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Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is the latest GOP presidential candidate to jump on 2016 frontrunner Ben Carson's theory that the pyramids were created by the biblical figure Joseph to store grain. "I'm really big into conspiracy theories, so I think they were probably built by the aliens as grain silos, don’t you think," Paul joked, when asked about Carson's idea on 1110AM WBT, as reported by Buzzfeed. Carson has defended the idea that the pyramids were built for grain storage -- not as pharaohs' tombs, as modern archaeology holds -- since Buzzfeed recently unearthed a video of the neurosurgeon making...

"If you go to St Mark's cathedral in Venice, there's a medieval depiction showing people using the three great pyramids of Giza as granaries in Joseph's story," says John Darnell, a professor of Egyptology at Yale University. The belief was also popularised by Saint Gregory of Tours, a sixth century Frankish bishop, who wrote: "They are wide at the base and narrow at the top in order that the wheat might be cast into them through a tiny opening, and these granaries are to be seen to the present day." The Book of John Mandeville, a popular 14th Century travel...

Ben Carson was put on the defensive on Thursday, with reporters pressing him about a series of reports that have sprung up questioning the factual accuracy of his past statements. As Carson has gained in the polls, so has media scrutiny of the 64-year-old retired pediatric neurosurgeon and Republican presidential candidate, whose past and present statements have drawn no shortage of curiosity and interest. On Thursday, during a stop on his book tour, Carson was pressed on everything from a report that questioned past claims of his physical violence toward others, an interview in which he appeared to struggle with...

".... I certainly don't agree with Carson on this but neither do I think it is terribly material to anything. If you are trying to make a case that Carson is an idiot or against science, I think it takes more than a religious conviction to discredit an internationally prominent neurosurgeon with a string of articles published in scholarly medical journals. On the other hand, Hillary Clinton believes in man-induced global warming. Many of the same people criticizing Carson actually believe that gender has nothing to do with chromosomes or endocrinology or physiology. When it comes to GMOs, especially seeds...

Yesterday, November 4, marked 93 years to the day that the tomb of King Tutankhamen was opened in Egypt, revealing spectacular artifacts and a magnificent mummy of the boy king. The celebration was somewhat marred, at least here in the U.S., by a leading Republican candidate for president, former neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who confirmed a statement he'd made in 1998 - that he believes the Egyptian pyramids were grain silos, not tombs. The collective reaction from archaeologists and historians, who have command of literally centuries' worth of research into the artifacts and literature of the ancient Egyptians, is... Wait, what...

Seventeen years ago, Ben Carson delivered a commencement address at Andrews University that featured a very unusual theory: Maybe Joseph built the pyramids to store grain. The speech itself, dug up by the ever-enterprising Andrew Kaczynski of BuzzFeed, was framed around Carson's trademark inspirational stories. "I thought that I would talk about my own personal philosophy for success in life," he told the graduating class. "Think big.? He used Joseph to illustrate the point. "Here was a man who was basically able to save the entire world with his big thinking," he mused. Joseph, in the biblical narrative, oversees the...

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson is not backing down from a belief that drew widespread attention on Wednesday - that the Egyptian pyramids were built as grain silos, not elaborate tombs. In a 1998 commencement speech at Andrews University unearthed by BuzzFeed, Carson pointed to hermetically sealed chambers as a sign the pyramids were used by Egyptians to store grain and food. "My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain," Carson said in the speech, referring to the biblical figure. He added: "Now, all the archaeologists think that they were made for the pharaohs' graves. But,...

So the left is all abuzz over Ben Carson’s 1998 speech in which he expressed an, admittedly, exotic view on the purpose of Egyptian pyramids. (This is a another hard-hitting click-bait piece by BuzzFeed cub reporter Andrew Kaczynski, so no link because I try not to reward bad behavior.) At the 1998 commencement for Andrews University, a school associated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church, Carson also dismissed the notion that aliens were somehow involved in the construction of the pyramids. “My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain,” Carson said. “Now all the archeologists think...

The retired neurosurgeon seeking his party's nomination for the White House made these remarks in a 1998 address at Andrews University, a school associated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church, to which he belongs, in a video posted Wednesday on Buzzfeed. The church is a conservative evangelical Christian one. "My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain," Carson said.

NAPLES, Florida -- Ben Carson stood by his long-held belief about ancient pyramids in Egypt, that they were used to store grain, rather than to inter pharaohs. Asked about this Wednesday, Carson told CBS News, "It's still my belief, yes." The subject came up when Buzzfeed published a 1998 commencement speech delivered by Carson at Andrews University, a college founded by Seventh-day Adventists. "My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain," Carson said. "Now all the archeologists think that they were made for the pharaohs' graves. But, you know, it would have to be something...

GOP frontrunner Ben Carson, in a 1998 commencement address, floated his own personal theory that the pyramids in Egypt were built by Joseph -- the biblical patriarch known for his coat of many colors -- to store grain, Buzzfeed reported. In the speech -- given at Andrews University, a school with ties to Carson's Seventh-day Adventist faith -- the neurosurgeon shot down claim that aliens had built the pyramids. But he also disagreed with the archaeological consensus that the pyramids were constructed as tombs for the pharaohs. “My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain,”...

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Dating back to the days of the Pharaoh Khufu, or Cheops in the Fourth Dynasty, the harbor dates back 4,500 years. The Great Pyramid of Giza serves as the tomb of Khufu, who died around 2566 B.C. The harbor was built on the Red Sea shore in the Wadi al-Jarf area, 112 miles south of Suez. The harbor was discovered by a French-Egyptian mission from the French Institute for Archaeological Studies. The site "predates by more than 1,000 years any other port structure known in the world," according to the mission's director, Pierre...

Cairo (AFP) - The Egyptian Museum in Cairo is showcasing for the first time the earliest writing from ancient Egypt found on papyrus, detailing work on the Great Pyramid of Giza, antiquities officials said Thursday. The papyri were discovered near Wadi el-Jarf port, 25 kilometres (15 miles) south of the Gulf of Suez town of Zafarana, the antiquities ministry said. The find by a French-Egyptian team unearths papers telling of the daily lives of port workers who transported huge limestone blocks to Cairo during King Khufu's rule to build the Great Pyramid, intended to be his burial structure. One document...

Astonishingly, the papyri were written by men who participated in the building of the Great Pyramid, the tomb of the Pharaoh Khufu, the first and largest of the three colossal pyramids at Giza just outside modern Cairo. Among the papyri was the journal of a previously unknown official named Merer, who led a crew of some 200 men who traveled from one end of Egypt to the other picking up and delivering goods of one kind or another. Merer, who accounted for his time in half-day increments, mentions stopping at Tura, a town along the Nile famous for its limestone...