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Reply to Ian Lawton
David P. Billington, Jr.Copyright March 28, 2000
As part of a larger response to Robert Schoch, Ian Lawton has replied to my review of the Sphinx chapter in the recent book he has co-authored with Chris Ogilvie-Herald, Giza: The Truth.
Before addressing the points directed in particular to me, I need to give an apology to Colin Reader for an opinion I expressed in my review. In a discussion of Reader's dating, I argued that the Sphinx enclosure walls suggested a predynastic date rather than the early dynastic one proposed by Reader. The geology of the walls does not in fact give us a specific date, only strong grounds (made clear by Reader) for saying that the walls predate Khufu. Reader's early dynastic date is based on archaeological context. I greatly admire Reader's 1999 paper and his interest and patience in this controversy, and I hope that he will continue to give the debate the benefit of his participation.
Lawton raises two points that I would like to address along with the more general concerns in his postscript.
On the dating of the Khafra Valley Temple, I should have been aware of the uncertainty regarding the source of the stone. The fact that the Egyptians had a normal procedure of erecting core blocks and then facing them with harder stone as part of the original construction is not a direct answer to the question of whether the Egyptians followed normal procedure in this temple. The evidence of simultaneous construction that Lawton observed on a visit is indeed significant, and it may well render the idea of two-stage construction moot. The condition of the core stone also may not lend itself to a clear answer to the dispute between Lehner and Schoch. But it would have addressed this dispute more directly if Lawton and Ogilvie had included, in their inspection of the Khafra Valley Temple, the rock behind intact facing that Lehner identified as unweathered and that Schoch identified as weathered.
On the matter of the Sphinx head, I frankly did not understand the exercise in head tilting that Lawton has now explained in more detail. In my next two paragraphs on the Sphinx head, I give my view that the head may have been pre-Khafra but not predynastic. On account of Reader's work, I gather Lawton also places the head in this timeframe.
The general concerns voiced by Lawton are that I hold Ogilvie and him to an unreasonable standard of scholarly completeness and that I do not display in my own work the balance that I ask of them.
Lawton and Ogilvie provide scholarly apparatus in the form of endnotes that cite peer-reviewed scholarship and other articles and papers by scholars. Lawton argues, however, that he does not need to reference some scholarship, such as the 1980 article by Lehner. I think a compromise would be appropriate in a situation like this, in which a more complete set of citations are discussed in the endnotes but only some of these sources are necessary to discuss in the text.
On the question of balance, I agree that impartiality is difficult to attain and that my own work is not above reproach. Concerning the seismic data, I note the possibility that a local difference in the natural hardness of the rock in back might explain the rear/side discrepancy. But elsewhere I do use the term "weathering" to refer to the seismic data, when the interpretation of the data as "weathering" is itself in dispute. Writing like this must go. My overall conclusions mostly say why the jury is still out on a prehistoric Sphinx, but before holding Lawton and Ogilvie to a particular standard, I should have examined my own work more carefully to make sure that it met the same standard.
Lawton and Ogilvie did not dismiss an earlier Sphinx at the outset and they have changed their views when presented with new findings. Schoch and other scientists need to return to Giza for further research to investigate the nature and chronology of weathering to the Sphinx and its enclosure. Lawton and Ogilvie support visits by Schoch and other scientists to conduct this research on site. The disagreement between critics and defenders of an earlier Sphinx rests on the basis of present knowledge, which is still incomplete. We need to answer the questions that remain.