Gosford Glyphs facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Gosford Glyphs |
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The Gosford Glyphs, also called the Kariong Hieroglyphs, are about 300 carvings that look like ancient Egyptian writing. You can find them in Kariong, New South Wales, Australia. This area is also known for its Aboriginal petroglyphs, which are carvings made by Indigenous people. The glyphs are located between Gosford and Woy Woy, inside the Brisbane Water National Park.
When these carvings were found in the 1970s, experts and officials said they were a hoax. This means they believed the carvings were not real ancient Egyptian writing. However, some people still try to show that the glyphs were made by ancient Egyptians around 4,500 years ago.
Rumours about Egyptian carvings in the area have been around since the 1920s. But a spokesperson for the National Parks and Wildlife Service stated that most of the carvings were likely made in the early 1980s.
What the Glyphs Show
The carvings show many different things. You can see boats, chickens, dogs, and owls. There are also simple stick figures and a dog's bone.
Two special carvings are called cartouches. A cartouche is an oval shape with a line at one end, used to enclose the name of a king or queen in ancient Egyptian writing. These cartouches seem to show the names of kings. One name looks like Khufu, who was a king from the Fourth Dynasty of Egypt (around 2637-2614 BC). The other king's name is not clear. There is also a carving of the ancient Egyptian god Anubis. Anubis was the god of mummification and the afterlife.
How They Were Found
The carvings were first officially reported in 1975 by Alan Dash. He was a local surveyor for the Gosford Council. Mr. Dash had visited the area for seven years but had never seen the glyphs before 1975. After that, he kept visiting for five more years and saw new glyphs appear each time.
Before they were found, the area where the glyphs are was covered with sand, rocks, and thick plants. In 1983, David Lamber, who worked to protect rock art for the National Parks and Wildlife Service, found some very clean-cut hieroglyphs. He thought they were less than a year old. More people started paying attention to the site from the mid-1990s.
Since then, some people who study ancient Egypt as a hobby, called amateur Egyptologists, have claimed the hieroglyphs are real. They believe ancient Egyptians sailed to Australia, got shipwrecked, and carved their story into the stones about 4,500 years ago.
Are They Real?
Most experts do not believe the Gosford Glyphs are real ancient Egyptian carvings. Professor Boyo Ockinga, an expert in Egyptology, has given several reasons why:
"[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."
Professor Ockinga also suggested that Australian soldiers might have made the glyphs in the 1920s. At that time, there was a lot of interest in ancient Egypt because the Tomb of Tutankhamun was discovered. Some soldiers had served in Egypt between 1910 and 1920. He mentioned an example of carvings shaped like the Sphinx and a pyramid that were known to be made by a soldier who returned home.
Another Australian Egyptology professor, Naguib Kanawati, also said the carvings are not real. He believes they "were constructed in the early 1980s." He pointed out that hieroglyphs on the same rock panels were from very different time periods. Some were even carved backwards.
Other ideas about who made the glyphs include high school students. They might have copied them from their textbooks in the 1970s. Another theory is that a Yugoslavian immigrant who liked Egyptology etched them in the early 1980s.
Geologists, who study rocks and the Earth, have also looked at the carvings. They say that the sandstone rock where the hieroglyphs are carved wears away quickly. Nearby Aborigine petroglyphs, which are 250 years old, show much more erosion (wearing away) than the Gosford Glyphs. This suggests the Gosford Glyphs are not as old.
Gallery
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The parallel walls where the glyphs are carved
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Different symbols, including a sphinx and the Eye of Horus
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The Egyptian God Anubis, which is the biggest carving at the site
