Tulli Papyrus

The Tulli Papyrus is claimed to be a transcription of an Egyptian papyrus dating from the reign of Thutmose III. The claim originated in a 1953 article published in Doubt, the Fortean Society magazine, by Tiffany Thayer.

The story
In CE 1933, Alberto Tulli, curator of the Egyptology department of the Vatican Museums, discovered a strange roll of papyrus lying in the antique pavilion of Cairo. After Alberto Tulli died, the papyrus was handed over to his brother. However, Tulli's brother also died shortly thereafter, and the papyrus scroll went missing. Twenty years later, Italian Egyptologist Boris de Rachewiltz claims that he had discovered the original copy of the papyrus, which contained excerpts roughly translated from Egyptian hieroglyphs which reads as follows:

"On the 22nd, the third month of winter, the sixth hour of the day [...] one of the chroniclers (historical scribes) of the book 'The House of Life' discovered a strange 'disk' approaching from the sky. It has no head. The breath from his mouth emitted an unpleasant odor.

Its body is about 50 meters long and 5 meters wide. It has no voice. It headed towards the king's house. Their minds became confused, they hit themselves in the stomach. They [go] report back to the pharaoh. Pharaoh [ordered] to look up in the chronicle 'The House of Life'. The king reflected on all that was going on.

After days have passed, they appear in the sky more than ever before. They shine brighter than Sun, and extend to all four corners of the sky [...]

Soldiers and pharaohs watched together. After dinner, the saucer soared high in the sky to the south. Fish and other plankton pour down from the sky, a strange thing unknown since the construction of the country.

Pharaoh ordered incense to soothe the hearts of Amun-Re, the god of two lands (i.e. upper and lower Egypt). And [order] that this event must be recorded in The House of Life Chronicle forever..."

This event is said to have taken place in the early years when Thutmose III ruled Egypt, around 1480 BCE.

According to Thayer, the transcription was sent to him by Boris de Rachewiltz who supposedly found the original transcription of the papyrus among papers left by Alberto Tulli, a deceased Vatican museum director. References to "circles of fire" or "fiery discs" allegedly contained in the translation have been interpreted in UFO and Fortean literature as evidence of ancient flying saucers, although ufologists Jacques Vallee and Chris Aubeck have described it as a "hoax". According to Vallee and Aubeck, since Tulli had supposedly copied it during a single viewing of the original papyrus using an "Ancient Egyptian shorthand", and de Rachewiltz had never seen the original, the alleged text likely contained transcription errors, making it impossible to verify.

Author Erich von Däniken included the Tulli Papyrus in his speculations of ancient visitations by extraterrestrials. In the 1968 Condon Report, Samuel Rosenberg reported that it was likely that "Tulli was taken in and that the papyrus is a fake". Rosenberg cited the Tulli Papyrus as an example of stories circulated among UFO book authors "taken from secondary and tertiary sources without any attempt to verify original sources" and concluded that "all accounts of 'UFO-like sightings handed down through the ages' are doubtful – until verified".

Most probably the text of the Tulli Papyrus was copied from the 'Egyptian Grammar' published by Gardiner in 1927.

Unable to verify
Tulli Papyrus allegedly may contain a transcription error, making it impossible to verify as real.