Jean-Baptiste Auguste Leloir, Homère, 1841
Jean-Baptiste Auguste Leloir, Homère, 1841
A Chinese professor claims that the Egyptian pyramids, the Parthenon, and other remnants of ancient civilizations in the West, were all faked by Western scholars in order to fabricate an ancient history, and diminish the glory of China.

Hong Kong News outlet Hong Kong 01 is just one of many Chinese language media who reported on the farcical claims after Professor Huang Heqing broadcast one of his lectures live to the internet recently.

While ultranationalist conspiracy theories are not rare in China (or indeed, in any other country), what makes this story even more bizarre is that Huang teaches in the School of Arts and Archeology at Zhejiang University - one of the oldest, most selective, and prestigious universities in China.
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Huang Heqing stated in his lecture that from the 19th to 20th centuries, the West was rampantly forging historical and cultural relics, and spending huge sums of money everywhere from the Mediterranean to India, fabricating fake ancient relics.

The Pyramids of Khufu, and the Great Sphinx of Giza, were made of concrete, and constructed in the 19th century, Huang claims.

"A well-known French chemist and material scientist conducted physical and chemical analysis on the Khufu pyramid in the 1980s, and confirmed that other than a small amount of natural stone, it mostly consisted of concrete," says Huang, referring to the controversial theories of Joseph Davidovits, who posits that the Egyptians built the pyramid using a limestone-based cement invented thousands of years before the Romans invented concrete.

"Another materials scientist from the United States came to a similar conclusion," Huang says.

"In addition, the stones at the bottom of the Pyramid of Khufu have a "lip shape", which is obviously a sign they were cast," Huang said. "The ancient Egypt we know today is actually a fairy tale fabricated by the Western orthodox historians since the 19th century."
Huang heqing
An artist's depiction of the Great Sphinx of Giza compared with an actual photograph today proves that the Sphinx was constructed in modern times, according to Huang's theory.
Western scholars elevated the status of ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Indian civilizations at China's expense, Huang argues.

The intention of this vast occidental conspiracy in fictionalizing these three civilizations to appear to be older than Chinese civilization was to "weaken the glory of Chinese civilization. Chinese civilization is more ancient," Huang said

The now 63-year-old Doctoral supervisor obtained his first degree, majoring in French, at the People Liberation Army's Luoyang Institute of Foreign Languages, studied Western Art History at Zhejiang University, and eventually gained a PHD at the The Sorbonne, University of Paris. Huang has been a professor at Zhejiang University since 2000.

The Chinese Ministry of Education Class A Double First Class University ranks among the top three in China, and its motto is: "Seeking Truth, Pursuing Innovation."

Professor Huang's theory is truly innovative, and he claims that he can prove his theory with pictures.

Huang said that he had found (online) the sketches of Denon, the first curator of the Louvre Museum in Paris, and others who were part of a delegation of scientists on Napoleon's 1798 expedition to Egypt. They published pictures in Description of Egypt after they returned home. Both show that the pyramid was built on a land of hills and gullies, completely different from the landscape we see today.
Heqing
A artist's depiction from 1809, used by Huang Heqing in a lecture denouncing western history as a fabrication.
"Whether it is the pyramids and the Sphinx in Egypt, or the Parthenon Temple in Athens, they are all actually modern forgeries by Western countries, with the purpose of "depreciating Chinese culture," Huang emphasized.

"This is a historical conspiracy, so I have to make a stand for rectification for Chinese culture."

"The West is always making up history and falsifying ancient relics. The main purpose is to belittle Chinese civilization. I want to justice for Chinese civilization!"

The lecture is just a small part of his efforts to "reverse history". In the past few years, he has been committed to correcting the "mistakes of the West".

If Huang's were only one voice, well may people laugh the story off, but unfortunately, Huang is only one member of a school of thought developing in China which aims to re-write the history of the world to put China at the center.

Huang wrote the preface for the book The Fictitious History of Western Civilization: Research on the Ancient and Modern West Copying China (虛構的西方文明史-古今西方「復制中國」考論), published in 2017. In this book, author Zhu Youzhi asserts that "Primitive Europe was brought into the "civilization of the world" by China, from which it obtained writing, navigation, technology, economy, bureaucracy, democracy, philosophy, and history.

In the book Fictitious Ancient Greek Civilization, published in 2015, author Dong Binsheng, claims that ancient Greek civilization does not have any credible philology or archeologically credible proof.

The history of ancient Greece is a cultural movement. This movement began around the 14th century, Dong argues. Rather than a "Renaissance" of classical western civilization, the Age of Enlightenment was a product of contact with Chinese civilization.

In The Source of Civilization and the World of Great Harmony (2012), author Du Gangjian explains how human civilization originated in the southwestern region of China, and ancient Chinese people moved westward, creating ancient Greek and Roman civilizations.

What all these books have in common is that world history as we know it is merely a Western fabrication. There were no ancient civilizations outside of China. Civilization is a Chinese characteristic, and others only became civilized after coming into contact with China. Therefore, today's "world civilization" is Chinese in origin, and in nature.