The Sphinx is truly a mystery, and even expert scientists admit it. The Sphinx, is scientists have got its age write, PRE-DATES the earliest known civilisation in Egypt and possibly the world -
Whispers From a Forgotten Past
According to legend, nearly three and a half thousand years ago, one of the sons of the Egyptian Pharaoh Amenophis II was out hunting near a plateau some ten miles from Cairo. Tired from his endeavours, the Prince Thutmose rested in the shadow of a mysterious head protruding from the desert sands.
Thutmose duly fell asleep and, in a dream, heard the carved stone head whispering to him that one day he would become ruler of all Egypt ahead of his older brothers. The prince was also told that he would then free the body of the forgotten god from the desert sands where it had lain buried for centuries. Thutmose awoke refreshed, and, recalling the dream silently committed himself to clearing away the sands, intrigued that as a younger son, he could possibly become Pharaoh. He then left to continue his hunting.
On the death of his father the prophecy become true, with the former hunter ascending the throne as Pharaoh Tuthmosis IV. Shortly afterwards the Pharaoh, who was only to reign for eight years (1413-1405BCE), honoured the pledge made as a younger man and cleared the area around The Great Sphinx revealing the God in its true magnificence. (1)
This enigmatic clue to the existence of a lost people and world was supposedly constructed during the lifetime of the Pharaoh Chephren around 2550 BC (2). However there is no actual evidence to support this dating; the link with Chephren has been assumed given that The Great Sphinx shares the Giza plateau with the Ancient Egyptian Pyramids of which the greatest was believed to have been built by Chephren. It was also believed that the ‘face’ of The Great Sphinx depicted Chephren himself.
However over two thousand years later in the 1940s suggestions were being made that The Great Sphinx may well be much older than that, possibly by thousands of years. The first to propose this was the French scholar Rene Schwaller de Lubicz (1891-1962).
Schwaller had moved to Egypt in 1936 and had stayed there for 15 years studying the temples, particularly the Temple of Luxor. His initial research was published in 1949 and a fuller account of his findings was published in 1957. (3) During Schwaller’s time in Egypt he also examined The Great Sphinx and noted that it was badly eroded. Whilst this was not a new observation, Schwaller’s conclusion was; for he believed that the erosion had not been as a result of the wind (which would have cut sharp, straight patterns into sediment layers), but from water. He pointed out that the erosion on The Great Sphinx (Sphinx Pictures - above right) was clearly the rounded and furrowed contours typical of water erosion.
The implications of Schwaller’s observations were not immediately realised, for data regarding rainfall in Ancient Egypt was not widely available at that time. However, it is now known that Ancient Egypt experienced torrential rainfall, with some interruptions, from about 10,000 to 5000 BCE. This rain came to a complete end by the middle of the third millennium. (3)
This meant that if the erosion on The Great Sphinx was indeed as a result of water rather than wind, then the Sphinx must have been carved at least two and a half thousand years before it’s accepted date, possibly even much longer if weathered for thousands of years.
The inevitable conclusion from this was startling; the construction of the Sphinx predated the Egyptian civilisation by thousands of years. Perhaps understandably, orthodox archaeologists and Egyptologists refused to even consider Schwaller’s hypothesis.
His work then languished in relative academic obscurity until it came to the attention of independent Egyptologist John West (right) who later published his own book ‘Serpent In the Sky: the High Wisdom of Ancient Egypt’ (5). After rigorous examination, West agreed with many of Schwaller’s earlier findings and concluded that
The Great Sphinx did indeed predate Egyptian civilisation.Such confirmation again threatened to cast accpeted world history into confusion, but this time its proponent was not to be easily dismissed. West was fully aware that world history as we know it centres on the Egyptian culture being founded around 3000 BCE.
So the question was again raised. If the early egyptians had not built The Great Sphinx, then clearly some other peoples had. And not only had someone else built the Sphinx, but they had done so thousands of years before there should have been a people civilised enough to undertake the task and there was certainly no obvious evidence that such a people had existed. Inevitably this was all too much to bear and West’s work was also consigned to the ‘best left alone’ fringe and considered little more in academic circles as had Schwaller’s work earlier in the century.But West wasn’t prepared to be dismissed so easily. By the 1980s he had interested a respected geologist from the University of Boston, a Dr. Robert Schoch. Schoch was a highly respected stratigrapher (a geologist who studies layers of rock) and palaeontologist and author of four published books.
Schoch explains his involvement. "I grudgingly got involved in the whole controversy as a favour to a couple of fellow academics at Boston. I was persuaded to get involved by Robert Eddy, Professor of Rhetoric at Boston, and an old friend of West. I was told West wanted an ‘open minded’ geologist to help explore his theory. I heard West out, but did not think there was much chance he was correct in suggesting that the Sphinx was older than its standard attribution – until I got to Egypt." (6)
Schoch carried out a clinical assessment of West’s claims and was mindful of suggestions that if the erosion was indeed caused by water, then this could be attributed to more recent flooding of the Nile, and therefore no earlier redating was required. When looking for evidence of this, however, Schoch noticed that the erosion was heaviest on the upper parts of The Great Sphinx and enclosure walls and not around the base where flooding should have undercut the monument. He therefore concluded in June 1990 that the erosion had indeed been caused by the weathering of rain over thousands of years rather than by wind erosion or flooding. He later published these findings. (7)
On 23rd October 1991, Schoch presented his material to the Geological Society of America, where it was grudgingly accepted rather than embraced (8). However the academic world was not totally convinced with one scholar, Carol Redmount of the University of California, claiming it undermined "everything we know about Ancient Egypt" (9) and another, Peter Lacovara, assistant curator of the Egyptian Department of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, muting "there are no big surprises in store for us". (10) He wasn’t ready to believe that The Great Sphinx predated the Egyptian civilisation.
Despite these reservations, it appeared proved beyond doubt that the erosion had been caused by water and rainfall rather than flooding.But then another tenacious scholar waded in with a different agenda.
Mark Lehner, of the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, had been investigating the Sphinx since 1980. He was dismissive of Schoch’s estimate that the Sphinx had been built around 7000BC, possibly earlier.
Ironically, Lehner’s interest in Ancient Egypt and The Great Sphinx originated from his connection with the Association for Research and Enlightenment (ARE - The Edgar Cayce Foundation) which expounded theories of the lost civilisation of Atlantis. Indeed, Lehner had written a book ‘The Egyptian Heritage based on the Edgar Cayce Readings’ (11). He openly admitted, "it’s no secret that when I went [to Egypt] I myself was imbued with the idea of lost civilisations…. So I was in fact … looking for the lost civilisation and something called the Hall of Records."
However, after his own exhaustive research, Lehner concluded there was no connection between Ancient Egypt and any lost civilisation and he wasn’t prepared to have a youthful Schoch claim otherwise. Lehner’s first objection to Schoch and West’s claims was if an earlier civilisation had built the Sphinx, where was the evidence of it’s existence? In his opinion it was nowhere to be found. Secondly, Lehner implied that Schoch was incompetent as a geologist. "I don’t think he has done his geological work yet … one of the primary pillars of his case is that if you compare The Great Sphinx to the Old Kingdom tombs, they don’t share the same weathering, therefore the Sphinx must be older, but he’s comparing layers in the Sphinx to other layers." (12)
Lehner was alleging that the ‘Sphinx layers’ ran under the tombs, so the tombs are made of different limestone, by implication harder, and should therefore have weathered much more slowly. If correct, this would have destroyed Schoch’s case – and along with it any need to account for what peoples had built the Sphinx before the Egyptians.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) then entered the fray. They were preparing a television programme to show West’s theory based on Schoch’s evidence. It was important for them to establish who was right, Schoch or Lehner, as the corporation was anxious not to show a potentially flawed documentary that could damage its integrity and world-wide reputation fort serious and informed reporting. They therefore hired an independent expert to give a professional opinion on who was right. The outcome was beyond doubt; the tombs were made of the same flaky limestone as the Sphinx. Schoch and West were correct and Lehner’s counter arguments had been dealt a body, but not a knockout, blow.
Lehner countered by arguing that the face of the Sphinx was in fact the same as that of an undamaged statue of Chephren (d. 2533BC). He published an article in the April 1991 issue of National Geographic in which he described using computer graphics to assist in this task. "We have constructed images of the Sphinx as it may have looked thousands of years ago. To create the face, I tried matching views of other sphinxes and pharaohs to our model. With the face of Khafre [Chephren], the Sphinx came alive." (13)
No so, West countered, stating that the two faces actually looked nothing like each other. West decided to approach Detective Sgt. Frank Domingo (right), a senior forensic police artist with the New York Police Department who had joined the ranks in 1966 for an informed opinion (14). Domingo had gained an impressive reputation in facial reconstructions to the extent that archaeologists and historians regularly sought out and used his services.
He was asked whether he was prepared to travel to Giza to clarify whether or not the Sphinx was actually Chefren. "What if I decide it is Chephren?" He asked. "If that’s what you come up with, that’s what I’ll publish." West replied. (15)
Domingo duly visited Cairo and took many photographs of the Sphinx and the statue of Chephren housed in the Cairo museum. He concluded that the chin of the Sphinx is far more prominent that that of Chephren, and more importantly, that a line drawn from the ear to the corner of the Sphinx’s mouth sloped at an angle of 32 degrees. The same line drawn on Chephren is only 14 degrees. This along with other dis-similarities led Domingo to conclude that the Sphinx is definitely not a portrait of Chephren (16). Given that it is clearly not Chephren, who then might it may actually be?W will never know for certain but perhaps a clue lies in the overall shape of the Sphinx. Even a casual glance at the sculpture shows that the Sphinx’s head is badly out of proportion with the rest of its body. Some researchers have suggested that the original head was much larger had could possibly have been that of a lion. This would certainly make sense for the rest of the Sphinx’s body appears to be that of a lion. Why then recarve the sculpture? Again, speculation, but we do know that the body of the ‘lion’ has spent most of its existence under the sand. In all probability those, like Tuthmosis, rediscovering the Sphinx in the age of the Pharaohs, only came across its head, perhaps in a poor state of repair and so recarved it to represent the new age.
Even though Domingo had demonstrated that the Sphinx was not a portrait of Chephren (apparently destroying Lehner’s last argument), the matter did not rest. The American Association for the Advancement of Science scheduled a session to debate the issue at its annual general meeting in Chicago on 7th February 1992. Lehner attended along with geologist K. Lal Gauri of the University of Louisville, who had also studied the Sphinx for many years. West also attended and presented his arguments. (17)
Once again, the water erosion findings were endorsed even though Egyptologists themselves could not bring themselves to accept the implications of this endorsement. The AAAS meeting broke up in words that, according to the New York Times "skated on the icy edge of scientific politeness" (18)
Schoch (left) was taken back by the strength of feeling regarding his claims, which he considered were based on science rather than a belief in some form of Egyptian ‘Order’. "When I first became interested in the dating of the Sphinx," he commented, "a friend who had lived in Egypt for several years warned me that I might run into such hostility. At first I was incredulous, but now I tend to think he may have been correct." (19)
Schoch, of course, was not the first scientist to run foul of Egyptologists. As Germer wrote in 1986,"In the past, co-operation between the natural sciences and Egyptology has not necessarily been successful in every case. The Egyptologist is initially suspicious; he often rejects out of hand, and is unwilling to work with scientific data. He believes that he can do better with his own methodology." (20)
After the controversy subsided, West spent the next eighteen months producing a documentary for television that attracted thirty million viewers when it aired in the United States on 10th November 1993. (Broadcast on the NBC network at 9:00 PM EST. The documentary won a 1993 Emmy award for Best Research and a nomination for Best Documentary.)
Although the arguments did not stop entirely, with papers still being issued on a regular basis, it does appear that West and Schoch had won the academic debate that the Sphinx should be redated to a much earlier age. (21)
So if the monument was constructed before the Egyptian civilisation, who did build it, and who were they? This is the one major argument against the earlier dating that Schoch cannot answer, however he does not see it as his problem to answer; he is a geologist not an historian. He rightly sees that as a problem for others.
It seems obvious to look for clues as to who these lost people were on the Giza plateau itself. Yet the area had been overrun with researchers, robbers and excavators for hundreds of years so presumably nothing new could now turn up. However geologists have recently developed a technique that could lead to previously hidden features being discovered.
This ‘new’ method is used by geologists for studying deeper layers of rock. A metal plate is struck with a sledge-hammer (below); the vibrations go down through the rock and are reflected back by various strata. These echoes are then picked up by ‘geophones’ placed at intervals along the ground and a computer later interprets their data. (22)
Using this method, John West’s geo-physicist, Thomas L Dobecki, noted that under the front paws of the Sphinx (Sphinx Pictures - right) there appeared to be some form of underground chamber, possibly more than one. This aroused considerable excitement for legend has it that chambers under the Sphinx hold ancient secrets.
So what did the Giza Plateau authorities do with this information? They immediately announced that further excavations would be delayed, not by months but for years. However, perhaps not too much should be read into this. An early photograph taken in 1926 showed a man standing at the entrance to a passageway leading into the Sphinx, although there is no record of any findings and the entrance was subsequently sealed with new blocks. Another passage found in 1987 yielded no more than some shoes and an early 20th Century newspaper. (23) Yet the knowledge that The Great Sphinx actually does contain secret passages and chambers means that at some point in the future we may discover clues to a hidden past.
One outcome of the Schoch and West investigation and the inevitable conclusion that a forgotten people predating the Ancient Egyptians had built the Sphinx, was to refocus attention on the Egyptian Pyramids for it seemed unlikely that the giant statue would have been constructed in isolation, indeed the monument almost appears to be protecting the Giza plateau. Perhaps, then, the Ancient Egyptian Pyramids could provide some clues about the lost people who had constructed the Sphinx and then disappeared from history.
http://www.violations.org.uk/book1/whispers/plateaupart1.htm
