The true age of the Sphinx

@Pharaoh

Published in 

Egypt

 · 28 Mar 2023

REASONS WHY ARCHAEOLOGY ATTRIBUTES THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE SPHINX TO CHEPHREN (2,500 B.C.)

1. The pyramid of Chephren is the one closest to the Sphinx.
2. Some statues of Chephren were found in the adjoining building called the Valley Temple.
3. On a stele placed between the Sphinx's legs is a hieroglyphic containing the first syllable of the name Chephren.
4. The face of the Sphinx resembles that of Chephren.
5. There are geometric and interdependent relationships between the various monuments on the Giza plain.
6. The Sphinx's head has the typical headdress of the pharaohs.
7. The erosion visible on its body, whatever the causes, has an explanation that does not lead to a backdating of the date of its construction. The Sphinx's body has some vertical cracks, apparently caused by water, that may have been generated in ancient time due to geological upheavals, thus already present when the monument was built. Even acknowledging that water is responsible for what we see today, it wetted the Sphinx in various forms, from the floods of the Nile to the frequent rains that even existed in Chephren's time. To prove this on the roofs of the temples, gutters and channels were found to drain rainwater.

Let us not forget that the Sphinx's body is located in a hollow, sloping plain, which thus becomes the natural receptacle for rainwater in the area.

Wet sand and subsurface waters would also have caused, during the period when the Sphinx remained buried, the kind of erosion we see now.

Then the combined action of wind and sand can be similar to that induced by water, and subsequent erosions can mask the real primitive erosion.

The same pollution of recent decades has increased the phenomenon by altering its already undecipherable speed. The same layers of limestone, due to their different compactness, have undergone erosive processes of different intensity.

It is erroneous to compare the degree of deterioration of the Sphinx with that of the temples that surround it, which appear less worn, because they are placed in an elevated position and not surrounded by fences, which prevents the stagnation of water. The same sand that has covered them for a long time has favored their preservation. It also appears that the type of limestone used in the Sphinx is more friable than that used in the other monuments.

Erosion probably due to water on the sphinx's body

The fact that the most eroded part is the upper part, i.e., the back, could be justified by the fact that only the lower part remained protected by stone blocks for a long time.

In conclusion to consider erosion as evidence to change the chronology of facts is erroneous because its process is subject to a thousand variables, from the type of material to the combined action of different processes. It was probably the water due to the flooding of the Nile (in sufficient quantities) at the time of Chephren to damage the Sphinx's body, without bothering an earlier period of a few thousand years when rainfall was probably more abundant.

Finally, there are no remains of a civilization prior to 2,500 B.C. with a technological capability capable of erecting the monument.

CLAIMS OF THE OFFICIAL ARCHAEOLOGY

1. Proximity to a monument can hardly be a guarantee of authorship.
2. Pharaoh may have had his statues placed in an existing temple perhaps for the purpose of appropriating the sacred energy contained therein.
3. The symbol representing the sound "khaf" is found in many Egyptian terms, as well as in Pharaoh Chephren's name. It also lacks the cartouche, which usually encloses royal names. And then even assuming that it does represent him, it is strange that it is the only inscription celebrating his authorship. Even assuming it means "Chephren" it could simply indicate the restorer.
4. The face of the Sphinx is damaged and therefore it is difficult to reconstruct the original face. There are at least two statues of Chephren, one in the Cairo museum and one in Boston, in which the face seems to belong to different people. This means that we do not know his real face. Hardly kings were portrayed realistically in sculpture: usually they were stylized. Are we then sure that, even if they wanted to, the ancient Egyptians were able to reproduce the features of a person? Moreover, the head-body disproportion seems to suggest intervention after the original construction. Testifying to the anomaly is that every sphinx subsequent to the one at Giza was built with much more proportionate head-bodies. In any case an attempt was made by Detective Frank Domingo to compare the face of the Sphinx with that which appears in the statuette preserved in the Cairo museum. The monument's chin was much more prominent than Chefren's. Moreover, the line connecting the ear and the corner of the Sphinx's mouth had a slant of 32°; a similar line drawn on the face had a slant of only 14°. So not only do the two faces belong to different people, but upon closer analysis, even to different races. That of the statuette recalls Europoid features, from whites; that of the Sphinx suggests that the individual was African, Nubian. And there was a period, prior to the time when Chephren lived, when the predominant ethnicity was precisely Nubian.
5. Actually it could be the whole complex that aligned with the already existing structure of the Sphinx.
6. The pharaonic headdress, the nemes, is yes typical of the time of the Pharaohs, but both the one we see in the statuette officially attributed to Chephren at the Cairo museum and the one depicted in the rulers after him have flaps on their shoulders, while the one on the Sphinx lacks them and never seems to have had them.
7. The type of erosion observed is unmistakably due to frequent and violent rain, a phenomenon that to that extent occurred only in predynastic times. Even violent thunderstorms were not uncommon in Chephren's time (2,500 B.C.), but not such as to justify the erosive process. We do not really know how much rain fell in the last 45 centuries in Egypt except that overall it was far less than that which fell in late prehistoric times. There is no evidence to show that such sporadic rains, however heavy, were sufficient to cause the erosion in question. The flood waters of the Nile only occasionally reached the area of the buildings; moreover, the most damaged part is the upper part not the legs or the lower part of the body, not to mention that the mere runoff of water does not cause the wide cracks visible from top to bottom. The very placement of the monuments, top or bottom in the plain inside or outside an enclosure, becomes irrelevant. The most eroded part of the Sphinx enclosure is to the west, the highest part from which the rains that fell in the valley descended into the basin. During the reign of Cheops, quarries were created upstream of the monument to prevent water runoff from reaching it. Thus the erosion of the upper part of the enclosure must have occurred prior to the works of Cheop. The use of gutters proves nothing because even the little rainwater, falling on the roofs of the temples, was easily fouled with dust and sand, defacing the wall paintings of the temples. It is also important to point out that the Sphinx, officially built around 2500 B.C., remained buried under the sand for several centuries until 1400 B.C., when the first restorations began. Considering that the dry, rainfall-free climate was supposed to favor its preservation the wear and tear should have been very strong in a short time, which is unlikely, since at that rate, it would have come to us in far worse condition. In addition, the chemical reaction created with the moisture in the sand causes a different type of erosion than that detected, and there is no evidence for the use of various types of limestone. The Valley and Sphinx temples near the monument as well as the tombs of the same period show far less erosion, although they are made of the same limestone, proving that they were exposed to the elements for a shorter period. Also significant are the mastabas found at Saqqara, built several centuries before the official date of the Sphinx's construction, or at most contemporary in the case of their reconstruction, which although made of fragile mudbrick, do not show the same kind of wear and tear as the lion's body. The different geographical location from Giza is not so marked as to justify a very different climate, being only 15 km away. The abrasion caused by sand and wind results in horizontal cracks with sharp edges not vertical crevasses and wavy, rounded horizontal furrows. Pollution itself cannot justify the kind of marks left on the rocks because, among other things, it is not a phenomenon that far back in time. If we then evaluate the head, the disproportion to the body indicates that originally perhaps it must have been different, probably added or restored in dynastic times. Basically what Robert Schoch, a geostratigrapher at Boston University, David Coxill, Colin Reader and other geologists say with confidence is that the age of the Sphinx should be backdated by several thousand years because only at that time did the climatic conditions that were necessary to create the kind of erosion visible on the monument today exist. The dry climate of 3,000 B.C. should have caused mainly aeolian erosion. The wet climate occurred mainly between 10,000 and 8,000 B.C. to 3,000 B.C. From the extent of wear and tear, the age could be around 7,000 to 5,000 B.C.
8. There are ruins at Nabta Playa in southern Egypt dated around 5,000 B.C. that feature slabs and alignments of stones so much to be called the Egyptian Stonehenge. They are considered the oldest known astronomical stone alignments. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

The Nile floodplain has always been intensively cultivated. There has been little excavation activity in the delta or in the Nile valley proper because of the continuous deposition of silt during floods. Then the Nile, in its lower course, changed bed several times over the millennia so today what are the banks were once, thousands of years ago, submerged. In addition, much of what was the then habitable coastal strip is now submerged.

The retreat of the ice after the last ice age caused the sea level to rise very rapidly. Beginning in 8,000 B.C., the level of the Mediterranean Sea rose about sixty centimeters, submerging every village or town along the coastal strip.

ADDITIONAL REASONS WHY THE AGE OF THE SPHINX SHOULD BE BACKDATED

1. Archaeologists of the last century such as Wallis Budge, a noted translator of the "Book of the Dead" of the ancient Egyptians, and Sir Flinders Petrie, one of the founders of Egyptology, considered the Sphinx build before the reign of Chephren.
2. All ancient literary references to the monument in the period between the New Kingdom and Roman times report of its existence long before the pyramids were built. Oral traditions of certain peasant groups living in villages around Giza claim that the Sphinx is at least 5,000 older than the pyramid of Chephren.
3. The so-called "Inventory Stele" from the 7^th or 6^th century B.C. states that it is a copy of an ancient Egyptian text and that the Sphinx existed at the time of Cheops, Chephren's brother and predecessor. Cheops himself allegedly restored the Sphinx when it was struck by lightning. The stele, preserved in the Cairo museum, is considered a fake by official archaeology but without convincing evidence to prove it.
4. If it was built during the dry and arid climate, the Egyptians should have been well aware of the problem of sand filling the pool. Why then make a monument intended to be concealed?