Sphinx age revisionism

[TithonusSyndrome]

Some Hancock wanker on another site is trying to get me to accept that the Sphinx is as old as 10000 years in age, based on some fringe hypothesis that it was weatherworn by post-ice age glacial runoff instead of wind based on some comparison of the erosion methods. While I'm confident that there was no sapient culture in Egypt at the end of the ice age capable of making anything like the Sphinx, he argues that apparently this theory has gained the support of 1400 members of the Geological Society of America:

The Sphinx Controversy
A research team has discovered physical evidence that the Great Sphinx of Giza, Egypt, may date from 5000 and 7000 BCE and possibly earlier. In response, archaeologists have thrown mud at geologists, historians have been caught in the middle, and the Sphinx, having revealed one secret, challenges us to unravel even greater ones.

The discovery originated half a century ago in the work of a neglected French scholar, R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz (1891-1962). Between 1937 and 1952, Schwaller undertook a survey of the Egyptian Temple of Luxor. His measurements of the floorplan and other detailed observations of the ruins disclosed geometrical relationships not previously suspected. These were confirmed by French archaeologists. Schwaller found similar relationships at other sites. He reported his findings in 1949 and gave a fuller account in 1957.[1] A reviewer for the Journal of Near Eastern Studies urged his colleagues to pay serious attention to Schwaller's work, which challenged the notion of Egypt's mathematical inferiority and suggested a new dimension to Egyptian religious belief.[2] But Schwaller stirred up opposition by the speculative meanings that he assigned to Egyptian architecture and inscriptions, and other scholars dismissed his findings.

Schwaller observed a curious physical anomaly in the pyramid complex at Giza. The erosion on the Sphinx, he noted, was quite different from the erosion observable on other structures. Schwaller suggested that the cause of erosion on the Sphinx was water rather than wind-borne sand. At the time, nobody understood the implications of this observation and it went largely unnoticed until the 1970s, when the independent Egyptologist John Anthony West took up the question.[3]

What is now the Sphinx head was probably at one time an outcrop of rock. The 240-foot body of the monument, in the shape of a recumbent lion facing east, was excavated from the limestone bedrock of the Giza plateau, forming an open enclosure around it. A small temple, the "Sphinx Temple," stands in front of the monument. This and an adjacent temple to the south, known as the "Khafra Valley Temple," originally stood close to the Nile river. The Valley Temple is at one end of a long 1600 foot causeway that leads to the Mortuary Temple in front of the Pyramid of Khafra (Chephren). The Sphinx and Valley Temples consist of huge limestone blocks quarried from the enclosure and refaced with Aswan granite. To the northeast of Khafra's pyramid lies the Great Pyramid of Khufu (Cheops) and to the southwest lies the Pyramid of Menkaura (Mycerinus). Causeways also link the Khufu and Menkaura pyramids to valley temples along the ancient Nile. Archaeologists attribute the Sphinx to the Old Kingdom fourth dynasty ruler Khafra, who reigned from 2520-2494 BCE.[4]

West compared the erosion on the Sphinx, on its temples, and on the enclosure walls to the erosion of other structures on the Giza plateau. On the Sphinx and its nearby walls, the rock was worn badly, giving it a sagging appearance. Edges were rounded and deep fissures were prominent. On structures elsewhere on the plateau, the surfaces showed only the sharper abrasion of wind and sand. Egypt experienced periods of heavy rainfall in the millennia that marked the post-glacial northward shift of the temperate zone. This period lasted from about 10,000 to 5000 BCE and by its end the Sahara had turned from green savanna into a desert. A shorter but more intense period of rainfall lasted from about 4000 to 3000 BCE, tapering off by the middle of the third millennium.[5] West thought that flooding from the post-glacial transition caused the distinctive weathering on the Sphinx complex, which meant that the Sphinx must have been carved during or before the transition.[6] Orthodox archaeologists refused even to consider West's hypothesis. But in 1990 West persuaded Robert M. Schoch, a geologist at Boston University, to examine the question. Curious, Schoch agreed and the two visited Giza in June 1990.

Archaeologists agreed that the Sphinx complex stood close to earlier flood levels and that flooding probably reached the base of the Sphinx on occasion. However, flood levels have declined since Old Kingdom times.[7] Schoch observed that erosion was heaviest on the upper parts of the Sphinx and enclosure walls, not around the base, where flooding should have undercut the monument. This upper surface weathering was typical of damage by rainfall, as were the undulating impaction pattern and fissures on the Sphinx and nearby walls. Schoch noticed that the limestone blocks on the Sphinx and Khafra Valley Temples were similarly eroded and that some of the refacing stones appeared to have been form-fitted to the eroded blocks behind them. Inscriptions suggest that the refacing stones dated from the Old Kingdom, which suggested that the original walls eroded long before.[8]

On a second trip to Giza in April 1991, West and Schoch brought Thomas Dobecki, a geophysicist from Houston, Texas, to carry out a seismic survey of the enclosure foundations to determine whether the underlying rock showed evidence of precipitation damage. The degree of subsurface weathering could be measured by bouncing sound waves off of deeper layers of rock. With the permission of the Egyptian Antiquities Organization, the team carried out sound-wave tests through the floor of the enclosure.

Schoch and Dobecki discovered that the enclosure floor in front and alongside of the Sphinx had weathered to a depth of six to eight feet. They also discovered that the back of the enclosure had weathered only half as far. Schoch agreed that the floor behind the Sphinx had been excavated during the Old Kingdom but he concluded that the sides and front of the monument were twice as old. Assuming a linear rate of weathering, Schoch estimated the date of the Sphinx and most of the enclosure to between 5000 and 7000 BCE, far earlier than the date of 2500 assumed by archaeology. Schoch noted that weathering could have been non-linear, slowing as it got deeper because of the increasing mass of rock overhead. On this assumption, the Sphinx could have been significantly older than 7000 BCE.[9]

Egyptologists dated the Sphinx to Khafra from several kinds of evidence. A stela from the New Kingdom reign of Thutmose IV (1401-1391 BCE) stands in front of the monument, and an inscription that has since flaked off contained the first syllable of Khafra's name. Statues of Khafra found in his Valley Temple also seemed to associate the complex with Khafra, and the Sphinx head was assumed to be his as well. Finally, the causeway from Khafra's pyramid was built into the Khafra Valley Temple.[10]

There was some uncertainty about the date even before West opened the question. Egyptologists agree that repair work to fill in fissures or to protect corroded areas on the monument took place in the New Kingdom no later than about 1400 BCE.[11] This gave little over a millennium for the erosion on the Sphinx to have reached such proportions as to require protective mortaring and partial covering. During much of this time, the main body of the Sphinx was probably buried in sand. The other evidence linking Khafra to the complex was circumstantial. The syllable khaf, for example, could have had other meanings.

West disproved one piece of supposed evidence. With the help of a New York City police artist, Detective Sgt. Frank Domingo, West compared the head of the Sphinx with a known head of Khafra. Sergeant Domingo generated profiles of the two heads by computer and by hand and found a very different facial structure in the profile of the Sphinx compared to the profile of Khafra. The difference is easily seen in photographs of the two heads.[12]

West and Schoch presented their evidence with considerable trepidation before the Geological Society of America meeting in San Diego on October 23, 1991.[13] Instead of finding some obvious flaw in their results, a number of geologists offered their support. In newspaper interviews and private correspondence, however, other geologists raised two objections. One asked if the seismic refraction data coincided with a natural fluctuation in the rock layer itself. In fact, the seismic profile did not follow the natural dip of the rock.[14] Another geologist proposed that the entire Sphinx , and not just the head, was a natural outcrop of rock. Such an outcrop, known in geology as a "yardang," could have eroded for millennia before being carved. But the Sphinx body and nearby temple blocks matched the stratification pattern of the excavated bedrock. They had clearly been carved out of the plateau along with the enclosure floor. Only the head could have been an outcrop. Schoch believed that the head, which was too small in proportion to the body, had probably been recarved in historic times from an earlier lion's head.[15] As publicity for the findings began to appear, some archaeologists denied the possibility of an earlier date. "There's just no way that could be true," countered one scholar, who pointed to the absence of known government and civilization from the earlier period.[16] "There are no big surprises in store for us," declared another scholar.[17]

The American Association for the Advancement of Science scheduled a session to debate the issue at its annual meeting in Chicago on February 7, 1992.[18] A leading authority on the Sphinx, Mark Lehner, director of the American Research Center in Cairo, defended an Old Kingdom date for the Sphinx. He was joined by a geologist, K. Lal Gauri of the University of Louisville, who had studied the Sphinx for a decade. Robert Schoch and Thomas Dobecki defended their results suggesting an earlier date.

After reviewing the standard reasons for dating the Sphinx to Khafra, Lehner asked the basic question raised by his colleagues in archaeology: where was the civilization that had to have existed to carve the Sphinx and build the temples so many millennia before the Old Kingdom? Archaeology had found no evidence of civilization in Egypt that far back. The Egyptians of the post-glacial transition were primitive "hunters and gatherers" who could not have built such a monument.[19]

Gauri circulated a short paper that attributed the erosion on the Sphinx primarily to geochemical effects associated with either an upward seepage of groundwater or with atmospheric condensation and evaporation, which occurred even in the dry climate of the area.[20] But in his own paper, Schoch addressed this objection. Until recently, the water table lay too far below the enclosure floor to be a serious factor. There was evidence of condensation damage to the Sphinx and its temples, but such damage was common to all of the structures on the Giza plateau and was in his view the least serious kind of weathering. It could not account for the nature and severity of the impaction patterns on the Sphinx and its temples.[21]

To the problem of archaeological context for an earlier Sphinx, Schoch replied that urban centers had existed in the eastern Mediterranean at Catal Huyuk from the seventh millennium and at Jericho from the ninth millennium BCE.[22] At Jericho there were large stone walls and a thirty foot tower. No such settlement had been found in Egypt itself but clearly there was civilization in the region. More evidence could be under millennia of Nile river silt. [23] An advanced civilization may not have been necessary. A Neolithic culture was able to erect Stonehenge in Britain.[24]

The AAAS meeting broke up in words that, according to The New York Times, "skated on the icy edge of scientific politeness."[25] A writer for the AAAS magazine Science wrote that Schoch "hadn't convinced many archaeologists or geologists" of his findings.[26] In fact, Schoch had received offers of support from geologists after the October and February meetings. Even some archaeologists accepted his geological findings without conceding the conclusion to which they pointed.[27] West spent the next eighteen months producing a documentary for television that attracted thirty million viewers when it aired in the United States on November 10, 1993.[28]

The Giza monuments have long been a subject of mystery and speculation. Arabs called the Great Sphinx the "Father of Terrors," while many Western writers have seen in the Pyramids everything from tombs to secret wisdom.[29] John Anthony West has suggested that an ice age date for the Sphinx raises anew the question of a lost ice age civilization, possibly the Atlantis of ancient legend.[30] The evidence dating the Sphinx to an earlier time does not prove such legends. But if the hypothesis of rainfall erosion is true, it does call the known chronology of African and indeed world civilization into question.

The evidence for an earlier Sphinx raises additional questions: If the Sphinx complex is so much older, who built it and why? Should we be more tentative in what we assume about the first half of the last ten thousand years? If so, how should that affect what we know about the second half? Some answers may be forthcoming in the next few years as the new findings are examined and tested. Until then, the Sphinx challenges us to rethink our history and keep an open mind.

I'll admit, this gives me pause, but I'm still reasonably certain that the Sphinx isn't older than (feasible) human civilization.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

The one link you gave doesn't work....at lest for me. I am not sure if anyone else has that problem, but I get some file not found error.


O.T. I have seen this issue before. One of the people mentioned in the article is Robert Schoch, who wrote a book about it trying to tie Egypt in with some older civilization that predates many in standard prehistory.

I believe that Egyptologists HAVE revised the age of various structures, including the Sphinx, but it's not as old as Schoch et al are claiming. The claims actually made by Schoch are not dishonest, they are simply seen as incorrect. The majority of the field doesn't agree with his interpretation of the data and they have come up with plausible alternatives to the "water weathering" he claims is responsible.

He's not a supporter of mysticism or "Atlantis" or anything like that, though. His degree is genuine and from a prominent, credible institution, and he is a geologist. It's that most think his interpretations are incorrect.

He seems to think that the Sphinx is based on a structure already there that was made about 5-7000 B.C. I don't see how this is, though.

It's peculiar, because he's not an idiot and has a litany of credible work.


The following is one website:

Dr. Shoch

His homepage at Boston U.

[Darth Wong]

Let's keep one thing straight when discussing so-called "alternative theories": when you hear that a proponent of such theories has received "offers of support" or "words of encouragement" from other scientists whose names he will not reveal, that means precisely jack shit. It's an inherently unverifiable claim that anyone could make without fear of contradiction.

Besides, the idea that the Sphinx was gradually developed over millennia is not that remarkable anyway. It certainly doesn't support these "chariots of the gods" crackpots and their idiotic theories.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Let's keep one thing straight when discussing so-called "alternative theories": when you hear that a proponent of such theories has received "offers of support" or "words of encouragement" from other scientists whose names he will not reveal, that means precisely jack shit. It's an inherently unverifiable claim that anyone could make without fear of contradiction.

Besides, the idea that the Sphinx was gradually developed over millennia is not that remarkable anyway. It certainly doesn't support these "chariots of the gods" crackpots and their idiotic theories.

I once wrote a rather exhaustive paper, Age Controversy on the Monumental Structures of the Giza Plateau, which went through this ridiculous host of these sources and came to the final conclusion that the geological anomalies on the Sphinx can be explained by dating it to the Early Dynastic Period; since technical capabilities in Egypt hadn't changed at all between the Early Dynastic and the Old Kingdom, all it means is that we have to change who built the sucker in the first place in the history books. Khafre probably just restored it, like it was restored numerous times later.

Basically the main evidence for that thesis is the work of two geologists, Colin Reader and David Coxill, who have been able to reconcile the data which sent Schoch off into this sad parody of science with a date of construction only about 400 years earlier than the one currently accepted in mainstream Egyptology.

Now, the mainstream Egyptologists may still be right--even if they're wrong, however, a modest chronological adjustment only is required, which tells us absolutely nothing new, since lots of people were building megaliths in that period and one more isn't exactly revolutionary.

[Frank Hipper]

To the problem of archaeological context for an earlier Sphinx, Schoch replied that urban centers had existed in the eastern Mediterranean at Catal Huyuk from the seventh millennium and at Jericho from the ninth millennium BCE.[22] At Jericho there were large stone walls and a thirty foot tower. No such settlement had been found in Egypt itself...

Wow, talk about yer slam dunk proof!



I watched an archeologist on a TV program walk up to one of the walls of the Sphinx enclosure, and with a fingernail, flip a large flake of stone off.

Some of the layers of stone in the Sphinx are so ridiculously soft you can literally dig into them with your bare hands.

[Vampiress_Miyu]

I always knew that those historians weren't telling us the whole story! This explains everything! It's only logical that the Sphinx was created around the end of the ice age! =O

-_-; But seriously, how do people come up with these theories? It baffles me.

[Frank Hipper]

-_-; But seriously, how do people come up with these theories? It baffles me.

They believe in utter bullshit first, shoehorn post-hoc "theories" later.

You wouldn't believe some of the shit from crippled minds I've seen lately; spouting diagrams that "prove" that the Giza plateau monuments were all pre-planned...swing an arc between two arbitrary points on a pixellated satelite photo, and that with all the precision of a blunt crayon, and there you have elegant "proof" bovine digestion.

[Vampiress_Miyu]

O.o; That's just nonesense!!

People are insane. Seriously.

[TithonusSyndrome]

You wouldn't happen to still have your thesis, or at least links to Coxill and Reader's work, would you, Duchess? I'd be much obliged if you did.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

You wouldn't happen to still have your thesis, or at least links to Coxill and Reader's work, would you, Duchess? I'd be much obliged if you did.

I'll try to dig up both for you. Unfortunately I think I only have the thesis on another computer which is not in the residence I am currently inhabiting, but I could have a copy somewhere in online storage, too.

Basically, Schoch massively overestimated both the amount of rainfall required and the resistance of the rock the Sphinx was carved from. Because it is so soft, even just a few very heavy rains could produce the erosion patterns--and such a spurt of heavy rainfall existed in Egypt during the Early Dynastic Period.

[Justforfun000]

Here's an excellent treatise on this subject. Mark Lehner actually went to Egypt in 1972 influenced by the readings of Edgar Cayce and the foundation actually spent their money to test the pyramids and the Sphinx to see if they would match the dates in the psychic readings.
Ironically they did discover a very different time line then what was believed, but it did not match Edgar Cayce's either. What ended up happening was Mark Lehner became 'de-converted' from a new age believer into a traditional archaeologist due to his own discoveries along the way and he's now a well respected authority. Here is an excerpt regarding the Giza pyramid and the Sphinx that should sum up a lot of the refutation points against people claiming a much earlier date:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/pyramid/ex ... wold2.html

NOVA: What does the radiocarbon dating tell us about the date of the pyramids?

LEHNER: Well, we did a first run in 1984, actually, funded by the Edgar Cayce Foundation because they had definite ideas that the pyramids were much older than Egyptologists believed. That they date as early as 10,500 B.C. Well, obviously for them it was a good test case because radio carbon dating does not give you pinpoint accuracy. If you have a plus or minus factor, but I say it's kind of like shooting at a fly on a barn with a shotgun. Well, you're not going to hit the fly exactly, you're going to know which side of the barn, which end of the barn, you know, the buckshot is scattering. And it wasn't scattering at 10,500 B.C. on that first run of some 70 samples from a whole selection of pyramids of the Old Kingdom. But it was significantly older than Egyptologists believed. We were getting dates from the 1984 study that were on the average 374 years too old for the Cambridge Ancient History, (the Cambridge Ancient History is a reference) dates for the kings who built these monuments. So just recently we took some 300 samples, and in collaboration with our Egyptian colleagues, we are now in the process of dating these samples. The outcome we are going to announce jointly in tandem with our Egyptian colleagues, and maybe we can pick up the subject of the results when we're over there in Egypt together with Dr. Zahi Hawass (during the February excavation of the bakeries at Giza).

NOVA: Is there any evidence at all that an ancient civilization predating the civilization of Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure was there?

LEHNER: It's a good question. If they were there, you see -- civilizations don't disappear without a trace. If archaeologists can go out and dig up a campsite of hunters and gatherers that was occupied 15,000 years ago, there's no way there could have been a complex civilization at a place like Giza or anywhere in the Nile Valley and they didn't leave a trace, because people eat, people poop, people leave their garbage around, and they leave their traces, they leave the traces of humanity.

Now at Giza, I should tell people how this has come down to me personally. Because I actually went over there with my own notions of lost civilizations, older civilizations from Edgar Cayce. When I worked at the Sphinx over a five-year period we were mapping every nook and cranny, every block and stone, and actually every fissure and crack as well. And I, on a couple of different occasions was able to excavate natural solution cavities in the limestone from which the Sphinx is made. Natural solution cavities are like holes in Swiss cheese. When the limestone formed from sea sediments 50 million years ago there were bubbles and holes and so on, and fissures later developed from tectonic forces cracking the limestone. So for example, right at the hind paw of the Great Sphinx on the north side, this main fissure that cuts through the whole body of the Sphinx and then through the floor opens up to about 30 centimeters wide and about a meter or more in length. And in tandem with Zahi Hawass in 1979-'80, we were clearing out this fissure, which now is totally filled with debris again. But we actually reached down to our armpits, lying on our sides on the floor, scooping out this clay. And in the clay was embedded, not only charcoal, but bits of pottery that were very characteristic of the pottery that was used during the time of Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure, the 4th Dynasty.

We did that again on the floor of the Sphinx temple which is built on a lower terrace directly below the paws of the Sphinx. Directly in front of the Sphinx, we found a solution cavity in 1978, during what's called the SRI Project, which has been written about. We actually cleared out this cavity. We found dolomite pounders, these round balls of hard dolomite that are characteristic hammerstones of the age of the pyramids that they used for roughing out work in stone. Beyond that, Zahi and I excavated deposits on the floor of the Sphinx, even more substantial, deposits that were sealed by an 18th Dynasty temple, built by Tutankamen's great grandfather when the Sphinx was already 1,200 years old. But it was built by a pharaoh named Amenhotep II and his son, Thelmos IV. They put the foundation of this temple right over deposits of the Old Kingdom, and sealed it, so that they were left there and were not cleared away by earlier excavators in our era in the 1930s.

Zahi and I sort of did a stratographic dissection of these ancient deposits. That is we did very careful trenches, recorded the layers and the different kinds of material. The bottom material sealed by a temple built by Tutankamen's great or great great grandfather, was Old Kingdom construction debris. They stopped work cutting the outlines of the Sphinx ditch -- the Sphinx sits down in this ditch or sanctuary. We were able to show exactly where they stopped work. They didn't quite finish that. We found tools, we found pottery, characteristic of the Old Kingdom time of Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure.

Now the point is this. That it's not just this crevice or that nook and cranny or that deposit underneath this temple, but all over Giza, you find this kind of material. And as I say in looking for our carbon-14 samples, climbing in the pyramids you find the same material embedded in the very fabric of the pyramids, in the mortar bonding the stones together. So back to the question, is there an earlier civilization? Well, as I say to New Age critics, show me one pot shard of that earlier civilization. Because the only way they could have existed is if they actually got out with whisk brooms, scoop shovels and little spoons and cleared out every single trace of their daily lives, their utensils, their pottery, their wood, their tools and so on, and that's just totally improbable. Well, it's not impossible, but it has a very, very low level of probability, that there was an older civilization there.

[Lord Poe]

Didn't we have some sort of Sphinx wanker here with this theory a couple years ago? IIRC we ran his ass out of here pretty quickly.

EDIT: Kilik, right?


http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?t=99864

[TithonusSyndrome]

Thanks, Duchess, that'd mean a lot.

Didn't we have some sort of Sphinx wanker here with this theory a couple years ago? IIRC we ran his ass out of here pretty quickly.

EDIT: Kilik, right?


http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?t=99864

I lurked here when Kilik was active, and I can't help but wonder if I'm not currently arguing with him.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Does he slam-post massive pre-made arguments complete with lots of irrelevant pictures and diagrams, and use the freaking I-ching to justify science?

[TithonusSyndrome]

YES, he does. In fact, while I was looking for sources to corroborate his claims, I found another website he'd spammed under the same name - a skeptic's forum of some kind. He fucking adores the I Ching, claims it's responsible for Leibniz's discoveries, and then goes on to more or less state that Qi = YHWH and that the mind exists independantly of the body based on some misread PEAR lab findings.

However, on the site I'm on, he goes by the name of PIMP69xxxx, so I'm cautious to decide just yet if he's Kilik or not, since he seems to like using that same name elsewhere.

[Frank Hipper]

Killik, that fucking idiot...Yin and Yang are not mathematical concepts, learn it you stupid son of a bitch!