d’Histoire Naturelle in
Paris, what would happen if we buried in the
ground a piece of the
product that we were
synthesizing in the laboratory at the time (our
first geopolymer material), and an archaeologist discovered it
3000 years later? Their
answer was surprising:
the archaeologist would
analyze this object disinterred from the garden of a ruin in SaintQuentin, and the analysis would reveal that
the nearest natural outcrop of the stone was
in Egypt in the Aswan
region! It was on that
day that I realized that
if I did not reveal the
synthetic nature of the
product we had developed, it would be taken
for natural stone.
T.D. Did you have to face any controversy or criticism from the scientific
community, while trying to establish your point?
Dr. Davidovits
I presented my ideas
at several International
Egyptology conferences: Grenoble, France
(1979), Toronto, Canada
(1982), Manchester, UK
(1984), Cairo, Egypt
(1988). They generated great debates, several articles in newspapers, yet no hostility. However, after the
publication of my book
for the general public,
(The pyramids: an enigma solved, 1988, New
York), several materials
scientists sent me a letter in which they asked
me to stop this research
because “I was jeopardizing my career”.
In 1989, an eminent
American Egyptologist
51
wrote a startling review
stating that I had falsified the scientific data
(my chemical analysis),
etc. My friends wanted me to go to court
because of these insults.
I answered: “No, this is
part of the game in science. A new theory is
always severely challenged. This has always