Life With The Great Sphinx

I first met the Great Sphinx face-to-face on 17 June 1990. She (yes, I consider the Great Sphinx a female) has influenced and in many ways defined my life ever since. It has been apparent to me that many a person knows me, or believes they know me, or more accurately knows of me, due to the controversy over the age of the Sphinx that my research has engendered.

For those not familiar with my research on the Great Sphinx, I will summarize it very briefly. For more extended discussions, I refer the reader to my books (listed in the notes to this article).

History of an Enigma

The Great Sphinx, carved out of solid bedrock limestone, sits on the eastern edge of the Giza Plateau, the area famous for containing the Great Pyramid attributed to the Fourth Dynasty pharaoh Khufu (Cheops), on the west bank of the Nile across from Cairo. The Sphinx sits due east of the second pyramid, the pyramid generally attributed to the pharaoh Khafre (Chephren, Khephren), possibly the son or brother of Khufu. The second pyramid is just slightly smaller than the Great Pyramid. A third major pyramid, though considerably smaller than the other two, is also located on the Giza Plateau; it is attributed to the pharaoh Menkaura (Menkaure, Mycerinus), possibly a grandson or son of Khufu. It is these three pyramids that various researchers, most notably Robert Bauval, have correlated with the belt of the constellation Orion (representative of, in some guises, the Egyptian god Osiris).

The traditional academics of the late twentieth century attributed the Great Sphinx to the pharaoh Khafre, builder of the second pyramid, circa 2500 B.C. In contrast, some classical Egyptologists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries dated the Great Sphinx to an earlier, pre-dynastic, period, foreshadowing my own work. There are no definitive ancient records of who originally carved the Sphinx, when, or why. We do not even know the name that the Old Kingdom Egyptians gave to the Sphinx.

A granite stela erected between the paws of the Sphinx by Thutmose IV, circa 1400 B.C., when first excavated was reported to include in its inscription the name, or at least part of the name, of Khafre (this portion of the inscription has since flaked away). This has been variously interpreted to indicate that either Khafre ordered the Sphinx carved, or that Khafre ordered the Sphinx renovated, as Thutmose IV did over a millennium later. In reality, however, it is unclear if indeed it was the Fourth Dynasty pharaoh Khafre being named on the stela, or what relationship the stela may have suggested that Khafre had to the Sphinx: builder, restorer, supplicant, or something else. Bottom line: The Thutmose IV stela provides no definitive evidence of when, or by whom, the Sphinx was constructed. Also possibly bearing on the origins of the Great Sphinx is the so-called Inventory Stela, alternatively known as the Stela of Cheops’ (Khufu’s) Daughter. Although the actual stela dates to the seventh or sixth century B.C., it purports to be a copy of an Old Kingdom text. According to the Inventory Stela, the Great Sphinx was already in existence during the reign of Khufu. Indeed, Khufu is credited with repairing the Sphinx after it was struck by lightning. Modern Egyptologists generally dismiss the Inventory Stela as a late period fabrication.

In New Kingdom times (circa 1550 to 1070 B.C. or so) the Great Sphinx was sometimes referred to as Horemakhet (Hor-em-akhet, Harmakhet, Harmachis), which can be translated as Horus of the Horizon or Horus in the Horizon, or as Ra-horakhty, translated as Ra of the Two Horizons. In medieval Arabic times one appellation given to the Great Sphinx was Abu el-Hol (Abu al-Hol, Abou el Hôl), or Father of Terror(s). The name ‘Sphinx’ may come from a Greek word meaning “to strangle” as, according to one legend, the Greek sphinx, often depicted as a winged lion with the head of a woman, had the habit of strangling and devouring those who could not answer her riddles. Another interpretation is that the word sphinx was derived, possibly through Greeks visiting Egypt, from the ancient Egyptian Shesep-ankh, sometimes translated as “living statue” or “living image,” a term used to refer to royal statues during the Old Kingdom.

I have extensively studied the nature and extent of the weathering and erosional features found on the Great Sphinx directly, under the numerous repairs to the Sphinx (some of which date back to Old Kingdom times), in the so-called Sphinx enclosure (the Sphinx sits in a hole or quarry, with its body below the level of the plateau behind it), and in the subsurface under and around the Sphinx. Based on my geological analyses, I have calculated that the oldest portions of the Sphinx date back to the period of approximately 7,000 B.C. to 5,000 B.C. I arrived at this conclusion through a variety of independent means, such as correlating the nature of the weathering with the climatic history of the area, calculating the amount of rock eroded away on the surface and estimating how long this may have taken, and calibrating the depth of subsurface weathering around and below the Sphinx.

Key to my redating of the Sphinx is the interpretation that the weathering observed on the body and the walls of the Sphinx enclosure is not due to the arid desert conditions found in the region during the last four to five thousand years. Rather, the observed weathering resulted from rain, precipitation, and water runoff – and sufficient precipitation was available only during pre-Sahara conditions, prior to circa 3,000 B.C. Other geologists, such as Colin Reader and David Coxill (each working independently of me, and also independently of each other), have corroborated my analyses of the nature of the weathering and erosion, concluding that the causative agent was water and not wind and sand. I must note, however, that while Reader, Coxill, and I agree that the Sphinx is weathered by water and must date to an earlier period than the traditional attribution, we do not all agree on the same age estimate. In particular, Reader has argued that the Sphinx can still be accommodated into a very early dynastic timeframe and thus is perhaps only a few hundred years older than the traditional date of circa 2500 B.C. However, I firmly believe that the extent of the erosion and weathering firmly push the core body of the Sphinx into a much more remote period. Furthermore, Reader does not take into adequate account the subsurface data that Thomas Dobecki and I collected (see discussion below), which allows me to calibrate the rate of subsurface weathering and arrive at my age estimate for the Sphinx. My dating places the Sphinx well back into pre-dynastic times, a period when many suppose that the technology and social organization did not exist to create such a monument.

Even though the Sphinx exhibits water erosion, this erosion was clearly from precipitation and rain runoff, not from flooding or the rising of the Nile. I want to be clear about this, since some people have misrepresented my data as supporting the notion that the Sphinx witnessed “Noah’s Flood” or a worldwide deluge. Furthermore, fossil shells, sea urchins, and so forth can be found on the Giza Plateau, but these have nothing to do with the water erosion seen on the Sphinx. Rather, the fossil sea organisms are millions of years old and have weathered out of the limestone rocks from which the Sphinx, pyramids, and many other structures are built.

Concerning my redating of the Sphinx, I emphasize that I am comfortable attributing it to the period of circa 5,000 B.C. or a bit earlier. Could it be considerably older? Based on the geological data, and depending on how one interprets the data, possibly. However, I have never claimed an age for the Great Sphinx prior to the 7,000 B.C. to 5,000 B.C. period. It is simply false when people state that I have confirmed the age of the Sphinx as being on the order of 10,500 B.C. It is also sometimes suggested that the leonine aspect of the Sphinx connects it to the constellation Leo, and thus with the precessional Age of Leo, placing the Sphinx in the period of circa 10,500 B.C. (if it was carved at the beginning of that age). I question this association, however, as I am not certain that the constellation of Leo as such was recognized some 12,000 or more years ago, and even if the Great Sphinx does represent or commemorate, in some aspect, the Age of Leo, that does not necessarily imply that it was sculpted during that age. Even more widely speculative is the idea that the Great Sphinx was carved not in the last Age of Leo, but in the preceding Age of Leo some 36,000 or so years ago. Another widespread notion is to view the leonine-human hybrid aspect of the Sphinx as a representation of Leo and Virgo combined, the masculine and feminine, the animal or beastly vitality and the human intellect united.

While most of the focus of, and controversy surrounding, my work has been on the Great Sphinx, to my mind the so-called Sphinx Temple – sitting directly in front of (east of) the Sphinx – is in many ways even more significant than the Sphinx itself from a construction and dating point of view. The Sphinx Temple is built of megalithic limestone blocks, many weighing tens of tons, assembled in a tightly enclosed space. How these blocks were maneuvered is difficult to fathom. Pertinent to our current theme, however, is the fact that the Sphinx Temple (or at least the original parts of the temple, as it too, like the Sphinx, was reworked and repaired in dynastic times) was built contemporaneously with the oldest portions of the Great Sphinx. The blocks from which the temple was constructed were removed from around the body of the Sphinx as the statue was carved. The sculptors of the Sphinx did not simply chisel, pound, and shovel out the excess rock they needed to remove; rather, they meticulously quarried it as huge blocks used to construct the Sphinx Temple. Although in ruins today, I consider the building of the Sphinx Temple to be an engineering feat even more incredible than the carving of the Great Sphinx, and this occurred in circa 5,000 B.C. or earlier.

We Never Forget a Face?

I must stress that in my assessment, the Great Sphinx of pre-dynastic times did not look like the Sphinx we see today. It is only what I refer to as the core body (the torso or trunk) of the Sphinx that dates back to that much earlier period. The front paws have been heavily reworked and repaired (today they are mostly covered with modern blocks of limestone), and the head is surely not the original head. I have always contended that the head of the Great Sphinx is out of proportion relative to the size of the body. It is too small. In my opinion, the head was originally larger, but it was damaged by weathering and erosion, and to “repair” it the ancients recarved the head, resulting in its relatively small size today. Originally the head may not have been that of a human. Although I have no hard evidence, my speculation is that the head was originally that of a lion, to fit the leonine body. As an aside, some years ago a noted Egyptologist refused to believe my observation that the current head of the Great Sphinx is too small for the body. He subsequently undertook an analysis of the proportions of many ancient Egyptian sphinxes, only to find that virtually all had similar head to body ratios, except for the Great Sphinx, in which case the head was proportionally smaller.