Khufu Knew the Sphinx (original) (raw)
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Proceedings of the Fourth British Egyptology Congress University of Manchester, 7-9 September 2018, 2020
Having examined the weathering and erosion of the limestones that were exposed by the excavation of the Great Sphinx, this author has previously concluded that whilst the Sphinx is a product of the Pharaonic culture, its excavation pre-dates the 4th Dynasty Pyramids at Giza. Although space here prevents the repeating of detailed arguments leading to this conclusion, the following pages will revisit a number of relevant issues in the context of criticism that has been presented by Dr Mark Lehner and Dr Zahi Hawass in their publication, Giza and the Pyramids (2017: 58-61).
Geologic features and durability of limestones at the sphinx
Environmental Earth Sciences, 1990
Geologic features considered to influence durability of the limestone at the sphinx are depositional history, evolution of porosity, and development of joints. These strata have two orthogonal groups of vertical joints. Where these joints intersect, wedge-shaped blocks are separating, causing loss of material from the core. Major reduction of the sphinx, however, is occurring due to salt crystallization aided by the “ink-bottle” pore systems prevailing in these rocks. The weathering profile exhibits alternating layers, less and more highly weathered. The less weathered rock is a biomicritic grainstone with smaller quantities of halite and gypsum and a larger large-pore-to-throat ratio than the indented, predominantly micritic, layers with larger concentration of salts and a smaller large-pore-to-throat ratio. Based upon poresize distributions, pressures generated in the pores have been calculated using thermodynamic principles, and an equation has been derived that provides a quantitative measure of durability of these rocks.
The Archaeology Of An Image: The Great Sphinx Of Giza
1991
This study is the first systematic description of the Great Sphinx of Giza. It is an architectural, archaeological, and geo-archaeological approach, based on five years of field work at the Sphinx between 1979 and 1983. The Sphinx and its site were documented using photogrammetry and conventional surveying techniques. I describe the setting and layout of the site of the Sphinx and review the history of previous research and excavation. The results of eight years of excavation from the 1920s and 30s are documented here for the first time. I review published sources about the history and significance of the Sphinx. I describe the features of the Sphinx and its site on the basis of the field work. This work has lead to the following conclusions: Builders, under the 4th Dynasty pharaoh, Khafre (ca. 2,500 B.C.), quarried a series of terraces and a U-shaped sanctuary for the Sphinx. They extracted the stone in the form of multi-ton core blocks that they used for making the Khafre Valley T...
Mehit's Stump: Unmasking the Great Sphinx of Giza
The current mainstream model of history proposes that 4 th Dynasty King Khafre had the Great Sphinx carved from the bedrock of the Giza Plateau in approximately 2500 B.C.E., and that the entire statue including its head, neck, and body was sculpted from the three raw substrate limestone layers of the Mokattam Formation de novo at the same time. However, a growing body of evidence suggests that the Great Sphinx is older than the date commonly ascribed to its construction, and that the head and neck were merely remodeled from a prior sculpture to create the face of the Great Sphinx sometime during the Old Kingdom. The following archaeo-sculptural analysis of the Great Sphinx subjects the monument to a detailed reconstructive examination to demonstrate the existence of a previously unreported contour signature, which suggests a modification to a prior sculpted structure that was partly removed and/or altered. This discovery provides a basis for an empirical method, which may aid in the relative dating of the stone layers belonging to the neck and body of the Great Sphinx to determine if they were indeed created at the same time or in different eras.
Geologic weathering and its implications on the age of the sphinx
Geoarchaeology, 1995
The Great Sphinx of Giza is considered by Egyptologists to have been excavated by the Pharaoh Kephren nearly 4500 years ago. Schoch and West (1991) have suggested that the Sphinx is much older, based primarily upon the rounded profile of the strata of the Sphinx thorax and the deep channels present in the walls surrounding the Sphinx ditch. These features, according to them, are due to "precipitation-induced weathering" formed when the Sahara still experienced a humid climate at least 7000 years ago. In this article we show how weathering in an arid environment can produce the rounded profile given the gradual change in lithology of the alternating hard and soft limestone strata. We show further that the channels are actually the pre-Pliocene karst features formed by underground water and exposed due to the excavation of the Sphinx ditch. We propose therefore that, for now, the Sphinx may still be regarded as of pharaonic origin. o 1995
Reconstruction of the bases of sandstone sphinxes from the Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari
Fieldwork and Research
The reconstruction of the iconographic program of the decoration of the sandstone bases of a group of sphinxes of Hatshepsut lining the processional avenue leading to the Queen’s Mansion of a Million Years in the temple at Deir el-Bahari is the prime focus of this article. The fragments of these statues discovered in the 1920s by the archaeological mission of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York were never published. The pieces were rediscovered in storage in 2005. A theoretical reconstruction has been undertaken, leading the author to identify an unusual iconographical pattern that reflects changes in art introduced in the times of Hatshepsut. The representations on the bases of the royal sandstone sphinxes from the queen’s temple include, among others, rekhyt birds, pat-people and “enemies of Egypt”. They take on a form that departs from that known from other sphinx sculptures.
Lion in the Bedrock: The Iconographic Shift of the Great Sphinx of Giza
2022
The Egyptian kings of the 4th Dynasty have been credited by scholars with the inception and building of the Giza Pyramids and the Great Sphinx. While the dates of these monuments have long been established in mainstream archaeology, there is evidence of an earlier sphinx that suggests the Great Sphinx could have originally been a full lion and later re-carved into what it is today. This alternate theory represents earlier dynastic lion worship that evolved over time and predated Khafre’s rule, thus changing the narrative about his claim on this monument. The shift from lion iconography in pre-dynastic and early Old Kingdom times to sphinx iconography moving forward was born on this plateau. The face of the king on the sphinx is likely still that of Khafre, but evidence presented in this essay suggests he was not the original builder.
Khafre's Temples, Giza: Part IV. The Sphinx Temple: A layman's guide
This final part of the guide on Khafre"s Temples will focus on the Sphinx temple. To keep the guide to a manageable size and prevent repetition it is advisable that the reader acquaint themselves to parts I, II, & III. The image above shows some of the ruinous remains of the sphinx temple, and for the majority of people this is as close as we can get; by placing a camera through a gap in a fence. Off limits to tourists, it is very difficult to obtain data on these ruins; indeed, as has been discussed in previous parts, the literature on the temple is very sparse. Though discovered by Baraize in 1925, nothing was recorded or published and much valuable evidence has been lost forever; our only record is black and white images of the excavations. It"s fair to say, that it was not Egyptology"s finest hour, and possibly worse than Barsanti"s disastrous excavations at the Great Pit of Zawiyet el-Aryan; but at least here, Barsanti made an attempt to record what he found.
Contrary to the well-known hypothesis of construction of the Great Pyramids at Giza by carving and hoisting quarried limestone blocks, in 1974 a French research chemist, Joseph Davidovits, proposed a radically different hypothesis that the pyramid blocks are not quarried stone but cast-in-place "concrete" prepared with the soft, marly kaolinitic limestone of Giza that was readily disintegrated in water and mixed with locally available lime and natron. The lime-natron combination, according to Davidovits, dissociates the kaolinitic clay from the limestone and forms an alkali-aluminosilicate (zeolitic) "glue", which he termed "geopolymer". The "man-made" hypothesis was proposed as an alternative explanation to the apparent mysteries associated with the "carve-and-hoist" hypothesis in regard to the methods of construction and observations of some "unusual" minerals in pyramid samples that are rare in natural limestone.