Age of the Sphinx, A glaring issue about it's age!

Originally posted by trailertrash
reply to post by SLAYER69

 

The thing was carved out of sedimentary rock in it's natural state. The reason for the difference in what we see now is due to the varying grades of this rock. The upper layers were of greater quality and thus resist erosion better than the lower which were not as strong.

I was under the impression that this was sorted out decades ago by geologists. Seems simple enough to me.

edit on 11-7-2011 by trailertrash because: (no reason given)

From all the posts by the OP i think its safe to say the layers are quite uniform in its "quality" look at the blocks all over the place...no real evidence of stones having accelerated erosion in spot...the plateau in general is pretty uniform. And its all from very close to the surface...not much chance of this IMHO...

I have worked stone before and if there was much quality loss the head would have cracked off completely following the vein/layer of lesser quality.

The most likely is A

its recarved and much older than in books...and as another poster pointed out, we have found other sites around the world that are dated older...its not that unlikely this would be older too. And before they dug the body out, the sand was around the neck so it would be easy to recarve it before they dug the rest out....

IMAGINE...wondering along and finding a monolithic head sticking out of the sand!! That would be so cool!!

What if we built it before? and now we are looking at our own work? Before the ice age....and we actually destroyed ourselves and our memories...the fallen ones...are us


Also the OP noted the temple made from this lower rock is not degraded...and the stone around the sphinx is eroded also...this upper layer has eroded...its the same layer as the upper part of the sphinx as the sphinx is recessed into the ground

reply to post by Drala




"IMAGINE...wondering along and finding a monolithic head sticking out of the sand!! That would be so cool!!"



www.youtube.com...


sorry, couldn't help it.


planet of the apes material.

To add some more food for thought:

The Giza Radiocarbon Studies
Radiological findings at Giza in the 1980s and 1990s, although not conclusive for the Sphinx site, have a bearing on the possible age of the monument. Surprisingly, neither side in the Sphinx controversy brought these findings into the debate.

Herbert Haas, James Devine, Robert Wenke, Mark Lehner, Willy Wolfli, and Georg Bonani, "Radiocarbon chronology and the historical calendar in Egypt," in Chronologies du Proche Orient/Chronologies in the Near East, eds. Olivier Aurenche, Jacques Evin, Francis Hours, BAR International Series, 379 (ii) (Oxford, 1987), pp. 585-606.

In 1984, a team of scholars gathered mortar samples from stone structures at Giza for a radiocarbon dating survey. The 1987 report of the survey found a significant discrepancy between the conventional dates of the Giza pyramids and the dates found by radiocarbon testing. On average, the structures at Giza were found to be about four centuries older than their conventional dates. Two samples taken from the mortar of the Sphinx Temple gave radiocarbon dates of 2746 BCE (+/- 171 years) and 2085 BCE (+/- 314 years). These dates were anomalous and received no publicity at the time. They prompted survey members to return in 1995 to gather samples for a second survey.

Robert Wenke, et. al., "Dating the Pyramids," Archaeology, Vol. 52, No. 5 (September-October 1999), pp. 26-33.

Georges Bonani, Herbert Haas, Zahi Hawass, Mark Lehner, Shawki Nakhla, John Nolan, Robert Wenke, and Willy Wolfli, "Radiocarbon Dates of Old and Middle Kingdom Monuments in Egypt," Radiocarbon, Vol. 43, No. 3 (2001), pp. 1297-1320.

Mark Lehner, "How Old are the Pyramids?" Ancient Egypt Research Associates, 2005.

The second survey, reported in 1999 and more fully in 2001, found on average that the Giza structures were only two centuries older than their conventional dates. The authors of the second survey attributed the older dates to the Egyptian use of "old wood" (or recycled wood) in the charcoal used to make the mortar for the structures. The younger sample dates were not explained. The 1995 survey took no new samples from the Sphinx Temple.

The original samples from the Sphinx Temple may have been later intrusions and cannot rule out a pre-Khafra date. But none of the dates for the Sphinx Temple or for Giza as a whole corroborate a prehistoric age.

source

reply to post by Mdv2


Well that's rather interesting. They can't even get the temple date straight and it appears to be much younger than the body of the Sphinx


Whats your opinion?

I know it was stated that the Romans used the Sphinx, pretty much, as target practice. So, artillery hit the sphinx, then those places weathered, etc.

If someone's already mentioned, sorry. Great thread though, awesomely detailed data.

reply to post by SLAYER69


Is there not a theory that the body was done decades before and the head was redone from say a lion to it's form it shows now. I have seen it or watched it on a documentry somewhere. that would explain the different weathering on areas. So if the head was redone and then at the same time the wall was constructed would be a plausable reason as to why the weathering on the wall and head are roughly the same. So wthe question is who built the original structure?

reply to post by celerygeneral

Thanks so much for posting these. They offer a viewpoint about the sphinx (multiples?) which I had never heard before now. New Zealand seems to be coming up more and more for me within the last year, so I was interested to read this.

So many great new (to me) ideas showing themselves in this thread. Thanks for keeping this going, OP.

reply to post by vkturbo


For what it's worth this may be it or a similar video.

It is blatantly obvious that the head was recarved at a later date - and the sphinx is considerably older.

But here again is an excellent example of how 'scientific' institutions are not 'scientists' and do not serve 'scientific' agendas - they are social institutions and serve social agendas - in this case to ensure that Egyptians are credited with creating that culture - even though nonsensically I believe the Arabs are actually relativley recent occupiers of that region!

reply to post by idunno12


It was my pleasure, I'm glad you found it interesting.

I love the spinx so much. Obelix broke its nose damn Gaul™

When you say the base was buried, you are assuming it was a static burial over time, ie the wind couldn't get at it so therefore it couldn't erode so therefore nothing was eroding at it.
Sand dunes are in motion, and over millenia, the base recieved most of this close contact aggregate movement action while the head in time lapse comparison only recieved a dusting.
A slow moving pile of mega tons of sand will have a lot different effect than wind erosion, especially over the length of time involved here.
Slow moving tonnage is how the glaciers reshaped the stratta on a much more grand scale, but it is the same principle, weight on top of aggregate and motion. The dynamics are different, one is a slow moving solid mass and one is a slowly compressing and uncompressing mass but aggregate motion gets applied to an eroding surface in each case.

Been there as well. Visited the Cairo area for three days but spent a year in Sinai. I can tell you that being buried in sand may be misleading. The sand dunes are very dynamic. You can have a 100 foot tall dune disappear in a day or two. So I would think anything under them would be "sanded" pretty well to say the least. It was probably buried and exposed over and over. Also, in Sinai in the mid 90's, the rains during the monsoons were tremendous. Flash floods. They would wash the Bedouins to the Gulf of Aquba. Tragic really. Of course that does not mean it rained like that way back then but you get my point.

reply to post by SLAYER69


Good thread, and I somewhat agree with your observations. I have always believed the weathering of the Sphinx does exhibit water corrosion as well. Whilst it would make sense that if the original head was recarved it would be smaller as suggested, but in the images it actually looks quite different texture as well as layering and erosion.

Just to throw this out there for thought, could it be possible that the Head was not recarved, but actually added? (i.e.) A thought that maybe the original head was damaged / collapsed / very eroded and the stone masons actually replaced it with the present head, i.e. the different layer / proportion to body / texture?

Anyway just a thought to add to the discussion.

Originally posted by SLAYER69

Originally posted by LadyTrick
reply to post by SLAYER69

 

Because the temple and the head are not carved from that ground limestone. So either the temple rock and head are stronger materials quarried from a more resiliant material or they were added much later.

Ok do you mean "re-carved" later? Because it could not have been added later to the body because it's one solid continuously sculptured piece.

I personally believe the head has been added later as the proportions to the body do not match. I have heard several theories that the head was originally Anubis.

The head being "Re-carved" is a possibility but again "Added"???

I like the Anubis touch

Its interesting that if you wiki Anubis and check out his name in hieroglyphics you get this rather Sphinxy looking glyph as part of his name:

Hi All,

Following on form the Anubis theory; has anyone read Robert Temples "The Sphinx Mystery"? He puts forward and interesting theory that the Sphinx enclosure was intentionally flooded and kept as a sort of moat, hence the horizontal water erosion on the sphinx itself (different levels as the water level was poorly maintained during unstable periods). The vertical water erosion seen on the enclosure walls resulting from water running back in when they dredged the sand from the "moat". As everyone knows the enclosure will fill with sand very quickly if left unattended. He proposes that the re-carving of the head took place around 1930 - 1890 BC done by Amenemhet II, he makes a good case for this with comparisons of known images of Amenemhet II and Khafre and other builders proposed by conformists. He maintains that the original form of the monument was as Anubis, in the form of a dog, also that the temple was added at a later time hence the lesser erosion.

He also has a fantastic collection of photo's, including proof of the entry tunnel and burial chamber. The entry tunnel is located on the back of the Sphinx toward the hind quarters, several very old postcard pictures clearly show a huge fissure there which was subsequently filled in (vandalised) by Baraize.

reply to post by SLAYER69


have enjoyed reading again refresh memory also love the mysteries and yes I also believe it is far older than is claimed by harty farty naswas or whatever the glory hunter is called
me I reckon 10 14 thousand yr old could be older but thanks to the egyptian vandalism we will probaly never get the true age but enjoying this thread

reply to post by SLAYER69


Because the other structures are more enclosed therefore it will take a much longer time for them to show wearing and they are all blocks which are more sturdier then the sphinx which is shaped much more different and more fragile in ways. The sphinx was built from the head to the bottom it was dug out in place so maybe that has something to do with it.
What was the point your making with this thread?

Nice pics and topic, but I can't see where you have brought anything new to the table in respect of this topic? There has been ongoing debate about this topic for decades at least. A quick Google shows these same arguments.

I have read many of your threads and I've noticed that your interest lies in "questioning" how old something is - almost as if you are on a mission to show all of us that there is something we are missing.

I'm not in the least saying that this is your mission, but as I cannot find any new arguments in this thread, It really has put a question in my mind as to why the same underlying current in all of your threads? Why do you feel the need to keep pointing out that things may be "older" than previously thought?

Not sure if anyone mentioned any of this or not, I tend to get distracted easily while sitting here trying to read thru pages and pages of stuff - in other words I don't have hours to sit here and read every comment made already.

You've been really busy lately, Slayer69, I like that. I've done a lot of my own reading and research into all kinds of "weird" stuff over the years but to be honest, I never really liked Forums too much. Mainly because of all the spam and arguing that goes on all the time, and the fact that you have to read so many comments sometimes spanning across months or even years.

But anyway, and again I'm sorry if someone already mentioned this - one of the first things that came to my mind after seeing your post here was the story of Napoleon shooting off the Sphinx's nose.

en.wikipedia.org...

Missing nose and beard



Limestone fragments of the Sphinx's beard
The one-metre-wide nose on the face is missing. Examination of the Sphinx's face shows that long rods or chisels were hammered into the nose, one down from the bridge and one beneath the nostril, then used to pry the nose off towards the south.[42]
The Egyptian Arab historian al-Maqrīzī, writing in the 15th century AD, attributes the loss of the nose to iconoclasm by Muhammad Sa'im al-Dahr, a Sufi Muslim from the khanqah of Sa'id al-Su'ada. In AD 1378, upon finding the Egyptian peasants making offerings to the Sphinx in the hope of increasing their harvest, Sa'im al-Dahr was so outraged that he destroyed the nose, and was hanged for vandalism. Al-Maqrīzī describes the Sphinx as the "talisman of the Nile" on which the locals believed the flood cycle depended.

A story claims that the nose was broken off by a cannonball fired by Napoleon's soldiers and that legend still lives on today. Other variants indict British troops, the Mamluks, and others. However, sketches of the Sphinx by the Dane Frederic Louis Norden, made in 1737 and published in 1755, illustrate the Sphinx already without a nose.

In addition to the lost nose, a ceremonial pharaonic beard is thought to have been attached, although this may have been added in later periods after the original construction. Egyptologist Vassil Dobrev has suggested that had the beard been an original part of the Sphinx, it would have damaged the chin of the statue upon falling.[14] The lack of visible damage supports his theory that the beard was a later addition.

To quickly summarize what several people have posted up on the "beloved" wikipedia, there are several different stories as to what happened to the Sphinx's nose - the one I remember hearing about as a kid was again, that Napoleon Bonaparte shot it's nose off, but if I remember correctly it wasn't by a cannonball either - the way I remember the story was that he had his troops target practice on it (so I guess the idea of a cannonball works).
I have never heard any of the other stories - probably because I'm an American and have never been to Egypt. However, I have never heard about any "sketches" that were made prior to Bonaparte being there either up until now - so obviously, nobody really "knows" what really happened... good stuff.