Everything we know about who built the Great Pyramid comes down to a few strokes of red paint on the ceiling of a sealed chamber, found by Colonel Howard Vyse in 1837.
There has always been a suspicion that Vyse — broke, out of time, and blasting his way up through the pyramid with gunpowder — painted it himself.
And there is, supposedly, a witness.
His name was Humphries Brewer: an engineer from Box, in Wiltshire, sent to Egypt in 1837 to help build an eye hospital, who ended up on Vyse’s crew running the explosives. According to his descendants, Brewer went into the newly-opened chambers and saw one of Vyse’s men going in with red paint and a brush. He said something about it. He argued with Vyse. And the next thing that happened was that he was barred from the site, and his name kept out of the official account.
If that’s true, the case is closed.
It’s disputed, and has been for decades — some take Brewer at his word, others think the story doesn’t stand up. I went and worked out which, tracing it back to where it starts.
What I found is in Episode 1.
The Only Proof — coming soon. Full sources in the description when it lands.