptology for obscure reasons.

It is true that Egyptology, like other subjects in the humanities, needs funds from the public for their increasingly more expensive projects, and if some sort of participation is not devised for those generous sponsors, such funds might eventually dry up, but there are many ways in which amateurs can help and promote archaeological work such as media exposure of the results, publication, guided visits to the sites, etc., which do not involve any risk to the scientific validity of the work itself.

The public should also be warned about the current popularity of unlikely theories about ancient Egypt published by people who did not have what it takes to make a name for themselves in the academic world and that, when such speculations are rejected by scholars, resort to the public instead as if popular acclaim would somehow get them the recognition they cannot get by other means. Needless to say, that the very substantial income generated by the sale of books and TV documentaries should also be considered as a possible motivation that leads some authors to ignore the fact that they are actually playing with people's good faith by spreading such views.

We think it is our duty, as egyptologists, in spite of being busy with teaching or with serious research, to come forward every time this happens and offer our point of view so that people can make up their minds with the whole picture before them. We also feel it is the duty of responsible, professional and well-meaning journalists to consult us before publishing any strange or unusual story or theory dealing with ancient Egypt. There is no reason for them not to apply to items involving ancient times the same principle they apply to current news. The public will no doubt benefit from this approach and many charlatans will be exposed before they can do any damage.

Let us also remember that it is only due to the efforts of accredited scholars that our knowledge about ancient people has dramatically increased in the last hundred years, not one single piece of important solid evidence has been provided by the so-called "independent researchers" that so arrogantly claim to have made significant discoveries. If it were for them, we would still be guessing about the meaning of the Egyptian hieroglyphs or about the birth of civilization on the banks of the Nile.

Egyptologists are arduously trained, serious professionals, working in reputable academic institutions, who without attractive material rewards try to broaden our horizons in this field through honest and hard work, sometimes right, sometimes wrong, but always learning from their mistakes as true scientists and pressing forward all the time increasing our knowledge about a wonderful ancient civilization.

It is our belief that the public will be well advised in turning first of all to them in their quest for answers when they want to know more about this subject.