continued from previous page
Sub-surface weathering. In addition to studying the surface weathering to the Sphinx and its walls, Schoch conducted seismic studies of the enclosure floor when he and West visited the Sphinx in 1991. Schoch conducted these with Thomas Dobecki, a geophysicist. The seismic work consisted of sending sound waves into the bedrock and capturing various kinds of data that these produced. A refraction survey of the bedrock under the enclosure floor found weathering that was 50-100 percent as deep along the sides and front as in the back. If the back was cleared in 2500 BCE, Schoch argues, the front and sides must have been excavated between 7000 and 5000 BCE (ie. current age of 4500 years times 2 or times 1.5).
On pages 324-327 of their chapter, Lawton and Ogilvie consider these results "deeply flawed." The two authors assert that capillary action from the water table or nearby flooding, not rainfall, was the main cause of sub-surface weathering. But they note that the enclosure floor slopes toward the front, so surface water would have concentrated there and presumably caused deeper weathering. The weathering doesn't show a uniform depth, which they think it should. Most strikingly, they argue that if the Sphinx was free of sand for only about 1400 years after 2500 BCE, the percentage difference between the depth of weathering in the back and front should be calculated as a percentage of 1400 years rather than of the total 4500 years since 2500 BCE. The authors also note that the rear of the Sphinx is as eroded as the sides and front, and that the western wall of the enclosure is as eroded as the southern wall.
Schoch's sub-surface findings are the most misunderstood aspect of his work and I must confess to having misunderstood them until recently almost as badly as Lawton and Ogilvie do here. To begin with, in the 1992 article he published on his seismic work, Schoch did not say that water caused the sub-surface weathering. What caused it, in fact, was not water but exposure to the air. Changes occur in rock that is close to an aerially exposed surface, and the weathering under the Sphinx is this kind of weathering in Schoch's view. Sand would not insulate against this exposure. If water was not the cause, then surface water flowing to the front would also be irrelevant.
By non-uniformity, Lawton and Ogilvie refer to sounding lines that Schoch and Dobecki used, one along the northern side of the Sphinx, a second along the southern side, a third (perpendicular to the first two) across the back, and a fourth across the front. What Lawton and Ogilvie regard as non-uniform is the appearance of some fluctuation along these lines. This fluctuation is different along each line, however, and is smaller than the basic discrepancy the lines show between the back and the rest of the enclosure. Schoch argues that subsurface voids can produce these local fluctuations, and other tests confirmed the existence of voids in these locations. Neither these features, nor the natural dip of the bedding planes in the bedrock, can explain the sub-surface weathering profile.
But could the water table or nearby Nile flooding have caused the subsurface damage? The present water table is rising (as a result of recent settlement nearby) and threatens the Sphinx but ancient water tables were lower. Unweathered bedrock lies below the weathered rock. Nile flooding did reach the Sphinx on occasion, but not enough to erode the monument or the walls, which would show undercutting if it had. Capillary action from floodwater is unlikely since the level of the bedrock east of the Sphinx falls and is overfilled with sand, through which capillary action is relatively weak. Flood levels were also lower in ancient times than they are today.
The idea of basing an age estimate only on the weathering of the 1400 years that the monument was uncovered by sand raises a question: what happened to the wet sand theory? I have argued that it should be disregarded, so I don't think the authors should have taken it into account, but it is puzzling that the authors give the idea such a prominent role in their chapter only to dismiss it as a weathering mechanism here. In any case, the weathering of the sub-surface occurred whether or not it was covered by sand.
Lawton and Ogilvie credit Schoch with noting that the rear of the Sphinx body was as eroded as the rest of the Sphinx. Some of the earliest stone facing blocks cover eroded areas of the rear. But these facts only call into question a two-stage lateral sequence of excavation. Schoch has argued that the shallower weathering of the back resulted not from a delay in the lateral westward excavation, but from a delay in reducing the elevation of the floor in back. This is also his response to the fact that the western wall is as eroded as the southern wall. The body length and the western wall were original.
There is a platform inside the back of the enclosure and extending to the north that is lower than the western and southern walls but higher than the floor. This platform almost certainly extended farther to the east at one time. It was this platform or terrace that Schoch believes was cut back at a later time to clear the back area in which he measured shallower weathering. This cutback was very narrow, about one or two meters in the west-east direction, but the depth of weathering under it is consistent in a north-south direction. One question is whether erosion on the rear of the monument goes all the way down to the level that Schoch believes was cleared later. West points out, however, that the back may have been cleared at some time before the earliest facing stone was laid.
West and Schoch initially differed over whether the sub-surface weathering proceeded downward at a linear or non-linear rate. Schoch preferred a linear rate (for every increment of time, there was a fixed increment of weathering downward). He acknowledged, however, that the rate could have slowed because of the increasing mass of rock overhead. West preferred a non-linear rate for this reason and a date prior to 7000 BCE. Against an earlier date, however, Schoch has raised the question of whether the rate of weathering was constant (whether linear or non-linear). Schoch concludes that a linear rate is still a reasonable approximation. But if West is correct about the back having been cleared some time before the application of facing stone, then the baseline date for estimating the age of the sides and front would necessarily be earlier than 2500 BCE.
The sub-surface weathering, as a basis for dating, is clearly subject to uncertainties. But the two stages of excavation, and the relative difference between them, are as clear as non-invasive methods can be. A delay in the excavation of the enclosure cannot be reconciled with a conventional origin of the Sphinx without contradicting the minimum dating indicated by the surface erosion.
Archaeological context. Finally, on pages 322-323 and 327-331, Lawton and Ogilvie argue on grounds of context that the Sphinx was dynastic in origin. (They begin with a discussion of the earliest facing stones to the Sphinx. I have reserved this to my general comments below.)
Egyptologists have traditionally assumed that the Giza necropolis was built by kings of the Fourth dynasty between 2575 and 2465 BCE, and that the Sphinx was built by Khafra (ruled c. 2520-2495 BCE). The Sphinx Temple, directly to the east of the monument, mirrors the court of the Khafra Mortuary Temple on the plateau just east of the second or Khafra Pyramid. Adjacent and to the south of the Sphinx Temple is the Khafra Valley Temple, which is connected to a causeway that leads to the Khafra Mortuary Temple. The first and third Pyramids (Khufu and Menkaura) have (or had) valley temples and causeways as well. These were used to perform funerary rites.
Schoch has argued that these temples may have been built in two stages, not all at once as mainstream Egyptology has assumed. Reader notes evidence that the Sphinx Temple was built in two stages. Core blocks used to wall the Sphinx Temple were considered by Herbert Ricke, the leading scholar on the structure, to have been original, excavated from the enclosure at the time the Sphinx was carved. The temple walls were later enlarged with additional blocks that are considered Old Kingdom in origin. But how much time separated the first and second stage is unclear, and a short interval cannot be ruled out. Lawton and Ogilvie observe that the temples do not show clear signs of rainfall weathering. It should be noted that one would hardly expect the temples to show runoff erosion, since they were free-standing structures with no catchment to run off onto them. But the visible fissuring on the enclosure walls is absent on the core blocks of the temples.
The Khafra Valley Temple is known to have been built before the Sphinx Temple because its blocks come from a higher sequence of limestone in the enclosure. The blocks used to build the Valley Temple core walls are faced with harder Aswan granite. (The Sphinx Temple was prepared for facing but was never faced.) Schoch has argued for a two-stage construction of the Valley Temple from weathered limestone he observed behind intact facing stone. The presence of any weather rock behind intact facing would also imply a significantly older age of the original walls, whether rain-damaged or not. But Mark Lehner observed unweathered limestone behind intact facing.
Proving Schoch or Lehner correct about the presence of weathered or unweathered stone behind intact facing would confirm or disconfirm that the Valley Temple was built in two stages. Lawton and Ogilvie unfortunately do not try to sort out this dispute by specifically reporting evidence that one or the other contention is right.
Critics of West and Schoch have not only tried to connect the Sphinx to the existing context of Giza but have asked where the prehistoric culture was that could have built a prehistoric Sphinx. In this connection, Schoch has pointed to the Neolithic stone ruins recently found at Nabta Playa in southern Egypt. These consist of calendar circles and temples that bear comparison to the smaller megalithic ruins of western Europe. The ruins at Nabta Playa (dated to c. 5000 BCE) are too crude and small in scale to be compared equivalently to the Sphinx and its temples. But Nabta Playa could be the tip of a larger archaeological story, evidence (like the smaller stone circles in Europe) of a culture whose larger works we haven't yet found. Or possibly have found if we count the Sphinx and the megalithic temples at Giza. At any rate, I think the question of context cuts two ways. Egyptologists have made a case for treating the Sphinx as part of the rest of dynastic Giza, but there is also a case for keeping an open mind about a possible context in late prehistory.
The two authors conclude on pages 333-334 by arguing that the Sphinx face in profile resembles the profile of Khafra on a statue in the Cairo Museum, if the missing nose is filled in to look like the museum statue's and if the Sphinx head is tilted forward. On a web page devoted in part to this point, it is not clear that the authors accurately depict the head, which from the side view shows a protrusion in the jaw. Only if the Sphinx head was tilted up already (viewed from the side) (this would be clear because the eyes would be looking up at the sky instead of straight ahead) could it be tilted down for comparison to the museum statue, which looks straight ahead.
Two points need to be made about the head. First, with the possible exception of Akhenaton, none of the kings of Egypt are portrayed realistically in sculpture. They are portrayed in idealized form. We don't know what Khafra really looked like. Second, the Nemes headcloth on the Sphinx has received very little attention. The headcloth on the Khafra statue in the Cairo Museum has lower flaps over the shoulders, as do every ruler that followed, while the headcloth on the Sphinx does not (and does not appear to have ever had them). A statue of Djoser, from the preceding dynasty, had lower flaps but these were pointed. The headdress appears to have evolved during the Old Kingdom and could help date the Sphinx.
A more basic question is whether the head was recarved in the Old Kingdom from a larger head, possibly that of a lion, that dated to an earlier time. The argument for a recarved head is the great disproportion between the head and the body. The Sphinx head is far too small. It has been suggested that the body was never intended to be seen sideways, but in that case why then was it extended back? The body may have been extended to enclose the major fracture across its back (this dates back millions of years). But if the builders had stopped short of the fracture, the body would still have been too long for the head. My own view is that the head/body disproportion is not strong enough evidence to say that the head was recarved. But every Sphinx in Egypt after the Great Sphinx had much more proportional heads and bodies, and the Great Sphinx head is definitely anomalous in this regard.
General Comments
This is a first book and it was evidently done under a severe deadline. But the difficulties the authors have in chapter seven result from their basic approach to evidence and arguments. The authors do not take into account all of the published responses of West and Schoch to their critics. More importantly, the authors do not in their own analysis challenge each side of the Sphinx controversy to the same degree. Lawton and Ogilvie present both sides and at times recognize that some criticisms on the orthodox side are unwarranted. But they do not ask whether the other criticisms are valid. That they needed to be balanced in their skepticism follows from their decision to pass judgment and not merely serve as reporters of the two sides.
Lawton and Ogilvie also neglect two critical events in Sphinx archaeology of the late 20th century: the 1979 photogrammetric survey by Lehner, reported in the 1980 ARCE Newsletter, and the two radiocarbon surveys of 1984 and 1995 by Robert Wenke and his colleagues.
The 1984 survey included two samples from the Sphinx Temple that indirectly date the Sphinx enclosure to the third millennium BCE (the 1995 results are not yet complete but so far broadly confirm the results of the 1984 survey). These samples are not without problems of their own but they are basic data that no chapter on the Sphinx controversy can leave out. Lawton and Ogilvie say nothing about them in their chapter. West and Schoch have long called for the removal of isotope samples to date the rock directly. Gauri has pointed out that the original rock surfaces have weathered away. But isotope samples would still be useful to take, particularly from areas that have been relatively protected from weathering along the base of the Sphinx.
Lawton and Ogilvie are aware of the problem for the age of the Sphinx if the date of application of the earliest facing stone is uncertain, but they evidently didn't read Lehner's original 1979 report that is the basis for this problem. Lawton and Ogilvie quote Appendix II of the 1993 reissue of West's book, Serpent in the Sky, but they could have found the citation in Appendix I, in which West describes the 1979 Lehner survey and underlines the problem it creates for an orthodox date.
Lehner found that the earliest facing stone on the Sphinx conformed to a severely weathered profile of the main core body. He argued that to agree with a 2500 BCE date for the monument, the facing blocks must have been applied later, in the New Kingdom, when the Sphinx is first known to have been restored.
The earliest and largest facing stone blocks abutting the Sphinx have an Old Kingdom appearance. But these may not prove an Old Kingdom date for their application, because (as Lawton and Ogilvie point out) New Kingdom restorers may have taken some Old Kingdom blocks from elsewhere for use on the Sphinx. Lehner was ambivalent about when the Old Kingdom facing stone was first applied in a 1994 article for Archaeology magazine that he co-authored with Zahi Hawass, the director of the Giza monuments. In The Complete Pyramids (London, 1997), Lehner falls back on his 1979 view that the earliest facing stone was applied in the New Kingdom and he provides evidence for the view that some Old Kingdom masonry was stripped from elsewhere and applied to the Sphinx in the New Kingdom. However, Dr. Hawass not only argues in his book, Secrets of the Sphinx (Cairo, 1998), that the poor condition of the Sphinx main body rock at the time of its original excavation made facing stone necessary from the beginning. Hawass also responds to Lehner on the question of whether some Old Kingdom facing was applied during the Old Kingdom. Lawton and Ogilvie give Lehner's side of this argument on pages 328-329 but do not give a complete account of what Hawass says on the question.
Lawton and Ogilvie nevertheless seem willing to concede to Dr. Hawass that some facing stone was applied to the Sphinx in the Old Kingdom. Was this subset of facing stone applied to an already severely-eroded body? Lehner has never retracted his 1979 finding that all of the facing stone was applied to such a body. If this is correct, and if some facing stone was applied to eroded areas during the Old Kingdom, then the conventional date cannot stand. This question would exist even if West and Schoch had never visited the Sphinx.
Lawton and Ogilvie could have written a chapter on the Sphinx without being specialists on ancient Egypt. In some ways, not being specialists can be an advantage. But amateurs must approach such technical matters with great care and even greater humility. A proper evaluation of both sides in the Sphinx debate has yet to be published.
Ian Lawton has posted a response, March 24, 2000.
I have posted a reply, March 28, 2000.