Location | Kariong, Central Coast |
---|---|
Coordinates | 33°27′07″S151°18′11″E / 33.451833°S 151.303001°E |
The Gosford Glyphs, also known as Kariong Hieroglyphs, are a group of approximately 300 Egyptian-style hieroglyphs located in Kariong, Australia. They are found in an area known for its Aboriginal petroglyphs, between Gosford and Woy Woy, New South Wales, within the Brisbane Water National Park.
The glyphs have been dismissed as a hoax by authorities and academics after their discovery in the 1970s, but there are still attempts to prove the false belief that they were carved by the ancient Egyptians about 4,500 years ago. [1]
While rumours of Egyptian glyphs have existed since the 1920s, a spokesperson for the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) has said "The engravings are something we became aware of in the early 1980s, which is around the time the majority were thought to have been made." [2]
In late 2023 the NPWS began dislodging boulders it deemed unsafe near the glyphs. These works were criticized by residents and a local environmental protection organization as unnecessary and extreme. [3]
They depict boats, chickens, dogs, owls, stick men, a dog's bone as well as two cartouches that appear to be the names of kings, one of them Khufu (second king of the Fourth Dynasty, 2637–2614 BC), the other uncertain. These names are given the same personal name and throne name. There is also a carving of the ancient Egyptian god Anubis. [4]
The carvings were first formally reported in 1975 by Alan Dash, a local surveyor working for Gosford Council who had been visiting the area for seven years without seeing the glyphs. Dash continued to visit for five years and saw new glyphs whenever he visited. [5] Up until their discovery, the site of the glyphs was engulfed with sand and rocks, and had overgrown vegetation. In 1983, David Lamber, then a rock art conservator for the NPWS, found some clean-cut hieroglyphs which he estimated to be less than twelve months old. [4] From the mid 1990s, the site started to receive more public attention.
Since then, the hieroglyphs have been claimed by pseudohistorians to be authentic script created about 4,500 years ago, by Egyptians who sailed to Australia and engraved their story into the stones after becoming shipwrecked. [6]
Professor Boyo Ockinga has said:
"[T]here are many reasons why they are not accepted as genuine hieroglyphics...
"First of all the way they're cut is not the way ancient Egyptian rock inscriptions are produced, they're very disorganised...
"There's also a problem with the actual shapes of the signs that are used. There's no way people would've been inscribing texts from the time of Cheops from the signs that weren't invented until 2500 years later."
He suggested that the glyphs might have been made in the 1920s by Australian soldiers when there was general interest in ancient Egypt after the uncovering of the Tomb of Tutankhamun at that time. The soldiers, who had served in the Sultanate of Egypt from the mid 1910s to early 1920s, cited an example of shapes in the form of the Sphinx and a pyramid known to have been made by a returning soldier. [1]
Australian Professor of Egyptology Naguib Kanawati has also stated that they are not authentic and that they "were constructed in the early 1980s", [7] concluding that the hieroglyphs within the same panels were of widely different periods and some were carved backwards. [5] Other theories for their creation include high school students who copied them from their textbooks in the 1970s and a Yugoslavian immigrant with an interest in Egyptology who etched them in the early 1980s. [7] Geologists have stated that the sandstone in which the hieroglyphs are carved erodes quickly and nearby 250-year-old Aboriginal petroglyphs at the Bulgandry Aboriginal Art Site show considerably more erosion. [5]
Egyptian hieroglyphs were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with more than 100 distinct characters. Cursive hieroglyphs were used for religious literature on papyrus and wood. The later hieratic and demotic Egyptian scripts were derived from hieroglyphic writing, as was the Proto-Sinaitic script that later evolved into the Phoenician alphabet. Through the Phoenician alphabet's major child systems, the Egyptian hieroglyphic script is ancestral to the majority of scripts in modern use, most prominently the Latin and Cyrillic scripts and the Arabic script, and possibly the Brahmic family of scripts.
Egyptology is the scientific study of ancient Egypt. The topics studied include ancient Egyptian history, language, literature, religion, architecture and art from the 5th millennium BC until the end of its native religious practices in the 4th century AD.
Khafre or Khafra, also known as Khephren or Chephren, was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty during the Old Kingdom. He was the son of Khufu and the successor of Djedefre.
Newspaper Rock State Historic Monument is a Utah state monument featuring a rock panel carved with one of the largest known collections of petroglyphs. It is located in San Juan County, along Utah State Route 211, 28 miles (45 km) northwest of Monticello and 53 miles (85 km) south of Moab.
The Central Coast is a peri-urban region lying on the Pacific Ocean in northern-eastern New South Wales, Australia. The region is situated north of Sydney, which is filled with subtropical national parks, forests and also encompasses the major coastal waterways of Brisbane Water, Tuggerah Lakes and southern Lake Macquarie. The region's hinterland, which has fertile valleys, rural farmland and wineries, and also includes the Watagan Mountains. The Central Coast is known for its regional coastal towns like Terrigal, The Entrance, Ettalong Beach, Budgewoi and Bateau Bay with resorts and holiday parks, which feature many expansive beaches and lagoons with surfing and coastal tracks, as well as scenic views. Gosford is the main commercial hub and gateway.
A petroglyph is an image created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, or abrading, as a form of rock art. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions of the technique to refer to such images. Petroglyphs, estimated to be 20,000 years old are classified as protected monuments and have been added to the tentative list of UNESCO's World Heritage Sites. Petroglyphs are found worldwide, and are often associated with prehistoric peoples. The word comes from the Greek prefix petro-, from πέτρα petra meaning "stone", and γλύφω glýphō meaning "carve", and was originally coined in French as pétroglyphe.
Archaeological forgery is the manufacture of supposedly ancient items that are sold to the antiquities market and may even end up in the collections of museums. It is related to art forgery.
In archaeology, rock art is human-made markings placed on natural surfaces, typically vertical stone surfaces. A high proportion of surviving historic and prehistoric rock art is found in caves or partly enclosed rock shelters; this type also may be called cave art or parietal art. A global phenomenon, rock art is found in many culturally diverse regions of the world. It has been produced in many contexts throughout human history. In terms of technique, the four main groups are:
Miꞌkmaw hieroglyphic writing or Suckerfish script was a writing system for the Miꞌkmaw language, later superseded by various Latin scripts which are currently in use. Mi'kmaw are a Canadian First Nation whose homeland, called Mi'kma'ki, overlaps much of the Maritime provinces, specifically all of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and parts of New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador.
Petroglyphs Provincial Park is a historical-class provincial park situated in Woodview, Ontario, Canada, northeast of Peterborough. It has the largest collection of ancient First Nations petroglyphs in Ontario. The carvings were created in the pre-Columbian era and represents aspects of First Nations spirituality, including images of shamans, animals, reptiles, and, possibly, the Great Spirit itself.
The throwing stick or throwing club is a wooden rod with either a pointed tip or a spearhead attached to one end, intended for use as a weapon. A throwing stick can be either straight or roughly boomerang-shaped, and is much shorter than the javelin. It became obsolete as slings and bows became more prevalent, except on the Australian continent, where the native people continued refining the basic design. Throwing sticks shaped like returning boomerangs are designed to fly straight to a target at long ranges, their surfaces acting as airfoils. When tuned correctly they do not exhibit curved flight, but rather they fly on an extended straight flight path. Straight flight ranges greater than 100 m (330 ft) have been reported by historical sources as well as in recent research.
Sanilac Petroglyphs Historic State Park is a state park in the U.S. state of Michigan. The park, also known as ezhibiigadek asin consists of 240 acres (97 ha) in Greenleaf Township, Sanilac County, in Michigan's Thumb. It contains the largest collection of Native American petroglyphs in Michigan. The carvings were created in the pre-Columbian era and represent aspects of Native American spirituality. An interpretive hiking trail within the park passes along the nearby Cass River.
Kariong is a locality of the Central Coast region of New South Wales, Australia west of Gosford along the Central Coast Highway. It is part of the Central Coast Council local government area.
The Ewaninga Conservation Reserve is a protected area in the Northern Territory of Australia consisting of an area of low sand dunes, rocky outcrops and a claypan about 35 kilometres (22 mi) south of Alice Springs. It is significant because of a large number of Aboriginal rock carvings.
The Petroglyphs of Pusharo constitute a unique and extensive ancient rock art archaeological site in southeastern Peru's Manú National Park, an expanse of rain forest that still contains unexplored and little known areas, and for which an official government permit is required for entry.
Aboriginal sites of New South Wales consist of a large number of places in the Australian state of New South Wales where it is still possible to see visible signs of the activities and culture of the Australian Aboriginals who previously occupied these areas.
In ancient Egyptian art, the Set animal, or sha, is the totemic animal of the god Set. Because Set was identified with the Greek monster Typhon, the animal is also commonly known as the Typhonian animal or Typhonic beast.
Frederic Slater was an Australian journalist, poet, researcher and "authority on aboriginal folk lore".
The Mount Penang Juvenile Justice Centre is a heritage-listed former juvenile detention centre, now a parkland and redevelopment precinct known as Mount Penang Parklands. It is situated on the Pacific Highway at Somersby, Central Coast, New South Wales, Australia. It was designed by James Nangle and built from 1912 by the New South Wales Public Works Department. It was also known as The Farm Home for Boys, Girrakool and Kariong Juvenile Detention Centre. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 19 September 2003. Today, Mount Penang Parklands is a redevelopment precinct containing parks and gardens, a high school, an events park, commercial and office space and residential development.
The archaeology of Ancient Egypt is the study of the archaeology of Egypt, stretching from prehistory through three millennia of documented history. Egyptian archaeology is one of the branches of Egyptology.