Whispers From a Forgotten Past Synopsis: Ancient Egypt Pyramids: An analysis of the dating of the Great Sphinx and Great Pyramid following the discovery of water erosion suggesting a pre-dating of Egyptian civilisation. Violations 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) Check out Thutmose's tomb here. 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 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 accepted 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.

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 7^th 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)

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 20^th 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.

Tags: Ancient Egypt Pyramids, Dating of the Great Sphinx, Dating of the Great Pyramid, Water Erosion, Analysis, Pre-Dating Egyptian Civilisation