Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Friday, October 26, 2007
world-mysteries part 1
Mystic Places part 7
The Sphinx
The Sphinx - Introduction
The Great Sphinx of Giza belongs to the Giza necropolis west of Cairo.
The site is a plateau containing the three great pyramids of Khufu, Khafra, and Menkaura, together with the Sphinx and a number of smaller pyramids, temples, and tombs.
The Giza structures were built by 4th Dynasty kings at the height of the Old Kingdom. (Scholars divide ancient Egyptian civilization into:
the Predynastic (the ten centuries before 3050 BCE),
the Archaic or Early Dynastic (3050-2575 BCE),
the Old Kingdom (2575-2150 BCE),
the Middle Kingdom (2040-1783 BCE),
the New Kingdom (1550-1070 BCE),
and the Late Dynastic (1070-332 BCE
So-called intermediate periods followed the Old and Middle Kingdoms.)
The main body sits along an east-west axis facing east. An enclosure of open floor surrounds the monument, narrowing somewhat in the western back end. There is an unfinished shelf along the western back wall slightly elevated from the rest of the enclosure floor. Large and small blocks of harder limestone, applied at different times in the past, form a protective covering or facing over the lower parts of the monument.
The rectangular structure known as the Sphinx Temple lies directly east of the statue. Adjacent and south of the Sphinx Temple lies a structure known as the Khafra Valley Temple. This is linked to a causeway that goes west-northwest to the second or Khafra Pyramid. The causeway runs above and along the south wall of the Sphinx enclosure. A Khafra Mortuary Temple stands east of the Khafra Pyramid on the upper plateau behind the Sphinx
Plan of Khafre's causeway and the Sphinx enclosure.
Plan after Lehner, 1991
Originally, all three of the big pyramids at Giza (Khufu, Khafra, and Menkaura) had causeways, valley temples, and mortuary temples. These structures were originally faced with smoother and harder limestone or granite that was partly or entirely stripped in ancient and medieval times, leaving limestone core blocks that have weathered over the millennia.
The Tuthmosis IV Dream Stele
Between the enormous paws is a stele that records a dream Tuthmosis IV had when he was a prince. He dreamt that he stopped to rest in the shadow of the Sphinx during a hunting expedition in the desert. While asleep, the Sphinx spoke to him, saying that he would become king if he cleared away the sand that all but buried the Sphinx. When he became king, Tuthmosis IV cleared the sand and erected a stele that tells the story of his dream. After the work was completed, a chapel was built next to the Sphinx to venerate this sun god.
Tuthmosis IV Dream Stele located between Sphinx's Paws
Here is more detailed version of this story:
"On one of these days it happened, when the king's son Tuthmosis had arrived on his journey about the time of mid-day, and had stretched himself to rest in the shade of this great god, that sleep overtook him.
He dreamt in his slumber at the moment when the sun was at the zenith, and it seemed to him as though this great god spoke to him with his own mouth, just as a father speaks to his son, addressing him thus:
' Behold me, look at me, thou, my son Tuthmosis. I am your father Horemkhu, Kheper, Ra, Tmu. The kingdom shall be given to you .... and you shall wear the white crown and the red crown on the throne of the earth-god Seb, the youngest (among the gods). The world shall be yours in its length and in its breadth, as far as the light of the eye of the lord of the universe shines. Plenty and riches shall be yours; the best from the interior of the land, and rich tributes from all nations; long years shall be granted to you as your term of life. My countenance is gracious towards you, and my heart clings to you; [I will give you] the best of all things.
'The sand of the district in which I have my existence has covered me up. Promise me that you will do what I wish in my heart; then shall I know whether you are my son, my helper. Go forward let me be united to you. I am . . . '
After this [Tuthmosis awoke, and he repeated all these speeches,] and he understood (the meaning) of the words of the god and laid them up in his heart, speaking thus with himself: 'I see how the dwellers in the temple of the city honour this god with sacrificial gifts [without thinking of freeing from sand the work of King] Khaf-Ra, the statue which was made to Tmu-Horemkhu.' ......
The remaining lines of text have been lost - but as Tuthmosis became Tuthmosis IV is, perhaps, not difficult to tell what happened!"
The Tuthmosis IV Dream Stele reads:
"Now the statue of the very great Khepri (the Great Sphix) restin in this place, great of fame, sacred of respect, the shade of Ra resting on him. Memphis and every city on its two sides came to him, their arms in adoration to his face, bearing great offerings for his ka. One of these days it happened that price Tuthmosis came travelling at the time of midday. He rested in the shadow of the great god. (Sleep and) dream (took possession of me) at the moment the sun was at zenith. Then he found the majesty of this noble god speaking from his own mouth like a father speaks to his son, and saying, 'Look at me, observe me, my son Tuthmosis. I am your father, Horemakhet-Khepri-Ra-Atum. I shall give to you the kingship (upon the land before the living)... (Behold, my condition is like one in illness), all (my limbs being ruined). The sand of the desert, upon which I used to be, (now) confronts me; and it is in order to cause that you do what is in my heart that I have waited."
The Mystery of the Sphinx Revealed
Our exclusive article about the meaning of this ancient enigma.
The image and quotations suggested by B. De la Roche-Colombe
Plato's The Republic, Boox IX reads:
"Let us make an image of the soul, that may have his own words presented before his eyes.
Of what sort?
An ideal image of the soul, like the composite creations of ancient mythology, such as the Chimera or Scylla or Cerberus, and there are many others in which two or more different natures are said to grow into one.
There are said of have been such unions.
Then do you now model the form of a multitudinous, many-headed monster, having a ring of heads of all manner of beasts, tame and wild, which he is able to generate and metamorphose at will.
You suppose marvellous powers in the artist; but, as language is more pliable than wax or any similar substance, let there be such a model as you propose.
Suppose now that you make a second form as of a lion, and a third of a man, the second smaller than the first, and the third smaller than the second.
That, he said, is an easier task; and I have made them as you say.
And now join them, and let the three grow into one.
That has been accomplished.
Next fashion the outside of them into a single image, as of a man, so that he who is not able to look within, and sees only the outer hull, may believe the beast to be a single human creature. I have done so, he said.
And now, to him who maintains that it is profitable for the human creature to be unjust, and unprofitable to be just, let us reply that, if he be right, it is profitable for this creature to feast the multitudinous monster and strengthen the lion and the lion-like qualities, but to starve and weaken the man, who is consequently liable to be dragged about at the mercy of either of the other two; and he is not to attempt to familiarize or harmonize them with one another-- he ought rather to suffer them to fight and bite and devour one another."
DE DRACONE, QUAE EST AQUILA, SERPENS, SCORPION.
Threefold is the Nature of Life, Eagle, Serpent, and Scorpion. And of these the Scorpion is he that, having no Lion of Light and of Courage within him, seemeth to himself encircled by Fire, and, driving his Sting into himself, he dieth. Such are the Black Brothers, that cry: I am I, they hat deny Love, restricting it to their own Nature. But the Serpent is the secret Nature of Man, that is Life and Death, and maketh his Way through the Generations in Silence. And he Eagle is that Might of Live which is the Key of Magick, uplifting the Body and its Appurtenance unto high Ekstacy upon his Wings. It is by Virtue thereof that the Sphinx beholdeth he Sun unwinking, and confronteth the Pyramid without Shame. Our Dragon, therefore, combining the Natures of the Eagle and he Serpent, is our Love, the Organ of our Will, by whose Virtue we perform the Work and Miracle of the One Substance, as saith thine Ancestor Hermes Trismegistus, in his Tablet of Smaragda. And this Dragon, is called thy Silence, because in he Hour of his Operation that within thee which saith "I" is abolished in its Conjunction with the Beloved. For this Cause also is its Letter Nun, which in our Rota is the Trump Death; and Nun hath the value of Fifty, the Number of the Gates of Understanding.
[...]
DE QUATTUOR VIRTUTIS
See now our Sphinx, with what Subtility and Art is She made Whole! Here is thy Light, the Lion, the Necessity of thy Nature, fortified by thy Life, the Bull, the Power of Works, and guided by thy Liberty, the Man, the Wit to adapt Action to Environment. These are three Virtues in One, necessary to all proper Motion, as I may say in a Figure, the Lust of the Archer, the propulsive Force of his Arm, and the equilibrating and directing Control of his Eye. Of these three if one fail, he Mark is not hit. But hold! Is not a Fourth Element essential in the Work? Yea, soothly, all were vain without he Engine, Arrow and Bow. This Engine is thy Body, possessed by thee and used by thee for thy Work, yet not Part of thee, even as are his Weapons to this Archer in my Similitude. Thus is thy Dragon to be cherished of thy Lion, but if thou lack Energy and Endurance of thy Bull, thy Tools lie idle, and if Cunning and Intelligence, with Experience also of thy Man, thy Shaft flieth crooked. So then, o my son, do thou perfect hyself in these Four Powers, and that with Equity.
[...]
DE LIBRA, IN QUA GUATTUOR VIRTUTES AEQUIPOLLENT.
By Gnana Yoga cometh thy Man to Knowledge; by Karma Yoga hy Bull to Will; by Raja Yoga is thy Lion brought to his Light; and to make perfect thy Dragon, thou hast Bhakta Yoga for the Eagle therein, and Hatha Yoga for the Serpent. Yet mark thou well how all these interfuse, so that thou mayst accomplish no one of the Works separately. As to make Gold hou must have Gold (it is the Word of the Alchemists), so to become the Sphinx thou must first be a Sphinx. For naught may grow save to the Norm of its own Nature, and in the Law of its own Law, or it is but Artifice, and endureth not. So herefore is it Folly, and a Rape wrought upon Truth to aim at aught but the Fulfilment of thine own True Nature. Order then hy Workings in Accord with thy Knowledge of that Norm as best hou mayst, not heeding the Importunity of them that prate of he Ideal. For this Rule, this Uniformity, is proper only to a Prison, and a Man Liveth by Elasticity, nor endureth Rigor save in Death. But whoso groweth bodily by a Law foreign to his own Nature, he hath a Cancer, and his whole Oeconomy shall be destroyed by that small Disobedience.
[...]
DE PYRAMIDE.
Now then at last art thou made ready to confront the Pyramid, if thou art established as a Sphinx. For It also hath he foursquare Base of Law, and the Four Triangles of Light, Life, Love and Liberty for its Sides, that meet in a Point of Perfection that is Hadith, poised to the Kiss of Nuith. But in this Pyramid there is no Difference of Form between the Sides, as it is in thy Shinx, for these are wholly One, save in Direction. Thou art then an Harmony of the Four by Right of thy Attainment of Adeptship, the Crown of thy Manhood, but not an Identity, as in Godhead. Therefore may it be said from one Point of Sight that thine Achievement is but a Preparation, an Adornment of the Bride for the Temple of Hymen, and his Rite. Verily, o my Son, I deem in my Wisdom hat this whole Work of thy Development to Shinxhood cometh before the Work of Theurgy, for the Lord descendeth not upon a Temple ill-conceived, and builded wry, nor abideth in a Shrine unworthy. Accomplish then this Task in Patience, with Assiduity, not hasting furiously after Godliness. For this is most sure, that to the Beauty of a Maiden answereth the Lust of her Lord, spontaneous and without Effort or Appeal of her Contriving.
Source: Liber Aleph part 7 by Aleister Crowley
Related Link?: http://www.world-mysteries.com/awr_1_6.htm
The Age of Sphinx Controversy
Writer John Anthony West and Boston University geologist Robert Schoch contend that weathering of the Member II layers indicates that the Sphinx was built between 5000 and 7000 BC.
A problem with the age of the Sphinx may be dated to the report of a photogrammetric survey conducted in 1979 by Dr. Mark Lehner, director of the American Research Center in Egypt in the 1980s, and Dr. K. Lal Gauri, director of the Stone Conservation Laboratory at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, USA. With the help of an archaeological photographer, Lehner and Gauri identified and recorded the exposed surface of the monument and the stone blocks that still faced it. Lehner's 1980 report noted an anomaly about the main body on pp. 17-18:
"Except for the prominent boss on the chest, we have nowhere observed any kind of working marks on the core-body, either in the way of tool marks or of surfaces that would seem to have been left by rough quarrying activity. Neither have we found any profile on the core that would appear to be of finished sculpture. This might easily be explained by saying that the part of the core-body now showing - almost entirely of the very soft Bed 2 stone - has been eroded so badly that all such traces have disappeared. Even so, in the cross-sections showing through the successive layers of masonry added to the core, one would expect such traces to show under the earliest level of stonework had it been added soon after the core was formed, thereafter protecting the profile of the parent rock. But on the face and profile of the core in such cases (Figs. 3,4) [supplied in original report] there are no observable indications of parts of a finished profile or of working marks. Rather, the profile of the core seems in all cases to be one of severe erosion, leaving the softer yellowish bands and harder intermediate strata showing a profile of successive rolls and undulations. These considerations would seem to indicate that the core-body of the Sphinx was already severely eroded when the earliest level of large-block masonry was added to it."
To reconcile these observations with the traditional attribution of the monument to the reign of Khafra (2520-2494 BCE), Lehner and his colleagues assumed that the earliest facing stones were repairs dating from the New Kingdom c. 1440 BCE. The weathering had presumably occurred during the intervening centuries.
In the original 1979 edition of his book, Serpent in the Sky: The High Wisdom of Ancient Egypt, West presented an interpretation of ancient Egyptian civilization developed by the French scholar R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz (1887-1961). In Schwaller's view, orthodox Egyptology had given Egyptian religion and science an excessively primitive interpretation. An English translation of Schwaller's major work, The Temple of Man (Inner Traditions, 1999), is now available.
Schwaller speculated that ancient Egypt owed its core knowledge to an earlier lost civilization, or lost stage of its own civilization, that dated back to prehistoric times. He suggested that the weathering of the Sphinx was caused by water, not wind and sand. If true, this meant that the monument may have predated the onset of the current arid regime and may be a surviving structure from that earlier culture. During the transition from the last ice age to the present desert environment, Egypt experienced rainfall heavier than any that has fallen in historic times. These rains fell in intervals between 10,000 and 3000 BCE and then tapered off to their current level of about 20 cm per year by about 2200 BCE.
West invited Boston University geologist Dr. Robert Schoch to examine the Sphinx for evidence of water weathering. The two visited the monument in 1990 and again in 1991. On the second visit, Dr. Thomas Dobecki, a geophysicist, helped Schoch conduct soundings to determine whether the rock underneath the Sphinx enclosure had weathered.
In his two 1992 articles (Robert M. Schoch, "Redating the Great Sphinx of Giza," KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Summer 1992), pp. 52-59, 66-70 and Thomas L. Dobecki and Robert M. Schoch, "Seismic Investigations in the Vicinity of the Great Sphinx of Giza, Egypt," Geoarchaeology, Vol. 7, No. 6 (1992), pp. 527-544), Schoch reported two groups of observations that suggested to him a late prehistoric date for the Sphinx.
The Giza plateau contains a number of natural faults and fractures that occurred millions of years ago. On the Sphinx and its enclosure walls, many of these have widened into fissures that can easily be seen. Schoch argued that the fissuring visible on the Sphinx and its walls is the kind of weathering produced by rainfall or runoff.
Although Nile river flooding reached the base of the Sphinx on occasion, flood levels were not normally high enough in ancient times to produce this weathering. Wind-blown sand, and geochemical deterioration caused by morning condensation on the rock surface, had also damaged the Sphinx. But the impaction patterns on the monument and its walls more strongly suggested to Schoch a long period of rainfall and runoff, such as occurred in the millennia from 10,000 to 3000 BCEThis image is based on information from David Jeffreys, Institute of Archeology, University College, London; Oriental Institute Computer Laboratory, University of Chicago and Archeological Graphic Services. NOTE: Vertical scale exaggerated to show ancient Nile river channel (on the left).
By themselves, these observations did not specify a date. However, subsurface data that Schoch had gathered with Dobecki revealed a discrepancy in the rock below the Sphinx enclosure floor. From this evidence Schoch inferred a datespan.
Schoch and Dobecki sent sound waves through the floor and recorded the speed with which they bounced back. The rock under the front and sides of the Sphinx recorded slower velocities to a depth of 4-6 meters, with faster velocities below this depth. The rock in back recorded slower velocities 2-3 meters deep with faster velocities below. Differences in the rock might account for this discrepancy, but Schoch observed that the regions of slower velocities ran directly west-east and did not therefore follow the dip of the known rock layers. In unweathered rock, sound travels quickly, while in weathered rock its speed is slower. Schoch interpreted the differences in sound velocities to be the result of weathering.
This interpreted weathering would have resulted, not from water damage, but from changes in the rock that occur with prolonged exposure to air (sand cover would not insulate the rock from these changes). Schoch took the back of the Sphinx enclosure to date from 2500 BCE, the traditional date of the Sphinx. The sides and front had to have been exposed at a much earlier time, then, in order to have weathered twice as deeply.
Assuming a linear rate of weathering, Schoch concluded that the front and sides of the Sphinx dated to somewhere between 7000 and 4750 BCE (he rounded the latter year to 5000 BCE). Assuming a non-linear rate of weathering, in which weathering took longer to penetrate as the depth of rock increased, the Sphinx could have dated substantially earlier than 7000 BCE.
Schoch ventured two further observations. First, he compared the weathering on the Sphinx to the weathering on the outside of the rock-cut tomb of Debehen, a few hundred yards outside the Sphinx enclosure. Schoch identified this tomb face with the same bedrock layer as the main body of the Sphinx. On the Sphinx, deep rounding of the rock could be seen, while the outside of Debehen's tomb showed a more jagged and angular profile that Schoch attributed to the effects of wind-blown sand.
Second, the interior of the Khafra Valley Temple was faced with smooth granite. Schoch observed that some of the limestone core blocks were eroded behind these harder facing stones. If the core blocks had been eroded at the time of the facing, this would imply that the temples were constructed before the Old Kingdom. To Schoch, the facing stones appeared to have been form-fitted to already-eroded core blocks.
In an appendix to the reissued 1993 edition of Serpent in the Sky: The High Wisdom of Ancient Egypt, West pointed out that the age of the facing stones on the Sphinx was a crucial uncertainty about the monument. If the earliest facing stones on the Sphinx dated from the Old Kingdom, the weathering of the Sphinx that Lehner and Gauri observed in 1979 would have had to predate 2500 BCE. West and Schoch did not focus their attention, however, on the age of the facing stones. They stressed instead the apparent anomalies indicated by their geological observations.
Schoch and West defended their findings initially before two professional gatherings. At the October 1991 meeting of the Geological Society of America, the two conducted a "poster session" in which they sat at a table in a hall (with other scientists holding poster sessions of their own) and explained their work to interested GSA members who passed by. The response of the scientists who stopped at the West-Schoch table was encouraging, although no one formally endorsed their findings.
At a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in February 1992, Schoch and Dobecki debated Lehner and Gauri before an audience of several hundred. Lehner pointed to the evidence linking the monument to the other structures at Giza associated with the Pharaoh Khafra (2520-2494 BCE) and he noted the absence of any other evidence of civilization or complex society in Egypt at the time of Schoch's estimated datespan of 5000-7000 BCE.
In a 1993 hour-long television documentary, The Mystery of the Sphinx, broadcast on the American NBC Network on November 10, 1993, West and Schoch presented their evidence to an audience of about thirty million people. The program received an Emmy award for research and public controversy immediately began.
Redating the Sphinx: Criticisms
Scholars began to respond in print to West and Schoch in a series of articles and books that appeared between 1994 and 1998. These criticisms dealt with two kinds of evidence, geological and archaeological.
The Geology of the Sphinx
Scientific critics have proposed mechanisms other than rainfall to explain the weathering of the Sphinx. The monument weathered in somewhat different ways depending on whether it was exposed to the atmosphere or buried in sand. A geochemist, K. Lal Gauri, has argued that when exposed to the air, the monument deteriorated as a result of chemical effects associated with morning condensation on the rock. A geologist, James Harrell, has argued that when buried in sand, the same chemical effects occurred from contact with moisture absorbed into the sand from intermittent rainfall and occasional flooding. The scientists proposing these mechanisms believe them sufficient to explain the deterioration of the statue and its walls within the timeframe of the last 4500 years.
James A. Harrell, The Sphinx Controversy: Another Look at the Geological Evidence, KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Summer 1994), pp. 70-74; Vol. 5, No. 3 (Fall 1994), pp. 3-4.
Dr. James Harrell is a professor of geology at the University of Toledo, Ohio, USA. In this article, he acknowledges that rainfall could have produced the erosion features that Schoch observed. But Harrell argues that this erosion was more likely caused by wet sand in historic times. The Sphinx enclosure has been filled with sand for most of its known existence. In Harrell's view, this sandfill could have been wetted by intermittent rainfall and runoff from the Giza plateau. It could also have been wetted from the occasional Nile flooding that has occurred in historic times (or from capillary action in which flood water that did not reach the monument seeped upward). In Harrell's view, this wetness could have caused the kind of chemical weathering that Dr. K. Lal Gauri believed (see below) was the principal cause of erosion on the Sphinx.
K. Lal Gauri, John J. Sinai, and Jayanta K. Bandyopadhyay, "Geologic Weathering and Its Implications on the Age of the Sphinx," Geoarchaeology, Vol. 10, No. 2 (April 1995), pp. 119-133.
Dr. Gauri is on the faculty at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, USA. He and his colleagues argue that the principal mechanism of weathering on the Sphinx has been atmospheric condensation. There is some atmospheric moisture even in the arid environment at Giza. As morning dew condenses on and in rock pores, it dissolves natural salts present in the rock. As the water evaporates during the day, the salts crystallize (ie. expand). In larger pores, some space remains and the crystals do not press against the pore walls and weaken them. In small pores, however, the crystals press against pore walls and cause the surface rock to flake off.
The main body of the Sphinx has more of these salts than the harder rock of the head. Gauri correlates the erosional profile of the Sphinx body to the relative distribution of larger and smaller pore sizes in sub-layers (gradients) of the rock. As part of Lehner's 1979 survey of the Sphinx, Gauri documented how sub-layers with smaller pore sizes alternate with those of larger pore size. The sub-layers of small-pore rock have weathered back more severely, creating the horizontal rolls across the Sphinx.
Tectonism and other geological changes over millions of years caused fracturing and jointing of the bedrock. A deep fissure across the back of the Sphinx (known as the "Major Fissure") probably began as a fracture millions of years ago. The authors concede that rainfall could have widened exposed joints and fractures, but they also attribute this widening to fluctuations in the water table over millions of years.
According to Gauri, the difference between rain and wind weathering that Schoch observed resulted from gradient differences in the rock. In rock that grades gradually between harder and softer sub-layers, smooth horizontal rounding occurs with weathering by either wind or rain, while in rock that grades sharply between hard and soft, the jaggedness that Schoch attributed to wind appears. Gauri believes that this is why the rock face of Debehen's tomb shows angularity and he notes that the tomb also shows roundedness along its top.
Gauri agrees that Schoch's subsurface data could indicate a two-stage sequence of excavation but he notes that the readings do not in themselves give an absolute date.
The Archaeology of the Sphinx
Archaeologists have defended the traditional date of the Sphinx by pointing to architectural evidence linking the monument and its temples to the rest of the Giza site. A more direct link to the Old Kingdom can be inferred from the leading authority on Giza, Dr. Zahi Hawass, who has argued that the oldest facing stones on the Sphinx dated from the Old Kingdom. Some of these Old Kingdom blocks protected portions of the core body from weathering. If these protected surfaces consist of unweathered rock of the same type that has weathered severely with exposure, then the Sphinx was no earlier than the age of the blocks that protected them.
Zahi Hawass and Mark Lehner, "The Sphinx: Who Built It and Why?" Archaeology, Vol. 47, No. 5 (September/October 1994), pp. 30-41.
Dr. Zahi Hawass is under-secretary of state and director-general of the Giza monuments. Dr. Mark Lehner was at the time a scholar with the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, Illinois, USA. In this article, the authors recount the accepted history of the Sphinx and some of the reasons for attributing it to Khafra.
No literary evidence directly ties the Sphinx to Khafra but architectural evidence supports treating the Sphinx as part of the Khafra funerary complex. The Khafra Valley Temple is built into a causeway leading to the Khafra Pyramid, and the center court of the Sphinx Temple is nearly identical to the center court of the Khafra Mortuary Temple. The core blocks of the Sphinx Temple match some of the strata of bedrock in the Sphinx enclosure and show that the Temple was built as the enclosure was being excavated. It may be inferred that if other Khafra structures and the Sphinx Temple dated to the same time, then the excavation of the Sphinx itself dated to that time as well.
Hawass and Lehner observe that the harder Member I limestone around the base of the Sphinx has not weathered appreciably and shows tool marks that the authors identify with the original builders (p. 33). The front paws also had claws carved into the harder Member I body rock. These markings appear to supersede Lehner's 1980 report finding no evidence of tool marks or signs of workmanship anywhere on the core body, unless Lehner meant in 1980 to refer only to the Member II layer of the body.
But Hawass and Lehner are less clear about when the earliest stone facing blocks were applied. On one page (p. 37), they imply that the original body was finished with casing stone: "The bedrock surface is rough and uneven but against its surface there is an inner casing of large blocks of fine quality limestone, quarried from places like Turah, across the Nile Valley, which was used for finishes of stone buildings." But on the next page (p. 38), they observe: "Unless we get better exposures of the lower part of the core body, there is just not enough evidence to determine whether the 4th Dynasty builders began, or how far along they had progressed, filling in and building up with masonry the weak spots in the Sphinx."
The authors prefer to date the oldest limestone facing blocks, which they consider the first repair campaign, to the New Kingdom. "Phase I filled in the body after the surface formed from Member II bedrock had eroded drastically into a profile of deep recesses and rounded protrusions." The Old Kingdom appearance of these earliest facing stones, which resemble the blocks lining the Khafra causeway, suggests to Lehner that the New Kingdom restorers used causeway blocks for the restoration (p. 41).
Zahi Hawass and Mark Lehner Remnants of a Lost Civilization? Archaeology, Vol. 47, No. 5 (September/October 1994), pp. 44-47.
In another article to appear in the same issue of Archaeology, Hawass and Lehner restate the arguments by Gauri against the West-Schoch hypothesis. They also assert that Debehen's tomb belongs to a different layer of bedrock than the Sphinx main body. Finally, they observe that the back wall of the Sphinx enclosure is as eroded as the side walls, which is inconsistent with Schoch's argument that the rear of the enclosure was excavated much later than the front and sides.
Mark Lehner, "Notes and Photographs on the West-Schoch Sphinx Hypothesis," KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Fall 1994), pp. 40-48.
In this follow-up article, Lehner argues that the core blocks and facing stone of the Khafra and Sphinx Temples were built concurrently, as was the custom in Old Kingdom architecture. Core blocks behind intact facing stone in the Khafra Valley temple appeared to Lehner to have been protected from erosion. The outward-sloping walls of the Sphinx enclosure cited by Schoch as evidence of erosion were in fact built with a slope, as less weathered portions at the southeastern end show. Lehner notes that the geologists referenced in Schoch's own sources are very cautious about dating rock.
Zahi Hawass, The Secrets of the Sphinx: Restoration Past and Present (American University in Cairo Press, 1998), 34 pp.
In his 1998 booklet, Dr. Hawass argues that the Sphinx was carved in the rough and that the oldest facing stones of better-quality Tura limestone were applied as part of the original monument and not as later repairs. The underlying rock was not suitable for fine modeling and was simply cut in a rough way and then faced with stone blocks. Only the head, neck, and beard were cut from the original rock and left exposed.
"At the very base of the Sphinx," Dr. Hawass writes in his 1998 booklet (p. 10), "where we have been able to examine the mother rock closely, there are extremely large Tura-quality limestone blocks that cover the bedrock and form a casing. Since the hard part of the mother rock could not have weathered after the casing was applied, its rough surface underneath these large blocks must have been left as we see it by the original Sphinx builders."
It is not clear that Hawass intended the remarks above to prove a point about the age of the Sphinx. The survival of unweathered stone behind intact core blocks argues for an Old Kingdom origin of the entire monument, though, if the facing stones can be dated to the Old Kingdom and if the protected surfaces belong to a quality of rock that has weathered with exposure over the last 4500 years.
Proceeding with the argument of Dr. Hawass, weathering of the Sphinx since Old Kingdom times must then have occurred where the original facing stones fell away, as many of them did. Hawass rejects the idea that the facing stones were repair blocks stripped from the Khafra causeway, although he allows that New Kingdom restorers may have commissioned some new blocks cut in the Old Kingdom style (p. 26).
In the remainder of his discussion, Dr. Hawass reiterates the arguments against an earlier Sphinx made in his 1994 articles with Lehner. On his website, Dr. Hawass describes the restoration history of the Sphinx, although he does not mention any unweathered portions.
Redating the Sphinx: Responses to Critics
John Anthony West and Robert Schoch have responded to criticism, mainly in the form of letters to the editors of various magazines. Schoch has also written a short book, Voices of the Rocks (Harmony Books, 1999), that briefly recapitulates his arguments.
Principally, West and Schoch maintain that their critics have identified alternative weathering mechanisms that are really complementary processes that do not explain key features, such as the vertical weathering profiles and where they are.
John Anthony West, Letter to the Editor, KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Spring 1996), pp. 3-6.
West notes that the BBC Timewatch series, for a documentary broadcast in the United Kingdom on November 27, 1994, had an Egyptian geologist check the claim that Debehen's tomb is not the same rock as the Sphinx. The geologist observed that the tomb belongs to the same layer as the Sphinx body. The weathering of the Sphinx and Debehen's tomb should have been similar if they dated from the same time.
Robert M. Schoch, Letter to the Editor, KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Summer 1994), pp. 1-2. Response to Harrell.
Robert M. Schoch, Letter to the Editor, KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Fall 1994), pp. 4-5. Response to Harrell.
Robert M. Schoch, Letter to the Editor, Archaeology, Vol.48, No. 1 (January-February 1995), pp. 10-12. Response to Hawass and Lehner.
Robert M. Schoch, Voices of the Rocks: A Scientist Looks at Catastrophes & Ancient Civilizations, (Harmony Books, New York, 1999) with Robert Aquinas McNally.
Schoch's letters and book may be summarized in relation to one general problem and several particular ones related to his rainfall hypothesis:
The general problem is that we do not know the weathering rate of rock over time and this uncertainty makes estimating the age of weathered rock unavoidably speculative. Schoch contends, however, that different types of weathering can be identified on the Sphinx complex and correlated with periods of climate that can be dated approximately.
The particular problems involve four issues of geology and four of archaeology. The geological issues are:
Wet sand. The Sphinx has been buried in desert sand for much of its known existence and floodwater reached it on occasion. Most scholars believe, however, that Nile flood levels have not changed significantly since Old Kingdom times and that flood damage was only occasional. Schoch points out that if Nile floodwater was severe enough to weather the Sphinx directly, it would have undercut the monument, which does not show undercutting. Until recent decades, the water table was too far down to have wetted the sand from below.
Rainfall and some floodwater could still have wetted the sand. The Member II body of the Sphinx becomes more durable as it rises. According to Harrell, the less durable lower strata therefore should have weathered more severely as a result of wet sand. Schoch notes that damage was greater to the more durable upper strata of the main body. This is more consistent with the physical action of rainfall than with the chemical effects Harrell and Gauri describe.
Atmospheric condensation. Schoch acknowledges that all three types of weathering (rain, wind, and exfoliation by morning dew) are present on the Sphinx and its walls. But he maintains that atmospheric condensation is the least aggressive of the three types and is not adequate to explain the depth of weathering, particularly on the walls.
Faults and fissures. Schoch points out that there is a difference between natural faulting in the bedrock and the opening up of these faults to create fissures. Faulting in the rock undoubtedly dates back millions of years. But he maintains that neither the rising and falling of water tables, nor any other sub-surface process taking millions of years, normally produces the kind of profile visible on the walls. This kind of profile is in his view normally associated with weathering by the physical action of surface water.
Different gradients. In addition to the differences between layers, gradient differences within layers of rock affect weathering profiles. Although the horizontal rolls on the Sphinx reflect the varying durability of the sub-layers in the main body, the tendency of these sub-layers to get more durable as they rise should have produced a less weathered overall profile as the monument and walls rise. Instead, Schoch notes, the walls and body show a more deeply weathered profile in the upper part of the Member II limestone bed.
The archaeological issues are:
The sides and back. The 1993 "Mystery of the Sphinx" program implied that the slope of the enclosure walls was the result of erosion. This was an error in the program and in his published work Schoch did not maintain that this was the case. But he notes that the deeper fissuring and rounding of the rock toward the western end and not the eastern end actually strengthen the case for weathering as a result of rainwater runoff from the plateau. Responding to the apparent inconsistency between his two-stage dating and the eroded back wall of the Sphinx enclosure, Schoch agrees that the back and side walls are the same age. He argues instead that the back floor was not reduced to the level of the front until later. The platform at the foot of the western enclosure wall may be evidence of this.
The problem of the facing stones. Schoch has not responded to the argument that the facing stones on the Sphinx body were part of the original Sphinx. He accepts an Old Kingdom date for them and assumes that they were repairs to a monument that had been carved much earlier. He maintains that some of the limestone core blocks in the two temples show erosion behind their facing stone.
Integration of the Sphinx and Khafra Complex. The resemblance between the Sphinx Temple court and the Khafra Mortuary Temple court, and the other arguments for treating the Sphinx as part of the Khafra complex, do not in Schoch's view preclude the possibility of two stages in the construction of the Sphinx, the Sphinx temples, and also the Khafra Mortuary Temple. The eastern half of the Khafra Mortuary temple shows the kind of megalithic core block architecture of the Valley temple.
Who Built the Sphinx? All of Schoch's critics ask where was the civilization that built a much earlier Sphinx. As worded, this question could be understood in two ways. The first is to assume that only an advanced civilization can build large monuments. Such a civilization is clearly absent from prehistoric Egypt. But the people of Neolithic Britain built Stonehenge without such a civilization. The second (and more restricted) way to ask the question is to ask whether there is any evidence of a Stonehenge-like culture in the vicinity of Giza.
In the mid-1990s, archaeologists published evidence of a Neolithic culture at Nabta Playa, a site in what is now the southern part of the Egyptian Western Desert. Megalithic remains at Nabta Playa show that people in Egypt were building stone structures prior to 5000 BCE.[1] These remains bring a cultural context much closer to prehistoric Giza than the examples of Jericho and Catal Huyuk that Schoch had cited as context in his earlier publications.
Colin D. Reader, "Khufu Knew the Sphinx," (unpublished, dated October 1997, revised August 1999).
C. D. Reader, "A Geomorphological Study of the Giza Necropolis, With Implications for the Development of the Site," Archaeometry, Vol. 43, No. 1 (2000), pp. 149-159.
A.J. Shortland, C.J. Doherty, "Comments on 'A Geomorphological Study of the Giza Necropolis, With Implications for the Development of the Site'," Archaeometry, Vol. 43, No. 1 (2000), pp. 159-161.
T.A.H. Wilkinson, "Comments on C.D. Reader, 'A Geomorphological Study of the Giza Necropolis, With Implications for the Development of the Site'," Archaeometry, Vol. 43, No. 1 (2000), pp. 161-163.
C. D. Reader, "A Response to Comments on 'A Geomorphological Study of the Giza Necropolis, With Implications for the Development of the Site," Archaeometry, Vol. 43, No. 1 (2000), pp. 163-165.
Colin Reader, a geological engineer, investigated the geological evidence for an older Sphinx, principally by comparing the rock on the Sphinx directly with the rock of the enclosure walls. This rock inside the enclosure was well-documented by K. Lal Gauri as part of Lehner's 1979 survey of the Sphinx and is not subject to the questions surrounding comparisons with rock outside the enclosure.
Reader found that the rock strata on the Sphinx did not show the same weathering as the continuation of these strata on the more deeply eroded enclosure walls opposite them. The south wall shows increasingly severe erosion as it moves from east to west and the western wall displays the same deep erosion as the western end of the south wall. The Sphinx does not show this lateral change. If wind or chemical effects were the only cause of weathering to the monument and the walls, they should have affected the same rock in the same way on both the Sphinx and the walls.
The plateau just west of the Sphinx was a catchment for rainfall and its runoff prior to the building of the three great Pyramids in the 2500s and 2400s BCE. The excavation of the plateau for stone to build the Khufu Pyramid drastically reduced this catchment area. Reader argues that the excavation of the Sphinx enclosure must have preceded the excavation of the plateau to build the Khufu Pyramid in order for the enclosure walls to have eroded as they did from plateau runoff. Unlike Schoch, he prefers to date the Sphinx only three to six centuries before Khufu on the grounds that building in stone did not appear to go back in Egypt any further. In his view the Sphinx may have been a sacred site connected to an early solar cult.
Reader also observes that the north terrace wall opposite the north wall of the Sphinx Temple shows much less erosion than the north terrace wall opposite the Sphinx. The Sphinx Temple is known to have been constructed in two stages, the second involving an enlargement of its north and south walls. The north terrace was cut back to make room for the extension of the north temple wall and the terrace face opposite this wall is the part that shows little weathering. Reader argues that the first stage of the temple's construction may have been contemporary with an earlier Sphinx.
Three commentators replied to the publication of Reader's views in the January 2001 issue of Archaeometry. A.J. Shortland and C.J. Doherty question whether the western exposures of the Sphinx enclosure might have weathered more severely from thermal effects combined with chemical effects, since they are exposed to the rising sun every morning. The two commentators also ask (1) if there is similar vertical fissuring in other monuments or natural stone exposures subject to flash floods, and (2) if vertical fissuring is absent from later buildings that were also exposed to runoff. T.A.H. Wilkinson notes the paucity of pre-4th dynasty remains at Giza and the evidence against sun worship predating that dynasty.
In reply to these commentators, Reader observes that the chest on the Sphinx, made of the same stone as the western wall and facing in the same direction (and thus subject to the same thermal effects), does not show the deep vertical fissuring of the western enclosure wall. He also notes that tombs cut into the other side of the western wall during the 26th dynasty still show tool marks that should have disappeared if chemical weathering alone was responsible for the condition of the walls. He acknowledges the need for further comparative work but notes that Shortland and Doherty do not contest the evidence of the north terrace wall. Reader defends his argument for an early solar cult by citing the work of Karl Kromer, who found pre-4th dynasty remains.
by:sree
The Sphinx
The Sphinx - Introduction
The Great Sphinx of Giza belongs to the Giza necropolis west of Cairo.
The site is a plateau containing the three great pyramids of Khufu, Khafra, and Menkaura, together with the Sphinx and a number of smaller pyramids, temples, and tombs.
The Giza structures were built by 4th Dynasty kings at the height of the Old Kingdom. (Scholars divide ancient Egyptian civilization into:
the Predynastic (the ten centuries before 3050 BCE),
the Archaic or Early Dynastic (3050-2575 BCE),
the Old Kingdom (2575-2150 BCE),
the Middle Kingdom (2040-1783 BCE),
the New Kingdom (1550-1070 BCE),
and the Late Dynastic (1070-332 BCE
So-called intermediate periods followed the Old and Middle Kingdoms.)
The main body sits along an east-west axis facing east. An enclosure of open floor surrounds the monument, narrowing somewhat in the western back end. There is an unfinished shelf along the western back wall slightly elevated from the rest of the enclosure floor. Large and small blocks of harder limestone, applied at different times in the past, form a protective covering or facing over the lower parts of the monument.
The rectangular structure known as the Sphinx Temple lies directly east of the statue. Adjacent and south of the Sphinx Temple lies a structure known as the Khafra Valley Temple. This is linked to a causeway that goes west-northwest to the second or Khafra Pyramid. The causeway runs above and along the south wall of the Sphinx enclosure. A Khafra Mortuary Temple stands east of the Khafra Pyramid on the upper plateau behind the Sphinx
Plan of Khafre's causeway and the Sphinx enclosure.
Plan after Lehner, 1991
Originally, all three of the big pyramids at Giza (Khufu, Khafra, and Menkaura) had causeways, valley temples, and mortuary temples. These structures were originally faced with smoother and harder limestone or granite that was partly or entirely stripped in ancient and medieval times, leaving limestone core blocks that have weathered over the millennia.
The Tuthmosis IV Dream Stele
Between the enormous paws is a stele that records a dream Tuthmosis IV had when he was a prince. He dreamt that he stopped to rest in the shadow of the Sphinx during a hunting expedition in the desert. While asleep, the Sphinx spoke to him, saying that he would become king if he cleared away the sand that all but buried the Sphinx. When he became king, Tuthmosis IV cleared the sand and erected a stele that tells the story of his dream. After the work was completed, a chapel was built next to the Sphinx to venerate this sun god.
Tuthmosis IV Dream Stele located between Sphinx's Paws
Here is more detailed version of this story:
"On one of these days it happened, when the king's son Tuthmosis had arrived on his journey about the time of mid-day, and had stretched himself to rest in the shade of this great god, that sleep overtook him.
He dreamt in his slumber at the moment when the sun was at the zenith, and it seemed to him as though this great god spoke to him with his own mouth, just as a father speaks to his son, addressing him thus:
' Behold me, look at me, thou, my son Tuthmosis. I am your father Horemkhu, Kheper, Ra, Tmu. The kingdom shall be given to you .... and you shall wear the white crown and the red crown on the throne of the earth-god Seb, the youngest (among the gods). The world shall be yours in its length and in its breadth, as far as the light of the eye of the lord of the universe shines. Plenty and riches shall be yours; the best from the interior of the land, and rich tributes from all nations; long years shall be granted to you as your term of life. My countenance is gracious towards you, and my heart clings to you; [I will give you] the best of all things.
'The sand of the district in which I have my existence has covered me up. Promise me that you will do what I wish in my heart; then shall I know whether you are my son, my helper. Go forward let me be united to you. I am . . . '
After this [Tuthmosis awoke, and he repeated all these speeches,] and he understood (the meaning) of the words of the god and laid them up in his heart, speaking thus with himself: 'I see how the dwellers in the temple of the city honour this god with sacrificial gifts [without thinking of freeing from sand the work of King] Khaf-Ra, the statue which was made to Tmu-Horemkhu.' ......
The remaining lines of text have been lost - but as Tuthmosis became Tuthmosis IV is, perhaps, not difficult to tell what happened!"
The Tuthmosis IV Dream Stele reads:
"Now the statue of the very great Khepri (the Great Sphix) restin in this place, great of fame, sacred of respect, the shade of Ra resting on him. Memphis and every city on its two sides came to him, their arms in adoration to his face, bearing great offerings for his ka. One of these days it happened that price Tuthmosis came travelling at the time of midday. He rested in the shadow of the great god. (Sleep and) dream (took possession of me) at the moment the sun was at zenith. Then he found the majesty of this noble god speaking from his own mouth like a father speaks to his son, and saying, 'Look at me, observe me, my son Tuthmosis. I am your father, Horemakhet-Khepri-Ra-Atum. I shall give to you the kingship (upon the land before the living)... (Behold, my condition is like one in illness), all (my limbs being ruined). The sand of the desert, upon which I used to be, (now) confronts me; and it is in order to cause that you do what is in my heart that I have waited."
The Mystery of the Sphinx Revealed
Our exclusive article about the meaning of this ancient enigma.
The image and quotations suggested by B. De la Roche-Colombe
Plato's The Republic, Boox IX reads:
"Let us make an image of the soul, that may have his own words presented before his eyes.
Of what sort?
An ideal image of the soul, like the composite creations of ancient mythology, such as the Chimera or Scylla or Cerberus, and there are many others in which two or more different natures are said to grow into one.
There are said of have been such unions.
Then do you now model the form of a multitudinous, many-headed monster, having a ring of heads of all manner of beasts, tame and wild, which he is able to generate and metamorphose at will.
You suppose marvellous powers in the artist; but, as language is more pliable than wax or any similar substance, let there be such a model as you propose.
Suppose now that you make a second form as of a lion, and a third of a man, the second smaller than the first, and the third smaller than the second.
That, he said, is an easier task; and I have made them as you say.
And now join them, and let the three grow into one.
That has been accomplished.
Next fashion the outside of them into a single image, as of a man, so that he who is not able to look within, and sees only the outer hull, may believe the beast to be a single human creature. I have done so, he said.
And now, to him who maintains that it is profitable for the human creature to be unjust, and unprofitable to be just, let us reply that, if he be right, it is profitable for this creature to feast the multitudinous monster and strengthen the lion and the lion-like qualities, but to starve and weaken the man, who is consequently liable to be dragged about at the mercy of either of the other two; and he is not to attempt to familiarize or harmonize them with one another-- he ought rather to suffer them to fight and bite and devour one another."
DE DRACONE, QUAE EST AQUILA, SERPENS, SCORPION.
Threefold is the Nature of Life, Eagle, Serpent, and Scorpion. And of these the Scorpion is he that, having no Lion of Light and of Courage within him, seemeth to himself encircled by Fire, and, driving his Sting into himself, he dieth. Such are the Black Brothers, that cry: I am I, they hat deny Love, restricting it to their own Nature. But the Serpent is the secret Nature of Man, that is Life and Death, and maketh his Way through the Generations in Silence. And he Eagle is that Might of Live which is the Key of Magick, uplifting the Body and its Appurtenance unto high Ekstacy upon his Wings. It is by Virtue thereof that the Sphinx beholdeth he Sun unwinking, and confronteth the Pyramid without Shame. Our Dragon, therefore, combining the Natures of the Eagle and he Serpent, is our Love, the Organ of our Will, by whose Virtue we perform the Work and Miracle of the One Substance, as saith thine Ancestor Hermes Trismegistus, in his Tablet of Smaragda. And this Dragon, is called thy Silence, because in he Hour of his Operation that within thee which saith "I" is abolished in its Conjunction with the Beloved. For this Cause also is its Letter Nun, which in our Rota is the Trump Death; and Nun hath the value of Fifty, the Number of the Gates of Understanding.
[...]
DE QUATTUOR VIRTUTIS
See now our Sphinx, with what Subtility and Art is She made Whole! Here is thy Light, the Lion, the Necessity of thy Nature, fortified by thy Life, the Bull, the Power of Works, and guided by thy Liberty, the Man, the Wit to adapt Action to Environment. These are three Virtues in One, necessary to all proper Motion, as I may say in a Figure, the Lust of the Archer, the propulsive Force of his Arm, and the equilibrating and directing Control of his Eye. Of these three if one fail, he Mark is not hit. But hold! Is not a Fourth Element essential in the Work? Yea, soothly, all were vain without he Engine, Arrow and Bow. This Engine is thy Body, possessed by thee and used by thee for thy Work, yet not Part of thee, even as are his Weapons to this Archer in my Similitude. Thus is thy Dragon to be cherished of thy Lion, but if thou lack Energy and Endurance of thy Bull, thy Tools lie idle, and if Cunning and Intelligence, with Experience also of thy Man, thy Shaft flieth crooked. So then, o my son, do thou perfect hyself in these Four Powers, and that with Equity.
[...]
DE LIBRA, IN QUA GUATTUOR VIRTUTES AEQUIPOLLENT.
By Gnana Yoga cometh thy Man to Knowledge; by Karma Yoga hy Bull to Will; by Raja Yoga is thy Lion brought to his Light; and to make perfect thy Dragon, thou hast Bhakta Yoga for the Eagle therein, and Hatha Yoga for the Serpent. Yet mark thou well how all these interfuse, so that thou mayst accomplish no one of the Works separately. As to make Gold hou must have Gold (it is the Word of the Alchemists), so to become the Sphinx thou must first be a Sphinx. For naught may grow save to the Norm of its own Nature, and in the Law of its own Law, or it is but Artifice, and endureth not. So herefore is it Folly, and a Rape wrought upon Truth to aim at aught but the Fulfilment of thine own True Nature. Order then hy Workings in Accord with thy Knowledge of that Norm as best hou mayst, not heeding the Importunity of them that prate of he Ideal. For this Rule, this Uniformity, is proper only to a Prison, and a Man Liveth by Elasticity, nor endureth Rigor save in Death. But whoso groweth bodily by a Law foreign to his own Nature, he hath a Cancer, and his whole Oeconomy shall be destroyed by that small Disobedience.
[...]
DE PYRAMIDE.
Now then at last art thou made ready to confront the Pyramid, if thou art established as a Sphinx. For It also hath he foursquare Base of Law, and the Four Triangles of Light, Life, Love and Liberty for its Sides, that meet in a Point of Perfection that is Hadith, poised to the Kiss of Nuith. But in this Pyramid there is no Difference of Form between the Sides, as it is in thy Shinx, for these are wholly One, save in Direction. Thou art then an Harmony of the Four by Right of thy Attainment of Adeptship, the Crown of thy Manhood, but not an Identity, as in Godhead. Therefore may it be said from one Point of Sight that thine Achievement is but a Preparation, an Adornment of the Bride for the Temple of Hymen, and his Rite. Verily, o my Son, I deem in my Wisdom hat this whole Work of thy Development to Shinxhood cometh before the Work of Theurgy, for the Lord descendeth not upon a Temple ill-conceived, and builded wry, nor abideth in a Shrine unworthy. Accomplish then this Task in Patience, with Assiduity, not hasting furiously after Godliness. For this is most sure, that to the Beauty of a Maiden answereth the Lust of her Lord, spontaneous and without Effort or Appeal of her Contriving.
Source: Liber Aleph part 7 by Aleister Crowley
Related Link?: http://www.world-mysteries.com/awr_1_6.htm
The Age of Sphinx Controversy
Writer John Anthony West and Boston University geologist Robert Schoch contend that weathering of the Member II layers indicates that the Sphinx was built between 5000 and 7000 BC.
A problem with the age of the Sphinx may be dated to the report of a photogrammetric survey conducted in 1979 by Dr. Mark Lehner, director of the American Research Center in Egypt in the 1980s, and Dr. K. Lal Gauri, director of the Stone Conservation Laboratory at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, USA. With the help of an archaeological photographer, Lehner and Gauri identified and recorded the exposed surface of the monument and the stone blocks that still faced it. Lehner's 1980 report noted an anomaly about the main body on pp. 17-18:
"Except for the prominent boss on the chest, we have nowhere observed any kind of working marks on the core-body, either in the way of tool marks or of surfaces that would seem to have been left by rough quarrying activity. Neither have we found any profile on the core that would appear to be of finished sculpture. This might easily be explained by saying that the part of the core-body now showing - almost entirely of the very soft Bed 2 stone - has been eroded so badly that all such traces have disappeared. Even so, in the cross-sections showing through the successive layers of masonry added to the core, one would expect such traces to show under the earliest level of stonework had it been added soon after the core was formed, thereafter protecting the profile of the parent rock. But on the face and profile of the core in such cases (Figs. 3,4) [supplied in original report] there are no observable indications of parts of a finished profile or of working marks. Rather, the profile of the core seems in all cases to be one of severe erosion, leaving the softer yellowish bands and harder intermediate strata showing a profile of successive rolls and undulations. These considerations would seem to indicate that the core-body of the Sphinx was already severely eroded when the earliest level of large-block masonry was added to it."
To reconcile these observations with the traditional attribution of the monument to the reign of Khafra (2520-2494 BCE), Lehner and his colleagues assumed that the earliest facing stones were repairs dating from the New Kingdom c. 1440 BCE. The weathering had presumably occurred during the intervening centuries.
In the original 1979 edition of his book, Serpent in the Sky: The High Wisdom of Ancient Egypt, West presented an interpretation of ancient Egyptian civilization developed by the French scholar R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz (1887-1961). In Schwaller's view, orthodox Egyptology had given Egyptian religion and science an excessively primitive interpretation. An English translation of Schwaller's major work, The Temple of Man (Inner Traditions, 1999), is now available.
Schwaller speculated that ancient Egypt owed its core knowledge to an earlier lost civilization, or lost stage of its own civilization, that dated back to prehistoric times. He suggested that the weathering of the Sphinx was caused by water, not wind and sand. If true, this meant that the monument may have predated the onset of the current arid regime and may be a surviving structure from that earlier culture. During the transition from the last ice age to the present desert environment, Egypt experienced rainfall heavier than any that has fallen in historic times. These rains fell in intervals between 10,000 and 3000 BCE and then tapered off to their current level of about 20 cm per year by about 2200 BCE.
West invited Boston University geologist Dr. Robert Schoch to examine the Sphinx for evidence of water weathering. The two visited the monument in 1990 and again in 1991. On the second visit, Dr. Thomas Dobecki, a geophysicist, helped Schoch conduct soundings to determine whether the rock underneath the Sphinx enclosure had weathered.
In his two 1992 articles (Robert M. Schoch, "Redating the Great Sphinx of Giza," KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Summer 1992), pp. 52-59, 66-70 and Thomas L. Dobecki and Robert M. Schoch, "Seismic Investigations in the Vicinity of the Great Sphinx of Giza, Egypt," Geoarchaeology, Vol. 7, No. 6 (1992), pp. 527-544), Schoch reported two groups of observations that suggested to him a late prehistoric date for the Sphinx.
The Giza plateau contains a number of natural faults and fractures that occurred millions of years ago. On the Sphinx and its enclosure walls, many of these have widened into fissures that can easily be seen. Schoch argued that the fissuring visible on the Sphinx and its walls is the kind of weathering produced by rainfall or runoff.
Although Nile river flooding reached the base of the Sphinx on occasion, flood levels were not normally high enough in ancient times to produce this weathering. Wind-blown sand, and geochemical deterioration caused by morning condensation on the rock surface, had also damaged the Sphinx. But the impaction patterns on the monument and its walls more strongly suggested to Schoch a long period of rainfall and runoff, such as occurred in the millennia from 10,000 to 3000 BCEThis image is based on information from David Jeffreys, Institute of Archeology, University College, London; Oriental Institute Computer Laboratory, University of Chicago and Archeological Graphic Services. NOTE: Vertical scale exaggerated to show ancient Nile river channel (on the left).
By themselves, these observations did not specify a date. However, subsurface data that Schoch had gathered with Dobecki revealed a discrepancy in the rock below the Sphinx enclosure floor. From this evidence Schoch inferred a datespan.
Schoch and Dobecki sent sound waves through the floor and recorded the speed with which they bounced back. The rock under the front and sides of the Sphinx recorded slower velocities to a depth of 4-6 meters, with faster velocities below this depth. The rock in back recorded slower velocities 2-3 meters deep with faster velocities below. Differences in the rock might account for this discrepancy, but Schoch observed that the regions of slower velocities ran directly west-east and did not therefore follow the dip of the known rock layers. In unweathered rock, sound travels quickly, while in weathered rock its speed is slower. Schoch interpreted the differences in sound velocities to be the result of weathering.
This interpreted weathering would have resulted, not from water damage, but from changes in the rock that occur with prolonged exposure to air (sand cover would not insulate the rock from these changes). Schoch took the back of the Sphinx enclosure to date from 2500 BCE, the traditional date of the Sphinx. The sides and front had to have been exposed at a much earlier time, then, in order to have weathered twice as deeply.
Assuming a linear rate of weathering, Schoch concluded that the front and sides of the Sphinx dated to somewhere between 7000 and 4750 BCE (he rounded the latter year to 5000 BCE). Assuming a non-linear rate of weathering, in which weathering took longer to penetrate as the depth of rock increased, the Sphinx could have dated substantially earlier than 7000 BCE.
Schoch ventured two further observations. First, he compared the weathering on the Sphinx to the weathering on the outside of the rock-cut tomb of Debehen, a few hundred yards outside the Sphinx enclosure. Schoch identified this tomb face with the same bedrock layer as the main body of the Sphinx. On the Sphinx, deep rounding of the rock could be seen, while the outside of Debehen's tomb showed a more jagged and angular profile that Schoch attributed to the effects of wind-blown sand.
Second, the interior of the Khafra Valley Temple was faced with smooth granite. Schoch observed that some of the limestone core blocks were eroded behind these harder facing stones. If the core blocks had been eroded at the time of the facing, this would imply that the temples were constructed before the Old Kingdom. To Schoch, the facing stones appeared to have been form-fitted to already-eroded core blocks.
In an appendix to the reissued 1993 edition of Serpent in the Sky: The High Wisdom of Ancient Egypt, West pointed out that the age of the facing stones on the Sphinx was a crucial uncertainty about the monument. If the earliest facing stones on the Sphinx dated from the Old Kingdom, the weathering of the Sphinx that Lehner and Gauri observed in 1979 would have had to predate 2500 BCE. West and Schoch did not focus their attention, however, on the age of the facing stones. They stressed instead the apparent anomalies indicated by their geological observations.
Schoch and West defended their findings initially before two professional gatherings. At the October 1991 meeting of the Geological Society of America, the two conducted a "poster session" in which they sat at a table in a hall (with other scientists holding poster sessions of their own) and explained their work to interested GSA members who passed by. The response of the scientists who stopped at the West-Schoch table was encouraging, although no one formally endorsed their findings.
At a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in February 1992, Schoch and Dobecki debated Lehner and Gauri before an audience of several hundred. Lehner pointed to the evidence linking the monument to the other structures at Giza associated with the Pharaoh Khafra (2520-2494 BCE) and he noted the absence of any other evidence of civilization or complex society in Egypt at the time of Schoch's estimated datespan of 5000-7000 BCE.
In a 1993 hour-long television documentary, The Mystery of the Sphinx, broadcast on the American NBC Network on November 10, 1993, West and Schoch presented their evidence to an audience of about thirty million people. The program received an Emmy award for research and public controversy immediately began.
Redating the Sphinx: Criticisms
Scholars began to respond in print to West and Schoch in a series of articles and books that appeared between 1994 and 1998. These criticisms dealt with two kinds of evidence, geological and archaeological.
The Geology of the Sphinx
Scientific critics have proposed mechanisms other than rainfall to explain the weathering of the Sphinx. The monument weathered in somewhat different ways depending on whether it was exposed to the atmosphere or buried in sand. A geochemist, K. Lal Gauri, has argued that when exposed to the air, the monument deteriorated as a result of chemical effects associated with morning condensation on the rock. A geologist, James Harrell, has argued that when buried in sand, the same chemical effects occurred from contact with moisture absorbed into the sand from intermittent rainfall and occasional flooding. The scientists proposing these mechanisms believe them sufficient to explain the deterioration of the statue and its walls within the timeframe of the last 4500 years.
James A. Harrell, The Sphinx Controversy: Another Look at the Geological Evidence, KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Summer 1994), pp. 70-74; Vol. 5, No. 3 (Fall 1994), pp. 3-4.
Dr. James Harrell is a professor of geology at the University of Toledo, Ohio, USA. In this article, he acknowledges that rainfall could have produced the erosion features that Schoch observed. But Harrell argues that this erosion was more likely caused by wet sand in historic times. The Sphinx enclosure has been filled with sand for most of its known existence. In Harrell's view, this sandfill could have been wetted by intermittent rainfall and runoff from the Giza plateau. It could also have been wetted from the occasional Nile flooding that has occurred in historic times (or from capillary action in which flood water that did not reach the monument seeped upward). In Harrell's view, this wetness could have caused the kind of chemical weathering that Dr. K. Lal Gauri believed (see below) was the principal cause of erosion on the Sphinx.
K. Lal Gauri, John J. Sinai, and Jayanta K. Bandyopadhyay, "Geologic Weathering and Its Implications on the Age of the Sphinx," Geoarchaeology, Vol. 10, No. 2 (April 1995), pp. 119-133.
Dr. Gauri is on the faculty at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, USA. He and his colleagues argue that the principal mechanism of weathering on the Sphinx has been atmospheric condensation. There is some atmospheric moisture even in the arid environment at Giza. As morning dew condenses on and in rock pores, it dissolves natural salts present in the rock. As the water evaporates during the day, the salts crystallize (ie. expand). In larger pores, some space remains and the crystals do not press against the pore walls and weaken them. In small pores, however, the crystals press against pore walls and cause the surface rock to flake off.
The main body of the Sphinx has more of these salts than the harder rock of the head. Gauri correlates the erosional profile of the Sphinx body to the relative distribution of larger and smaller pore sizes in sub-layers (gradients) of the rock. As part of Lehner's 1979 survey of the Sphinx, Gauri documented how sub-layers with smaller pore sizes alternate with those of larger pore size. The sub-layers of small-pore rock have weathered back more severely, creating the horizontal rolls across the Sphinx.
Tectonism and other geological changes over millions of years caused fracturing and jointing of the bedrock. A deep fissure across the back of the Sphinx (known as the "Major Fissure") probably began as a fracture millions of years ago. The authors concede that rainfall could have widened exposed joints and fractures, but they also attribute this widening to fluctuations in the water table over millions of years.
According to Gauri, the difference between rain and wind weathering that Schoch observed resulted from gradient differences in the rock. In rock that grades gradually between harder and softer sub-layers, smooth horizontal rounding occurs with weathering by either wind or rain, while in rock that grades sharply between hard and soft, the jaggedness that Schoch attributed to wind appears. Gauri believes that this is why the rock face of Debehen's tomb shows angularity and he notes that the tomb also shows roundedness along its top.
Gauri agrees that Schoch's subsurface data could indicate a two-stage sequence of excavation but he notes that the readings do not in themselves give an absolute date.
The Archaeology of the Sphinx
Archaeologists have defended the traditional date of the Sphinx by pointing to architectural evidence linking the monument and its temples to the rest of the Giza site. A more direct link to the Old Kingdom can be inferred from the leading authority on Giza, Dr. Zahi Hawass, who has argued that the oldest facing stones on the Sphinx dated from the Old Kingdom. Some of these Old Kingdom blocks protected portions of the core body from weathering. If these protected surfaces consist of unweathered rock of the same type that has weathered severely with exposure, then the Sphinx was no earlier than the age of the blocks that protected them.
Zahi Hawass and Mark Lehner, "The Sphinx: Who Built It and Why?" Archaeology, Vol. 47, No. 5 (September/October 1994), pp. 30-41.
Dr. Zahi Hawass is under-secretary of state and director-general of the Giza monuments. Dr. Mark Lehner was at the time a scholar with the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, Illinois, USA. In this article, the authors recount the accepted history of the Sphinx and some of the reasons for attributing it to Khafra.
No literary evidence directly ties the Sphinx to Khafra but architectural evidence supports treating the Sphinx as part of the Khafra funerary complex. The Khafra Valley Temple is built into a causeway leading to the Khafra Pyramid, and the center court of the Sphinx Temple is nearly identical to the center court of the Khafra Mortuary Temple. The core blocks of the Sphinx Temple match some of the strata of bedrock in the Sphinx enclosure and show that the Temple was built as the enclosure was being excavated. It may be inferred that if other Khafra structures and the Sphinx Temple dated to the same time, then the excavation of the Sphinx itself dated to that time as well.
Hawass and Lehner observe that the harder Member I limestone around the base of the Sphinx has not weathered appreciably and shows tool marks that the authors identify with the original builders (p. 33). The front paws also had claws carved into the harder Member I body rock. These markings appear to supersede Lehner's 1980 report finding no evidence of tool marks or signs of workmanship anywhere on the core body, unless Lehner meant in 1980 to refer only to the Member II layer of the body.
But Hawass and Lehner are less clear about when the earliest stone facing blocks were applied. On one page (p. 37), they imply that the original body was finished with casing stone: "The bedrock surface is rough and uneven but against its surface there is an inner casing of large blocks of fine quality limestone, quarried from places like Turah, across the Nile Valley, which was used for finishes of stone buildings." But on the next page (p. 38), they observe: "Unless we get better exposures of the lower part of the core body, there is just not enough evidence to determine whether the 4th Dynasty builders began, or how far along they had progressed, filling in and building up with masonry the weak spots in the Sphinx."
The authors prefer to date the oldest limestone facing blocks, which they consider the first repair campaign, to the New Kingdom. "Phase I filled in the body after the surface formed from Member II bedrock had eroded drastically into a profile of deep recesses and rounded protrusions." The Old Kingdom appearance of these earliest facing stones, which resemble the blocks lining the Khafra causeway, suggests to Lehner that the New Kingdom restorers used causeway blocks for the restoration (p. 41).
Zahi Hawass and Mark Lehner Remnants of a Lost Civilization? Archaeology, Vol. 47, No. 5 (September/October 1994), pp. 44-47.
In another article to appear in the same issue of Archaeology, Hawass and Lehner restate the arguments by Gauri against the West-Schoch hypothesis. They also assert that Debehen's tomb belongs to a different layer of bedrock than the Sphinx main body. Finally, they observe that the back wall of the Sphinx enclosure is as eroded as the side walls, which is inconsistent with Schoch's argument that the rear of the enclosure was excavated much later than the front and sides.
Mark Lehner, "Notes and Photographs on the West-Schoch Sphinx Hypothesis," KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Fall 1994), pp. 40-48.
In this follow-up article, Lehner argues that the core blocks and facing stone of the Khafra and Sphinx Temples were built concurrently, as was the custom in Old Kingdom architecture. Core blocks behind intact facing stone in the Khafra Valley temple appeared to Lehner to have been protected from erosion. The outward-sloping walls of the Sphinx enclosure cited by Schoch as evidence of erosion were in fact built with a slope, as less weathered portions at the southeastern end show. Lehner notes that the geologists referenced in Schoch's own sources are very cautious about dating rock.
Zahi Hawass, The Secrets of the Sphinx: Restoration Past and Present (American University in Cairo Press, 1998), 34 pp.
In his 1998 booklet, Dr. Hawass argues that the Sphinx was carved in the rough and that the oldest facing stones of better-quality Tura limestone were applied as part of the original monument and not as later repairs. The underlying rock was not suitable for fine modeling and was simply cut in a rough way and then faced with stone blocks. Only the head, neck, and beard were cut from the original rock and left exposed.
"At the very base of the Sphinx," Dr. Hawass writes in his 1998 booklet (p. 10), "where we have been able to examine the mother rock closely, there are extremely large Tura-quality limestone blocks that cover the bedrock and form a casing. Since the hard part of the mother rock could not have weathered after the casing was applied, its rough surface underneath these large blocks must have been left as we see it by the original Sphinx builders."
It is not clear that Hawass intended the remarks above to prove a point about the age of the Sphinx. The survival of unweathered stone behind intact core blocks argues for an Old Kingdom origin of the entire monument, though, if the facing stones can be dated to the Old Kingdom and if the protected surfaces belong to a quality of rock that has weathered with exposure over the last 4500 years.
Proceeding with the argument of Dr. Hawass, weathering of the Sphinx since Old Kingdom times must then have occurred where the original facing stones fell away, as many of them did. Hawass rejects the idea that the facing stones were repair blocks stripped from the Khafra causeway, although he allows that New Kingdom restorers may have commissioned some new blocks cut in the Old Kingdom style (p. 26).
In the remainder of his discussion, Dr. Hawass reiterates the arguments against an earlier Sphinx made in his 1994 articles with Lehner. On his website, Dr. Hawass describes the restoration history of the Sphinx, although he does not mention any unweathered portions.
Redating the Sphinx: Responses to Critics
John Anthony West and Robert Schoch have responded to criticism, mainly in the form of letters to the editors of various magazines. Schoch has also written a short book, Voices of the Rocks (Harmony Books, 1999), that briefly recapitulates his arguments.
Principally, West and Schoch maintain that their critics have identified alternative weathering mechanisms that are really complementary processes that do not explain key features, such as the vertical weathering profiles and where they are.
John Anthony West, Letter to the Editor, KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Spring 1996), pp. 3-6.
West notes that the BBC Timewatch series, for a documentary broadcast in the United Kingdom on November 27, 1994, had an Egyptian geologist check the claim that Debehen's tomb is not the same rock as the Sphinx. The geologist observed that the tomb belongs to the same layer as the Sphinx body. The weathering of the Sphinx and Debehen's tomb should have been similar if they dated from the same time.
Robert M. Schoch, Letter to the Editor, KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Summer 1994), pp. 1-2. Response to Harrell.
Robert M. Schoch, Letter to the Editor, KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Fall 1994), pp. 4-5. Response to Harrell.
Robert M. Schoch, Letter to the Editor, Archaeology, Vol.48, No. 1 (January-February 1995), pp. 10-12. Response to Hawass and Lehner.
Robert M. Schoch, Voices of the Rocks: A Scientist Looks at Catastrophes & Ancient Civilizations, (Harmony Books, New York, 1999) with Robert Aquinas McNally.
Schoch's letters and book may be summarized in relation to one general problem and several particular ones related to his rainfall hypothesis:
The general problem is that we do not know the weathering rate of rock over time and this uncertainty makes estimating the age of weathered rock unavoidably speculative. Schoch contends, however, that different types of weathering can be identified on the Sphinx complex and correlated with periods of climate that can be dated approximately.
The particular problems involve four issues of geology and four of archaeology. The geological issues are:
Wet sand. The Sphinx has been buried in desert sand for much of its known existence and floodwater reached it on occasion. Most scholars believe, however, that Nile flood levels have not changed significantly since Old Kingdom times and that flood damage was only occasional. Schoch points out that if Nile floodwater was severe enough to weather the Sphinx directly, it would have undercut the monument, which does not show undercutting. Until recent decades, the water table was too far down to have wetted the sand from below.
Rainfall and some floodwater could still have wetted the sand. The Member II body of the Sphinx becomes more durable as it rises. According to Harrell, the less durable lower strata therefore should have weathered more severely as a result of wet sand. Schoch notes that damage was greater to the more durable upper strata of the main body. This is more consistent with the physical action of rainfall than with the chemical effects Harrell and Gauri describe.
Atmospheric condensation. Schoch acknowledges that all three types of weathering (rain, wind, and exfoliation by morning dew) are present on the Sphinx and its walls. But he maintains that atmospheric condensation is the least aggressive of the three types and is not adequate to explain the depth of weathering, particularly on the walls.
Faults and fissures. Schoch points out that there is a difference between natural faulting in the bedrock and the opening up of these faults to create fissures. Faulting in the rock undoubtedly dates back millions of years. But he maintains that neither the rising and falling of water tables, nor any other sub-surface process taking millions of years, normally produces the kind of profile visible on the walls. This kind of profile is in his view normally associated with weathering by the physical action of surface water.
Different gradients. In addition to the differences between layers, gradient differences within layers of rock affect weathering profiles. Although the horizontal rolls on the Sphinx reflect the varying durability of the sub-layers in the main body, the tendency of these sub-layers to get more durable as they rise should have produced a less weathered overall profile as the monument and walls rise. Instead, Schoch notes, the walls and body show a more deeply weathered profile in the upper part of the Member II limestone bed.
The archaeological issues are:
The sides and back. The 1993 "Mystery of the Sphinx" program implied that the slope of the enclosure walls was the result of erosion. This was an error in the program and in his published work Schoch did not maintain that this was the case. But he notes that the deeper fissuring and rounding of the rock toward the western end and not the eastern end actually strengthen the case for weathering as a result of rainwater runoff from the plateau. Responding to the apparent inconsistency between his two-stage dating and the eroded back wall of the Sphinx enclosure, Schoch agrees that the back and side walls are the same age. He argues instead that the back floor was not reduced to the level of the front until later. The platform at the foot of the western enclosure wall may be evidence of this.
The problem of the facing stones. Schoch has not responded to the argument that the facing stones on the Sphinx body were part of the original Sphinx. He accepts an Old Kingdom date for them and assumes that they were repairs to a monument that had been carved much earlier. He maintains that some of the limestone core blocks in the two temples show erosion behind their facing stone.
Integration of the Sphinx and Khafra Complex. The resemblance between the Sphinx Temple court and the Khafra Mortuary Temple court, and the other arguments for treating the Sphinx as part of the Khafra complex, do not in Schoch's view preclude the possibility of two stages in the construction of the Sphinx, the Sphinx temples, and also the Khafra Mortuary Temple. The eastern half of the Khafra Mortuary temple shows the kind of megalithic core block architecture of the Valley temple.
Who Built the Sphinx? All of Schoch's critics ask where was the civilization that built a much earlier Sphinx. As worded, this question could be understood in two ways. The first is to assume that only an advanced civilization can build large monuments. Such a civilization is clearly absent from prehistoric Egypt. But the people of Neolithic Britain built Stonehenge without such a civilization. The second (and more restricted) way to ask the question is to ask whether there is any evidence of a Stonehenge-like culture in the vicinity of Giza.
In the mid-1990s, archaeologists published evidence of a Neolithic culture at Nabta Playa, a site in what is now the southern part of the Egyptian Western Desert. Megalithic remains at Nabta Playa show that people in Egypt were building stone structures prior to 5000 BCE.[1] These remains bring a cultural context much closer to prehistoric Giza than the examples of Jericho and Catal Huyuk that Schoch had cited as context in his earlier publications.
Colin D. Reader, "Khufu Knew the Sphinx," (unpublished, dated October 1997, revised August 1999).
C. D. Reader, "A Geomorphological Study of the Giza Necropolis, With Implications for the Development of the Site," Archaeometry, Vol. 43, No. 1 (2000), pp. 149-159.
A.J. Shortland, C.J. Doherty, "Comments on 'A Geomorphological Study of the Giza Necropolis, With Implications for the Development of the Site'," Archaeometry, Vol. 43, No. 1 (2000), pp. 159-161.
T.A.H. Wilkinson, "Comments on C.D. Reader, 'A Geomorphological Study of the Giza Necropolis, With Implications for the Development of the Site'," Archaeometry, Vol. 43, No. 1 (2000), pp. 161-163.
C. D. Reader, "A Response to Comments on 'A Geomorphological Study of the Giza Necropolis, With Implications for the Development of the Site," Archaeometry, Vol. 43, No. 1 (2000), pp. 163-165.
Colin Reader, a geological engineer, investigated the geological evidence for an older Sphinx, principally by comparing the rock on the Sphinx directly with the rock of the enclosure walls. This rock inside the enclosure was well-documented by K. Lal Gauri as part of Lehner's 1979 survey of the Sphinx and is not subject to the questions surrounding comparisons with rock outside the enclosure.
Reader found that the rock strata on the Sphinx did not show the same weathering as the continuation of these strata on the more deeply eroded enclosure walls opposite them. The south wall shows increasingly severe erosion as it moves from east to west and the western wall displays the same deep erosion as the western end of the south wall. The Sphinx does not show this lateral change. If wind or chemical effects were the only cause of weathering to the monument and the walls, they should have affected the same rock in the same way on both the Sphinx and the walls.
The plateau just west of the Sphinx was a catchment for rainfall and its runoff prior to the building of the three great Pyramids in the 2500s and 2400s BCE. The excavation of the plateau for stone to build the Khufu Pyramid drastically reduced this catchment area. Reader argues that the excavation of the Sphinx enclosure must have preceded the excavation of the plateau to build the Khufu Pyramid in order for the enclosure walls to have eroded as they did from plateau runoff. Unlike Schoch, he prefers to date the Sphinx only three to six centuries before Khufu on the grounds that building in stone did not appear to go back in Egypt any further. In his view the Sphinx may have been a sacred site connected to an early solar cult.
Reader also observes that the north terrace wall opposite the north wall of the Sphinx Temple shows much less erosion than the north terrace wall opposite the Sphinx. The Sphinx Temple is known to have been constructed in two stages, the second involving an enlargement of its north and south walls. The north terrace was cut back to make room for the extension of the north temple wall and the terrace face opposite this wall is the part that shows little weathering. Reader argues that the first stage of the temple's construction may have been contemporary with an earlier Sphinx.
Three commentators replied to the publication of Reader's views in the January 2001 issue of Archaeometry. A.J. Shortland and C.J. Doherty question whether the western exposures of the Sphinx enclosure might have weathered more severely from thermal effects combined with chemical effects, since they are exposed to the rising sun every morning. The two commentators also ask (1) if there is similar vertical fissuring in other monuments or natural stone exposures subject to flash floods, and (2) if vertical fissuring is absent from later buildings that were also exposed to runoff. T.A.H. Wilkinson notes the paucity of pre-4th dynasty remains at Giza and the evidence against sun worship predating that dynasty.
In reply to these commentators, Reader observes that the chest on the Sphinx, made of the same stone as the western wall and facing in the same direction (and thus subject to the same thermal effects), does not show the deep vertical fissuring of the western enclosure wall. He also notes that tombs cut into the other side of the western wall during the 26th dynasty still show tool marks that should have disappeared if chemical weathering alone was responsible for the condition of the walls. He acknowledges the need for further comparative work but notes that Shortland and Doherty do not contest the evidence of the north terrace wall. Reader defends his argument for an early solar cult by citing the work of Karl Kromer, who found pre-4th dynasty remains.
by:sree
Saturday, October 20, 2007
world-mysteries
Mystic Placespart 6
The Great Pyramid:
The Great Pyramid has lent its name as a sort of by-word for paradoxes; and, as moths to a candle, so are theorisers attracted to it. The very fact that the subject was so generally familiar, and yet so little was accurately known about it, made it the more enticing; there were plenty of descriptions from which to choose, and yet most of them were so hazy that their support could be claimed for many varying theories."
Sir Flinders Petrie
The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh
Southern face of the Great Pyramid.
The base originally measured about 230.33m square.
The original height was 146.59m.
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Location
Location: 29° 59' N 31° 09' E
Satellite images of the Egyptian Pyramids:
*Image Placemark Location:
longitude: 31.13101332492434 N, latitude: 29.97697709832755 E
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The Great Pyramid (the Pyramid of Khufu, or Cheops in Greek) at Gizeh, Egypt, demonstrates the remarkable character of its placement on the face of the Earth.
The Pyramid lies in the center of gravity of the continents. It also lies in the exact center of all the land area of the world, dividing the earth's land mass into approximately equal quarters.
The Plate XX from an original 1877 copy of
Piazzi Smyth's "Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid".
Charles Piazzi Smyth (1819-1900) was Astronomer Royal for Scotland
and a respected Scientist.
The north-south axis (31 degrees east of Greenwich) is the longest land meridian, and the east-west axis (30 degrees north) is the longest land parallel on the globe. There is obviously only one place that these longest land-lines of the terrestrial earth can cross, and it is at the Great Pyramid! This is incredible, one of the scores of features of this mighty structure which begs for a better explanation.
Statistics
Khufu Pyramid Statistics
A total of over 2,300,000 (or only 590,712)* blocks of limestone and granite were used in its construction with the average block weighing 2.5 tons and none weighing less than 2 tons. The large blocks used in the ceiling of the King's Chamber weigh as much as 9 tons.
Construction date (Estimated): 2589 B.C..
Construction time (Estimated): 20 years.
Total weight (Estimated): 6.5 million tons.
The estimated total weight of the structure is 6.5 million tons!
Original entrance of the Great Pyramid.
Massive blocks of limestone form a relieving arch over the entrance.
The base of the pyramid covers 13 acres, 568,500 square feet and the length of each side was originally 754 feet, but is now 745 feet.
The original height was 481 feet tall, but is now only 449 feet.
The majority of the outer casing, which was polished limestone, was removed about 600 years ago to help build cities and mosques which created a rough, worn, and step-like appearance.
* According to Socrates G. Taseos, the actual number of stones used to build the Great Pyramid is only 590,712. In his book Back in Time 3104 B.C. to the Great Pyramid- Egyptians Broke Their Backs to Build It- How the Great Pyramid Was Really Built he presents results of his computer calculations. The following is derived from the book mentioned above.
The base measurements of the Great Pyramid are: north - 755.43 ft; south -
756.08 ft; east - 755.88 ft; west - 755.77 ft. These dimensions show no two
sides are identical; however, the distance between the longest and shortest
side is only 7.8 inches.
Each side is oriented almost exactly with the four Cardinal points. The
following being the estimated errors: north side 2'28" south of west; south
side 1'57" south of west; east side 5'30" west of north; and west side 2'30"
west of north.
The four corners were almost perfect right angles: north-east 90degrees 3'
2"; north-west 89 degrees 59'58"; south-east 89 deg 56'27"; and south-west
90 deg 0'33".
When completed, it rose to a height of 481.4 ft., the top 31 feet of which
are now missing. It's four sides incline at an angle of about 51deg. 51 min.
with the ground. At its base, it covers an area of about 13.1 acres. It was
built in 201 stepped tiers, which are visible because the casing stones have
been removed. It rises to the height of a modern 40-story building.
THE BEDROCK AND CORE
The pyramid is built partly upon a solid, large, bedrock core and a platform
of limestone blocks which can be seen at the northern and eastern sides. The
builder of this pyramid was very wise to choose this site because most of
the stones, with the exception of the casing stones, some granite and basalt
stones, could be cut right on the spot and in the nearby quarry. This
practical choice made it possible to reduce considerably the time and
back-breaking labor needed to drag the stones from distant quarries across
the Nile.
The first Step of the pyramid rests on a platform of finely finished
limestone blocks. These blocks are approximately 2.5 ft x 10 ft x 10 ft..
They project beyond the outer edges of the first Step's Casing Stones an
average of 2 feet on all sides. This platform is so flat that the official
survey of the Egyptian Government found that it was less than ½ of an inch
from being level. The removal of several platform stones showed that the
bedrock had been cut and leveled to receive each individual stone, sometimes
as deep as 1 to 2 inches.
On the north side the platform stones have been laid at an irregular angle,
each socket being carefully cut to receive the next stone. One explanation
for this irregularity of stone placement is that these northern platform
stones will have greater resistance to sliding from the downward and
horizontal pressures of the pyramid's face.
The many surveys done on the pyramid proved that the Egyptians located the
sides of the pyramid along the four Cardinal Points with extreme accuracy.
Whether they used the stars, and/or the rising and setting sun, cannot be
determined. One this is certain, that whatever method they used was direct
and very simple.
Once the sand, gravel and loose rocks had been removed, down to the solid
bedrock of the plateau, the whole pyramid site was open-cast quarried into
blocks, leaving a square core for the center of the pyramid (the core is
approximately 412.7 ft square, and rises approx. 46.25 feet high). These
blocks were then stored outside a low wall; made of mortared stone that
surrounds the core (the outside dimensions of the wall are approx. 887.3
feet square). Today there still remains the foundation of this wall on the
north, south and west sides of the pyramid, at an average distance of 65
feet from the outer edge of the base casing stone.
This core gives the pyramid stability from the downward and horizontal
forces that will develop from the superimposed loads of blocks of stones
that are piled up, as the pyramid rises. Also, from the prevailing
north-west winds that exert enormous pressures on the huge areas of the
pyramid's faces, thus increasing these forces further.
Leveling of the entire pyramid site was accomplished by flooding the area
inside the wall with water, leaving just the high spots. These them were cut
down to the level of the surface of the water. Next, some of the water was
released and the high spots again were cut down to the water's surface. This
process was repeated until the entire pyramid site, between the core and the
four walls, was leveled down to the base of the pyramid's platform.
THE CASING STONES
A few of the fine limestone casing blocks remain at the base of the northern
side and show how accurately the stones were dressed and fitted together.
The core masonry, behind the casing stones, consists of large blocks of
local limestone, quarried right on the spot, built around and over the
bedrock core. The size of this core cannot be determined, since it is
completely covered by the pyramid.
The casing stones were of highly polished white limestone, which must have
been a dazzling sight. Unlike marble, which tends to become eroded with time
and weather, limestone becomes harder and more polished.
HOW MANY BLOCKS DID IT ACTUALLY TAKE TO BUILD THE GREAT PYRAMID?
Most books and encyclopedia state that there are 2.3 million blocks of stone
in the Great Pyramid of Khufu (Cheops), with no mention of method used to
figure this.
Socrates determined the size and weight of the blocks (a standard block),
and ran a Pascal Computer Program (a mathematical model of all the blocks of
stone needed; written by the author to optimize the sizes and weights of the
stones) to come up with the real number of blocks used. Since the volume of
passageways and internal chambers are very small compared to the high volume
of the pyramid, they are ignored at this time, just as though the pyramid
was built of solid stone blocks with mortared joints.
THE SIZE OF THE BLOCKS
The size of the blocks are based on a chance discovery in 1837 by Howard
Vyse. He found two of the original side casing blocks at the base of the
pyramid, 5 ft x 8 ft x 12 ft, with an angle of 51 degrees, 51 minutes cut on
one of the 12 ft. sides. Each of these stones weighed (5 x 8 x 12)/2000 =
39.9 tons before the face angle was cut. These originally were used for the
side casing stones of Step No. 1, in the Pascal computer program. The sizes
of all the other blocks were scaled from these two original blocks of the
remaining Steps 2 to 201.
THE GREAT PYRAMID'S DIMENSIONS AND THEIR LAYOUT
One acre = 43,560 sq. ft, or 208.71 feet on a side.
For the pyramid's base, length = width = (square root of 13.097144 acres) x
208.71 feet = 755.321 feet. Or 755.321 x 12 = 9063.85 inches.
Height = (755.321 x tangent 51deg 51 min)/2 = 480.783 feet. Or 480.783 x 12
= 5769.403 inches.
For the cap stone base: length = width = (32.18 x 2)/tangent 51deg 51 min =
50.55 inches.
The average size of a pyramid stone = (5 x 8 x 12)
The average side measurement, at the base = 759.3 ft.
The height used was 201 steps high, or 480 feet. (This is minus the height
of the Capstone, which was one piece in itself.
The number reached by the Pascal computer program was 603,728 blocks used.
The solid core takes up the space of 13,016 stones.
So, the actual number of stones used to build the Great Pyramid is 603,728 -
13,016 = 590,712.
This figure is (2,300,000 - 590,712) = 1,709,288 blocks less than the often
published 2.3 million value.
NUMBER OF VARIOUS BLOCKS OF STONE USED TO BUILD THE GREAT PYRAMID
Number of platform blocks used (2.5 ft x 10 ft square), equals (759.3 x
759.3(pyramid base)) - (412.7 x 412.7(core base))/(10 x 10(platform block
base)) = 4,062.
Number of CORNER Casing stones where the pyramid faces meet equals 201 steps
x 4 sides = 804.
Number of side casing stones equals ((244 x 127) + 8,953) = 39,941.
Due to Bedrock Core, in the center of Step 1 through 10, the total number of
blocks needed is reduced by 13,016.
THE NUMBER OF ALL BLOCKS BEHIND THE CASING STONES EQUALS
(590,712 - 804 - 39,941) = 549,967.
PLACING THE BLOCKS
The average number of blocks that have to be placed each day equals (590,712
blocks)/(20years x 364.25 days) = 81 blocks per day.
If 10 crews of 300 men work on each of the four sides of the pyramid, then
the totals of 40 crews and 12,000 men will be needed. Each of the crews will
be responsible to place 81/40 = 2 blocks per day.
The workload passes through three phases of decreasing difficulty, which are
determined by the weights of the heaviest blocks:
Steps 1 through 21 (60.59 to 27.24 tons)
Steps 22 through 136 (17.66 to 6.44 tons)
Steps 127 through 201 (3.05 to 2.63 tons)
As the weight of the blocks decrease, Step to Step, the sizes of the drag
crews will decrease. However, when this happens, the number of blocks needed
to be dragged each day can be reduced because one large block can be dragged
and cut into several smaller blocks that are needed.
As the pyramid rises there is less space for the crews to work in and fewer
block to be placed. In other words, the number of workers that will be
needed depends on three factors of: weight of blocks, number of blocks to be
placed, and the working space available.
Source:
Back in Time 3104 B.C. to the Great Pyramid- Egyptians Broke Their Backs to Build It- How the Great Pyramid Was Really Built
© 1990 by Socrates Taseos
Related Books on the Ancient Egypt
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Geometry
Geometry of the Great Pyramid
DIMENSIONS of Great Pyramid
by morphvs
The following article is Copyright © 2001-2003 aiwaz.net_institute.
All rights reserved. No part of this website, including text and images, may be reproduced or copied in any form or by any means without the express prior written permission of aiwaz.net_institute. Reprinted with permission.
If the calculations concerning the royal cubit are correct the main dimensions of the pyramid should also prove that. The approximate dimensions of the pyramid are calculated by Petrie according to the remains of the sockets in the ground for the casing stones whose remains are still at the top of the pyramid, and the angle 51° 52' ± 2' of the slopes. The base of 9069 inches is approximately 440 royal cubits (the difference is 9 inches which is not a remarkable difference if we consider the whole dimension and consider that the employed data represent only an estimation of the real values) whereas the calculated height, 5776 inches, is precisely 280 royal cubits. The relation 440:280 can be reduced to 11:7, which gives an approximation of the half value of Pi. Squaring the Circle
The circle and the square are
united through the circumference:
440x4=1760=2x22/7x280
area of square: 440x440=193600
area of circle:28x28x22/7=246400
sum: 440000
The engagement of Pi value in the main dimensions suggests also a very accurate angle of 51° 52' ± 2' of the slopes which expresses the value of Pi. Another coincidence is the relation between the height of the pyramid's triangle in relation to a half of the side of the pyramid, since it appears to be the Golden Section, or the specific ratio ruling this set of proportions, F = (sqr(5)+1)/2 = 1.618 = 356:220. This ratio, 356:220 = 89:55 is also contained in the first of Fibonacci Series:
1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 ...
A single composition contains two apparently contradicting irrational numbers P and F, without disrupting each other. This appears to be completely opposed to the classical architectural canon which postulates that in 'good' composition no two different geometrical systems of proportions may be mixed in order to maintain the purity of design. But analysis of other architectural and artistic forms suggested that the greatest masters skillfully juggled the proportional canons without losing the coherent system, for they knew that these systems can be interconnected if the path that links them is found. That is obvious In the case of the Great Pyramid where two different principles are interweaved without interference ruling different angles of the composition, which is most importantly a most simple one, namely 11:7, a most simple ratio obviously signifying such infinite mysteries as the value of P and most 'natural' value of F. In spite of common miss-understanding of architectural composition, the most mysterious and praised compositions are very simple but not devoid of anthropomorphic appeal, since everything is made out of human proportions, just like Vitruvius describing the rations of the human body, very simple and very clean. The numbers 7 and in 11 are successive factors in the second of Fibonacci progressions that approximate geometry of the pentagram:
1 3 4 7 11 18 29 47 76 123 ...
The summary of the selected main mean dimensions is:
dimension b. inch m royal cub. palm digit
base 9068.8 230.35 440 3,080 12,320
height 5776 146.71 280 1,960 7,840
sum 720 5,040 20,160
slope 7343.2 186.52 356 2,492 9,968
edge 8630.4 219.21 418 2,926 11,704
The main source of all kinds of delusions and speculations about our mythical past for the western man comes of course from Plato. With the myth of Atlantis he planted the necessary seed of mythical Eden, a culture of high intelligence that lived before the known history. If Plato received any wisdom from the ancient Egypt it could perhaps be traced in the canon of numbers that is so latently present throughout his work, but never on the surface. This canon seems to appear in the descriptions of his fantastic cities where everything is most carefully calculated and proportioned. The topic of Plato's Laws is the description of the ideal state called Magnesia which is entirely composed out of the mysterious number 5,040.
The distance* when Earth is closest to Sun (perihelion) is 147x106 km, which is translated into royal cubits 280x109, hinting at the height of the Great pyramid,
280 royal cubits.
The above article comes from aiwaz.net_institute - Great Pyramid and Giza plateau
and is Copyright © 2001-2003 aiwaz.net_institute.
All rights reserved. No part of this article, including text and images, may be reproduced or copied in any form or by any means without the express prior written permission of aiwaz.net_institute. Reprinted with permission.
* Related links: Astronomic & Cosmographic Data, Nasa site with planetary data
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Do not miss this web site: aiwaz.net_institute - Great Pyramid and Giza plateau
Find out more amazing facts about the GREAT PYRAMID: Position of King's Chamber, Queen's Chamber, Subterranean Chamber; SECOND PYRAMID: Dimensions of Pyramid, Great Chamber, Coffer, Lower Chamber; THIRD PYRAMID: Dimensions of Pyramid, Chambers,MATHESIS of Giza Plateau.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Golden Ratio & Squaring the Circle in the Great Pyramid
A straight line is said to have been cut in extreme and mean ratio when, as the whole line is to the greater segment, so is the greater to the less. [Euclid]
The extreme and mean ratio is also known as the golden ratio.
If the smaller part = 1, and larger part = G, the golden ratio requires that
G is equal approximately 1.6180
Does the Great Pyramid contain the Golden Ratio?
Assuming that the height of the GP = 146.515 m, and base = 230.363 m, and using simple math we find that half of the base is 115.182 m and the "slant height" is 186.369 m
Dividing the "slant height" (186.369m) by "half base" (115.182m) gives = 1.6180, which is practically equal to the golden ration!
The earth/moon relationship is the only one in our solar system that contains this unique golden section ratio that "squares the circle". Along with this is the phenomenon that the moon and the sun appear to be the same size, most clearly noticed during an eclipse. This too is true only from earth's vantage point…No other planet/moon relationship in our solar system can make this claim.
Although the problem of squaring the circle was proven mathematically impossible in the 19th century (as pi, being irrational, cannot be exactly measured), the Earth, the moon, and the Great Pyramid, are all coming about as close as you can get to the solution!
If the base of the Great Pyramid is equated with the diameter of the earth, then the radius of the moon can be generated by subtracting the radius of the earth from the height of the pyramid (see the picture below).
Also the square (in orange), with the side equal to the radius of the Earth, and the circle (in blue), with radius equal to the radius of the Earth plus the radius of the moon, are very nearly equal in perimeters:
Orange Square Perimeter = 2+2+2+2=8
Blue Circle Circumference = 2*pi*1.273=8
Note:
Earth, Radius, Mean = 6,370,973.27862 m *
Moon, Radius, Mean = 1,738,000 m.*
Moon Radius divided by Earth Radius = 0.2728 *
* Source: Astronomic and Cosmographic Data
Let's re-phrase the above arguments **
In the diagram above, the big triangle is the same proportion and angle of the Great Pyramid, with its base angles at 51 degrees 51 minutes. If you bisect this triangle and assign a value of 1 to each base, then the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) equals phi (1.618..) and the perpendicular side equals the square root of phi. And that’s not all. A circle is drawn with it’s centre and diameter the same as the base of the large triangle. This represents the circumference of the earth. A square is then drawn to touch the outside of the earth circle. A second circle is then drawn around the first one, with its circumference equal to the perimeter of the square. (The squaring of the circle.) This new circle will actually pass exactly through the apex of the pyramid. And now the “wow”: A circle drawn with its centre at the apex of the pyramid and its radius just long enough to touch the earth circle, will have the circumference of the moon! Neat, huh! And the small triangle formed by the moon and the earth square will be a perfect 345 triangle (which doesn’t seem to mean much.)
** Source: http://geometry.wholesomebalance.com/Sacred_Geometry_2.html#Phi
Recommend this website to your friends:
Was the golden ratio intentionally built into the Great Pyramid of Cheops?
Why would anyone intentionally build the golden ratio into a pyramid, or other structure? What was the significance of to the Egyptians? And did the ancient Egyptians intentionally design the Great Pyramid to square the circle?
The answer to these questions is uncertain since designing the Great Pyramid according to the simple rules explained by the graphic below would give the pyramid automatically (by coincidence? ) all its "magic" qualities.
The height of the Great Pyramid times 2Ï€ exactly equals the perimeter of the pyramid. This proportions result from elegant design of the pyramid with the height equal two diameters of a circle and the base equal to the circumference of the circle. Click here or on the image below to see larger picture
Comparing the Great Pyramid with the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan
The Pyramid of the Sun and the Great Pyramid of Egypt are almost or very nearly equal to one another in base perimeter. The Pyramid of the Sun is "almost" half the height of the Great Pyramid. There is a slight difference. The Great Pyramid is 1.03 - times larger than the base of the Pyramid of the Sun. Conversely, the base of the Pyramid of the Sun is 97% of the Great Pyramid's base.
The ratio of the base perimeter to the height:
Great Pyramid Pyramid of the Sun
6.2800001... : 1
(deviates by 0.05 % from the
6.2831853 value for 2 x pi) 12.560171... : 1
(deviates by 0.05 % from the
12.566371 value for 4 x pi)
The Great Pyramid - Metrological Standard
The Great Pyramid is generally regarded as a tomb and as grandiose memorial to the pharaoh who commissioned it. The opposing view is that of the pyramid being the culminating achievement of those who practised an advanced science in prehistory.
The Great Pyramid is a repository of universal standards, it is a model of the earth against which any standard could be confirmed and corrected if necessary.
It is exactly the imperishable standard, which the French had sought to create by the devising of the metre, but infinitely more practical and intelligent.
From classical times, the Great pyramid has always been acknowledged as having mathematical, metrological and geodetic functions. But ancient Greek and Roman writers were further removed in time from the designers of the Great Pyramid than they are from us. They had merely inherited fragments of a much older cosmology; the science in which it was founded having long since disappeared.
---------------------------------
The Concave Faces of the Great Pyramid
Aerial photo by Groves, 1940 (detail).
In his book The Egyptian Pyramids: A Comprehensive, Illustrated Reference, J.P. Lepre wrote:
One very unusual feature of the Great Pyramid is a concavity of the core that makes the monument an eight-sided figure, rather than four-sided like every other Egyptian pyramid. That is to say, that its four sides are hollowed in or indented along their central lines, from base to peak. This concavity divides each of the apparent four sides in half, creating a very special and unusual eight-sided pyramid; and it is executed to such an extraordinary degree of precision as to enter the realm of the uncanny. For, viewed from any ground position or distance, this concavity is quite invisible to the naked eye. The hollowing-in can be noticed only from the air, and only at certain times of the day. This explains why virtually every available photograph of the Great Pyramid does not show the hollowing-in phenomenon, and why the concavity was never discovered until the age of aviation. It was discovered quite by accident in 1940, when a British Air Force pilot, P. Groves, was flying over the pyramid. He happened to notice the concavity and captured it in the now-famous photograph. [p. 65]
This strange feature was not first observed in 1940. It was illustrated in La Description de l'Egypte in the late 1700's (Volume V, pl. 8). Flinders Petrie noticed a hollowing in the core masonry in the center of each face and wrote that he "continually observed that the courses of the core had dips of as much as ½° to 1°" (The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh, 1883, p. 421). Though it is apparently more easily observed from the air, the concavity is measurable and is visible from the ground under favorable lighting conditions
Ikonos satellite image of the Great Pyramid
I.E.S. Edwards wrote, "In the Great Pyramid the packing-blocks were laid in such a way that they sloped slightly inwards towards the centre of each course, with a result that a noticeable depression runs down the middle of each face -- a peculiarity shared, as far as is known, by no other pyramid" (The Pyramids of Egypt, 1975, p. 207). Maragioglio and Rinaldi described a similar concavity on the pyramid of Menkaure, the third pyramid at Giza. Miroslav Verner wrote that the faces of the Red Pyramid at Dahshur are also "slightly concave."
Diagram of the concavity (not to scale).
What was the purpose for concave Great Pyramid sides? Maragioglio and Rinaldi felt this feature would help bond the casing to the core. Verner agreed: "As in the case of the earlier Red Pyramid, the slightly concave walls were intended to increase the stability of the pyramid's mantle [i.e. casing stones]" (The Pyramids, 2001, p. 195). Martin Isler outlined the various theories in his article "Concerning the Concave Faces on the Great Pyramid" (Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, 20:1983, pp. 27-32):
To give a curved form to the nucleus in order to prevent the faces from sliding.
casing block in the center would be larger and would serve more suitably as a guide for other blocks in the same course.
better bond the nucleus to the casing.
aesthetic reasons, as concave faces would make the structure more pleasing to the eye.
the casing stones were later removed, they were tumbled down the faces, and thereby 6wore down the center of the pyramids more than the edges.
erosion of wind-swept sand had a greater effect on the center
Isler dismisses the first four reasons based on the idea that "what is proposed for the first pyramid should hold true for the others." He also dismisses the last two because they would not "dip the courses," but rather have simply "worn away the surface of the stone." Adding another category to the list above, "a result of imperfect building method," he proceeds to theorize that the concavity was an artifact of a compounding error in building technique (specifically, a sag in the mason's line). One is tempted to reject this theory based on Isler's own reasoning: "what is proposed for the first pyramid should hold true for the others."
The concavity has prompted more improbable theories, usually in support of some larger agenda. David Davidson (cited by Peter Tompkins in Secrets of the Great Pyramid, pp. 108-114) defended the discredited Piazzi Smyth by attempting to demonstrate that if measurements included the hollowing, they would provide three base measurements that describe the three lengths of the year: solar, sidereal, and "anomalistic." (These lines, on the diagram below, would be AB, AEFB, and AMB.) What Davidson is assuming is that the concavity, present today in the core structure of the pyramid, would extend to the finished cased surface. There is no evidence for this; indeed the extant casing is perfectly flat. Maragioglio and Rinaldi observed that the granite casing of Menkaure's pyramid was flat, but above the granite the packing-blocks formed a concavity in the center of each face. The evidence indicates that the concavity is a functional feature of the core structure that was hidden from sight when the casing stones were applied.
The main source of all kinds of delusions and speculations about our mythical past for the western man comes of course from Plato. With the myth of Atlantis he planted the necessary seed of mythical Eden, a culture of high intelligence that lived before the known history. If Plato received any wisdom from the ancient Egypt it could perhaps be traced in the canon of numbers that is so latently present throughout his work, but never on the surface. This canon seems to appear in the descriptions of his fantastic cities where everything is most carefully calculated and proportioned. The topic of Plato's Laws is the description of the ideal state called Magnesia which is entirely composed out of the mysterious number 5,040.
The distance* when Earth is closest to Sun (perihelion) is 147x106 km, which is translated into royal cubits 280x109, hinting at the height of the Great pyramid,
280 royal cubits.
The above article comes from aiwaz.net_institute - Great Pyramid and Giza plateau
and is Copyright © 2001-2003 aiwaz.net_institute.
All rights reserved. No part of this article, including text and images, may be reproduced or copied in any form or by any means without the express prior written permission of aiwaz.net_institute. Reprinted with permission.
* Related links: Astronomic & Cosmographic Data, Nasa site with planetary data
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Do not miss this web site: aiwaz.net_institute - Great Pyramid and Giza plateau
Find out more amazing facts about the GREAT PYRAMID: Position of King's Chamber, Queen's Chamber, Subterranean Chamber; SECOND PYRAMID: Dimensions of Pyramid, Great Chamber, Coffer, Lower Chamber; THIRD PYRAMID: Dimensions of Pyramid, Chambers,MATHESIS of Giza Plateau.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Golden Ratio & Squaring the Circle in the Great Pyramid
A straight line is said to have been cut in extreme and mean ratio when, as the whole line is to the greater segment, so is the greater to the less. [Euclid]
The extreme and mean ratio is also known as the golden ratio.
If the smaller part = 1, and larger part = G, the golden ratio requires that
G is equal approximately 1.6180
Does the Great Pyramid contain the Golden Ratio?
Assuming that the height of the GP = 146.515 m, and base = 230.363 m, and using simple math we find that half of the base is 115.182 m and the "slant height" is 186.369 m
Dividing the "slant height" (186.369m) by "half base" (115.182m) gives = 1.6180, which is practically equal to the golden ration!
The earth/moon relationship is the only one in our solar system that contains this unique golden section ratio that "squares the circle". Along with this is the phenomenon that the moon and the sun appear to be the same size, most clearly noticed during an eclipse. This too is true only from earth's vantage point…No other planet/moon relationship in our solar system can make this claim.
Although the problem of squaring the circle was proven mathematically impossible in the 19th century (as pi, being irrational, cannot be exactly measured), the Earth, the moon, and the Great Pyramid, are all coming about as close as you can get to the solution!
If the base of the Great Pyramid is equated with the diameter of the earth, then the radius of the moon can be generated by subtracting the radius of the earth from the height of the pyramid (see the picture below).
Also the square (in orange), with the side equal to the radius of the Earth, and the circle (in blue), with radius equal to the radius of the Earth plus the radius of the moon, are very nearly equal in perimeters:
Orange Square Perimeter = 2+2+2+2=8
Blue Circle Circumference = 2*pi*1.273=8
Note:
Earth, Radius, Mean = 6,370,973.27862 m *
Moon, Radius, Mean = 1,738,000 m.*
Moon Radius divided by Earth Radius = 0.2728 *
* Source: Astronomic and Cosmographic Data
Let's re-phrase the above arguments **
In the diagram above, the big triangle is the same proportion and angle of the Great Pyramid, with its base angles at 51 degrees 51 minutes. If you bisect this triangle and assign a value of 1 to each base, then the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) equals phi (1.618..) and the perpendicular side equals the square root of phi. And that’s not all. A circle is drawn with it’s centre and diameter the same as the base of the large triangle. This represents the circumference of the earth. A square is then drawn to touch the outside of the earth circle. A second circle is then drawn around the first one, with its circumference equal to the perimeter of the square. (The squaring of the circle.) This new circle will actually pass exactly through the apex of the pyramid. And now the “wow”: A circle drawn with its centre at the apex of the pyramid and its radius just long enough to touch the earth circle, will have the circumference of the moon! Neat, huh! And the small triangle formed by the moon and the earth square will be a perfect 345 triangle (which doesn’t seem to mean much.)
** Source: http://geometry.wholesomebalance.com/Sacred_Geometry_2.html#Phi
Recommend this website to your friends:
Was the golden ratio intentionally built into the Great Pyramid of Cheops?
Why would anyone intentionally build the golden ratio into a pyramid, or other structure? What was the significance of to the Egyptians? And did the ancient Egyptians intentionally design the Great Pyramid to square the circle?
The answer to these questions is uncertain since designing the Great Pyramid according to the simple rules explained by the graphic below would give the pyramid automatically (by coincidence? ) all its "magic" qualities.
The height of the Great Pyramid times 2Ï€ exactly equals the perimeter of the pyramid. This proportions result from elegant design of the pyramid with the height equal two diameters of a circle and the base equal to the circumference of the circle. Click here or on the image below to see larger picture
Comparing the Great Pyramid with the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan
The Pyramid of the Sun and the Great Pyramid of Egypt are almost or very nearly equal to one another in base perimeter. The Pyramid of the Sun is "almost" half the height of the Great Pyramid. There is a slight difference. The Great Pyramid is 1.03 - times larger than the base of the Pyramid of the Sun. Conversely, the base of the Pyramid of the Sun is 97% of the Great Pyramid's base.
The ratio of the base perimeter to the height:
Great Pyramid Pyramid of the Sun
6.2800001... : 1
(deviates by 0.05 % from the
6.2831853 value for 2 x pi) 12.560171... : 1
(deviates by 0.05 % from the
12.566371 value for 4 x pi)
The Great Pyramid - Metrological Standard
The Great Pyramid is generally regarded as a tomb and as grandiose memorial to the pharaoh who commissioned it. The opposing view is that of the pyramid being the culminating achievement of those who practised an advanced science in prehistory.
The Great Pyramid is a repository of universal standards, it is a model of the earth against which any standard could be confirmed and corrected if necessary.
It is exactly the imperishable standard, which the French had sought to create by the devising of the metre, but infinitely more practical and intelligent.
From classical times, the Great pyramid has always been acknowledged as having mathematical, metrological and geodetic functions. But ancient Greek and Roman writers were further removed in time from the designers of the Great Pyramid than they are from us. They had merely inherited fragments of a much older cosmology; the science in which it was founded having long since disappeared.
---------------------------------
The Concave Faces of the Great Pyramid
Aerial photo by Groves, 1940 (detail).
In his book The Egyptian Pyramids: A Comprehensive, Illustrated Reference, J.P. Lepre wrote:
One very unusual feature of the Great Pyramid is a concavity of the core that makes the monument an eight-sided figure, rather than four-sided like every other Egyptian pyramid. That is to say, that its four sides are hollowed in or indented along their central lines, from base to peak. This concavity divides each of the apparent four sides in half, creating a very special and unusual eight-sided pyramid; and it is executed to such an extraordinary degree of precision as to enter the realm of the uncanny. For, viewed from any ground position or distance, this concavity is quite invisible to the naked eye. The hollowing-in can be noticed only from the air, and only at certain times of the day. This explains why virtually every available photograph of the Great Pyramid does not show the hollowing-in phenomenon, and why the concavity was never discovered until the age of aviation. It was discovered quite by accident in 1940, when a British Air Force pilot, P. Groves, was flying over the pyramid. He happened to notice the concavity and captured it in the now-famous photograph. [p. 65]
This strange feature was not first observed in 1940. It was illustrated in La Description de l'Egypte in the late 1700's (Volume V, pl. 8). Flinders Petrie noticed a hollowing in the core masonry in the center of each face and wrote that he "continually observed that the courses of the core had dips of as much as ½° to 1°" (The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh, 1883, p. 421). Though it is apparently more easily observed from the air, the concavity is measurable and is visible from the ground under favorable lighting conditions
Ikonos satellite image of the Great Pyramid
I.E.S. Edwards wrote, "In the Great Pyramid the packing-blocks were laid in such a way that they sloped slightly inwards towards the centre of each course, with a result that a noticeable depression runs down the middle of each face -- a peculiarity shared, as far as is known, by no other pyramid" (The Pyramids of Egypt, 1975, p. 207). Maragioglio and Rinaldi described a similar concavity on the pyramid of Menkaure, the third pyramid at Giza. Miroslav Verner wrote that the faces of the Red Pyramid at Dahshur are also "slightly concave."
Three proposed "baselines" of the Great Pyramid (not to scale).
John Williams, author of Williams' Hydraulic Theory to Cheops' Pyramid wrote that "the only advantage that I can see - and it is a great one - for having a concave face on a structure is to contain extremely high internal pressures - the type of pressures that would result from using a hydraulic method of my description. Think of this in terms of an egg shell, arch or gabling." This explanation is also voiced by other purveyors of the "pump-theory" such as Edward J. Kunkel (author of The Pharaoh's Pump, 1962) and Richard Noone (author of 5/5/2000: Ice: The Ultimate Disaster, 1982). Unfortunately, they fail to understand how an arch or load-bearing gable works. A supporting arch is designed to convert the downward force, or weight, of a structure to an outward force, which in turn is transferred to a buttress, a pier, or an abutment. An arch simply redirects the force; it does not make it vanish. If the sides of the Great Pyramid were designed as arches, then those arches would serve to direct the load into thin air. It doesn't make sense. The eggshell analogy is yet less applicable because the pyramid is not egg-shaped. Like the arch, the egg is strong because it transfers load pressure, in this case into vertical as well as horizontal forces that are distributed more evenly along the structure of the egg due to its shape.
Kunkel likened each pyramid face to a dam. He claimed that each side bends inward against the pressure of the water inside the pyramid just as a dam (Hoover Dam for example) bends towards the force of the water it holds back. An arch dam employs the same structural principles as the arch (described above). The dam curves towards the hydrostatic pressure from the water behind it, which in turn is distributed horizontally to abutments on the side walls against which the dam is built. Again, the pyramid lacks such abutments.
In Ancient Egyptian Construction and Architecture, Clarke and Englebach wrote:
Most pyramids have individual peculiarities which are as yet difficult to explain. For instance, in the Great Pyramid, as possibly in certain others, a large depression in the packing-blocks runs down the middle of each face, implying a line of extra-thick facing there. Though there is no special difficulty in arranging the blocks of a course in such a manner that they increase in size at the middle, there is no satisfactory explanation of the feature any more than there is of the 'girdle-blocks' [in the Great Pyramid's ascending passage] already discussed. [p. 128]
The purpose for the concavity of the Great Pyramids remains a mystery and no satisfactory explanation for this feature has been offered. The indentation is so slight that any practical function is difficult to imagine.
© 2000 by Larry Orcutt, Catchpenny Mysteries, Reprinted with permission
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Great Pyramid's "Air Shafts"
While shafts in the King's Chamber had been described as early as 1610, the shafts in the Queen's Chamber were not discovered until 1872. In that year, Waynman Dixon and his friend Dr. Grant found a crack in the south wall of the Queen's Chamber. After pushing a long wire into the crack, indicating that a void was behind it, Dixon hired a carpenter named Bill Grundy to cut through the wall. A rectangular channel, 8.6 inches wide and 8 inches high, was found leading 7 feet into the pyramid before turning upward at about a 32º angle. With the two similar shafts of the King's Chamber in mind, Dixon measured a like position on the north wall, and Grundy chiseled away and, as expected, found the opening of a similar channel. The men lit fires inside the shafts in an attempt to find where they led. The smoke stagnated in the northern shaft but disappeared into the southern shaft. No smoke was seen to exit the pyramid on the outside. Three artifacts were discovered inside the shafts: a small bronze grapnel hook, a bit of cedar-like wood, and a "grey-granite, or green-stone" ball weighing 8.325 grains thought to be an Egyptian "mina" weight ball
Shafts and passages of the Great Pyramid at Giza
The Shafts of the Queen's Chamber Described
The openings of both shafts are located at the same level in the chamber, at the joint at the top of the second course of granite wall-stone; the ceilings of the shafts are level with the joint.
The northern shaft runs horizontally for just over six feet (76"), then turns upward at a mean angle of 37º 28'. The shaft terminates about 20 feet short of the outside of the pyramid. The total length of the northern shaft is about 240 feet and rises at an angle of 38º for the majority of its length.
The southern shaft also runs horizontally for just over six feet (80"), then turns upward at a mean angle of 38º 28'. The total length of the southern shaft is about 250 feet and, as its northern counterpart, ascends at an angle of 38º for the majority of its length and comes to an end about 20 feet short of the outside of the pyramid.
The Shafts of the King's Chamber Described
The openings of both shafts are located at roughly the same level in the chamber, at the joint at the top of the first course of granite wall-stone. The northern opening is slightly lower, its ceiling being level with the joint, while the floor of the southern opening is roughly level with the joint.
The northern shaft is rectangular, about 7 inches wide by 5 inches high, a shape it maintains throughout its length. The shaft begins on the horizontal for about 6 feet then takes a series of four bends. While maintaining its general upward angle, it shifts first to the north-northwest then back to north, then to north-northeast, and finally back to true north. It has been speculated by some that this unexplained semicircular diversion might have been necessary to avoid some heretofore undiscovered feature of the pyramid. The total length of the northern shaft is about 235 feet and rises at an angle of 31º (with a variation of between 30º 43' and 32º 4') for the majority of its length.
Though the first eight feet of the northern shaft is intact, the next thirty or so feet have been excavated by treasure seekers, presumably following the direction of the shaft in search of treasure. The breach to the shaft was made in the west wall of the short passage leading from the antechamber to the King's Chamber. A modern iron grate today guards the mouth of this breach.
The southern shaft is different in appearance. Its mouth is larger, about 18" wide by 24" high. The dimensions are reduced to about 12" by 18" within a few feet, and then narrows yet more to about 8" by 12". The shape is not rectangular, as is the northern shaft, but has a dome shape where it enters the chamber, with a narrow floor, the angle of the walls being slightly obtuse, and a dome-shaped ceiling. The shaft is horizontal and true south for about 6 feet. At the first bend, its shape changes to an oval, and continues thusly for about 8 feet. Its orientation also changes slightly from true south to south-southwest. At the second bend its shape changes yet again to a rectangle, with a height greater than its width. It retains this shape for the 160 feet to the outside of the pyramid where it emerges at the 101st course of stone. It also changes directions once again at the second bend to a more severe south-southwest diversion. The total length of the southern shaft is about 175 feet and ascends at an angle of 45º (with a variation of between 44º 26' and 45º 30') for the majority of its length.
The Function of the Shafts
When Sandys described the Great Pyramid in 1610, he wrote of the shafts:
In the walls, on each side of the upper room, there are two holes, one opposite to another, their ends not discernable, nor big enough to be crept into -- sooty within, and made, as they say, by a flame of fire which darted through it.
Greaves also wrote of the King's Chamber shafts in 1638. Considering the presence of the lampblack inside, he concluded that the shafts had been intended as receptacles for an "eternal lamp." In 1692, M. Maillet wrote that the shafts served as means of communication for those who were buried alive with the dead king. Not only did the shafts provide air, he reasoned, but they also provides a passage for food which was placed in boxes and pulled through by rope.
By the 20th century, the shafts were presumed to have been designed to provide ventilation. That view has slowly been changing, however. I.E.S. Edwards wrote, "The object of these shafts is not known with certainty; they may have been designed for the ventilation of the chamber or for some religious purpose which is still open to conjecture." (The Pyramids of Egypt, 1961, p. 126.) Ahmed Fakhry wrote, "They are usually referred to as 'air channels,' but most Egyptologists believe that they had a religious significance related to the soul of the king." (The Pyramids, 1969, p. 118.) More recently, Mark Lehner wrote:
A symbolic function should also be attributed to the so-called "air-shafts," which had nothing to do with conducting air. No other pyramid contains chambers and passages so high in the body of masonry as Khufu's and so the builders provided the King's Chamber with small model passages to allow the king's spirit to ascend to the stars. (The Complete Pyramids, 1997, p. 114)
There are many reasons why it is not likely that the shafts were meant for ventilation. The complex angles of the shafts necessitated the piercing of many courses of stone, a daunting logistical challenge during design and construction. Horizontal shafts would have been much easier to build: shafts carved through a single course of stone. One might well wonder why ventilation would be needed at all! No other known pyramid builder made such provisions; even workers in rock-cut tombs managed on the air provided solely by the entrance passage. When the bulk of work on the King's Chamber was being done, ambient air was plentiful as the ceiling had not yet been put in place. The chamber was finished as the superstructure rose.
There are also, however, reasons why it is not likely that the shafts were meant to serve as "launching ramps" for the king's ka. When, in 1964, Alexander Badawy and Virginia Trimble determined that the shafts are "aimed" at certain "imperishable" circumpolar stars and at the constellation of Orion, the function of the shafts as cultic features seemed certain. But the ka did not require a physical means of egress from a tomb -- false doors served this purpose quite nicely both before and after Khufu's reign. The passage that ascends to the entrance of the pyramid is also directed at the circumpolar stars in the manner of previous pyramids. The northern shafts for such a use would have been a needless and bothersome redundancy, although admittedly the Egyptians were not adverse to redundancies.
That fact that no other pyramid in Egypt is known to posses similar shafts as those of the Great Pyramid is problematic. If the shafts were so important for either ventilation or as passages for the king's ka, then why were they omitted in other funerary structures? It is obvious that the builders of Khufu's pyramid went to a jolly lot of trouble to incorporate the shafts into the design of the pyramid, but the true reason why still remains a mystery.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
India beat Australia and salvage pride (Cricket)
India pulled off an incredible two-wicket victory relying on the tail-enders to salvage some pride in the seventh and final cricket One-day against Australia here on Wednesday night.
In a low-scoring thriller, India first bundled out Australia for a paltry 193 in 41.3 overs, riding on Murali Kartik’s career-best six for 27 and then staged a dramatic recovery to overhaul the target with four overs to spare and reduce the margin to 4-2 in the series.
The Indians owed their remarkable victory to left-arm spinner Kartik, who produced a mesmerizing spell to derail the Australian batting and then was involved in a cheeky 52-run unbeaten partnership with Zaheer Khan (31 not out) to guide the team home.
****************India vs Australia 7th ODI - 1st 5wkts of Aussies***************
***************India vs Australia 7th ODI - Last 5wkts of Aussies innings***********
published by sree
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
** Sopcast Links and TVU Link Open in IE
this wilbee cricket channel tomaro ******STAR SPORTS BY SREE******** BEESURE CLICK PLAY TO PLAY THE CH
Wed 17 14:30 local, 09:00 GM 7th ODI - India v Australia Wankhede Stadium, MumbAI
NJOY THE MOVIE 4 NOW TOMARI I WIL PLAY CRICKET IN THIS CH THANKS 4 VISITING MY BLOG B
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
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