Disclaimer: Transformers is property of Takara-Tomy and Hasbro. I'm just borrowing it. Other characters are property of their respective owners.
"Khufu's decree huh? I haven't thought much about that for a long time," Jones said. "What would you like to know?"
"Did you ever find any earlier references to the 'demons' that built the structure the pyramid supposedly covers?" Optimus' holographic avatar asked.
"If you read them right, by which I mean the right context with the right translation, there are references to the demons in every Egyptian culture until the Fouth Dynasty. The greatest concentration, though, can be found in the few Halfan drawings that have been discovered. They ruled from 18 000 to 15 000 BC and over half the pictograms from that period depict the demons."
"Why do the depictions end during the Fourth Dynasty?"
"This is just a theory, mind, but I figure that the construction of the pyramid over the demon temple was done in synchronization with an extermination of the old demon-fearing traditions."
"How do you just kill an oral tradition?" Leo blurted out.
"It's not that hard, kid," Jones said with a pitying glance at Leo. "They Egyptians were big fans of huge bureaucratic undertakings, and killing everyone who followed the old demon worship and wiping out every reference they could find would have been relatively easy."
"Easy?!" Leo was shocked.
"Sure. In six years, with modern technology, the Nazis killed 6 million Jews. That's a million a year. Now, Khufu's bureaucrats didn't have modern methods, but they had a lot fewer people to deal with, not more than a hundred thousand, and decades to do it. Easy."
"What would the motivation have been for such an act?" Optimus asked, trying to bring the conversation back on topic.
"The Pharaohs were revered as living gods by the Egyptians. By burying the demon temple under his artificial mountain, the Pyramid, and exterminating demon worship, Khufu cemented his god-hood in the minds of his people. It made his reign, and that of his successors, utterly unassailable. And just to keep it in everyone's mind, he used the Pyramid as his own burial chamber. 'I shall protect my people from the demons, even in the afterlife', if I remember the text of the decree correctly."
"That is correct," Optimus agreed.
"It was basically a political move, and the biggest snub anyone could ever throw at the demonic religion."
"Indeed. Were there ever depictions of the demons?" Optimus asked.
"Now there's an interesting thing. There are two different schools of thought on what the Egyptians were depicting as demons. In some images you see jagged humanoid giants associated with the word 'demon'. In other images, the term is depicted with streamlined objects that either fly or hover just above the ground."
"Which one do you think is correct?"
"Well that's the rub. If the depictions were geographically separated, I'd say we were looking at two different interpretations of the same tradition."
"I take it that they are not?"
"No. In fact, in one case, both depictions were found on pottery fragments that came from pits 6 feet apart. My best guess is that there were two different types of demons: the humanoid ones and the streamlined ones."
"Could the demons have simply possessed multiple forms?" Optimus asked.
"I suppose so. Other places have traditions of shape-shifting demons, so it's entirely possible. The point against that theory is that there's no reference in the images or writing to describe shape-shifting."
"Perhaps they didn't have the language to describe it," Optimus opined.
"Oh, come on. People don't make up religious myths if they don't have the language to describe the thing they're mythologizing," Jones scoffed.
"Unless they weren't making it up," Optimus said.
"Mr. Paxton, if you're one of those UFO nuts and you think I can help you prove it, you're dead wrong. According to the US government, our planet has never had contact with an alien species, and that's all I can say about it," Jones said grumpily.
"Oh, I don't believe this!" Leo blurted as he shot out off the couch. "We came all this way and Gramps here is siding with The Man. Let's go Op-Orion."
"The Man? You think I like spewing government bull crap, kid?" Jones demanded as he stood, also. "The fact is that I've seen things that would make you piss yourself and roll up into a little ball. I spout that garbage to keep snot-nosed wimps like you from dissolving into hysterical panic!"
"Leo! Sit!" Optimus ordered. Leo's eyes widened in shock and he dropped back onto the couch. "Professor Jones, please accept my apology for Leo's presumption. He has some issues with official information policy."
"Hmph. I know what it's like to be young and sure of yourself," Jones said as he sat back down. "But I also know that most young punks aren't half as tough as they think they are."
"But if the young were not so ignorant of their own limitations, advancements would never be made," Optimus countered.
"Heh. True enough. So, Mr. Paxton, I assume that you've seen more than average, too."
"Far more."
"So you would agree that the face that high-jacked the TV signals a couple of months back, and those military experiments that got loose in New York at the same time, may be related to the demons?"
"From what do you draw that conclusion?"
"The face had an elongated head that looked a hell of a lot like a pharaohnic crown and those robots looked about as close to 'jagged humanoid giants' as I can image."
"Professor, would you be interested in taking a drive to a less populated local so that we might share our experiences?" Optimus offered.
"OK, but on two conditions. First, I drive my own car. Second, I'm bringing my gun."
"Agreed."