Thirty Refusals, One Approval, And A Rule Nobody Will Name
The Giza inspectorate's subsurface register, bought for 640 pounds at the ministry's own counter, lists thirty-one applications to drill below thirty metres since 1978. One signature block appears on nineteen refusals. It outlived the man who signed.
CAIRO, Egypt — A certified copy of the Giza inspectorate's register of subsurface works costs 640 Egyptian pounds. It is sold over a counter in Cairo to anyone who fills in a form and waits nineteen days.
We bought one. Sixty-one pages, sealed on every sheet. It is published with this story entire.
The register runs from 1978 to 30 June 2026 and lists thirty-one applications to drill, core or sound below thirty metres on the Giza plateau.
Thirty were refused.
One was approved. It was ours, in June, and we cannot tell you why.
The rule twenty-four refusals stand on
Twenty-four of the thirty refusals give a reason, and it is the same reason: the application is not permitted under Standing Instruction 4 (1978).
Four of the twenty-four quote a clause from it. The quoted wording is identical across thirty-one years, from a 1985 refusal to a 2016 one, down to a comma.
Standing Instruction 4 is not in the official gazette. It is not in the ministerial decree series. It is not in the consolidated regulation index. Nadine Sobhy-Errington, the Cairo administrative lawyer we instructed to look for it, searched all three and found nothing, and is careful to say what that does and does not mean: an internal standing instruction is not required to be published, so its absence from the gazette is not by itself irregular.
What is harder to sit beside is the date. The instruction is dated 30 May 1978. The inspectorate's own seismic sounding below thirty metres was carried out on 14 March 1978. Eleven weeks to the day separate them, and no application to go below thirty metres has been approved since, except one.
The hand that is not a hand
Nineteen of the thirty refusals carry the same signature block: DIRECTOR, SUBSURFACE WORKS — ENG. S. ROUSHDY-FARAG, printed, with a broken serif on the R that appears on every impression.
It first appears on 9 October 1983. It last appears on 2 August 2021.
Eng. Roushdy-Farag retired from the directorate in 2012 and died in 2017.
Girgis Wahba-Talaat, who kept the records in that office from 1981 to 2009, told us where the block lived — the second drawer of the outer office — and who could reach it, which was anyone senior enough to be standing in the room.
The directorate has now told us the block was destroyed on 6 August, two days after its director read our draft. She volunteered the date. We had not found it.
Four questions, four words
We wrote to the Permits Directorate on 3 June, 19 June, 14 July and 30 July. Each letter asked the same two things: produce Standing Instruction 4, or state that it does not exist.
On 11 August we received one answer, of four words.
Standing instructions are internal.
That is not a production and it is not a denial. It is a sentence that uses the phrase and declines the document, and it is the ministry's entire position on a rule that has closed the ground under the most examined monument on earth for forty-eight years.
Eng. Dalia Moussa-Renshaw, who runs the directorate, then replied at length, and her reply is at the foot of this page. Readers should go and read it. She confirms the register is ours to publish, confirms the arithmetic, declines to produce the instruction, declines to say it does not exist — and then writes the sentence this newspaper did not expect and is not able to improve on.
She has read it. It is four pages. She does not think it is a good rule and has said so inside her own ministry, in writing, twice.
What we owe
The register is a public document that we could have bought at any point in the eleven stories we have run about this plateau, including the one where we complained about being kept out of it. We did not think to.
Our own approval sits on line 31, and the honest position on it is the one printed above under Unverified: we do not know why we got it. Eng. Moussa-Renshaw's explanation — that we asked for something small enough to refuse to widen — is the best account anyone has offered, and it comes from the person with the most reason to offer a flattering one.
The renewal is still with the committee. When it is decided, either way, it will run here.
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Sources & Method
We stopped applying and started buying. The register of subsurface-works applications is a public record sold by the ministry's own records office; we filled in the form, paid 640 Egyptian pounds and waited nineteen days. Two people then counted the thirty-one lines separately and reconciled their counts before either saw the other's. Every date, citation and signature block in this story is on the certified copy, which is published with it.
Who we spoke to
- Register of applications for subsurface works, Giza Inspectorate, 1978 – 30 June 2026, Certified copy, 61 pages, ministry records office. Bought over the counter for 640 Egyptian pounds after a written request; issued in nineteen days with the records office seal on every page July 2026 Published with this story in full. The certification covers completeness to 30 June 2026 and nothing after it.
- Permits Directorate, Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, Egypt. Four written questions, sent 3 June, 19 June, 14 July and 30 July 2026, each asking the directorate to produce Standing Instruction 4 or to state that it does not exist June–August 2026 One answer, of four words, received 11 August. The director's fuller reply is printed under Right of Reply.
- Nadine Sobhy-Errington, Administrative lawyer, Cairo; practises in antiquities and planning. Instructed by this newspaper to search the official gazette, the ministerial decree series and the consolidated regulation index for any instrument answering to the citation June–July 2026 Found nothing. Cautions that an internal standing instruction is not required to be published, and that its absence from the gazette is therefore not by itself irregular.
- Girgis Wahba-Talaat, Records clerk, Giza Inspectorate, 1981–2009, retired. Interviewed twice in person in Giza, on the record and with his own copy of the 1994 filing manual open on the table July 2026 Says the stamp was kept in the second drawer of the directorate's outer office and that anyone senior enough to be in the room could reach it.
- Eng. Dalia Moussa-Renshaw, Director, Permits Directorate. Sent the complete draft, the register and all four questions on 4 August 2026; replied in writing on 18 August with no conditions attached August 2026 Printed in full and unedited, including the paragraph about us and the paragraph in which she says she has read the instruction.
What we could not confirm
- Whether Standing Instruction 4 exists as a physical document. We can prove that twenty-four refusals cite it by number and date, that four of those refusals quote a clause from it, and that the quoted clauses agree with each other word for word across thirty-one years. We cannot put a piece of paper in front of a reader, and the directorate has been asked four times and has neither produced one nor said there is none.
- Why our application was approved. This is the single line on the register that we cannot account for, and it is ours. The directorate says the decision was taken on the ordinary criteria. Thirty other applicants, several of them better qualified than a newspaper, met criteria they were never shown. We have asked what changed and we do not have an answer.
- What the 1978 sounding found. It is the event the whole register hangs from and it is the one thing the register does not record. The works section's field report is not in the file, not in the ministry's library, not in the two university deposits we searched, and not, according to its own catalogue, in the national archive.
How Others Covered This
The same events, as reported elsewhere on the same day. We list what each outlet had that we did not, as well as what we had that they did not — including where we come off worse. Why we print this.
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The Meridian TelegraphEgypt's Secret Drilling Ban: The Rule That Sealed The Pyramids For Half A Century
Ran the instruction as a suppression order written to bury a specific finding made in March 1978.
Had that we did not
The eleven-week interval between the sounding and the instruction, which is real, and which they took from our figure box.
Left out
That they have never seen the instruction either. They give its purpose and its author with great confidence and no document, having taken the interval from our figure box, and the only person who admits to having read it — the director whose reply is at the foot of our page — describes four vague pages about the structural condition of the plateau and names no finding at all.
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The Hollow PostTHEY REFUSED THIRTY TIMES AND THEN THEY LET A NEWSPAPER IN
Treated our approval as the tell: the paper was allowed down because somebody wanted the plateau's reputation laundered.
Had that we did not
The approval, correctly dated, and the fair observation that we have not explained it.
Left out
That we asked the directorate four times to explain it and printed all four questions and the single answer, which their piece describes as our silence.
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They Buriedthis newspaperThirty Refusals, One Approval, And A Rule Nobody Will Name
Bought the register over a counter, counted the lines, and asked the directorate in writing to produce the rule twenty-four of them cite.
Had that we did not
The register entire, the four questions, the four-word answer, and the directorate's reply at length.
Left out
We have written about this plateau eleven times and never once asked for the permit register, which is public, costs 640 pounds and took nineteen days. We ran three stories about being refused access before we thought to buy the list of everyone else who had been. — V. Ashcombe-Doyle, standards editor
Right of Reply
They Buried contacted Eng. Dalia Moussa-Renshaw, Director, Permits Directorate, Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities sent the complete draft, the certified register and all four of our questions on 4 August 2026, with no deadline imposed. Replied in writing on 18 August 2026. Asked that it run whole. Printed unedited.
I will answer you properly, which is not the same as answering you fully, and I would like to be clear at the start about where the line falls and why.
Your register is genuine. It is our register. You bought it at our counter for the price we charge, and I am not going to spend a paragraph pretending the document is something other than what it is, because that is the manoeuvre my directorate is expected to make and it insults both of us.
Your arithmetic is also correct. Thirty-one applications, thirty refusals, one approval. I signed the approval.
Now the part you want. You have asked me four times to produce Standing Instruction 4 (1978) or to tell you it does not exist. I am not able to produce it. I am also not able to tell you it does not exist. I am aware of exactly how that sentence reads in a newspaper and I am writing it anyway, because the alternative is to say something untrue to a reporter who has the register open in front of her and will notice.
I will tell you one thing that is true and that you will use against me, and I would rather you had it from me than from a retired clerk. I have read it. It is four pages. It concerns the structural condition of the plateau and it is written in the language of 1978, which is to say it is vague where a modern instrument would be specific, and it is on that vagueness that thirty refusals have rested. I do not think it is a good rule. I have said so inside this ministry in writing, twice, and I will say so to you.
What I cannot do is hand it to you, because the classification of internal instructions is not mine to lift, and the officer whose it is to lift has declined, and I am not going to name him to you so that you can print that he declined.
On the stamp. You are right and it is embarrassing. A printed signature block was used in this directorate for thirty-eight years, including after the retirement and after the death of the man whose name is on it, because it sat in a drawer and because no one wrote down that it should stop. That is not a conspiracy. It is a filing practice that outlived its subject, and it is worse than a conspiracy in one respect, which is that a conspiracy at least implies somebody was paying attention. The block was destroyed on 6 August, two days after I read your draft. I am telling you the date because you would have found it out and because you would have been right to ask why I had not told you.
On your approval. You have written that you do not know why you were granted what thirty others were refused, and you have written it as though the not-knowing is sinister. It is simpler than that and it is also less flattering to you. You applied for one hole of one hundred millimetres, for one week, with a shoring assessment attached and a contractor who has worked this plateau since 1994, and you offered to publish everything you found whether or not it suited you. Nobody else in forty-eight years asked for anything that small. Most of them asked to excavate. I did not approve a newspaper. I approved a hole I could refuse to widen.
And I have refused to widen it. Your renewal is with the committee, and it will be decided on the shoring assessment and on nothing else, and if it is refused you will print that too, which is the only reason any of this is worth my afternoon.
Published unedited under our right-of-reply guarantee.
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