Who Built the Great Sphinx?
The Great Sphinx is an iconic piece of history that’s just as remarkable as it is mysterious. From its enormous size to its intricate detail, it’s nothing short of an astounding architectural feat.
Who built the Great Sphinx and why? How, exactly, was such a large-scale and magnificent structure constructed? What is the significance of the Sphinx — a mythical creature with a lion’s body and a human face?
While there are plenty of questions, one thing is certain: The Great Sphinx offers no shortage of details to explore.
Mystery of the Sphinx
The Great Sphinx in Giza, a city in Egypt that features other prominent monuments such as the Great Pyramids, measures 66 feet high and 240 feet long. It is, by far, the largest sculpture of the ancient world. It is made of various blocks of limestone that weighed up to 200 tons each.
Scholars have long held the belief the Sphinx was constructed for the Pharaoh Khafre, who reigned from approximately 2,520 to 2,494 BC. This could explain why the Sphinx seems to align geographically with the Pyramid of Khafre, where the pharaoh himself is buried, and a temple, which is located due east from the statue.
In contrast, some Egyptologists theorize the Sphinx was actually built by Khafre’s father, [King Khufu]http://www.guardians.net/egypt/sphinx/), or Khafre’s brother, Djedefre.
However, the age of the Sphinx is still up for debate, and a growing body of evidence suggests it may be even older than once thought — so old, in fact, the Sphinx may not have been constructed by the Egyptians.
Weathering
Researchers such as John Anthony West and R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz observed signs of weathering due to rainfall on the Sphinx, dating the construction of this marvel to the end of the last Ice Age, about 10,000 to 5,000 BC. While some weathering due to wind erosion is to be expected over the course of such a long time period, this particular type of weathering suggests the Sphinx was constructed at a time in which Egypt was not such a dry, barren environment.
Geologists confirmed that long, long ago Egypt was subjected to a period of flooding. During this period, the Sphinx was most likely covered in sand, which would have preserved its construction and protected it from wind erosion for many years. This is further supported by Napoleon’s rediscovery of the ancient structure in 1798, in which the Sphinx was buried up to its neck in sand.
Lion Symbolism
The Sphinx is depicted as a lion with a human head, which some speculate is a tribute to the constellation of Leo. However, it’s also curious to note the Sphinx and its alignment with the Giza pyramids and the Nile River closely mirror the orientation of Leo, Orion, and the Milky Way.
Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval, the researchers who made this observation, state this pattern represents the orientation of the aforementioned celestial bodies during the astrological Age of Leo, which occurred between the dates 10,970 and 8810 BC.
Who Really Built the Sphinx?
Longstanding theory suggests slaves built the Sphinx and the Great Pyramids using some sort of pulley system.
However, all of the aforementioned factors and more lead some to believe the Great Sphinx may have actually not been constructed by the Egyptians at all.
Zecharia Sitchin, a prominent ancient astronaut theorist, hypothesized the Annunaki constructed the Sphinx. These intelligent beings allegedly built the structure in a precise geographical location close to where they purportedly had spaceports on Earth. The alignment of the Sphinx and the Great Pyramids also mirrors that of pyramid-like structures found on Mars, possibly suggesting Giza served as a landing strip for spacecraft.
During a quest to discover the actual age of the Sphinx, John Anthony West and his team uncovered more than they had initially anticipated. Several underground cavities and tunnels were discovered beneath the structure, including a large chamber some 25 feet beneath the statue’s front paws. This is another piece of evidence that correlates to the Annunaki, who allegedly built sprawling underground structures and dwellings.
So who really built the Sphinx? No one can be completely sure, but there is certainly no shortage of fascinating details to explore and examine.
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Decoding the Actual Age of the Great Sphinx
The Great Sphinx of Giza is widely believed to be around 4,500 years old, constructed during the reign of Pharaoh Khafre around 2500 BCE. But some researchers argue it could be far older, even 10,000 to 12,000 years old, based on geological signs of water erosion and other conflicting evidence. This ongoing debate challenges the accepted history of Egypt and the origins of human civilization.
Posing as a sentinel on the Giza plateau is the weathered and colossal figure that stands 66 feet above the desert sand, the Great Sphinx, a limestone sculpture with the head of a lion and the body of a human. While we now know much about the history and mythology of the ancient Egyptians, the mystery of the Sphinx has yet to be truly unraveled.
An ongoing battle between mainstream Egyptologists and a more recent wave of independent thinkers debates the age of the Sphinx by thousands of years. The latter insists the imposing limestone statue is much older than mainstream archaeologists, and Egyptologists claim it to be.
Mainstream archaeologists determined the Sphinx to have been built between 2558 and 2532 BCE. But in 1992, John Anthony West rocked the scientific community with his claim that the Sphinx was actually carved 10,000 years earlier before Egypt was a desert. West and others argued that academia had overlooked an important detail—the body of the sculpture bore distinct markings of water erosion.
After his assessment of the Sphinx’s age, West found fellow scientists who shared his observation about uncovering an entirely different history than was commonly accepted. West’s search led him to Robert Schoch, a geology professor at Boston University, willing to pursue an open-minded, out-of-the-box investigation into the origins not only of the Sphinx but the entire region, as well as its implications for the origin of the human species.
In Gaia’s original series, Ancient Civilizations, Schoch explains his first encounter with the figure in 1990, at which time he immediately noticed there was a disconnect between the statue’s academically accepted date of origin and the truth staring him in the face. Upon careful inspection, Schoch realized the Sphinx survived intensely wet weather conditions that stand in stark contrast to the now hyper-arid conditions of the Sahara Desert.
Schoch concluded that academia had determined the Sphinx’s age by overlooking signs of erosion due to heavy rainfall. The deluge that eroded the Sphinx was uncommon to the Egyptian plateau 5,000 years ago, but very common 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. For Schoch, this was an exciting find, but for mainstream science, it was met with derision and denial.
