The Tulli Papyrus: The Pharaoh’s Fiery Discs and the Missing Original

In 1933 or 1934, Alberto Tulli, the curator responsible for the Egyptian collection at the Vatican Museums, was said to have seen a fragment of papyrus in a Cairo antiquities shop. The price was too high, so he did not buy it. He copied the Egyptian shorthand called hieratic by hand. The copy later reached Boris de Rachewiltz, an Egyptologist, and became a translation about circles of fire appearing in the sky during the twenty-second year of Pharaoh Thutmose III.

The text published in the 1950s described a glowing round object brighter than the Sun over Egypt. After several days, more objects appeared. Scribes became frightened, and the king ordered the event recorded in the House of Life so that later generations would remember it. Believers in extraterrestrial visitors read this as the oldest UFO report ever found.