Author Topic: The Age of the Sphinx  (Read 158 times)

Z the laidback Virus

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The Age of the Sphinx
« on: January 03, 2004, 02:53:55 PM »
After mentioning this touchy subject in the "Nobody's learning" thread started by our dear Trauma and he asking me to start a new thread concerning this,I've searched for more detail and found this at http://www.ebtx.com/theory/sphynx.htm .This is what it says:

The Egyptian Sphinx
How old is it?
There was an episode on the Discovery Channel not long ago on the age of the Sphinx.  Egyptologists say it originates with the ancient Egyptians who built the pyramids. Apparently this may not be so. The "overlooked" evidence indicates that it is much older ... perhaps thousands of years older.

That evidence consists of the weathering patterns on and about the Sphinx which is indicative of "water erosion". The problem here is that there has been no significant rainfall in the area since the Sahara desert was a fertile savannah (as evidenced by cave paintings).

For those not familiar with the placement of the sphinx, it is in a carved depression ... kind of a three sided box with stone walls about ten feet high ... a short distance from the Nile with the Giza pyramids in back of it. During most of its existence, the lion body has been covered by sand with just the head sticking out.

The walls definitely show this type of erosion (and erosion form the Nile has been ruled out) ... so there is no question that the lower part (the lion body) was carved out at the time of that erosion. The Egyptologist on the program clearly demonstrated a degree of fear and could only appeal to "authority", i.e. Egyptologists are very careful, scientific fellows and couldn't possibly be mistaken. The context of the documentary is somewhat obscure, so I can't say that some statements weren't taken out of context (which is often the case on TV).

Something which wasn't stated ...

Although they said that the head had probably been recarved, no note was made of the following.

That the head is artisticly incompatible with the body. It does not integrate properly either in size or design.

For instance, though I never knew that the sphinx was in an "enclosure" till I saw this show, I have always wondered why the head is sooooooo damn small. It reminds me of a scene at the end of the movie "Beetlejuice" where Michael Keaton is sitting next to a witch doctor and gets his head shrunk. The sphinx' head is way too small to have been "passed" on by a king or emperor at the design stage. That is, no one would OK this massive and expensive work with such poorly drawn proportions.

And, the style seems completely different. Absolutely foreign.

So here's the theory

Some "Saharan" culture, of which we know nothing, built this structure as a big lion ... a common, "macho" animal of the area (and therefore worthy of being immortalized). It rains a lot and causes the weathering. Then the Sahara goes dry and the civilization disappears. The head sticks out from the sand and some thousands of years later, the new locals carve it into the head of "Pharoah". Now it's much smaller because they cut away more stone ... and ... the head was subject to wind erosion for thousands of years while the body is protected ... hence, the "Keaton head".

Now, they find out that the head is attached to the body by clearing away the sand to see how deep it goes.

"Wow! The body of a lion ... our Pharoah has the body of a lion ... what an interesting thesis ... let's incorporate it into our religion!"
So now they have this cool idea that the mangods have animal heads and man bodies or vice versa. Combo style Gods ... and this is taken up by subsequent cultures.
The Question

What is this ancient culture and ... where is to be found its remains?

Well, it may be that this is the only thing they ever made. Probably untrue ... If you can work stone this well, you probably have buildings also. The place to look is where there were ancient rivers ... cities or cultural centers will be at the forks in river systems ... under the sand ... to be located only with ground penetrating radar ... someday.

Though there is no present evidence of a "high" Saharan culture, we know there were people out there. If you look at Russia, you know there were people out there too during Roman times but there is no evidence of an advanced stone building culture in that area from that time. Yet there were stone building cultures elsewhere ... these "barbarians" sacked them.

I think this finding of water erosion on the Sphinx is going to lead to something interesting sometime in the near future. I look forward to it.
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Z the laidback Virus

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Re:The Age of the Sphinx
« Reply #1 on: January 03, 2004, 03:02:23 PM »
Also, from http://stuwww.uvt.nl/~s585866/sphinx.htm

The greatest monumental sculpture in the ancient world, the Sphinx is carved out of a single ridge of stone 240 feet (73 meters) long and 66 feet (20 meters) high. The head, which has a markedly different texture from the body, and shows far less severe erosion, is a naturally occurring outcrop of harder stone. To form the lower body of the Sphinx, enormous blocks of stone were quarried from the base rock (and these blocks were then used in the core masonry of the temples directly in front and to the south of the Sphinx). While a few stubborn Egyptologists still maintain that the Sphnix was constructed in the 4th Dynasty by Chephren (Khafre), an accumulating body of evidence, both archaeological and geological, indicates that the Sphinx is far older than the 4th Dynasty, and was only restored by Chephren during his reign. There are no inscriptions on the Sphinx, or on any of the temples connected to it that, that offer any evidence of construction by Chepren, yet the so-called 'Inventory Stele' (uncovered on the Giza plateau in the nineteenth century) relates how Cheops - Chephren's predecessor - ordered a temple built alongside the Sphinx, meaning of course that the Sphinx was already there, and thus could not have been constructed by Chephren.
A far greater age for the Sphinx has been suggested by R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, based upon geological considerations. Schwaller de Lubicz observed, and recent geologists (such as Dr. Robert Schoch, Professor of Geology at Boston University) have confirmed, that the extreme erosion on the body of the Sphinx could not be the result of wind and sand, as has been universally assumed, but rather was the result of water. Geologists agree that in the distant past Egypt was subjected to severe flooding. This period coincides with the melting of the ice from the last Ice Age (13,000-10,000 BC). Wind erosion cannot take place when the body of the Sphinx is covered by sand, and it can be proved that the Sphinx has been in this condition for nearly all of the last five thousand years - since the alleged time of its 4th Dynasty construction. Furthermore, if wind-blown sand had indeed caused the deep erosion of the Sphinx, we would expect to find evidence of such erosion on other Egyptian monuments built of similar materials and exposed to the wind for a similar length of time. Yet the fact of the matter is, that even on structures that have had more exposure to the wind-blown sand, there are minimal effects of erosion, the sand having done little more than scour clean the surface of the dressed stones. Quite simply, this means the Sphinx was carved before Egypt was inundated with the waters of the great Ice Age floods, and that those waters caused the unique erosion patterns on the Sphinx.
Additional evidence for the great age of the Sphinx may perhaps be indicated by the astronomical significance of its shape, being that of a lion. Roughly every two thousand years (2160 to be exact), because of the precession of the equinoxes, the sun on the vernal equinox rises against the stellar background of a different constellation. For the past two thousand years that constellation has been Pisces the Fish, symbol of the Christian age. Prior to the age of Pisces it was the age of Aries the Ram, and before that it was the age of Taurus the Bull. It is interesting to note that during the first and second millennia BC, approximately the Age of Aries, ram-oriented iconography was common in dynastic Egypt, while during the Age of Taurus the Bull-cult arose in Minoan Crete. Perhaps the builders of the Sphinx likewise used astrological symbolism in designing their monumental sculpture. The geological findings discussed above indicate that the Sphinx seems to have been sculpted sometime before 10,000 BC. and this period coincides neatly with the Age of Leo the Lion, which lasted from 10,970 to 8810 BC.
Further support for this vast age of the sphinx comes from a surprising sky-ground correlation proven by sophisticated computer programs such as Skyglobe 3.6. These computer programs are able to generate precise pictures of any portion of the celestial vault as seen from any place on earth at any time in the distant past or future. Graham Hancock explains in Heaven's Mirror that, "computer simulations show that in 10,500 BC the constellation of Leo housed the sun on the spring equinox - i.e. an hour before dawn in that epoch Leo would have reclined due east along the horrizon in the place where the sun would soon rise. This means that the lion-bodied Sphinx, with its due-east orientation, would have gazed directly on that morning at the one constellation in the sky that might reasonably be regarded as its own celestial counterpart."
All this means that the monumental sculpture of the Sphinx may have existed at a time when (according to prevailing archaeological theory) there were no civilizations on earth and humans had not yet evolved beyond hunter-gatherer lifestyles. This matter is so radical that scholarly reticence in acknowledging it is understandable. If the Sphinx does indeed predate the flooding of Egypt, our notions of the development of civilization must be entirely rewritten and the mystifying question of Plato's Atlantis should be given very serious consideration.
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Trauma-san

Re:The Age of the Sphinx
« Reply #2 on: January 03, 2004, 03:57:09 PM »
Well, you have to look at the entire picture.  There's 2 ways to look at it.  You have to make sure that you dont see what you want to see, you know what I mean? We look for the fantastic, and many of us are predetermined to question authority.  So we challenge any held notion.  

So, lets look at the Sphinx.  It's a big rock carved into a lion, with a severely weathered body, and a smaller Rock sticking above ground out of the enclosure carved into a Pharoah's head.  The weathering on the back is very severe, and is similar to water erosion scars.  The head doesn't suffer from those kind of scars.

Now, the first point I'll talk about is the proportional difference between the human head, and the lion's body.  While it appears weird, there are a couple easy explanations for this.  For one, there is a huge fissure running through the back of the Sphinx, making it impossible for the body to be the proper size in relation to the head.  did you know that?  If the Sphinx, using the pre-existing rock as the head, were carved the correct size, the fault would lay a few feet from the haunches of the lion, and wouldn't be stable.  However, if the body was elongated, the monument would not only be more imposing, but would also be safe.  Sounds like a good reason to make it longer to me.  Also, the body & the head are roughly in the correct proportion in relation to one another, if you take a lion's body and measure it against a human's head.  Since most Sphinx' have a lion's head, they usually have a head, proportional to a lion's body.  A human head is smaller than a Lion's head.  

While the erosion on the sphinx enclosure does appear to be like water erosion, the body of the sphinx does not feature this type of erosion.  If rain had been raining on the unprotected back of the Sphinx in the enclosure, it would have the same eroded look as the enclosure wall, but it doesn't.  We simply have an area of the Giza plateau that is severly weathered, there is no evidence that it's rain wear.  Again, if it is, why isn't the Sphinx itself weathered in the same way?  Why isn't the valley temple weathered in the same way?  The Valley Temple in front of the spinx was built with the blocks cut from the Sphinx' enclosure.  Statues of Khafre have been found buried in the temple.  

Also, if the Sphinx existed before Khafre, then Khufu would have built his pyramid behind it.  Instead, Khufu built his pyramid, the great pyramid, off to the right of the Sphinx.  Khafre built his pyramid, the 2nd pyramid, directly behind the Sphinx.  Why would Khufu leave the 'prime spot' open to Khafre? It simply doesn't make sense.  

Also, to suppose that some other civilization built the Sphinx, solely because of how the walls in his enclousure look?  What other evidence........ AT ALL , is there to say there was a civilization before the Egyptians? LOL.  Think about this.  The only, absolute only, thing that points to a prior civilization is the grooves in the wall of the Sphinx' enclosure, and you're ready to rewrite history and fabricate a great civilization that lived in the area.  1 piece of evidence, and it's not even rock-hard evidence (pun intended).  
 

Z the laidback Virus

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Re:The Age of the Sphinx
« Reply #3 on: January 04, 2004, 03:51:04 AM »
There's more to this culture then the carvings on the Sphinx. The link Seer provided to www.grahamhancock.com might be worthwile to check out as is reading his books. I only mentioned the Sphinx as an example of this.

By the way,isn't it depressing that we're the only ones here willing to touch these kinds of subjects?
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[Stoned]Jesus H. Christ[Wheat]

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Re:The Age of the Sphinx
« Reply #4 on: January 04, 2004, 08:27:24 PM »
thanks for the info, it was an interesting read.
« Last Edit: January 04, 2004, 08:30:39 PM by Don't Tell Me Shit, Just Let Me Be »
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