THE VANISHING EVIDENCE OF

CLASSICAL AFRICAN CIVILIZATIONS:

A 2001 Update
Prof. Manu Ampim
The Vanishing Evidence series is a general summary of years of detailed
observation and research. The full documentation supporting the conclusions
expressed in this series of articles, including dozens of photographs, will be
published in my forthcoming book, Modern Fraud: The Forged Ancient Egyptian
Statues of Ra-Hotep and Nofret. I make no attempt here to prove such a
complicated case as forgeries and the deliberate destruction of African artifacts
in just a few short articles. Rather, this series is simply a preliminary report on my
findings, which will be given extensive treatment in my book Modern Fraud. - MA
SCOPE OF THE VANISHING EVIDENCE SERIES
I originally wrote "The Vanishing Evidence of Classical African Civilizations"
series in The Gaither Reporter in 1995-1996. The 3-part series documents the
unintentional human-aided deterioration, as well as the deliberate and massive
alteration, mutilation, and destruction of ancient Egyptian artifacts. The series
covers three broad categories of this vanishing evidence: the Temple Evidence
(part I), the Tomb Evidence (part II), and the Museum Evidence (part III). Before
writing the series, I had meticulously studied artifacts and images at temples,
tombs, pyramids, museums, and ancient residential sites throughout Egypt and
Nubia (1990, 1994-1995). I also carefully examined ancient Egyptian and Nubian
artifacts at nearly all of the major museums, institutes, and libraries in eleven
European countries (1989-1990), and in dozens of cities throughout the U.S. and
Canada (1991-1992). Overall, I painstakingly studied well over a million images
and artifacts before writing the The Vanishing Evidence series.
My initial goal was simply to follow the path of research outlined by the eminent
scholar, Dr. Chancellor Williams in The Destruction of Black Civilization (1974),
and conduct primary research on ancient Black civilizations. As Williams pointed
out, the accurate knowledge of African science, social organization, and
advanced spiritual systems can only be known from an unbiased first-hand study
of the history and artifacts. Though I began my extensive multi-country research
tour with a mission of documenting the specific details of the advanced African
civilizations of ancient Egypt and Nubia, a quite different and unexpected theme
emerged in every region that I studied. I was struck by the specific patterns of
deliberate alterations and defacement of the artifacts. These patterns became
clear after I had visited the initial group of European museums. What I noticed
most was that these acts were more than simply knocking off the noses of
statues, they involve a much broader assault on ancient Black images.

The pair statue from the Tomb of Ikhetneb has lost most of its original paint on the faces
and upper body of the two images, while much of the original paint on the legs and feet
still survive. It seems evident that the darker paint has been deliberately erased on the
face and upper body, thus giving the images the illusion of a white-skin appearance.

METHODS OF DESTRUCTION AND ALTERATION

My observations of the evidence are careful and are supported by photographic
and video documentation. The extensive study of over a million artifacts and
images gave me the keen power of observation to make analyses of the same
materials that are also available to Egyptologists, although most of them have not
studied the volume of the materials that I have examined. When the artifacts in
question were examined meticulously, I found that the methods used to change
or damage the images are varied, and they include: subtly altering the shape of
the nose on statues by using some type of sanding device; adding on false
noses; reshaping or completely destroying the face on temple and tomb walls;
lightening the color of the face and body paint on statues and paintings;
completely eliminating the paint on statues and paintings and thus making the
images appear white; destroying the lower facial structure, particularly the chin
and jaw area; putting in false bluish-gray inlaid eyes; plastering over temple
images with White Portland Cement during ongoing conservation work; and
creating outright forgeries! These acts of fraud and deliberate destruction is what
I call the handiwork of modern conspirators. I was stunned by such an angry,
vicious, and widespread attack against Black images by the enemies of Classical
African Civilizations.
MODERN FORGERIES
One of the most absurd invention of the conspirators is the forged statues of RaHotep and Nofret in the Cairo Museum. I present detailed and concrete evidence
in my forthcoming book, Modern Fraud: The Forged Ancient Egyptian Statues of

Ra-Hotep and Nofret (also see part 3 of this series on the Museum Evidence)
that there is a list of specific artistic rules which are consistently applied to statue
after statue throughout the pyramid age.[1] Although some writers would attempt
to argue to the contrary, the fact that there was a body of specific artistic rules is
demonstrated by the tens of thousands of statues and paintings that are
presented in exactly the same way across various sites and cites throughout all
of the major periods: the old, middle, and new kingdoms. Thus, these shocking
forgeries make no artistic sense as they violate a long list of clearly defined rules,
according to the ancient Egyptian rule system. Further, these fabricated
European-looking statues do not make any cultural or historical sense, and it is
consistent that they were found (or rather created by modern hands) during the
19th century, which has been called by some historians as The Great Age of
Fakes. There is no doubt that the Ra-Hotep and Nofret forgeries stand
completely outside of the ancient Egyptian artistic, cultural, and historical reality.
One of the great forgeries of the 19th century which has already been proven is
that of the famous Queen Tetisheri. The statue of Queen Tetisheri was
purchased by the British Museum in 1890, and this fake piece (with its facial
features resembling most Europeans) was paraded around the world until it was
first suspected as a fraud in 1984. This fake Tetisheri statue was showcased in
the British Museum special exhibit on forgeries in 1990, but not before this
forgery fooled experts and deceived the world for 100 years![2]

This limestone statuette inscribed with the name of Queen Tetisheri was long regarded as
an important piece for the study of ancient Egyptian sculpture of the late 17th and early
18th dynasties. Now, however, this world renown statuette is regarded as a modern
forgery.

WHO ARE THE CONSPIRATORS?

Who are the conspirators responsible for these acts of destruction, alteration and
invention is a basic question that must be answered. Brian Fagan in his book on
The Rape of Egypt (1975) documents a list of culprits: the Christian Copts who
destroyed statues and monuments; the conquering Arabs who dismantled
ancient buildings; and the 18th and 19th century European travelers,
adventurers, and archeologists who were treasure hunters, plunderers, and
looters. It was during the 19th century that a vast number of ancient Egyptian
artifacts were excavated, but most of these discoveries were not adequately
documented, with original on-site photographs and detailed field reports, which
are now standard procedures within the archeological field. The systematic
documentation of archaeological excavations did not develop until many years
after volumes of artifacts were already taken from their original African sites and
eventually placed in museums. Indeed, it is a sketchy record of how most of
these artifacts were discovered and eventually made it onto museum floors.
This brings us to the identification of a large group of conspirators, who are the
handlers of the excavated artifacts. This group includes excavators,
antiquities dealers, museum curators and directors, and restorers and
conservationists. Somewhere between the original excavation of the artifacts,
to their transport, sale and acquisition, storage, cleaning, conservation, and
finally their display on the museum floor there has been a diligent effort at
altering, reworking, and touching up the facial features of countless statues.
The conspirators who perpetrate these acts are behind the scenes actors who
use a hit and run strategy of defacement and alteration of the art. They hide their
hands from public view, but the results of their fraudulent and destructive activity
is plain to see by anyone who carefully examines the evidence, as their pattern of
fraud is highly distinctive. The lack of original documentation of many excavated
artifacts has made it easy for these conspirators to commit their fraud. It is well
known that many great artifacts of ancient Egypt were destroyed by the hands of
plunderers during the widespread looting and trading in antiquities that went on
for centuries, but what is not well known is the full story of the artifacts that did
survive the wave of plunderers and make it into modern museum collections. I
show in Modern Fraud that a large number of these surviving artifacts have
undergone a racial makeover at the hands of modern conspirators. The results of
their fraudulent work are the countless altered artifacts, reworked pieces, fake
genealogies, and a host of forged statues.
The most recent revelation of the racist fabrications by this group of handlers, or
more specifically Western museum directors, is reported in the current issue of
Archaeology Magazine 54 (September-October 2001, p. 27). This report is
associated with an article by Peter Lacovara et al. Archaeology reported that in
the absence of scholarship the directors of the Niagara Falls Museum in Ontario,
Canada fabricated pedigrees for many of their Egyptian mummies in the midnineteenth century. The most imaginative of these fake pedigrees, or false
identities, was created for a bearded male mummy of the Roman period. The
museum officials invented the following elaborate story for him which is a

complete myth: General Ossipumphnoferu the General in Chief of Thotmes III.

... He was a man of military skill, also a famous magician. He was 60 years old
when he died. The scar on his forehead was caused by an enraged elephant
while defending the king from his onslaughts. A palace was erected for the
general near that of the king. The museum officials took their scandalous activity
even further, as for many years the general was displayed in the coffin of
Iawttayesheret, a high-ranking woman from the 25th dynasty, which was 700
years before his time! It is incredible that the directors of a public museum would
take an unidentified Roman period mummy, with a European facial appearance,
put him in a womans coffin from 700 years earlier, and then create a bogus
identity for him as a famous general during a period which was another 700
years earlier than the coffin he was buried in! Eventhough this mummy and other
artifacts at the museum were not studied comprehensively by an Egyptologist,
this is yet another case which documents that Western museum directors would
go to any lengths in the 19th and early 20th century to falsify evidence.
Currently, there is no doubt that this list of conspirators includes local Egyptian
government workers, who are carrying out many acts of destruction on a
regular basis. These men either work for the Egyptian government on
conservation projects, or for various European or North American archeological
teams. On several occasions in the 1980s and 1990s, these unsupervised
minimally-skilled government workers have been caught on video tape plastering
over temple images and inscriptions! In fact, it is impossible to visit the Karnak
Temple in Luxor and not see the recent defacement, and it is suspicious that with
rare exception Egyptologists are silent about this matter.
WHAT ARE THEIR MOTIVES
After examining a vast body of artifacts, it seems evident that the ultimate
motives of these groups of conspirators from the 19th century to the present is to
eliminate the Black images from the ancient Egyptian historical record. This
motivation is consistent with the racist views of many of the 19th and early 20th
century Egyptologists who made many ridiculous assertions about Black people
having little to no role in ancient Egypt, and that this was a civilization founded by
white or Semitic people from the North. These baseless claims were widespread
within the ranks of Egyptologists, and they helped inspire both H. M. Hergets
1941 National Geographic Magazine paintings of pale-skinned Egyptians and the
imaginary white images created by Hollywood, which together have deceived the
public for the past half century.[3] This nonsense was exposed in the 1950s by
the late Senegalese scholar, Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop. Diop assembled an awesome
body of evidence to document the Black foundation of ancient Egypt and to
expose the dishonest discourse of Western Egyptologists who were, as he put it,
performing intellectual acrobatics to avoid dealing with concrete evidence to
support their contentions about the Northern origins of ancient Egyptian
civilization.[4] The mainstream Egyptologist Bruce Trigger in The American
Discovery of Ancient Egypt (1995) discusses Diops impact and that it is because

of his work that ancient Egypt is now seen by mainstream scholars as an African
nation. Trigger also comments that the white racist rhetoric that permeated most
early twentieth-century writings about the development of Egyptian civilization
has long been abandoned, [but] ideas formulated at the time have continued to
influence thinking about the origins and nature of Egyptian civilization.[5]
The white racist rhetoric that Trigger describes as permeating early twentieth
century writings is simply a continuation of the same racist views held in the 19th
century, and it is within this climate that the behind the scenes handlers had both
the motives and the opportunity to deface images, alter facial features, and
create racist forgeries.
RESPONSE TO THE SERIES
Since I first wrote "The Vanishing Evidence" series in 1995-1996, there has been
much discussion, and many individuals across the country have indicated to me
that they have also observed both the human-aided deterioration and the
deliberate acts of destruction against Black images and artifacts. I have
examined photographs of several of these individuals who have traveled to Egypt
at various times, and for the most part only a very small percentage of their
photographs are useful, because the individual photographers are not trained on
how to systematically document the damage. However, some of the images are
invaluable as they document the ongoing assault on Black images at major
temple sites. It is now known by many that the physical evidence of classical
African civilizations is vanishing before our eyes in essentially every geographical
area. Many people are now aware that the human-aided decay, distortion of the
artifacts, and deliberate defacement is widespread and this damage is most
obviously visible at popular temple sites throughout Egypt.
Predictably, there have been a few white writers who have made ignorant
comments about the The Vanishing Evidence series without even looking at the
artifacts in question! They have not examined the first-hand evidence that I
outline in the series, but they attack without anything other than empty emotion.
They are in blind support of the fraudulent activity and racist scholarship of the
19th and 20th century. These people subscribe to Western colonial scholarship,
eventhough this scholarship was born and bred in the brutal period of European
expansion and colonialism. Egyptology as a discipline originated in this shameful
19th century era, and still maintains -- with little improvement -- its arrogant
colonial discourse about African culture and civilizations. Any research that
challenges this Western paradigm is automatically attacked by the apologists of
this paradigm as wrong misinformed, or pseudo-scientific. These individuals
are willing to do whatever it takes to ignore evidence, and in some cases lie and
mislead the public.
PREVIOUS DOCUMENTATION

After I had begun organizing my information on the vanishing evidence theme

that had emerged from my museum and field work, I later found out that a portion
of my work of documenting the ongoing deterioration and destruction in Egypt
had already been anticipated by the accomplished Egyptologist John Romer
nearly 20 years earlier.[6] On his website, Romer republished a 1997 essay
which summarizes his many years of work in the Kings Valley and is entitled
The Valley of Death, wherein the author wrote: The warning has been
sounded. Loud and clear. Egypts famed Valley of the Kings...is in danger itself of
the death it silently encloses. In less than 25 yearsunless something is done
urgentlythe valley of priceless ancient tombs could become the valley of ochre
mud. And responsible is the planets prime agent of destructionman himself.
Lastly, there is also video footage shot by Ashra Kwesi in his video series on
The African Origin of Civilization that I recall viewing in the 1980s. Kwesis short
footage showed local Arab workers chopping and plastering over wall material at
one of the Luxor area temples. Kwesi's footage was probably my first exposure to
the documentation which shows the vanishing evidence of classical African
civilizations.
An updated version of The Vanishing Evidence series, complete with numerous
photographs, form an important section in my upcoming book on Modern Fraud,
which concerns the Ra-Hotep and Nofret forgeries.
Prof. Manu Ampim
October 2001
Profmanu@acninc.net
PO Box 18623
Oakland, CA 94619
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------Notes
[1] I list some of these rules in Manu Ampim, Ra-Hotep and Nofret: Modern Forgeries in the
Cairo Museum? in Egypt: Child of Africa (1994), pp. 207-212. I will discuss the full body of these
rules in my forthcoming book, Modern Fraud: The Forged Ancient Egyptian Statues of Ra-Hotep
and Nofret.
[2] For details see: Mark Jones, ed., Fake: The Art of Deception (1990), pp. 160, 162. The
Tetisheri statue was first suspected to be a forgery in 1984 by Mr. W.V. Davies, Keeper of
Egyptian Antiquities at the British Museum. See Davies, British Museum Occasional Paper (no.
36, 1984). For the significance of this forgery see Manu Ampim, Ra-Hotep and Nofret: Modern
Forgeries in the Cairo Museum? in Egypt: Child of Africa (1994), pp. 207-208. [Return to text]
[3] William Hayes, Daily Life in Ancient Egypt, National Geographic Magazine 80 (1941): 419515. H. M. Hergets 32 imaginary color paintings with pale-skinned Egyptians are used as
illustrations for Hayes article, eventhough Hayes states the Egyptians are, and always have
been, Africans, and that they are a brown and brunet (i.e. dark brown or reddish brown)
skinned people. This deliberate public deceit and racism is still being carrying on by KMT
Magazine, which uses these same dishonest images created by Herget more than a half century

ago. For example see: KMT premiere issue (spring 1990), pp. 9, 11, 16; and KMT vol. 5, no. 4
(Winter 1994-95), pp. 45-46, 60. KMT now seems to have adopted a new favorite set of modern
racist drawings by Winifred Brunton to illustrate its various articles; for the complete set of the
Brunton drawings, see KMT, vol. 1, no. 4 (Winter 1990-91), pp. 52-61. Also see KMT, vol. 8, no. 1
(Spring 1997), p. 31; and vol. 12, no. 3 (Fall 2001), pp. 1, 74. [Return to text]
[4]Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality (1974), trans. by Mercer
Cook. The African scholars C.A. Diop and Theophile Obenga solidified their position of Egypt as a
Black civilization at the historic 1974 Peopling of Ancient Egypt Symposium. See: UNESCO,
The Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Deciphering of the Meroitic Script: Proceedings of the
Symposium held in Cairo, Egypt from 28 January to 3 February 1974 (The General History of
Africa, Studies and Documents, no. 1, 1978), p. 102. [Return to text]
[5]Bruce Trigger, Egyptology, Ancient Egypt, and the American Imagination in The American
Discovery of Ancient Egypt (1995), pp. 21-35. [Return to text]
[6]John Romer had already done thorough work in documenting the deterioration of the
monuments, with his publication, Physical Deterioration of the Royal Tombs in the Valley of the
Kings: A Progress Report on the 1977-1978 Season of the Brooklyn Museum Theban Expedition
(1978). Along the same lines, Romer wrote The Rape of Tutankhamun (1993), which was later
turned into a one-hour PBS television documentary in 1994. [See:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7171/romer.html] [Return to text]