Beneath the labyrinth

One of the things that bothers me most about the woo-woo mindset is the apparent need they feel to superimpose some kind of paranormal frisson on top of damn near everything, as if what we know from science and rational inquiry isn't fascinating enough.

I mean, really.  Do you need to add any Tao of Physics nonsense to make quantum theory mind-blowingly cool?  Do we need to have the apparent positions of the planets against the backdrop of stars somehow controlling our lives to make astronomy awe-inspiring?  Why is there this bizarre drive to look at the universe around us, with all of its real marvels, and say, "Nope, that's not sufficient"?

That was my reaction to the rather overwrought article I read over at Substack a couple of days ago, entitled, "The Labyrinth at Hawara: What the Scans Found and Why Egypt Won't Let Anyone Dig."  Hawara, it turns out, is a recently-excavated archaeological site in Egypt, near the pyramid of Amenemhet III, and is about 380 by 160 meters -- so, a pretty sizable structure -- that once was made up of hundreds of rooms separated by walls and rows of columns.  Now, it's a ruin, and in fact much of the stone that was used to build it was scavenged for other uses in the intervening four millennia.  Its original purpose is unknown, but it may have been a temple complex.  The historian Herodotus, who visited it in around 430 B.C.E. while it was still standing, described it as follows:

[The Egyptians] made a labyrinth [... which] surpasses even the pyramids.  It has twelve roofed courts with doors facing each other: six face north and six south, in two continuous lines, all within one outer wall.  There are also double sets of chambers, three thousand altogether, fifteen hundred above and the same number under ground. ...  We learned through conversation about [the labyrinth's] underground chambers; the Egyptian caretakers would by no means show them, as they were, they said, the burial vaults of the kings who first built this labyrinth, and of the sacred crocodiles. ...  The upper we saw for ourselves, and they are creations greater than human.  The exits of the chambers and the mazy passages hither and thither through the courts were an unending marvel to us ...  Over all this is a roof, made of stone like the walls, and the walls are covered with cut figures, and every court is set around with pillars of white stone very precisely fitted together.  Near the corner where the labyrinth ends stands a pyramid two hundred and forty feet high, on which great figures are cut.  A passage to this has been made underground.

Which, I think we can all agree, is pretty freakin' cool.

But apparently not cool enough, because the fringe got a hold of this story and began to embellish it.  The Egyptian government has halted deep excavation of the site; the official reason given was the high water table in the area, making digging a fraught endeavor, both from the standpoint of safety and of potentially damaging the site irreversibly.  But we all know what "official reason" means to woo-woos:

It means "lie."

So in came Joe Rogan (because of course he did) and interviewed someone who said that the real reason was a "magnetic anomaly" that scans had discovered in the area, that was evidence of a "thirty- or forty-meter-wide metallic sphere" buried underneath the labyrinth, and the Egyptian government didn't want us finding out anything more about it.  Well, that could only mean one thing, right?

Of course right.  Aliens.  What else?

The Substack article was accompanied by the following, obviously AI-generated image:

This has about as much credibility as a pic that someone claims is "a real photograph of Mordor," but no one comes right out and says that.  The article, and Rogan, and (now) many other fringe-y sources, strongly imply that's really what's under there, and the Egyptian government is stopping anyone from looking into it further because, um, reasons.

Oh, and if that wasn't enough, Rogan also said that in order to prove all this, we need to "occupy Egypt, and just fucking get this done."

*brief pause to stop screaming and throwing heavy objects*

Well, actual archaeologist Flint Dibble (with a name like "Flint Dibble," what other profession could he have gone into?) had some choice words for Rogan et al. about his penchant for "pseudoarchaeological crap," and calls out the "metallic sphere" claim for the nonsense it is.  There was no anomalous magnetic scan, and there is zero evidence of a metallic sphere (or a metallic anything) buried at Hawara, much less what Rogan says is there (a spaceship, natch).

C'mon, people.  Ancient Egypt is cool.  Hawara is a site that was already almost two thousand years old when Jesus was born.  This temple complex -- or whatever it was -- is amazing, astonishing, fascinating.

YOU DO NOT NEED TO ADD A FUCKING SPACESHIP TO MAKE IT COOLER.

Sorry.  I said I was going to stop screaming. 

I'm really done now.

Anyhow, that's today's maddening visit to the fringe.  The upshot is that you should go to actual sources by actual archaeologists (such as this one) for your information, and stop listening to Joe Rogan, whose grasp of the truth is such that if he said the sky was blue and the grass was green, the chance of their being some other color is close to a hundred percent.

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