Phone 4342 5333         Email us.

Skip Navigation Links.
Collapse Issue 283 - 23 Jan 2012Issue 283 - 23 Jan 2012

Researching the Kariong Glyphs

I have been researching the story of the Kariong Glyphs and have gathered quite a lot of information over the years.

Firstly the carvings at Kariong are modern day forgeries and badly done ones at that.

First documented by a Gosford Council surveyor back in the late 70s, he observed the glyphs being created over a period of two to three years.

I spoke to this man by telephone two years ago and found that he now works as a guide for the National Parks and Wildlife Service.

In 1983 a person contacted the Parks Service and they undertook studies of the site and monitored it over the next couple of years.

The Service took photographs back then showing freshly cut engravings and stockpiles of materials being used to alter a natural fault in the rocks at the site to create an underground chamber or "tomb".

The head of the Department of Egyptology at Macquarie University in Sydney remarked that the carvings were "the work of amateurs and merely scratches that meant nothing".

Tests on the rock surface by experts revealed that the carvings were less than 40 years old.

In 1984 a NPWS ranger caught a man adding to the carvings and confiscated his chisel.

The NPWS receive so many calls about the glyphs that they have produced a facts sheet which is available if you contact them.

So all this happened over 30 years ago and was just a local mystery until the story appeared in an archaeological magazine and then the internet.

This began a new wave of speculation by a variety of "experts" who only had dubious reports and scant photos of the site.

Without conducting any background research, these "experts" suddenly declared that the carvings were done by shipwrecked Egyptian sailors, lost Sumerians or Phoenicians and even the odd space visitor.

It is a little known fact that three farms were in this area for about 50 years and one land owner lived less than 100 metres from the glyphs site up until the 60s.

You could also drive your car to within 20 metres of the site up until around 2001.

To this day there are still people who will ignore the facts and persist with the Egyptian myth, mainly to line their own pockets by conducting tours, holding seminars and selling "sacred fragrances" etc.

There is a real mystery as to who the actual culprit is but evidence suggests that this may be the work of several people over a period of years, possibly starting back in the 60s when students from a local school copied texts from an Egyptian studies textbook onto the rocks at Kariong and then again sometime in the late 70s early 80s when a person living in an old abandoned farmhouse near the site was thought to be adding more glyphs.

In 1983 more work was added including the Anubis figure and possibly some of the earlier work was re-grooved.

My research also uncovered some interesting information which came from 2 reliable and totally unconnected sources that the original culprit may have been the son of a famous local identity but was hushed up to avoid embarrassment.

So we still have a great little local practical joke and the glyphs are now a famous example of pseudo-archaeology but they are definitely not an Egyptian fantasy.



Skip Navigation Links.

Skip Navigation Links.
  Copyright © 2012 Peninsula Community Access Newspaper Inc