How old is the Sphinx?

[naimless]

The Mystery Of The Sphinx:

[Anomalocaris]

Can you give a synopsis? I can't listen to charlton Heston for an hour and half.

[popeyespappy]

I'm skeptical of the theories of any regular on Ancient Aliens.

[naimless]

Basically water erosion of the Egyptian Sphinx shows it was made thousands of years before Egyptologists claim.

[Minimalist]

Geologist Robert Schoch has noted that the vertical fissures on the Sphinx enclosure wall



are symptomatic of erosion caused by rainwater running down the face of the wall.

Schoch has maintained that such rainfall in North Africa has not been seen since the Neolithic Subpluvial.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Subpluvial

The Neolithic Subpluvial — sometimes called the Holocene Wet Phase — was an extended period (from about 7500–7000 BCE to about 3500–3000 BCE) of wet and rainy conditions in the climate history of northern Africa. It was both preceded and followed by much drier periods.

And the Egyptologists shriek in horror



and do what they always do....

[Anomalocaris]

And physical erosion has become a reliable and precise age indicator in geology as of which day?

And if the enclosure was worked by neolithic popilation sometime after the monuments at gobekli tepe in turkey is not only already built, but abandoned, what is ground shaking about that?

It doesn't mean Egyptian culture therefore extended that far back.

[Minimalist]

The Egyptology Club has ruled that the Sphinx was built by Khafre mainly because it is adjacent to the Second Pyramid at Giza which they have equally arbitrarily assigned to Khafre.

We do know what the climate of dynastic Egypt was like. Schoch's point is that this wall was built at or before a time when there was copious rainfall in Egypt. He has identified when the last period of such rainfall happened.

The Egyptology Club insists "there was NO ONE to build it then...so WHO built it?"

And Schoch famously replied: "I don't know who built it. I'm just telling you WHEN if was built."

Besides, do you think the Ancient Egyptians were stupid? I don't. Blowing sand had to be a normal part of their lives. For most of its history the Sphinx has been covered up to its neck by sand blown into the pit. I find it impossible to believe that there would not have been one engineer who did not notice the sand blowing in and tell his boss, "I don't think this is such a great idea."

But.... if it was built at a time when Giza was a well-watered grassland that would not have been such a problem, would it?

[naimless]

Further research also indicates that the Sphinx head is very dissimilar to Khafre's head. It is probably of a black African instead.

[Minimalist]

The head was probably re-carved into what we see now. Exposed as it was it would have been subject to far more erosion than the body which was usually covered. This artist's impression is of a lion.




What is certain is that the head is disproportionally small compared to the body and other sphinxes in Egypt do not show this disproportion.

[Anomalocaris]

The sphinx is not a monolithic rock block. The head is made of much more resistant rocks than most of the body. So just because the head sticks out, it does not follow that the head would have been more effected by erosion than the body.

Also the smallness of the head does not automatically indicate reworking. It is not clear exactly how large the resistant block on top of the body had been before the scultpors got to it. The disproportionat size of the head could well have been an original feature of the sphinx imposed by the small size of the available rock appropriately position to be carved into the head.

Finally, recent climatological study suggest in fact the Holocene wet phase ended in Egypt as recently as 2000 BC, much later than previously thought. so the conventionally accepted date of sphinx construction would not preclude it from exhibiting water erosion indicative of very wet weather.

I think taken as a whole, the evidence for old-kingdom origin of the sphinx is much more cohesive than for a much earlier origin.