Hot air balloons that are over three thousand years old? Diagrams of ancient airplanes and flight suits hidden in the design of jewellery, carved on the sides of pyramids, or even woven into rug patterns? Is it possible that what was commonly believed to be temples and palaces to the gods could in reality be ancient airports and aircraft factories? Absurd, crackpot notions to most of us, but not to William Deiches, an amateur Egyptologist living in Brentwood, a suburb of London. Back in the early 1980s he re-assembled a piece of winged jewellery from the tomb of Tutankhamun into a hand glider. Three hundred scale models later (with recognition from the Guinness Book of World Records, Who's Who's in the World and the Rolex Awards for Enterprise) Deiches is convinced beyond a doubt that the ancients had an elaborate system of aircraft and hand gliders... Are we convinced?
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"One likely looking oddball is Neal Livingston's The Paper Age and Ancient Flight, a 22-minute documentary interview with eccentric Britisher William Deiches, who expounds his theory that ancient Egyptians, Mayans, Tibetans and Incas few around in giant paper airplanes and left 'diagrams' of their planes in jewelry, paintings, and even carpet designs. Livingston's approach is entirely deadpan; if Deiches' theories weren't quite so loony, you could end up believing that everything happened just the way he says it did."
KIRCHHOFF, J. J.. The Globe & Mail, Canada, September 16, 1992
