It's Insulting: How NOT to "Research the Past"

"This is this is insulting, it's insulting to people 

that are into this stuff, to the interested
amateur this is a slap in the face"

Dan Richards

I have always said archaeology is "mot rocket science", access to the raw data is easy, the underlying principles are pretty simple, the logic is easy to follow. The situation in Britain (at least) shows that amateur groups can do some fantastic work.* Part of the key to that is often seeking guidance/help but certainly approaching the activity in a spirit of collaboration. Unfortunately the rise of an alternative model, pseudoarchaeology particularly of the clickbait commercial form (eg YouTubers) and commercial book production (Hancock and the rest) has led a lot of the do-it-yourself research into a cul-de-sac. Instead of collaboration, the sales algorithm favours confrontation, from the perspective of this (quite large) group of the people "just interested a true picture of the past" the study of the common history of mankind is no longer a "we" but instead an "us and them". A very good example of this is a video put out yesterday by Dan Richards ("Dan DeDunker") whose 'winning formula' is to simply attack anything in archaeology he thinks he can "debunk" (which he mispronounces "dedunk") and thereby generate click-money from the number of like-minded haters that engage. His latest target is Egyptologists (he apparently fancies himself as a self-taught expert in the very specialist field of Egyptology too).

Over on social media and in the press over the past few days, there has been a minor flurry of interest in the discovery of an  early fifth dynasty tomb at Saqqara of "Hereditary Prince, Governor of the Buto and Nekhbet Regions, Royal Scribe, Minister, Judge, and Chanting Priest" Userefre, apparently a son of Userkaf the founder of the Fifth dynasty. The tomb, like much in some parts of Saqqara (notably Userkaf's mortuary temple - which seems by that time to have been in ruins) had been altered in the 26th dynasty (the Saite period) explaining why there were various extraneous statues and other items found in this tomb.

Mr Richards put his mind to how he could piggyback on the news attention to produce some clickbait contrarian "content" about this tomb. He "researched" it and then decided that the 'New Egyptian Tomb Discovery Reveals The Lies of Egyptology'. He therefore rearranged his tchotchkes on the trophy shelf in the games room and stands below the camera with his treasures in the background to mumble, fumble and ramble through the topic in another of his over-long unfocussed videos. 

 .

'New Egyptian Tomb Discovery Reveals The Lies of Egyptology' 

Posted on YouTube 18.05.2025   by DeDunking 123K 

The first 11 minutes is a free-fall potpourri of gripes against Egyptologists.  We do not get onto this "New Tomb discovery" until here

"Now when this site was first discovered, Egyptologist Dr Joseph Wegner one of the first archaeologists excavating the site went on Fox News and said that he thought that it was from the Abydos dynasty. He said this was before it was announced as Usarkov's son but the difference in time is staggering. Now the Abydos dynasty is said to be a short-lived dynasty of kind of usurper type of royals that hung out in Abydos between the fifteenth and sixteenth dynasty [... digression ...]. It's kind of interesting that, um, we're getting really vastly different information. The Abydos dynasty between the fifteenth and sixteenth, like I said, Userkaf is from the fifth dynasty, the first pharaoh of the fifth dynasty. We're talking, like nine hundred years here, okay? This, the differences that that are going to be in that tomb are staggering, all right? We're getting two different stories. 

As a matter of fact there's more evidence we're getting two different stories. When you look at the information that they gave us on the, uh, Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities Facebook page, they say that it was a purely Egypt... Egyptian-ran (sic) mission right, like, that it was just Egyptians that were doing (sic) the find, but this guy's clearly an American right?He... He's not an Egyptian he's clearly an American....  [rolls eyes] . But you know why they made that little bit of bullshit up, right? That, that's clearly just like this national pride thing like this we've seen that before".

Good job there's no American pride here at all eh? The whole problem here is that Dan Richards is quite simply WRONG. He's just taken Fox "News" at face value - while these irresponsibly use an old video to bulk out the report of a new discovery without explicitly telling their viewers that  this is what they'd done. the more gullible ones just assume the two are the same. duh, Mr Dan. If he'd spent as much time researching and double-checking his story than arranging the tchotchkes on his show-off shelf  he'd not have made this mistake .  

Text 1: Andrea Margolis Archaeologists discover long-lost tomb of unknown pharaoh in Egypt" Fox news April 3rd 2025

"The excavation, which was conducted near the Egyptian city of Abydos this winter, was announced by the Penn Museum in Philadelphia last week. The pharaoh's tomb was found 23 feet underground and featured a decorated entryway and mudbrick vaults [...] Excavation leader Dr. Josef Wegner, an egyptology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, spoke with Fox News Digital about the discovery, which dates back to the Second Intermediate Period".

Text 2: Andrea Margolis 'Archaeologists discover tomb of Egyptian royalty behind false door: 'Unveils new secrets' Fox News May 11th 2025

The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced the discovery in a recent Facebook post in April. The tomb was found at the Saqqara archaeological site in the Giza Governorate of Egypt. [...] The tomb belonged to a prince named "Userefre" or "Waser Ef Ra," the son of King Userkaf. Userkaf was the founder of the Fifth Dynasty, which lasted from the early 25th century B.C. until the mid-24th century B.C.

It is difficult to see how anyone doing their reading diligently and who knew their geography would confuse the two. There is quite a long stretch of desert between the two sites. The problem is that Mr Richards was not reaserching the actual archaeology, but looking for "dirt" on the archaeologists and if you look hard enough (or maybe superficaially enough) no doubt something can be found.

As a result Dan Richards has published a video revealing "The Lies of Egyptology" (of Professor Joseph Wegener and the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, and what he scanadalously calls the "Zahi Hawass Foundation for Stealng Shit from Egypt" ). He asserts - on the basis of his own mistaken conflation of two sites - that the public are:

"getting fed a line of shit [...] I tend to believe that they frequently do things like this, and quite often I think it's just for them to facilitate you know looting of antiquities that there was something there that was cool from the 15th dynasty and they just sell that off and Wagner comes back he's like "Hey where was that artifact?" They're like "What artifact?"...."

These seem to me to be the kind of accusations this guy urgently needs to be called on to substantiate. This video has already received over 199,408 views [updated 21/5/2025]. These lies need to be stopped. This should not be what You Tube is used for.


*Not to say that all do, and I DO NOT include the majority of metal detecting in the framework of amateur archaeology.