I read this years ago, before Dan Brown and the Davinci Code phenom. I was shocked that the authors of this book lost the plagiarism lawsuite against Dan Brown. Seemed to me that Brown stole everything from this book.

I need to revisit this book. There was a lot to like about it, though as I recall, there were also some points that were hard to accept. ( )

I loved this book. I have no idea whether anything that the authors claim is true or even accurately researched, but it reads well and the ideas are largely plausible. I'm certain that Dan Brown derived a lot of his material from this book. But most essentially it is a gripping yarn.

I also have a soft spot for this book as I was reading it in conjunction with Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, which is not only an extremely concise and informative text on the Abrahamic cults, sects and religious orders since time immemorial but also the greatest piss-take thereof. So yes, I would recommend Hiram Key, but do yourself a favour, and if you have the patience, and read Foucault's Pendulum. ( )

I love ideas that involve thinking outside the box. Ergo, I have a soft spot for alternative history, especially that involving religion, secret societies, and events beyond the canon of history we are taught in school.

Therefore, I found this book to be an interesting and plausible account of the history and origins of Freemasonry. However, there is very little in the way of serious scholarship here -- no citing of sources, no bibliography, and some of the leaps they take and the connections they make are giant steps indeed.

So, the book is entertaining, plausible as far as it goes, but unless some further discovery is made, still extremely speculative. ( )

Besproken in AMT, september 1997 no.9, p.10:
“Het is ook niet niks te vernemen dat de vrijmetselaren de tradities van de Farao’s voortzetten…zelfs dat Jezus een vrijmetselaar was. De conclusies zijn een bewijs van grote verbeeldingskracht…Knight en Lomas hebben er wel van begrepen dat ritualen de sleutel zijn tot money making science fiction.”
Besproken in AMT, december 1998 no.12, p.16:
“We praten dus niet over boeken waarin braaf begonnen wordt met de beschrijving van de geschiedenis, beginnende bij het jaar 1717 (of iets daarvoor). Het zijn geen boeken met hoogdravende taal over hoe de vrijmetselaar als ruwe steen werkt aan de zuivere kubiek die geschikt moet zijn voor de tempel van Salomo. Welnee? We hebben het over echt spannende boeken! Geschreven door journalisten-auteurs die naast het schrijven van een nieuwsbericht ook de vaardigheid van het schrijven van een goed boek perfect beheersen…Als eerste om te lezen raden we aan ‘De sleutel van Hiram’.”
Besproken door John M.Hamill in Thoth, 1996, p.197:
“Helemaal verbijsterend wordt het wanneer ze stellen in een museum in Kaïro niet alleen de gemummificeerde resten van Hiram Abiff gevonden te hebben, maar ook die van één van zijn moordenaars.Het betoog van de auteurs rammelt echter aan alle kanten. De auteurs geven ruiterlijk toe dat zij niet over enige deskundigheid beschikken op het gebied van theologie, egyptologie of maçonnieke geschiedenis, en dat zij bij hun onderzoek bewust alle contact met deskundigen op deze gebieden hebben vermeden.”
Besproken in AQC, vol.109 (1996), 1997, pp.254 en 255:
“There are several ways of writing history…A third way is to select a topic about which a great deal has already been written, declare that there is a quite new way of explaining it and then produce material that would at a first and cursory glance seem to support that claim but for which no verifiable evidence is forthcoming. This book is one of those written in the latter fashion…The authors are freemasons but they display throughout the book a continual lack of knowledge about some very fundamental masonic facts.”

I came to "Hiram Key" thinking "this will be a particularly woolly conspiracy theory" and I was dead-on right. To the best of my understanding the thesis is that Freemasonry comes from ancient Egypt rather than eighteenth century Britain, and that Jesus was a Freemason (and had a wife and kid) and that pretty much every shadowy organisation in history gets a mention (including the Priory of Sion and the Cathars). Somehow Rosslyn Chapel and the Dead Sea Scrolls also get shout outs.

There's some entertainment to be had in "Hiram Key" but to be honest Knight didn't sway my beliefs around the Freemasons. ( )