 | Great Sphinx of Giza: Encyclopedia II - Great Sphinx of Giza - Alternative dating theories
Great Sphinx of Giza - Alternative dating theories
Great Sphinx of Giza - Water erosion
In recent years professor Robert M. Schoch of Boston University, Colin Reader and other geologists have pointed out that the Sphinx displays evidence of prolonged water erosion. Egypt's last significant rainy period ended during the third millennium BC, and these geologists have posited that the amount of water erosion evident on the Sphinx indicates a construction date no later than the sixth or fifth millennia BC, at least two thousand years before the traditional construction date and 1500 years prior to the accepted date for the beginning of Egyptian civilisation. This theory has not been accepted by mainstream Egyptologists. Alternative theories for the erosion include wind and sand, acid rain, exfoliation or the poor quality of the limestone used to construct the Sphinx.
Great Sphinx of Giza - Other speculations
In common with many famous constructions of remote antiquity, the Great Sphinx has over the years attracted a large number of speculative assertions put forward by non-scientists, mystics, and general writers. The claimed proofs for these "alternative" accounts of the origin, purpose and history of the monument invoke a wide array of sources and associations, such as astrology, lost continents and civilizations (e.g. Atlantis), numerology, mythology and other esoteric subjects. Egyptologists and the wider scientific community largely ignore such claims; however, on occasion they are drawn into public debate with these theorists, particularly when the claim purports to rely upon some novel or re-interpreted data from an academic field of study.
One such well-publicised debate[2] was generated by the works of two writers, Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval, in a series of separate and collabarative publications from the late 1980s onwards. Their claims include that the Great Sphinx was constructed in 10,500 B.C.; that its lion-shape is a definitive reference to the constellation of Leo; and that the layout and orientation of the Sphinx, the Giza pyramid complex and the Nile River is an accurate reflection or "map" of the constellations of Leo, Orion (specifically, Orion's Belt) and the Milky Way, respectively.
Their initial claims re the alignment of the Giza pyramids with Orion ( "…the three pyramids were an unbelievably precise terrestrial map of the three stars of Orion's belt"— Hancock's Fingerprints of the Gods, 1995, p.375) are later joined with speculation about the age of the Sphinx (Hancock and Bauval, Keeper of Genesis, published 1997 in the U.S. as The Message of the Sphinx). By 1998's The Mars Mystery, they claim:
"...we have demonstrated with a substantial body of evidence that the pattern of stars that is ‘frozen’ on the ground at Giza in the form of the three pyramids and the Sphinx represents the disposition of the constellations of Orion and Leo as they looked at the moment of sunrise on the spring equinox during the astronomical ‘Age of Leo’ (i.e, the epoch in which the Sun was ‘housed’ by Leo on the spring equinox.) Like all precessional ages this was a 2,160-year period. It is generally calculated to have fallen between the Gregorian calendar dates of 10,970 and 8810 BC." (op. cit., p.189).
A date of 10,500 B.C. is chosen because they claim this is the only time in the precession of the equinoxes when the astrological age was Leo and when that constellation rose directly east of the Sphinx at the vernal equinox. They claim also that in this epoch the angles between the three stars of Orion's Belt and the horizon was an "exact match" to the angles between the three main Giza pyramids. This time period also coincides with the American psychic Edgar Cayce's "dating" of Atlantis, and together these claims are used to support the overall belief in some advanced and ancient, but now vanished, progenitor civilization.
These claims, and the astronomical and archaeological data upon which they are based, have been refuted by scholars who have examined them, notably the astronomers Ed Krupp and Anthony Fairall[3]. The refuting evidence includes noting that the correspondence of the angles between the pyramids and the angles in Orion's Belt at that epoch is not in fact precise or even very close, that the "Age of Leo" (period when the Sun's path appears in this constellation at the equinoxes) in fact starts 1500 years later than this, that the Zodiac of western astrology is known to have originated in Mesopotamia and not pre-ancient Egypt, and that if the Sphinx is meant to represent Leo, then it should be on the other side of the Nile (the "Milky Way") from the pyramids ("Orion").
Hancock and Bauval maintain their positions and continue to publish books on their speculations. The scientific community regards these as pseudoscience[4].
Other related archives10th, 1378, 1400 BC, 15th centuries, 15th century, 1737, 1755, 1817, 1925, 2004, 2005, 2563 BC, 2723 BC, 3rd millennium BC, Antiquity, Arabic, Atlantis, British Museum, Cairo, Cairo Museum, Chephren, Colin Reader, Djedefre, Ed Krupp, Edgar Cayce, Egypt, Egyptologist, Egyptologists, Fingerprints of the Gods, Fourth dynasty of Egypt, Frederick Lewis Norden, Giza, Giza Plateau, Giza pyramid complex, Graham Hancock, Great Pyramid, Great Pyramid of Giza, Greek legend, Islam, June 28, Khafre, Khufu, Leo, Memphis, Mesopotamia, Milky Way, Napoléon, Nile River, Old Kingdom, Orion, Orion's Belt, Pharaoh, Ra, Robert Bauval, Robert M. Schoch, Sphinx, Sun, The Daily Telegraph, Turkish, Tutmosis IV, Zodiac, acid rain, ancient Egyptians, astrological age, astrology, astronomical, civilization, constellation, equinoxes, esoteric, exfoliation, granite, limestone, lion, lost continents, mystics, mythology, necropolis, nose, numerology, precession, prehistoric, pseudoscience, psychic, scientists, stars, stela, vernal equinox, western astrology
 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Alternative dating theories", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
