Archaeologists discovery: 12 sphinx statues unearthed in Egypt (4th Century)

Archaeologists discover second sphinx-lined road in Luxor dating back to fourth century

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They were buried beneath Egypt's shifting desert sands for centuries and more recently entombed by unsightly urban sprawl. But now the remains of hundreds of ancient sphinxes have been unearthed in Luxor and - once renovated - are due to go on show to tourists from next February in a huge open-air museum. The latest remarkable discovery came when jubilant Egyptian archaeologists found the 12 sphinxes along a road linked to an already discovered ceremonial route known as the Sphinx Alley.

The Kabash path connects the vast Karnak temple in ancient Thebes to the Luxor Temple. It marks a route that ancient Egyptians promenaded along once a year carrying the statues of the deities Amun and Mut in a symbolic re-enactment of their marriage. Amun was ancient Egypt's supreme god king, while Mut was a goddess worshipped as a mother. The road was later used by the Romans and is believed to have been renovated by Cleopatra, the fabled Ptolemaic queen who left her cartouche - an inscribed hieroglyphic bearing her name - at the temple in Luxor.

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The statues are from the reign of Pharaoh Nectanebo I and are in a road off 'Sphinx Alley' which could not be dug up before because of flats above it

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The Avenue of the Sphinxes links Karnak Temple and Luxor in Egypt and is believed to have been visited by Cleopatra

Source: www.dailymail.co.uk...

Very nice find indeed. Over 1300 of these road statues are believed to be around-many unfound. I bet someday-when they have explored the whole area and read over a findings map etc that one hell of a picture is going to emerge of our friends over there.

Now, the debate. Who made these, or this stuff. I say humans. Long after the aliens vanished (one way or another)-leaving the Giza pyramids and other things. But whatever happened, one thing for sure, they liked to go BIG. On just about everything.

What does that tell you? Why? What the hell where these people doing in sand dominated areas-building all of this stuff? For what overall purpose. Fear of their Gods (in which reality-were Ufo/Aliens).

I thought I had a good handle on Egypt and UFO/ALiens etc----until I joined ATS... With that being said, I think whoever made all of this stuff had the ability to heat rock into a liquid form and then could pour these things into a mold.

reply to post by anon72


Great post .

I've long been of the opinion that there are vast archaeological treasures to be found beneath all those 'sands of time' that , upon discovery will force the customary images of Egypt's distant past to be somewhat re-written and better understood .

It's most likely concrete.
Concrete's been around far longer than many people realize.

earliest known uses of concrete

reply to post by stupid girl


Yes, thank you for that. I learned a lot from that. Nice links to give even more info about. Hmmm.

I don't think your ATS name is what you are.... IMO

Very good post! Thanks for sharing. The sands of Egypt continue to surprise and amaze us. I don't think we will ever know all of her secrets. But it will be fun for all of us ancient alien believers every time something new pops up

reply to post by stupid girl


There is some evidence that some of the Great Pyramid may have some concrete it but it doesn't explain everything, It was made of Limestone (outer) and granite (Burial chamber), these blocks weighed tons and were solid, I don't think that thousands of slaves could have lifted them up to form the Pyramid, also think that they were much older evidenced by the water marks on the Sphinx.

Originally posted by anon72
Now, the debate. Who made these, or this stuff. I say humans.

Well, the articles say who made them. 4th century BC is 399 BC to 300 BC. The Egyptians were literate and wrote a lot of things (the beginning of the Library of Alexander is around this era) and they often had cartouches on them. The article mentions Nectanebo I. He deposed and then murdered the previous pharaoh. After he takes the throne (starting a new dynasty), he turned into a huge monument builder, probably to establish himself in the minds of the people as legitimate and not an usurper
en.wikipedia.org...

What does that tell you? Why? What the hell where these people doing in sand dominated areas-building all of this stuff? For what overall purpose. Fear of their Gods (in which reality-were Ufo/Aliens).

Luxor isn't in one of the sand dominated areas. It's on the banks of the Nile. And if you read the writings from that time, they weren't afraid of their Gods -- their gods protected them and cared for them (but occasionally got annoyed with them... however, they could be placated.)

Nor was this the only huge project... the temple of Ramses at Abu Simbal and the temple of Hatshepsut featured a lot more stonework than this. The Osireon is also quite extensive. One thing we keep trying to get people to realize is that there's a lot more to Egypt than just the pyramids and the sphynx. The people of Egypt created a lot of monuments (and a LOT of written material.) If you don't go hunting for it, you may end up thinking that the only things they wrote were the Book of the Dead and some lists of kings. The truth is that there's thousands of letters and poems and stories and prayers and so on and so forth. They're not big and spectacular things (they're pretty mundane) so none of the Ancient Aliens authors ever mentions those since they kind of knock holes in a lot of the material these modern authors write.

Anyway, we know that these were created in workshops that specialized in mass production (by 600 BC, they were mass producing amulets for mummies and had a lot of "modern" mass production techniques in place. In any case, the sphynxes weren't done overnight. They were done in workshops by the king's official sculptors (plus a lot of assistants.)

With that being said, I think whoever made all of this stuff had the ability to heat rock into a liquid form and then could pour these things into a mold.

Not unless they made individual molds for the things. They're all different. Very slightly different, but they're all different. Plus, the stone will show characteristics not found in concrete (and on some of them, if you know where to look, you can see the chisel marks.)

The Romans used concrete... it looks different than stone.

reply to post by anon72

They were buried beneath Egypt's shifting desert sands for centuries and more recently entombed by unsightly urban sprawl.

S & F


One could only imagine what else or whom will be discovered next.

Great find

I do not know how to post links but i will tell you to go to www.thecrowhouse.com and read the online book about world secrets and what no one will tell you about them. specifically the part about the pyrimads. the book states there are lots of stone hyroglyphs showing the taking of limestone and water and making the limstone into a liquid and when a specific other stone in the same state was added together and then poured like concrete into molds it dries alot harder and stronger than the original limestone. i recommend reading the entire book. i dont get into reading that much but found myself wanting to read more. great book

the chisel marks and other imperfections are from working the stone as it dried. think about it how much easier would that be than to take 24 hrs. to chisel or work one piece of stone.

reply to post by pthd840



You got my interest. Very interesting concept.

Thanks for that site. I will check it out.

Originally posted by pthd840the book states there are lots of stone hyroglyphs showing the taking of limestone and water and making the limstone into a liquid and when a specific other stone in the same state was added together and then poured like concrete into molds it dries alot harder and stronger than the original limestone.

Does the book say where these hieroglyphs are found (what temple or papyrus, etc)? I'm pretty sure the book is wrong, here and that no such writing exists. BUT... if they've got a link to the hieroglyphs, I'll be glad to take a look at what the writing says (I can read a few inscriptions in Egyptian hieroglyphs.)

I had some friends living in Luxor and that great 'find' is the road between two temples there. People were living all there life on top of it and the gov. just gave them a little money (not compared to the value of the houses they were living in) to relocate, if you refused, you didn't get paid and was relocated anyway all for tourism,... uhm great archeological discoveries. Remember the prtotest at the temple of Karnac

I love Egypt. Thanks for the post. I recently went to an Egypt exibit at the London Museum...(No im not a brit, just stationed here) and I saw so many odd things. These people were small in stature (the mummies I saw out of the caskets) yet these caskets were HUGE, some tombs were like 25 feet long and 15 feet tall. Then the actually mummy cases were 15 feet tall at least.

I find that very interesting.

Not to speak off topic, but my point being there is alot we can learn from Egypt.

Good post.

reply to post by ATC_GOD


I have to say you opened an old thought in me.

I have always believed that the way Egypt came to be-as taught in schools etc. just can't be. Well to be honest. Since I went an saw the King TuT tour a few years back. After seeing that exhibit I thought to myself their is no way those Egyptians, that we were taught, built the Pyramids. Not the Giza ones anyway.

I think whoever built the great buildings/structures, that we know are from the earliest times of Egyt's history, either died in war, natural event, moved off the planet whatever..... and after a long period of Human Race rebuilding etc they came across these grand structures/buildings.

They must have been in awe... with no other idea of other races, other than their own, they thought: Our Ansestors built these blah blah blah and they being to honor, copy, replicate etc as much they could-even making other great discoveries along the way.

Now, what did they find? Half human/half animal-bird hybirds. Some race they feared or had knowledge of thet made them fearful? So? call them Gods because you just can't explain it any other way. Then, over their history, things got faded out-changed-distorted etc to a point where they appeared to be the ones who actually designed and built everything.

Which leads me to the your point. The oversized coffins & Sarcophagus: Again, from the past Race of inhabitants. And. I believe no bodies were ever found in the Giza ones or most pyramids for that matter. This was discuss somewhat in another thread but I lost track of it.

Anyway, as I said, there was someone here before US.

Originally posted by ATC_GOD
I love Egypt. Thanks for the post. I recently went to an Egypt exibit at the London Museum...(No im not a brit, just stationed here) and I saw so many odd things. These people were small in stature (the mummies I saw out of the caskets) yet these caskets were HUGE, some tombs were like 25 feet long and 15 feet tall. Then the actually mummy cases were 15 feet tall at least.

They had to be. A mummy (such as Tut's) rested inside layers of 3 coffins and each one had to be big enough to contain the elaborate (smaller) coffin or coffins. And they had to fit a 12-14 foot tall coffin into the sarcophagus ("tomb" in your words.) Of course, that's for royalty only. Commoners only had a simple wooden coffin. Coffins carved into the shape of a human were for nobles and important people. The poor were probably wrapped in cloth and simply buried.

reply to post by Byrd


There you go... Making sense again.

Let me ask you this.

Do you think the Giza Pyramids were built by the way we were told in schools growing up? Meaning Slaves cutting the blocks and hauling them up.

Or, it was a national program that everyone (most) wanted to be a part of and participated willing etc?

Or, something along the lines that I wrote that another race built them and departed (one way or another) and they were later taken over by the Egyptians that we know about-and they went on to build a great nation etc?

OR something else-not similar to any of these.

I appreciate your insights and apparent knowledge of the topic.

Other than the obvious things like size, material, and age, are there any significant differences between these sphinxes and "The Sphinx"? I'm just wondering if it's supposed to be depicting the same person or deity.

reply to post by DragonsDemesne


I don't think that question can ever be answered correctly. From what I understand, the face to the BIG Sphinx has been changed/altered/repaired/weathered over time. I think it would be hard.

And also, from what I under stand, the Big Sphinx is far older than first thought. Maybe 10-15000 years? BUT I am not an expert, of course.

It would be interesting to see if the faces of all the others found, and to be found, resemble each other or did they get changed/altered/repaired. The one in this OP looks like it has not been changed in anyway. If I get a chance today, maybe I'll do some comparisons.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Originally posted by anon72
Do you think the Giza Pyramids were built by the way we were told in schools growing up? Meaning Slaves cutting the blocks and hauling them up.

No. Archaeologists haven't believed that version for a very long time.

Or, it was a national program that everyone (most) wanted to be a part of and participated willing etc?

Yes. Material (writing and inventories and paintings and tombs) from the worker's village around the Giza complex and from the other tombs (1st-4th dynasty and later) in the graveyard at Giza support this. So do trivial graffiti (like the names of the worker "gangs" or "teams" that are found on some of the blocks.)

Or, something along the lines that I wrote that another race built them and departed (one way or another) and they were later taken over by the Egyptians that we know about-and they went on to build a great nation etc?

The whole thing is culturally consistent with being done by Egyptians and nobody else. The layout of the pyramid complexes is very similar to that of Djoser's step pyramid (with the walls and offering areas and associated temples.) Djoser's pyramid predates the Giza pyramids by about 200 years -- and in the time between Djoser and the first of the Giza pyramids, pharaohs were building pyramids for themselves. There are several partial ones, such as that of Khaba (en.wikipedia.org...) that were started but not completed during a time of unrest (and probable assassinations), showing that this was a very common type of structure. Sneferu went on a pyramid building binge, with at least 3 pyramids constructed during his reign, and did a lot of modifying to the original design (en.wikipedia.org...).

There's nothing amazingly unusual about the cutting of the stone blocks (similar blocks, similarly well fitted together are found in many other structures even older than the Giza pyramids -- and other pyramids have stonecutting work that's equal to that on the Giza plateau.)

So the "train of evidence" suggests that there were groups of people very familiar with this kind of work and may have been doing these projects for pharaohs every year of their lives, that they had over 200 years of "practice" on pyramids, that the concept developed over time (went through subtle changes and innovations), and that even after the Giza pyramids were finished, they continued this kind of work (there's over 100 known pyramids in Egypt) -- indicating they still had the skills and the workforce for this kind of labor.

If this had been something totally novel, we would not see precursor buildings, would not see design modifications over the centuries, would not see the quality of stonework prior to this structure... and if it had been built by a more advanced civilization I'd expect to see uniform blocks of stone (they aren't), and possibly even better materials than the ones they were using. So what we'd see would be, say, mud brick mastabas very suddenly changing to huge buildings constructed from prefabricated blocks... and then a sudden drop back to the previous level of construction instead of innovations like an improved cutting and carving method for granite (as shown in Sahure's pyramid and complex.)

I can believe that the task of constructing the three great pyramids caused problems for Egypt (such as the next guy had to devote a lot of the resources of HIS reign to finishing the monument that Dear-Old-Dad-Who-Is-Now-a-God started) and caused the successors to these pharaohs to plan smaller pyramids (because if you're spending time finishing DearOldDad's pyramids and monuments, you aren't working on YOUR pyramid and monuments.) You also can't afford to have the whole country involved in these building projects and neglect developing your army (and within 100 years of the last of the Giza pyramids, Egypt was building up its armies and getting into conflicts with its neighbors.)

So I find it plausible that the Egyptians built it. And I don't see them as the "impossible to build" things that many people describe. I personally like some of the later monuments, such as the temple of Ramses at Abu Simbal and the great temples and structures built by Hatshepsut at Karnak. They're more sophisticated in design and the stonemasons are usually working in granite rather than the softer limestone.