"A gigantic statue, with lion body
and the head of a man, gazes east from Egypt along
the thirtieth parallel. Sphinx
is a monolith, carved out of the limestone
bedrock of the Giza plateau, two hundred and forty
feet long, thirty eight feet wide across the shoulders, and sixty
six feet high.
It is worn down and eroded, battered, fissured and collapsing.
Yet nothing else that
has reached us from antiquity even remotely
matches its power and grandeur, its majesty and its
mystery, or its sombre and hypnotic watchfulness.
It is Great Sphinx Once it was believed to be
an eternal God. Then amnesia ensnared it and it fell into an enchanted
sleep. Ages passed: thousands of years. Climates changed. Cultures
changed. Religions changed. Languages changed. Even the positions
of the stars in the skies changed.
But still the statue endured, brooding
and numinous, wrapped in silence. [1].
"There is a belief that Great Sphinx
was fashioned during that period of Egyptian history
classified as the `Old Kingdom' on the orders of the Fourth
Dynasty Pharaoh named Khafre whom
the Greeks later knew as Chephren
and who reigned from 2520-2494 BC. [2]. "
"In these same sources it is also repeatedly stated as fact that the
features of the Sphinx were carved to represent Khafre
himself in other words, its face is his face. [3]. "
"The only problem at any rate without access to a time machine is
that none of us, not even distinguished Egyptologists,
is really in a position to say whether or not the Sphinx is
a portrait or likeness of Khafre. Since the Pharaoh's
body has never been found we have nothing to go on except statues
(which might or might not have closely resembled the king himself).
The best known of these statues, an almost unsurpassable masterpiece
of the sculptor's art carved out of a single piece of black diorite,
now reposes in one of the ground floor rooms of the Cairo
Museum. It is to this beautiful and majestic representation
that the scholars make reference when they tell us with such confidence
that the Sphinx was fashioned in Khafre's
likeness. [4]. "
"The origins of this controversy go back to the late 1970s when John
Anthony West, an independent American researcher, was studying
the obscure and difficult writings of the brilliant French
mathematician and symbolist R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz.
Schwaller is best known for his works on the Luxor
Temple, but in his more general text, Sacred Science (first
published in 1961), he commented on the archaeological
implications of certain climatic conditions and floods that last afflicted
Egypt more than 12,000 years ago:
A great civilization must have preceded the vast movements of water
that passed over Egypt, which leads us to assume
that the Sphinx already existed, sculptured in the
rock of the west cliff at Giza that Sphinx
whose leonine body, except for the head shows indisputable signs of
aquatic erosion."
Schwaller's simple observation, which nobody appeared
to have taken any notice of before, obviously challenged the Egyptological
consensus attributing the Sphinx to Khafre
and to the epoch Of 2500 BC. What West immediately
realized on reading this passage, however, was that, through geology,
Schwaller had also offered a way 'virtually to prove
the existence of another, and perhaps greater civilization antedating
dynastic Egypt and all other known civilizations
by millennia' If the single fact of the water erosion of the Sphinx
could be confirmed, it would in itself overthrow all accepted chronologies
of the history of civilization; it would force a drastic re evaluation
of the assumptions of 'progress' the assumption upon which the whole
of modern education is based. It would be difficult to find a single,
simple question with graver implication…[5]. "
References:
[1] - [5] Robert Bauval, Graham Hancock, Keeper Of Genesis. London: William Heinemann Ltd, 1996.
ABSTRACT. The problem of dating the Great Egyptian Sphinx construction is still valid, despite of the long-term history of its research. Geological
approach in connection to other scientific-natural methods permits to answer the question about the relative age of the Sphinx. The conducted
visual investigation of the Sphinx allowed the conclusion about the important role of water from large water bodies which partially flooded the
monument with formation of wave-cut hollows on its vertical walls. The morphology of these formations has an analogy with similar such hollows
formed by the sea in the coastal zones. Genetic resemblance of the compared erosion forms and the geological structure and petrographic
composition of sedimentary rock complexes lead to a conclusion that the decisive factor of destruction of the historic monument is the wave energy
rather than sand abrasion in Eolian process. Voluminous geological literature confirms the fact of existence of long-living fresh-water lakes in
various periods of the Quaternary from the Lower Pleistocene to the Holocene. These lakes were distributed in the territories adjacent to the Nile.
The absolute mark of the upper large erosion hollow of the Sphinx corresponds to the level of water surface which took place in the Early
Pleistocene. The Great Egyptian Sphinx had already stood on the Giza Plateau by that geological (historical) time.
In the recent years one could observe the growth of interest
in dating the construction of the Great Egyptian Sphinx (GES),
which is determined, to a considerable extent, by new ideas
about geological factors which could influence its safety. In
view of another interpretation of the geological and naturegeographical
data the historical-archaeological method for
determining the GES age (about 5000 years old) can prove to
be unfounded. The authors of the report have another point of
view in considering the problem. We have taken the GES age
such as it was indicated by theosophist Yelena Blavatskaya in
one of her basic works (1937). She wrote: “Notice the
indestructible witness of evolution of Human races, from
Divine, and especially Androgynous race, the Egyptian Sphinx,
that mystery of centuries”. According to Blavatskaya the time of
GES erection should exceed 750000 years. Are there some
geological indications which are evidence for such an old age
of the Sphinx? Consider the brief prehistory of the problem.
The sand abrasion which resulted in formation of deep
horizontal hollows all over the monument parameter (Fig. 1-2)
is considered conventional in estimating the factors which
influenced the GES. Maximum depth of those hollows reaches
8 feet (above 2 meters). Geologists who studied Sphinx are
sure that the hollows had formed at the expense of
comparatively loose mountain rocks, while the protrusions
between them are more hard rocks resistant to the influence of
winds. They think that the period of 5000 years is sufficient for
creating such large hollows by Eolian process. But they cannot
answer the question, about the absence of such forms of
weathering on the front part of the head. A new point of view, concerning the age of the Sphinx, has
appeared recently. It belongs to geologist R. Schoch (2005);
he has found traces of water on the surface of the GES. He
supposes that the problem is in the rain water. Climatic
conditions characterized by high humidity and pouring rains
may have taken place 13000 years BC. But even this age
border, is not the date of construction, since the Sphinx had
already been standing in the Giza Plateau by the beginning of
the period of pouring rains.
In order to study the geological situation and to specify the
role of possible factors for the destruction of GES, one of the
authors of this report has made a visual investigation of the
monument on the spot (in the Republic of Egypt). After a
detailed analysis of the GES surface morphology and after
reading the literary sources we have come to a conclusion that
the statement about the influence of sand abrasion on the root
rocks of the monument is exaggerated.
In our geological field expeditions in different mountains and
littoral zones of the Crimea and Caucasus we could often
observe the forms of Eolian weathering which morphology
differs considerably from the weathering taking place on the
GES. Most natural forms of weathering are of smoothed
character, independent of lithological composition of the rocks.
