Gosford Glyphs

Gosford Glyphs
	Kariong, Central Coast
Coordinates	33°27′07″S 151°18′11″E / 33.451833°S 151.303001°E

The Gosford Glyphs, also known as Kariong Hieroglyphs, are a group of approximately 300

Woy Woy, New South Wales, within the Brisbane Water National Park

.

The glyphs have been dismissed as a

ancient Egyptians about 4,500 years ago.^[1]

While rumours of Egyptian glyphs have existed since the 1920s, a spokesperson for the

National Parks and Wildlife Service has said "The engravings are something we became aware of in the early 1980s, which is around the time the majority were thought to have been made."^[2]

In late 2023 the National Parks and Wildlife Service began dislodging boulders it deemed unsafe near the glyphs. These works were criticized by residents and a local environmental protection organization as unnecessary and extreme.[3]

Description

They depict boats, chickens, dogs, owls, stick men, a dog's bone as well as two

Egyptian god Anubis.^[4]

Discovery

The carvings were first formally reported in 1975 by Alan Dash, a local surveyor working for Gosford Council who had been visiting the area for seven years without seeing the glyphs. Dash continued to visit for five years and saw new glyphs whenever he visited.

National Parks and Wildlife Service, found some clean-cut hieroglyphs which he estimated to be less than twelve months old.^[4]

From the mid 1990s, the site started to receive more public attention.

Since then, the hieroglyphs have been claimed by

pseudohistorians to be authentic script created about 4,500 years ago, by Egyptians who sailed to Australia and engraved their story into the stones after becoming shipwrecked.^[6]

Authenticity

Professor Boyo Ockinga has said:

"[T]here are many reasons why they are not accepted as genuine hieroglyphics...
"First of all the way they're cut is not the way ancient Egyptian rock inscriptions are produced, they're very disorganised...
"There's also a problem with the actual shapes of the signs that are used. There's no way people would've been inscribing texts from the time of
Cheops
from the signs that weren't invented until 2500 years later."

He suggested that the glyphs might have been made in the 1920s by Australian soldiers when there was general interest in ancient Egypt after the uncovering of the Tomb of Tutankhamun at that time. The soldiers, who had served in the Sultanate of Egypt from the mid 1910s to early 1920s, cited an example of shapes in the form of the Sphinx and a pyramid known to have been made by a returning soldier.^[1]

Australian Professor of Egyptology

Geologists have stated that the sandstone in which the hieroglyphs are carved erodes quickly and nearby 250-year-old Aboriginal petroglyphs (Bulgandry Aboriginal Art Site) show considerably more erosion.^[5]