Is Göbekli Tepe the proof of Older Sphinx?

[abhijit_b]

2 hours ago, Harte said:

So, Cairo, therefore the sphinx is 10,000 years old?

No, there is no proof that Sphinx was built 10,000 years old. I have been telling this since the beginning. There are mostly pointers to an older Sphinx. But there are major flaws in the current timelines.

Could you please clarify, according to you, who did build Sphinx? Also please point out the related proofs?

@kmt_sesh  believes it to be Khafre, but not sure about others. Unfortunately I didn't get any response from kmt_sesh on my concerns pointed out in one of my earlier comments.

Edited October 21, 2017 by abhijit_b

[Sir Wearer of Hats]

It was a mink, or rather several, they were also quite drunk, itscwhy the lion had a mans head,

 

minks made the Sphinx after several drinks.

[Essan]

I didn't think anyone built the sphinx .  I thought it was carved out of the bedrock .....  

And all available evidence points to this having occurred around the same time period as the pyramids were constructed ~3.5kya

The important point being - whilst it is quite possible that it was carved much earlier, there is NO irrefutable evidence to support such a conjecture.   And in the absence of such, why suggest it?    No-one suggests Stonehenge was built 10kya - yet there is as much evidence for stonehenge being that old as there is for the sphinx .....

[Harte]

1 hour ago, Essan said:

I didn't think anyone built the sphinx .  I thought it was carved out of the bedrock .....  

And all available evidence points to this having occurred around the same time period as the pyramids were constructed ~3.5kya

The important point being - whilst it is quite possible that it was carved much earlier, there is NO irrefutable evidence to support such a conjecture.   And in the absence of such, why suggest it?    No-one suggests Stonehenge was built 10kya - yet there is as much evidence for stonehenge being that old as there is for the sphinx .....

Not only is there no irrefutable evidence, there's really NO evidence it's older, as long as we recognize that OK dates are approximate.

Just for example, why is the sphinx enclosure carved out to match Khafre's causeway?

The stone on that side of the enclosure is just as weathered as the rest of it.

Can anyone explain why that particular side was carved out at that angle prior to the causeway being built?

And what of the excavated stone being used in the sphinx temple?

Did the previous culture just leave the stone laying around and the later Egyptian culture used it to build their temple?

Harte

 

[Kenemet]

5 hours ago, abhijit_b said:

Totally agree to it. I am just putting some common-sensical things than scientific. My main point is that existing human activities make it harder to find evidences, not impossible. 

But Giza poses other problems too. The major quarrying activities in the fourth dynasty has potentially wiped out many pre-fourth dynastic evidence in the plateau. Just quoting something from a paper by Dr Colin reader:

Later Dr Reader also found a Tomb with Sunken Palace that proofs pre-dynastic activities in the area. I couldn't find a paper related to it, but can be found in this National Geographic documentary.

 

Yes, activity on the Giza plateau does go back before the 4th dynasty... that's actually well known.  But it isn't evidence for the Sphinx being even older... just as the presence of the city of of Agra (and its mention in the  Mahābhārata) is NOT evidence that the Taj Mahal is older than 1632 (date of the building construction.) 

[Kenemet]

5 hours ago, abhijit_b said:

 

@kmt_sesh  believes it to be Khafre, but not sure about others. Unfortunately I didn't get any response from kmt_sesh on my concerns pointed out in one of my earlier comments.

I think that in general, most of the folks here agree with the conclusion of the archaeologists.

[Hanslune]

7 hours ago, abhijit_b said:

Totally agree to it. I am just putting some common-sensical things than scientific. My main point is that existing human activities make it harder to find evidences, not impossible. 

But Giza poses other problems too. The major quarrying activities in the fourth dynasty has potentially wiped out many pre-fourth dynastic evidence in the plateau. Just quoting something from a paper by Dr Colin reader:

Later Dr Reader also found a Tomb with Sunken Palace that proofs pre-dynastic activities in the area. I couldn't find a paper related to it, but can be found in this National Geographic documentary.

 

Giza Before the Fourth Dynasty by Colin Reader  (JACF) 9 (2002), pp. 5–21

How accurate the following is a display of his ideas I don't know:

http://atlantipedia.ie/samples/tag/colin-reader/

 

[kmt_sesh]

15 hours ago, abhijit_b said:

If Sphinx was built earlier than believed, then probably it was not built by the Ancient Egyptians we know of. Must be a different culture.

...

You have to go by the evidence that is available. Positing the possibility of a previous civilization or culture just because there might have been one, is not how one approaches the situation. You have to interpret the sum total of evidence available to us.

Simply put, there is no evidence for a pre-existing, sophisticated civilization in the Delta and Nile Valley. As the peoples of these areas were entering the Early Bronze Age, in fact, the centers of power that were emerging were far to the south, in places like Hierakonpilis, Naqqada, and Abydos. The south was always more socio-politically advanced. The evidence is pretty clear on that. It's also pretty clear that the emerging powerhouses in the south were spreading north and imposing their socio-economic structures on the simpler cultural groups of the north.

And as it turned out, state formation occurred deep in the south and the regions to the north, the Delta included, were absorbed. This was around 3100 BCE.

In summary, there was no powerful or sophisticated state in the Memphite region (Giza included) until state formation.

[kmt_sesh]

11 hours ago, abhijit_b said:

Totally agree to it. I am just putting some common-sensical things than scientific. My main point is that existing human activities make it harder to find evidences, not impossible. 

But Giza poses other problems too. The major quarrying activities in the fourth dynasty has potentially wiped out many pre-fourth dynastic evidence in the plateau. Just quoting something from a paper by Dr Colin reader:

Later Dr Reader also found a Tomb with Sunken Palace that proofs pre-dynastic activities in the area. I couldn't find a paper related to it, but can be found in this National Geographic documentary..

...

It's been known for a very long time that the very southern end of the Plateau had been used as a burial ground in Early Dynastic times, albeit to a limited extent. But to this day there is no solid evidence that the majority of the Plateau had been the focus of a royal cult until the time of Khufu, around the mid-third millennium BCE. Something like the Sphinx is definitely the hallmark of a royal cult.

In other words, Khufu started the brunt of building activity there. He left his father's royal burial ground at Dashur and started his own at Giza. One can study a tomb and discern by its layout and style the dynasty to which it belongs, and often enough one can do the same for ceramics, lithics, stelae, and other objects. All of this points to the fact that Giza as a royal cult center started in dynasty 4, and the Sphinx was an outgrowth of that. You're right that quarrying operations tend to wipe out evidence, but the brunt of the Plateau is not a quarry. There are hundreds of tombs there, thousands of graves, and generations of material culture—up to and including the workmen's village to the south.

I'm not familiar with a "Tomb of the Sunken Palace" and couldn't really find information on it outside of news outlets like the Daily Mail, which I'm not going to use. If you have anything to share, feel free to provide a link. I'm willing to bet it's Old Kingdom, but I can't say anything about it.

[kmt_sesh]

On the subject of Göbekli Tepe or Nabta Playa, these prehistoric sites can't be regarded as evidence for an older Sphinx just because they themselves date to such-and-such prehistoric times. Related to something I said earlier, if one wants to make a case for a much older Sphinx, one must point to tangible evidence at or adjacent to the site of the Sphinx. We have plentiful evidence for what the Egyptians were doing there in Dynasty 4, but we also have plentiful evidence for the prehistoric cultures that lived in that area until state formation in 3100 BCE, when the southern kingdoms folded in the northern.

Göbekli Tepe doesn't offer any evidence for an Egyptian presence 12,000 years ago. The people of Nabta Playa were of Egypt, of course, but were hardly the same cultural group that occupied the Delta region. The latter would be kind of like saying the Ojibwe and the Apache were the same people because they both occupied sites in North America.

LOL I think the only person who believed the Egyptians marched across Anatolia was Herodotus. He thought the statues he heard of in that land were put there by the pharaoh "Sesostris." They were put there by the Hittites, of course.

[jaylemurph]

11 hours ago, Essan said:

I didn't think anyone built the sphinx .  I thought it was carved out of the bedrock .....

I think many members here are cognizant of the fact that it was, in fact, built. Built by an Ancient and Powerful race, who, for reasons previously known only to themselves, departed this plain of existence thousands of years ago.

Some tell of a line of ancient priests and wise men who have carried secrets about the Sphinx down even unto our present times. They urge us to notice, for instance, that the Sphinx' back is turned to the Pyramids, as if in disdainful petulance. This is because of the failure of the Pyramids: they were built with the intention to look like hams, yet they do not. Could this be the reason for the disappearance of those powerful ancient beings, and the Sphinx an eternal marker of our shame?

The answer is clearly "yes." 

--Jaylemurph

Edited October 21, 2017 by jaylemurph

[kmt_sesh]

11 minutes ago, jaylemurph said:

I think many members here are cognizant of the fact that it was, in fact, built. Built by an Ancient and Powerful race, who, for reasons previously known only to themselves, departed this plain of existence thousands of years ago.

Some tell of a line of ancient priests and wise men who have carried secrets about the Sphinx down even unto our present times. They urge us to notice, for instance, that the Sphinx' back is turned to the Pyramids, as if in disdainful petulance. This is because of the failure of the Pyramids: they were built with the intention to look like hams, yet they do not. Could this be the reason for the disappearance of those powerful ancient beings, and the Sphinx an eternal marker of our shame?

The answer is clearly "yes." 

--Jaylemurph

And to this day, ages later, the Sphinx gazes into the distance, forlornly, awaiting proper hams.

[kmt_sesh]

13 hours ago, abhijit_b said:

...

@kmt_sesh  believes it to be Khafre, but not sure about others. Unfortunately I didn't get any response from kmt_sesh on my concerns pointed out in one of my earlier comments.

Sorry, missed this. The sum total of the GPMP's assessment points to Khafre, and their website emphasizes this. Can they or I guarantee this with 100? certainty? Of course not, but the material evidence on the ground makes it the most reliable and likely avenue. Schoch's theory is not considered valid and ignores too much of the total evidence at Giza (archaeological included). Reeder has a more reasoned argument but, in my estimation, does not stand up to the work of the GPMP. Harte's point in his last post, about the posture of the enclosure wall, is also a very good one to emphasize. There simply isn't much to see at Giza before Khufu came along and started things rolling.

[Gaden]

2 hours ago, jaylemurph said:

I think many members here are cognizant of the fact that it was, in fact, built. Built by an Ancient and Powerful race, who, for reasons previously known only to themselves, departed this plain of existence thousands of years ago.

Some tell of a line of ancient priests and wise men who have carried secrets about the Sphinx down even unto our present times. They urge us to notice, for instance, that the Sphinx' back is turned to the Pyramids, as if in disdainful petulance. This is because of the failure of the Pyramids: they were built with the intention to look like hams, yet they do not. Could this be the reason for the disappearance of those powerful ancient beings, and the Sphinx an eternal marker of our shame?

The answer is clearly "yes." 

--Jaylemurph

 

[kmt_sesh]

[Harte]

4 hours ago, kmt_sesh said:

I'm not familiar with a "Tomb of the Sunken Palace" and couldn't really find information on it outside of news outlets like the Daily Mail, which I'm not going to use. If you have anything to share, feel free to provide a link. I'm willing to bet it's Old Kingdom, but I can't say anything about it.

I fast forwarded the vid to see that part.

It was what appeared to be a tomb cut in rock, the face of which had later been repurposed in the 4th Dynasty and afterward. The statement was made that maybe it was a sunken palace. I certainly saw no such thing in the vid, but the excuse is (apparently) quarrying.

Looked to me more like the rock face of a quarry that had been cut into the bedrock below the tomb, making the tomb appear high up (maybe ten meters) on a rock face. There was a wall attached to the rock that had been built later.

The tomb wasn't "discovered" by Reader. He presented an old tomb that predated the sphinx, that's all. It's not like it wasn't already known.

I've read Reader's ideas. I don't have a quarrel with the guy. He asserts the sphinx is a few hundred years older than the consensus date. He could be right.

But it still doesn't explain the angle on the southern wall of the enclosure.

The vid also had a guy drawing a lion over the sphinx, trying to see if the explanation of the too-long body is the fissure just in front of the rear haunches.

His drawing showed that - put to scale - a lion's body matching the head size would have that fissure right up next to the rump of the statue.

This I already knew, and I've always thought it was obvious that the fissure can (and probably does) explain the too long body.

Yet this guy just said he's sure the AEs could have patched that up.

That's all I watched. Probably there were other, less ignoble, parts.

Harte

[kmt_sesh]

1 hour ago, Harte said:

I fast forwarded the vid to see that part.

It was what appeared to be a tomb cut in rock, the face of which had later been repurposed in the 4th Dynasty and afterward. The statement was made that maybe it was a sunken palace. I certainly saw no such thing in the vid, but the excuse is (apparently) quarrying.

Looked to me more like the rock face of a quarry that had been cut into the bedrock below the tomb, making the tomb appear high up (maybe ten meters) on a rock face. There was a wall attached to the rock that had been built later.

The tomb wasn't "discovered" by Reader. He presented an old tomb that predated the sphinx, that's all. It's not like it wasn't already known.

I've read Reader's ideas. I don't have a quarrel with the guy. He asserts the sphinx is a few hundred years older than the consensus date. He could be right.

But it still doesn't explain the angle on the southern wall of the enclosure.

The vid also had a guy drawing a lion over the sphinx, trying to see if the explanation of the too-long body is the fissure just in front of the rear haunches.

His drawing showed that - put to scale - a lion's body matching the head size would have that fissure right up next to the rump of the statue.

This I already knew, and I've always thought it was obvious that the fissure can (and probably does) explain the too long body.

Yet this guy just said he's sure the AEs could have patched that up.

That's all I watched. Probably there were other, less ignoble, parts.

Harte

It's a flashy video and entertaining, but one would not view it as an academic study. It was produced for a popular audience to garner ratings. I didn't watch every bit of it and skipped around some, so I didn't see the part you mentioned about the drawing of the lion over the Sphinx. That's an old idea and has been played with quite a bit, up to and including the implausible idea of Robert Temple that the Sphinx started as Anubis.

It was the part about the rock wall and old tomb I most wanted to see, and I was kind of disappointed by the leaps Reeder was trying to make. I like him for the most part, although I find him easier to read than listen to (his dialect his hard for me to understand sometimes). The salient point is, he's not an Egyptologist and seems to be making something force-fit. The fact is, those tombs dug into the quarry walls largely post-date the pyramids. They were dug in by later dynasties of people who were using the quarry walls and escarpments for their own tombs. This is well understood. I have no idea where Reeder is getting the idea of a "Sunken Palace." I see no clear evidence for reworked architecture or masonry. I see quarry walls and the cuttings one finds in them. He's trying to make it seem like a palace facade (a common architecture motif from Dynasty 1 on), but what he's looking at is the remnants of quarry work.

[Sir Wearer of Hats]

7 hours ago, kmt_sesh said:

I draw the Honourable gentleman’s attention to the fact the Sphinx is a lion ... also known as a cat. It’s quiet clear to anyone other than dogmatic adherents to the ascended bassets.

[Hanslune]

Some additional comments on the 'older' Sphinx by Jason Colavito. He takes a look at some of the earlier claims.

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/the-predynastic-sphinx-how-gaston-maspero-launched-an-article-of-fringe-faith

 

Quote

The careful reader will notice that there is a bit of a nationalist undercurrent here. Supporters of the Inventory Stela’s antiquity, and thus that of the Sphinx, are largely French: Mariette, Maspero, Lenormant. Those who opposed its antiquity were not: Smyth, a Scot; Brugsh, a German; Osburn, an Englishman. This was not a universal view in the North, of course: Flinders Petrie and E. A. Wallis Budge both though the Sphinx to be early dynastic or late predynastic, for the same reasons. But I found almost no dissent in French sources of the era, though admittedly my reading of them is much sparser. Despite the flimsy evidence for the French position, it seems to have maintained an unusual staying power in the Francophone world for decades while the Northern European world gradually rejected it. The French, who wanted to maintain primacy in Egyptology, had an interest in continuously finding the oldest and most important evidence of high civilization.

Quote

....this is important because the occult writer R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz read Dawn of Civilization and adopted his view of the predynastic origins of the Sphinx from Maspero, citing the above text in his book Sacred Science (1958/1961). It was in this book, and in attempting to justify Maspero’s claims, that Schwaller de Lubicz invented the water erosion hypothesis of the Sphinx, the foundation for John Anthony West and Robert Schoch’s work. As any fan of the West and Graham Hancock school of history knows, the predynastic Sphinx claim ended up in their work because West had picked it up from Schwaller de Lubicz.

 

Edited October 22, 2017 by Hanslune

[kmt_sesh]

12 hours ago, Sir Wearer of Hats said:

I draw the Honourable gentleman’s attention to the fact the Sphinx is a lion ... also known as a cat. It’s quiet clear to anyone other than dogmatic adherents to the ascended bassets.

Oh, I totally concur. As I've made clear, I am a loyal and devoted acolyte of our Beloved and Benevolent Feline Masters—may they ever purr!

But I like jayle and wanted to pay homage to his Eaters of the Hams. Jayle is smarter than I am.

[kmt_sesh]

5 hours ago, Hanslune said:

Some additional comments on the 'older' Sphinx by Jason Colavito. He takes a look at some of the earlier claims.

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/the-predynastic-sphinx-how-gaston-maspero-launched-an-article-of-fringe-faith

 

 

Isn't it amusing how the fringe tends to recycle the same outdated and disproved nonsense?

I haven't read this one of Colavito's yet, but does he go into more current research on the Inventory Stela? While it's true some early scholars took it at face value and accepted its antiquity, that's certainly no longer the case. We have a much clearer understanding of the situation today. The fringe loves to trod out this stela for any number of fringy agendas, but, as we know, the fringe is not well acquainted with proper modern research.

The area around G1 experienced a brief resurgence in the Third Intermediate Period, although it was not so much Khufu's pyramid as it was one of the small queen's pyramids to the immediate east. This was converted into a small temple to Isis. The resurgence bloomed again in the Late Period, and it is this period to which the Inventory Stela dates (specifically Dynasty 26). The writing and iconography on the stela clearly are not from Dynasty 4 and has nothing to do with Khufu; some of the deities listed on the stela did not even yet exist in Dynasty 4.

We've discussed this ad nauseam at UM, but the fringe continues to try to make it work.

[Truthseeker007]

On ‎10‎/‎21‎/‎2017 at 1:34 PM, abhijit_b said:

No, there is no proof that Sphinx was built 10,000 years old. I have been telling this since the beginning. There are mostly pointers to an older Sphinx. But there are major flaws in the current timelines.

Could you please clarify, according to you, who did build Sphinx? Also please point out the related proofs?

@kmt_sesh  believes it to be Khafre, but not sure about others. Unfortunately I didn't get any response from kmt_sesh on my concerns pointed out in one of my earlier comments.

Well to those that are concerned. Thoth claimed he built the Great Pyramid of Egypt but that the beings from the Inner Earth were the architects that built the Sphinx  by using sound frequencies. Just saying but I don't know.

[kmt_sesh]

5 minutes ago, Truthseeker007 said:

Well to those that are concerned. Thoth claimed he built the Great Pyramid of Egypt but that the beings from the Inner Earth were the architects that built the Sphinx  by using sound frequencies. Just saying but I don't know.

Wha?

Sometimes I don't know if posters are serious or not.

[Hanslune]

2 hours ago, kmt_sesh said:

Isn't it amusing how the fringe tends to recycle the same outdated and disproved nonsense?

I haven't read this one of Colavito's yet, but does he go into more current research on the Inventory Stela? While it's true some early scholars took it at face value and accepted its antiquity, that's certainly no longer the case. We have a much clearer understanding of the situation today. The fringe loves to trod out this stela for any number of fringy agendas, but, as we know, the fringe is not well acquainted with proper modern research.

The area around G1 experienced a brief resurgence in the Third Intermediate Period, although it was not so much Khufu's pyramid as it was one of the small queen's pyramids to the immediate east. This was converted into a small temple to Isis. The resurgence bloomed again in the Late Period, and it is this period to which the Inventory Stela dates (specifically Dynasty 26). The writing and iconography on the stela clearly are not from Dynasty 4 and has nothing to do with Khufu; some of the deities listed on the stela did not even yet exist in Dynasty 4.

We've discussed this ad nauseam at UM, but the fringe continues to try to make it work.

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/inventory-stela.html

He had a piece on what it says but his comments on it seem spread about in many pieces

 

[Hanslune]

2 hours ago, Truthseeker007 said:

Well to those that are concerned. Thoth claimed he built the Great Pyramid of Egypt but that the beings from the Inner Earth were the architects that built the Sphinx  by using sound frequencies. Just saying but I don't know.

Is that the 'Emerald tablet of Thoth the Atlantean' you are speaking of?

You  might want to read that with a large grain of salt - I suggest one about the size of Jupiter.

Said Thoth is a 3rd cousin on my person friend Rupert the Atlantean - see avatar.

Edited October 23, 2017 by Hanslune