Derry man to cause storm with book about Pyramids

BRENDAN McDAID

28 November 2006

A Londonderry man is set to cause a storm of controversy among academics with a new book claiming the Pyramids were built thousands of years later than currently believed.

Major US non-fiction publisher Algora has now committed Emmet Sweeney's groundbreaking book, The Empire of Thebes, to print.

The 51-year-old author, who has spent 20 years studying the mysteries of Egyptology and visiting ancient sites, also claims in his new book that many of the Pharoahs reigned a lot closer to the time of Christ than first thought.

Research conducted by Mr Sweeney, a University of Ulster graduate from Malborough Street, found a number of similarities between Old Testament Biblical writings and those unearthed in Egypt, which were traditionally thought to have been much older.

Mr Sweeney, who lectures at West University in Timisoara, Romania, has previously had his work published on the Arthurial legend and Stonehenge, as well as books on Egypt and Israel.

Speaking at his Derry home, he commented today: "The new book looks at many of the mysteries of the ancient world and the chronology of Egypt's civilisation.

"The work to construct the Pyramids is very advanced. They are made of granite, which can only be carved with steel.

"It has been accepted previously that these Pyramids were built 3,000 years before Christ, using flint, which could not have happened.

"They were built around 800BC when people had access to steel. That is a big reduction in the chronology."

Mr Sweeney said that such notions had been challenged before in the 1950s by Immanuel Velikovsky, who was ridiculed at the time by the formidable old academic guard.

Taking up the abandoned mantle, however, Mr Sweeney has found many of his predecessor's theories were not that far off the mark.

While Cleopatra is well documented in Roman literature as being alive in the decades before Christ, the chronology of the generations of Pharoahs that preceded her remains "hazy", he said.