A huge mummified finger could prove the existence of a race of giants living in ancient Egypt.
Adventurer Gregor Spörri first came across the large severed digit in 1988.
Aged 33 at the time, he visited Egypt on holiday to explore shipwrecks and examine the cosmic energy of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
After getting to know the bartender at his hotel in Cairo, Spörri was invited to meet Najib, the descendant of a family of grave robbers, as reported by What’s the Jam.
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The old man lived 65 miles away in the small farming village of Bir Booker, located between Cairo and Alexandria.
Najib showed Gregor a relic that had been kept in his family for several generations.
He told him that there was a mysterious connection between the object and the Great Pyramid.
Najib said his ancestors had unearthed the mummified object in the desert a very long time ago.
He claimed the item had only been seen by a handful of people and was not for sale at any price.
However, he offered to show it to the Swiss tourist for a fee of $300 and Gregor agreed.
Najib opened a wooden box and pulled out a 38-centimetre-long object that was wrapped in a leather cover and tied together with leather strings.
Initially thinking it could be an animal’s leg, Gregor quickly realised that he was looking at a finger that must have belonged to humanoid creature around 20 feet tall.
Najib allowed Gregor to take several photos of the object and even held the camera so the visitor could pose with it in his hands.
Gregor said the finger had been severed from the creature’s hand with anatomical precision.
He described the skin as several millimetres thick. It was torn in places and apparently gnawed by mice or rats.
He said the fingernail was still in place, but splintered on the front.
The phalanx bone was protruding from where it had apparently been amputated and there were traces of fungi.
Najib could see that Gregor still appeared very sceptical so he showed him several documents in Arabic and Latin that apparently confirmed its authenticity.
He also showed him a Polaroid photo and X-ray of the finger that was taken in the 1960s.
Fascinated by the possibility that giants may have roamed the Earth thousands of years ago, Gregor began studying the subject when he returned home.
Although several scientists were unwilling to validate the object based solely on Gregor’s photographs, some did confirm that it appears to have come from an unusually large humanlike creature.
Professor Frank J. Rühli, who has studied the mummy of the caveman Ötzi, said the finger’s bones and joints were the same as a human’s, but disproportionately thick-walled.
Dr Benecke agreed, but suggested the digit came from a person with macrodactyly, a rare condition in which a person’s extremities are abnormally large due to bone and tissue overgrowth.
Gregor consulted with several other scientists who said the finger looked authentic, but as the existence of giants has never been proved, they believe it was related to the uncommon condition.
Dr. Carl Bader was quoted as saying: “This really looks like the mummified finger of a humanoid giant.
“But, according to evolutionary biology, such creatures have never existed.”
Gregor has since published a research report on his website that argues why the finger could not be a case of macrodactyly, and his investigations are still ongoing.
He returned to Egypt in 2009 to track down Najib or any information related to the finger, but his efforts were fruitless.
Nevertheless, he is still convinced of the existence of the giant finger he held in his hands in Najib’s house almost 40 years ago.
“It was strange and eerie,” Gregor explained.
“The old Arab seemed to possess ancient knowledge that nobody knows about today.”
Giants have appeared in numerous ancient legends, myths, and even in the Bible, most notably in the Book of Genesis.
Although science denies the existence of giants, Roman historian Flavius Josephus wrote in 79 AD that they existed in Egypt until the 13th century BC.
In 2011, Austrian archaeologist Manfred Bietak discovered 16 skeletal hands buried in four pits in the ancient city of Avaris in Egypt,
He said: “Most of the hands are quite large.
“Some of them are very large.”
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