Last week I mentioned that former Egyptian archaeological supremo Dr Zahi Hawass had attacked ‘hidden history’ author Robert Bauval on the front page of the Egyptian daily Al Ahram. Bauval has now returned serve, bringing up the controversial old topic of whether Hawass PhD was funded by New Age organization, The Association of Research and Enlightenment (ARE), the executive branch of the Edgar Cayce Foundation. The allegations were first made in the biography of Cayce’s son Hugh Lynn, written by A. Robert Smith:
In Robert Smith’s book it is further claimed that the reason for helping Hawass get his PhD was for Hawass “to advance within the [Egyptian] government to further his own career and open doors for Hugh Lynn [Cayce]’s project, [and] he could do it best on the wing of higher education at an American Ivy League college.” (Smith, Chapter 19, p. 250)
But many years later, in 1998 to be precise, both Hawass and Lehner denied that Hugh Lynn Cayce had been instrumental in helping Zahi Hawass obtain a Fulbright Scholarship to study for a PhD at the University of Pennsylvania. They made official statements to that effect in the KMT Journal (volume 9, Number 1, Spring 1998, pp.5-6).
For another take on this most recent controversy involving Hawass, see also Philip Coppens’ latest article “A New Future for Egyptology“.
