8 - The Great Sphinx: Neolithic or Dynastic? Whose Lion?
Will acid dissolve the problem or further sour relationships?
One of the fun perks of academic conferences is when two Academic Giants engage in a slugfest over a matter that only an handful of scientists truly know or care about. It’s best to secure your seating early as you don’t want to sit up front, in the spittle “splash-zone”, where you may be called upon to CPR a smitten apoplectic combatant. One such fracas occurred at the Eighth International Congress of Egyptology in Cairo in 2000, where the lucky spectators were treated to an unseemly falling-out between Egyptologists Hawass and Stadelmann[1]. The latter had the brazen effrontery to suggest that it was Khufu, not Khafre, who built the Great Sphinx, whereupon the former seized the moment and the mike to set matters straight. It may seem strange to outsiders that the fur and feathers fly over a seemingly trivial matter (Whofu?), but academic insiders appreciate what’s truly at stake: personal prestige, grants, tenure, intellectual turf, and the power to mock, censure or cancel one’s colleagues, preferably in front of a live audience.
It’s a delusion that all scientists are only motivated by the search for scientific truths: today’s (and yesterday’s) academic institutions often serve to maintain the status quo, the mainstream thinking, and the consensus science [2]. Any anomalous data or alternative hypotheses and theories that question the consensus scientific narrative are often either ignored or censured. Max Planck, one of the founders of quantum mechanics famously said: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” But before such happy occasions, all new truths must pass an often onerous peer-review, whereby a researcher’s peers not only judge whether the new ideas have merit, but also whether their powerful academic, social, political, and religious peers will bring punishment to bear if the ideas are published. Regrettably, the process often works to suppress radical ideas that challenge the consensus, and often fails to catch fraudulent research that supports it [3].
Mainstream archeologists can easily ignore, dismiss and mock non-academic journalists and writers with strong archeological interests such as Graham Hancock and Andrew Collins. Hancock’s Ancient Apocalypse series on Netflix leaves no doubt that there is little love lost between him and mainstream archeology: he reportedly was not allowed film at The Serpent Mound in Ohio, a decision he claims “was made solely on the grounds that my views about the remote past of Serpent Mound do not align with those of mainstream archaeology.” Yet such journalists often provide a valuable service to Archeology as their books and films increase the popular interest in ancient history, sites, cultures, and artifacts, which in turn increases institutes’ and governments’ willingness to sponsor archeological digs. Journalists’ descriptions of sites are often far superior to what academics can offer: documenting and writing is what journalists do well. For example, Andrew Collins’ description of Göbekli Tepe [4] is still the best one I’ve come across, and Graham Hancock’s dramatic video footage of archeological sites seduces his audience into visiting them. These journalists in turn need the archeologists to do their grunt work, so a win-win would seem unavoidable. However journalists - like scientists - are also driven by personal motives and therefore often pursue the sensational, as that’s what sells books and movies. They often promote highly speculative stories based on very thin evidence that can cause mainstream archeology’s toes to curl. And journalists’ questionable tactic of lambasting mainstream archeology for their ignorance and parochialism – as Hancock is prone to do in his series – is unlikely to scold or shame mainstream archeologists into firming up his often highly speculative theories.
Academics such as Dr Robert Schoch however can perform their own studies, collect their own data, do their own research, and publish their own results, and are therefore not as easily ignored or dismissed as “fringe” or “pseudoscience”, though not for lack of trying. Schoch has instigated what has arguably become the longest and largest current controversy in Archeology: the age of the Great Sphinx of Giza. Mainstream archeology’s view has long been that the Sphinx dates to the Fourth Dynasty reign of Khafre (c. 2558–2532 BCE). However in the early 1990s, Schoch and writer John Anthony West analyzed the weathering of the Sphinx and its enclosure, and determined that it must be much older, that is it must have been created in pre-historical times. West and Schoch’s work was immediately and severely criticized by mainstream archeologists, but it wasn’t until the 1993 broadcast of the "Mystery of the Sphinx" documentary, in which the two proposed and defended their pre-historic Sphinx theory, that mainstream archeology realized it had a major problem: Egyptologists could no longer ignore the fact that their credibility had taken a big hit. If Egyptologists are mistaken about the Sphinx’s age then what else are they wrong about? A fair and comprehensive blow-by-blow summary of the slugfest that followed can be found on David Billington’s website. [5]
The Great Sphinx is part of the Giza necropolis that sits on a plateau to the west of modern Cairo. The necropolis also includes:
the Pyramids of Khufu, Khafre (pictured above), and Menkaure to the west of the Sphinx. Note that some academics prefer “Great”, “Second” and “Third” pyramid as they are less interpretive.
a Causeway (left in picture), the stone avenue immediately to the south of the Sphinx that leads to the Khafre pyramid, also attributed to Khafre.
the Sphinx Temple (in front of the Sphinx) and the Valley Temple, immediately to the south of the Sphinx Temple, also attributed to Khafre.
the ruins of a Mortuary Temple (at the base of the pyramid, to the left of the Sphinx’s head), also attributed to Khafre.
The head of the Sphinx is anthropomorphic and rises above the Giza plateau, while its body is zoomorphic, carved/quarried from the underlying bedrock and therefore largely sits below ground level. Dating the Sphinx has been highly problematic, largely due its multiple periods of neglect and restoration during ancient Egyptian times through Persian, Greek, Roman, Arab, Ottoman, French and British times to the modern day. Mainstream Egyptologists date the Sphinx to the reign of Khafre (c. 2558–2532 BCE) based on its archaeology and architecture[5]: Egyptologists argue that the Sphinx’s association with other Khafre-age necropolis monuments, for example the Valley Temple and Causeway, indicates it likely does not pre-date them, and that its head clearly represents a face in a pharaonic headdress.
Schoch and other critics counter[6] that the Sphinx’ head is out of proportion with its torso, that its face is not that of Khafre and that the current pharaonic head is a re-carving that dates back to early dynastic times. They make a good point as the Egyptians were notoriously fastidious in the proportions of their artworks, so a Khafre-age Sphinx would be atypical both in design and execution. In addition, Schoch refers to numerous inscriptions [6] that suggest that a) the Sphinx was already so eroded in Khafre’s time that Khafre needed to restore it, and b) that a Sphinx with a lion(ess) head existed by the Early Dynastic Period (c. 3150–2686 BCE). Other workers[1] argue the body resembles a canine (Anubis), due to its long forepaws and flat back.
The strongest argument for a pre-historic Sphinx however is the weathering and erosion of the Sphinx and its enclosure. A geophysical survey has established that large parts of the enclosure floor were weathered to a depth of over 1.8 meters. If the Sphinx dates to Khafre then this extensive weathering must have occurred before the current arid climate set in, which is generally believed to have been in 2350 BCE [6]. Schoch’s analysis indicates the weathering must have occurred over a much longer period, that is over several millennia[6]:
[The weathered upper layer is] primarily due to subsurface dissolution, chemical weathering, and karstic development under subaerial conditions since the time that different portions of the floor of the Sphinx Enclosure were first excavated and exposed
Schoch’s current best estimate dates the Sphinx to 10,000 BCE [6], which is in the same ballpark as the dates of Göbekli Tepe (GT) and Karahan Tepe (KT).
The similarities between the Sphinx and GT and KT are striking:
All have high-relief anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures whereby the stone around the ornamentation is removed. In the case of the Sphinx however there’s only one huge hybrid figure.
All monuments exhibit severely weathered and eroded limestone quarry walls
Both the Taş Tepeler (Amorous Fox) and ancient Egypt (Osiris) cultures likely revered Orion’s belt as a fertility and re-birth symbol.
Both GT’s Lion Pillar Temple and the Great Sphinx are facing directly eastwards, in the direction of Leo at the Summer Solstice 10,000 years BCE.
GT’s main enclosures and the Great Sphinx are similarly oriented in the direction of Orion at 10,000 years and 2500 years BCE resp. at the Summer Solstice
All monuments lack significant tool marks. As Lehner et al. [7] wrote for the Sphinx:
Except for the prominent boss on the chest, we have nowhere observed any kind of working marks on the core-body, either in the way of tool marks or of surfaces that would seem to have been left by rough quarrying activity. … [The evidence] would seem to indicate that the core-body of the Sphinx was already severely eroded when the earliest level of large-block masonry was added to it.
Other than the observed weathering, the main argument against either date - Neolithic or Dynastic - is that the quarrying of the Sphinx would require significant resources. Khafre’s builders would likely have had their hands full with the building of his main how-did-they-do-that monument, his pyramid. A Neolithic age would have required significant manpower and food resources from the stone-age Egyptian hunter-gatherer community. Note that resources are a much bigger issue than technology: if hunter-gatherers had the wherewithal to build and decorate KT and GT then the could very likely sculpt what is in essence a huge high-relief lion/canine, though its order-of-magnitude larger size would require order-of-magnitude more resources. Could acid-quarrying techniques similar to those employed at GT and KT have been used to create the Sphinx? If so, then such information – as is typical for the controversy – helps both the mainstream and Schoch hypotheses:
it reduces the number of years of weathering required to match the observed “weathering and erosion” of the Sphinx and its enclosure to effectively zero, as acid corrosion is virtually indistinguishable from severe weathering on a macroscopic scale.
it dramatically reduces the resource requirements.
The purpose of this post is not to judge the merits of either hypothesis, but rather to propose “What if?” stories on how acid-quarrying technology could impact the Sphinx’s age estimation. A starting assumption is that the Sphinx’s head was carved or etched from a yardang [6], a wind-eroded hard limestone outcrop that protruded from the Giza plateau. Such a yardang would likely be have been elongated in an east-west direction [8], and might plausibly have had the shape of a (human or animal) head. Two stories illustrate how acid-quarrying both helps and hurts the two theories.
If Khafre had wanted to build a Sphinx, he likely would have wanted to build it above ground, in a fashion similar to his pyramid and temples. He was likely resource-constrained due to the building of his enormous pyramid, and was probably irked that a rock outcrop – the yardang – was partially obstructing the view from the Nile/west to his pyramid-in-construction. He could have it removed by quarrying, but his workforce likely had their hands full building his 136 m tall pyramid. His building supervisor therefore might have had a brilliant epiphany that a “B” team use a 7000 year old acid-quarrying technique to etch the head of Anubis, the traditional guardian of necropolises, from the yardang. Anubis was the Old Kingdom protector of graves and the guide to the underworld, and traditionally sat in the west, in the viewing direction of the pyramids. But a jackal/fox/dog head sticking out of the plateau would be like a gopher peeping out of its hole: visually unsatisfying. So Khafre would have likely decided to go the full monty and quarry out a canine body as well, while using some of the quarried limestone blocks for his temples. Such an acid-quarried Sphinx would show a lightly “weathered” body, as the workers would take great care to deliver quality work on the main sculpture. The quarry walls and floor however would require no such special care and would likely be heavily corroded by the acid. Such a scenario could even be consistent with Khafre himself re-sculpting the head and/or restoring the Sphinx. Suppose he tasked his crew to build an Anubis Sphinx, but that he developed buyer’s regret: the “weathered” canine head already looked timeworn and tatty - maybe an ear fell off - and some of the Sphinx’s features were weathering away quicker than expected. He therefore might have had some restoration works performed during his lifetime whereby the large canine head was recarved as a smaller pharaoh’s head, and new casing stones were added to the body to prevent further erosion. The main argument against this scenario is that Khafre’s builders would be using an ancient technique possibly for the first time in several millennia on a massive scale.
Currently one of the main problems with a Neolithic age is that a huge team of hunter-gatherers would have had to excavate the quarry around the Sphinx using stone axes, an undertaking that is an order of magnitude larger than GT or KT in terms of manpower and food requirements. Once again, acid-quarrying could severely reduce these requirements, and would produce an impressive but “weathered and eroded”-looking Sphinx and enclosure. The Egyptian Neolithic hunter-gatherers would have noticed the east-west elongation of the yardang, in the direction of Leo at the summer solstice (Note: Schoch’s software claims this occurred during the vernal/spring solstice), and decided – similar to the Lion Pillar temple in Göbekli Tepe – to create the head of a Lion facing his cosmic counterpart. (below).
Afterwards, the body of a Lion could have been carved out when food and manpower resources allowed the hunter-gatherers - or by that time possibly farmers - to fulfil their ambition of creating a truly great monument. Before undertaking such an enormous task they must have surely experimented with smaller projects. If the builders were in contact with Taş Tepeler culture – and that’s a strong possibility as Göbekli Tepe was in contact with other eastern Mediterranean cultures [9] – then they could have known of Karahan Tepe, whose “Chamber of Phalluses” with its snake god head and its standing pillars, was either carved or more likely acid-quarried out of the bedrock.
The similarities with the Sphinx and its enclosure are striking:
An anthropomorphic head carved out of a hard, resistant layer at top
Heavily weathered/eroded/corroded quarry walls (green box) with no tool marks
Corroded/weathered monuments (pillars) without tool marks (yellow box) quarried out of the bedrock. Both the KT pillars and the Sphinx’s body could not have been eroded (much) by surface water runoff.
In summary: the acid-quarrying technology likely employed by the Taş Tepeler builders could plausibly have also been used in the construction of the Great Sphinx, and therefore has the potential to disrupt the Sphinx age status quo. This however does not help to fix a creation date, even when taking into account possible stellar alignments. A suggested next step in determining the Sphinx’s age is to drill a core hole through the quarry floor to characterise the floor’s lithology, weathering and corrosion, and to calibrate Schoch’s geophysical lines. A chemical analysis of the core samples will likely show significant evidence of any acid used in the quarrying process. If the acid was organic, then 14C age analysis might fix the date of quarrying.
None of the discussed Neolithic monuments (Sphinx, KT, GT) show any clear evidence of technologies inherited from an advanced civilisation. Nor does their archeology provide any major clues on the catastrophic or unusual events of the last ice age. However it is very likely that geological, biological, astronomical, chemical and (astro)physical analyses of the events of the last ice age can clarify some of the archeological observations presented in the last three posts. The next post makes a start.
References:
[1] Temple, R. and Temple, O., 2009, The Sphinx mystery : the forgotten origins of the sanctuary of Anubis. Inner Traditions. ISBN: 978-1-59477-884-1
[2] Kuhn, T., 1962, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The University of Chicago Press, ISBN: 0-226-45804-0
[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-14314501
[4] Collins, A., 2014, Göbekli Tepe: Genesis of the Gods: The Temple of the Watchers and the Discovery of Eden. Bear & Company, pp 464. ISBN: 978-1591431428
[5] https://www.davidpbillington.net/sphinx2.html
[6] Schoch, R, Bauval, R., 2017, Origins of the Sphinx: Celestial Guardian of Pre-Pharaonic Civilization. Inner Traditions, 528 pp., ISBN: 978-1620555255
[7] Mark Lehner, M., Allen, J. and Gauri, L., 1980, The ARCE Sphinx Project: A Preliminary Report. The ARCE Newsletter, No. 112, 3-33
[8] Donner, J., Embabi, N., 2000, The significance of yardangs and ventifacted rock outcrops in the reconstruction of changes in the late Quaternary wind regime in the western desert of Egypt. Quaternaire, 11, 179-185
[9] https://www.livescience.com/19085-world-oldest-temple-tools-pilgrimage.html
Enjoy reading your articles Koen! Hope we meet again someday.