Carved in place from limestone, the Sphinx is among the world's largest statues.

Sandro Vannini / Corbis

Uncovering Secrets of the Sphinx

After decades of research, American archaeologist Mark Lehner has some answers about the mysteries of the Egyptian colossus

By Evan Hadingham
Smithsonian magazine, February 2010

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Related Books

The Complete Pyramids: Solving the Ancient Mysteries

by Mark Lehner
Thames & Hudson, 1997

Riddles of the Sphinx

by Paul Jordan
New York University Press, 1998

Sphinx: History of a Monument

by Christiane Zivie-Coche
Cornell University Press, 2002

When Mark Lehner was a teenager in the late 1960s, his parents introduced him to the writings of the famed clairvoyant Edgar Cayce. During one of his trances, Cayce, who died in 1945, saw that refugees from the lost city of Atlantis buried their secrets in a hall of records under the Sphinx and that the hall would be discovered before the end of the 20th century.

In 1971, Lehner, a bored sophomore at the University of North Dakota, wasn’t planning to search for lost civilizations, but he was “looking for something, a meaningful involvement.” He dropped out of school, began hitchhiking and ended up in Virginia Beach, where he sought out Cayce’s son, Hugh Lynn, the head of a holistic medicine and paranormal research foundation his father had started. When the foundation sponsored a group tour of the Giza plateau—the site of the Sphinx and the pyramids on the western outskirts of Cairo—Lehner tagged along. “It was hot and dusty and not very majestic,” he remembers.

Still, he returned, finishing his undergraduate education at the American University of Cairo with support from Cayce’s foundation. Even as he grew skeptical about a lost hall of records, the site’s strange history exerted its pull. “There were thousands of tombs of real people, statues of real people with real names, and none of them figured in the Cayce stories,” he says.

Lehner married an Egyptian woman and spent the ensuing years plying his drafting skills to win work mapping archaeological sites all over Egypt. In 1977, he joined Stanford Research Institute scientists using state-of-the-art remote-sensing equipment to analyze the bedrock under the Sphinx. They found only the cracks and fissures expected of ordinary limestone formations. Working closely with a young Egyptian archaeologist named Zahi Hawass, Lehner also explored and mapped a passage in the Sphinx’s rump, concluding that treasure hunters likely had dug it after the statue was built.

No human endeavor has been more associated with mystery than the huge, ancient lion that has a human head and is seemingly resting on the rocky plateau a stroll from the great pyramids. Fortunately for Lehner, it wasn’t just a metaphor that the Sphinx is a riddle. Little was known for certain about who erected it or when, what it represented and precisely how it related to the pharaonic monuments nearby. So Lehner settled in, working for five years out of a makeshift office between the Sphinx’s colossal paws, subsisting on Nescafé and cheese sandwiches while he examined every square inch of the structure. He remembers “climbing all over the Sphinx like the Lilliputians on Gulliver, and mapping it stone by stone.” The result was a uniquely detailed picture of the statue’s worn, patched surface, which had been subjected to at least five major restoration efforts since 1,400 B.C. The research earned him a doctorate in Egyptology at Yale.

Recognized today as one of the world’s leading Egyptologists and Sphinx authorities, Lehner has conducted field research at Giza during most of the 37 years since his first visit. (Hawass, his friend and frequent collaborator, is the secretary general of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities and controls access to the Sphinx, the pyramids and other government-owned sites and artifacts.) Applying his archaeological sleuthing to the surrounding two-square-mile Giza plateau with its pyramids, temples, quarries and thousands of tombs, Lehner helped confirm what others had speculated—that some parts of the Giza complex, the Sphinx included, make up a vast sacred machine designed to harness the power of the sun to sustain the earthly and divine order. And while he long ago gave up on the fabled library of Atlantis, it’s curious, in light of his early wanderings, that he finally did discover a Lost City.

The Sphinx was not assembled piece by piece but was carved from a single mass of limestone exposed when workers dug a horseshoe-shaped quarry in the Giza plateau. Approximately 66 feet tall and 240 feet long, it is one of the largest and oldest monolithic statues in the world. None of the photos or sketches I’d seen prepared me for the scale. It was a humbling sensation to stand between the creature’s paws, each twice my height and longer than a city bus. I gained sudden empathy for what a mouse must feel like when cornered by a cat.

Nobody knows its original name. Sphinx is the human-headed lion in ancient Greek mythology; the term likely came into use some 2,000 years after the statue was built. There are hundreds of tombs at Giza with hieroglyphic inscriptions dating back some 4,500 years, but not one mentions the statue. “The Egyptians didn’t write history,” says James Allen, an Egyptologist at Brown University, “so we have no solid evidence for what its builders thought the Sphinx was....Certainly something divine, presumably the image of a king, but beyond that is anyone’s guess.” Likewise, the statue’s symbolism is unclear, though inscriptions from the era refer to Ruti, a double lion god that sat at the entrance to the underworld and guarded the horizon where the sun rose and set.

The face, though better preserved than most of the statue, has been battered by centuries of weathering and vandalism. In 1402, an Arab historian reported that a Sufi zealot had disfigured it “to remedy some religious errors.” Yet there are clues to what the face looked like in its prime. Archaeological excavations in the early 19th century found pieces of its carved stone beard and a royal cobra emblem from its headdress. Residues of red pigment are still visible on the face, leading researchers to conclude that at some point, the Sphinx’s entire visage was painted red. Traces of blue and yellow paint elsewhere suggest to Lehner that the Sphinx was once decked out in gaudy comic book colors.

For thousands of years, sand buried the colossus up to its shoulders, creating a vast disembodied head atop the eastern edge of the Sahara. Then, in 1817, a Genoese adventurer, Capt. Giovanni Battista Caviglia, led 160 men in the first modern attempt to dig out the Sphinx. They could not hold back the sand, which poured into their excavation pits nearly as fast as they could dig it out. The Egyptian archaeologist Selim Hassan finally freed the statue from the sand in the late 1930s. “The Sphinx has thus emerged into the landscape out of shadows of what seemed to be an impenetrable oblivion,” the New York Times declared.

The question of who built the Sphinx has long vexed Egyptologists and archaeologists. Lehner, Hawass and others agree it was Pharaoh Khafre, who ruled Egypt during the Old Kingdom, which began around 2,600 B.C. and lasted some 500 years before giving way to civil war and famine. It’s known from hieroglyphic texts that Khafre’s father, Khufu, built the 481-foot-tall Great Pyramid, a quarter mile from where the Sphinx would later be built. Khafre, following a tough act, constructed his own pyramid, ten feet shorter than his father’s, also a quarter of a mile behind the Sphinx. Some of the evidence linking Khafre with the Sphinx comes from Lehner’s research, but the idea dates back to 1853.

That’s when a French archaeologist named Auguste Mariette unearthed a life-size statue of Khafre, carved with startling realism from black volcanic rock, amid the ruins of a building he discovered adjacent to the Sphinx that would later be called the Valley Temple. What’s more, Mariette found the remnants of a stone causeway—a paved, processional road—connecting the Valley Temple to a mortuary temple next to Khafre’s pyramid. Then, in 1925, French archaeologist and engineer Emile Baraize probed the sand directly in front of the Sphinx and discovered yet another Old Kingdom building—now called the Sphinx Temple—strikingly similar in its ground plan to the ruins Mariette had already found.

Despite these clues that a single master building plan tied the Sphinx to Khafre’s pyramid and his temples, some experts continued to speculate that Khufu or other pharaohs had built the statue. Then, in 1980, Lehner recruited a young German geologist, Tom Aigner, who suggested a novel way of showing that the Sphinx was an integral part of Khafre’s larger building complex. Limestone is the result of mud, coral and the shells of plankton-like creatures compressed together over tens of millions of years. Looking at samples from the Sphinx Temple and the Sphinx itself, Aigner and Lehner inventoried the different fossils making up the limestone. The fossil fingerprints showed that the blocks used to build the wall of the temple must have come from the ditch surrounding the Sphinx. Apparently, workmen, probably using ropes and wooden sledges, hauled away the quarried blocks to construct the temple as the Sphinx was being carved out of the stone.

That Khafre arranged for construction of his pyramid, the temples and the Sphinx seems increasingly likely. “Most scholars believe, as I do,” Hawass wrote in his 2006 book, Mountain of the Pharaohs, “that the Sphinx represents Khafre and forms an integral part of his pyramid complex.”

But who carried out the backbreaking work of creating the Sphinx? In 1990, an American tourist was riding in the desert half a mile south of the Sphinx when she was thrown from her horse after it stumbled on a low mud-brick wall. Hawass investigated and discovered an Old Kingdom cemetery. Some 600 people were buried there, with tombs belonging to overseers—identified by inscriptions recording their names and titles—surrounded by the humbler tombs of ordinary laborers.

Near the cemetery, nine years later, Lehner discovered his Lost City. He and Hawass had been aware since the mid-1980s that there were buildings at that site. But it wasn’t until they excavated and mapped the area that they realized it was a settlement bigger than ten football fields and dating to Khafre’s reign. At its heart were four clusters of eight long mud-brick barracks. Each structure had the elements of an ordinary house—a pillared porch, sleeping platforms and a kitchen—that was enlarged to accommodate around 50 people sleeping side by side. The barracks, Lehner says, could have accommodated between 1,600 to 2,000 workers—or more, if the sleeping quarters were on two levels. The workers’ diet indicates they weren’t slaves. Lehner’s team found remains of mostly male cattle under 2 years old—in other words, prime beef. Lehner thinks ordinary Egyptians may have rotated in and out of the work crew under some sort of national service or feudal obligation to their superiors.

This past fall, at the behest of “Nova” documentary makers, Lehner and Rick Brown, a professor of sculpture at the Massachusetts College of Art, attempted to learn more about construction of the Sphinx by sculpting a scaled-down version of its missing nose from a limestone block, using replicas of ancient tools found on the Giza plateau and depicted in tomb paintings. Forty-five centuries ago, the Egyptians lacked iron or bronze tools. They mainly used stone hammers, along with copper chisels for detailed finished work.

Bashing away in the yard of Brown’s studio near Boston, Brown, assisted by art students, found that the copper chisels became blunt after only a few blows before they had to be resharpened in a forge that Brown constructed out of a charcoal furnace. Lehner and Brown estimate one laborer might carve a cubic foot of stone in a week. At that rate, they say, it would take 100 people three years to complete the Sphinx.

Exactly what Khafre wanted the Sphinx to do for him or his kingdom is a matter of debate, but Lehner has theories about that, too, based partly on his work at the Sphinx Temple. Remnants of the temple walls are visible today in front of the Sphinx. They surround a courtyard enclosed by 24 pillars. The temple plan is laid out on an east-west axis, clearly marked by a pair of small niches or sanctuaries, each about the size of a closet. The Swiss archaeologist Herbert Ricke, who studied the temple in the late 1960s, concluded the axis symbolized the movements of the sun; an east-west line points to where the sun rises and sets twice a year at the equinoxes, halfway between midsummer and midwinter. Ricke further argued that each pillar represented an hour in the sun’s daily circuit.

Lehner spotted something perhaps even more remarkable. If you stand in the eastern niche during sunset at the March or September equinoxes, you see a dramatic astronomical event: the sun appears to sink into the shoulder of the Sphinx and, beyond that, into the south side of the Pyramid of Khafre on the horizon. “At the very same moment,” Lehner says, “the shadow of the Sphinx and the shadow of the pyramid, both symbols of the king, become merged silhouettes. The Sphinx itself, it seems, symbolized the pharaoh presenting offerings to the sun god in the court of the temple.” Hawass concurs, saying the Sphinx represents Khafre as Horus, the Egyptians’ revered royal falcon god, “who is giving offerings with his two paws to his father, Khufu, incarnated as the sun god, Ra, who rises and sets in that temple.”

Equally intriguing, Lehner discovered that when one stands near the Sphinx during the summer solstice, the sun appears to set midway between the silhouettes of the pyramids of Khafre and Khufu. The scene resembles the hieroglyph akhet, which can be translated as “horizon” but also symbolized the cycle of life and rebirth. “Even if coincidental, it is hard to imagine the Egyptians not seeing this ideogram,” Lehner wrote in the Archive of Oriental Research. “If somehow intentional, it ranks as an example of architectural illusionism on a grand, maybe the grandest, scale.”

If Lehner and Hawass are right, Khafre’s architects arranged for solar events to link the pyramid, Sphinx and temple. Collectively, Lehner describes the complex as a cosmic engine, intended to harness the power of the sun and other gods to resurrect the soul of the pharaoh. This transformation not only guaranteed eternal life for the dead ruler but also sustained the universal natural order, including the passing of the seasons, the annual flooding of the Nile and the daily lives of the people. In this sacred cycle of death and revival, the Sphinx may have stood for many things: as an image of Khafre the dead king, as the sun god incarnated in the living ruler and as guardian of the underworld and the Giza tombs.

But it seems Khafre’s vision was never fully realized. There are signs the Sphinx was unfinished. In 1978, in a corner of the statue’s quarry, Hawass and Lehner found three stone blocks, abandoned as laborers were dragging them to build the Sphinx Temple. The north edge of the ditch surrounding the Sphinx contains segments of bedrock that are only partially quarried. Here the archaeologists also found the remnants of a workman’s lunch and tool kit—fragments of a beer or water jar and stone hammers. Apparently, the workers walked off the job.

The enormous temple-and-Sphinx complex might have been the pharaoh’s resurrection machine, but, Lehner is fond of saying, “nobody turned the key and switched it on.” By the time the Old Kingdom finally broke apart around 2,130 B.C., the desert sands had begun to reclaim the Sphinx. It would sit ignored for the next seven centuries, when it spoke to a young royal.

According to the legend engraved on a pink granite slab between the Sphinx’s paws, the Egyptian prince Thutmose went hunting in the desert, grew tired and lay down in the shade of the Sphinx. In a dream, the statue, calling itself Horemakhet—or Horus-in-the-Horizon, the earliest known Egyptian name for the statue—addressed him. It complained about its ruined body and the encroaching sand. Horemakhet then offered Thutmose the throne in exchange for help.

Whether or not the prince actually had this dream is unknown. But when he became Pharaoh Thutmose IV, he helped introduce a Sphinx-worshiping cult to the New Kingdom (1550-1070 B.C.). Across Egypt, sphinxes appeared everywhere in sculptures, reliefs and paintings, often depicted as a potent symbol of royalty and the sacred power of the sun.

Based on Lehner’s analysis of the many layers of stone slabs placed like tilework over the Sphinx’s crumbling surface, he believes the oldest slabs may date back as far as 3,400 years to Thutmose’s time. In keeping with the legend of Horemakhet, Thutmose may well have led the first attempt to restore the Sphinx.

When Lehner is in the United States, typically about six months per year, he works out of an office in Boston, the headquarters of Ancient Egypt Research Associates, a nonprofit organization Lehner directs that excavates the Lost City and trains young Egyptologists. At a meeting with him at his office this past fall, he unrolled one of his countless maps of the Sphinx on a table. Pointing to a section where an old tunnel had cut into the statue, he said the elements had taken a toll on the Sphinx in the first few centuries after it was built. The porous rock soaks up moisture, degrading the limestone. For Lehner, this posed yet another riddle—what was the source of so much moisture in Giza’s seemingly bone-dry desert?

The Sahara has not always been a wilderness of sand dunes. German climatologists Rudolph Kuper and Stefan Kröpelin, analyzing the radiocarbon dates of archaeological sites, recently concluded that the region’s prevailing climate pattern changed around 8,500 B.C., with the monsoon rains that covered the tropics moving north. The desert sands sprouted rolling grasslands punctuated by verdant valleys, prompting people to begin settling the region in 7,000 B.C. Kuper and Kröpelin say this green Sahara came to an end between 3,500 B.C. and 1,500 B.C., when the monsoon belt returned to the tropics and the desert reemerged. That date range is 500 years later than prevailing theories had suggested.

Further studies led by Kröpelin revealed that the return to a desert climate was a gradual process spanning centuries. This transitional period was characterized by cycles of ever-decreasing rains and extended dry spells. Support for this theory can be found in recent research conducted by Judith Bunbury, a geologist at the University of Cambridge. After studying sediment samples in the Nile Valley, she concluded that climate change in the Giza region began early in the Old Kingdom, with desert sands arriving in force late in the era.

The work helps explain some of Lehner’s findings. His investigations at the Lost City revealed that the site had eroded dramatically—with some structures reduced to ankle level over a period of three to four centuries after their construction. “So I had this realization,” he says, “Oh my God, this buzz saw that cut our site down is probably what also eroded the Sphinx.” In his view of the patterns of erosion on the Sphinx, intermittent wet periods dissolved salt deposits in the limestone, which recrystallized on the surface, causing softer stone to crumble while harder layers formed large flakes that would be blown away by desert winds. The Sphinx, Lehner says, was subjected to constant “scouring” during this transitional era of climate change.

“It’s a theory in progress,” says Lehner. “If I’m right, this episode could represent a kind of ‘tipping point’ between different climate states—from the wetter conditions of Khufu and Khafre’s era to a much drier environment in the last centuries of the Old Kingdom.”

The implication is that the Sphinx and the pyramids, epic feats of engineering and architecture, were built at the end of a special time of more dependable rainfall, when pharaohs could marshal labor forces on an epic scale. But then, over the centuries, the landscape dried out and harvests grew more precarious. The pharaoh’s central authority gradually weakened, allowing provincial officials to assert themselves—culminating in an era of civil war.

Today, the Sphinx is still eroding. Three years ago, Egyptian authorities learned that sewage dumped in a nearby canal was causing a rise in the local water table. Moisture was drawn up into the body of the Sphinx and large flakes of limestone were peeling off the statue.

Hawass arranged for workers to drill test holes in the bedrock around the Sphinx. They found the water table was only 15 feet beneath the statue. Pumps have been installed nearby to divert the groundwater. So far, so good. “Never say to anyone that we saved the Sphinx,” he says. “The Sphinx is the oldest patient in the world. All of us have to dedicate our lives to nursing the Sphinx all the time.”

Evan Hadingham is senior science editor of the PBS series “Nova.” Its “Riddles of the Sphinx” aired on January 19.

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Comments

Splendid article by Hadingham! The related PBS show last night, with Hawass narrating as her roams around the Sphinx and climbs onto its back was also superb.
I hope we'll see more first-rate articles like this in Smithsonan Magazine!

Posted by Winslow Shea on January 20,2010 | 11:48 PM

Evan, I think if you'd done just a bit more homework you would have discovered, and then perhaps mentioned, Mark Lehner's 'sudden realization' that the Sphinx was eroded by water had already been theorized by the geologist Dr. Robert M Schoch in 1991. Based on his research Dr. Schoch placed the sphinx origin to 7000–5000 BCE. And, may I add, he was widely criticized by many ... Including a vehement denial by Dr.Zahi Hawass who stated there is no way the Sphinx predated Pharaoh Khafre's era of 2600 BCE. Of course any estimation of age based on erosion would depend on the current climatological theory as to when the region transformed from a wet climate to the desert it is today.

Posted by Mark on January 21,2010 | 04:03 PM

Interesting article, indeed. Although maybe some info has to be checked better, like the astronomic hypotheses that for me are extremely doubtful for many reasons. But I am most surprised to read that "Egyptians didn’t write history"; for what I know (for instance Herodotus) they had a lot of written history and about their most ancient time. It's real that, sadly, very little has survived to present time, but what remains well testify that.
Very welcome the geologic analysis and the correlation with ancient climate evolution, it's a long awaited work and I think that can bring new and real data about this nice monument.

Posted by marco cocchi on January 22,2010 | 05:02 AM

Wouldn't the equinox have precessed in the 4500 years since?

Posted by Denver on January 22,2010 | 11:12 AM

. . . this articla (and the related pablum-filled NOVA on PBS) stikes me as nothing more than another forum for the absolute views of supreme leader Hawass and company (Lehner included) . . . no mention of the theory that the Sphinx's head is not the original one (that Kafre erected the existing head on a limestone body that was already there)? How can that basic (and obvious) theory not be included?

Posted by J A Larsen on January 22,2010 | 01:46 PM

I was just looking at the picture of the Spinx in the foreground and the pyramid in the back that really looks like where the top of the pyramid is not eroded that that top eroded level was the water level in a massive river for a long time. The surface of the pyramid was washed away. Are there any signs of aquatic animals near the top of the pyramid?

Posted by Christopher Lukacs on January 22,2010 | 10:37 PM

What caused much more cloudcover for that "special time of more dependable rainfall?" It was during the Ice Age, which ended much later than we are being told (proven by the submerged ruins of Heraklion and Menouthis off the coast near Alexandria and the catastrophic climate change described in the Ipuwer Papyrus).

To know how the ancient Egyptians surveyed the Giza complex, particularly the dimensions for the Great Pyramid, checkout article #2 at http://IceAgeCivilizations.com, the obvious solution to the measuring mystery, the method by which the royal cubit length of measure was determined, so I hope the Smithsonian informs Mark Lehner of this.

Posted by James I. Nienhuis on January 24,2010 | 08:53 AM

This research shows that Schoch may have been right about the rainfall but way out on the dating (because he was working on now outdated information perhaps). He should have taken the possibility of rainfall during this period into account, it's not as though it doesn't still rain in the area.

Posted by Doug Weller on January 25,2010 | 11:51 AM

To Mr. Lukacs, when the now-extinct canopic branch of the Nile flowed strong past Menouthis and Heraklion into the Mediterranean, the Nile flowed much wider upstream at Giza, near the paws of the Sphinx, where building materials were shipped up to the Giza building site.

And before the catastrophic climate change described in the Ipuwer Papyrus reduced the Nile, the Sahara was green, from where the kingdom of Yam, 700 km to the west of Giza, supplied the pharoahs' tropical timber and elephant ivory, now one of the driest places on earth.

Posted by James I. Nienhuis on January 26,2010 | 12:53 AM

Doug, it rained about ten times more during old kingdom times in Egypt than today, corroborated by the dessication portrayed in the Ipuwer Papyrus, and that north Africa was evidently at the end of the "aqualithic period" when Jason and the Argonauts lost their way into the Sea of Tritonis, where now is desert, drastic drying in that timeframe.

Posted by James I. Nienhuis on January 26,2010 | 01:26 AM

In the same 1991 program mentioned that featured Dr. Schoch, they also featured the information that they had done sonic testings on the Sphinx and had indeed found an empty chamber in the right front paw, as described by Cayce.

Mr. Hawass, Prof. Lehner and other Egyptologists now try to completely discredit this finding even though it is on record and this is not the only confirmation of the chamber.

Certainly Hawass wants to protect the monuments of Egypt. But why deny a finding that has multiple confirmations?

What was found in the paw of the Sphinx? Why are the officials denying its discovery and existence? They need to come clean about this, but I am not going to hold my breath.

Posted by Tom Huggins on January 27,2010 | 02:48 PM

I agree with Doug...Wouldn't the eqinox have precessed??

Posted by Valerie on January 27,2010 | 03:43 PM

The problem with Schoch's date is that his estimated date itself does not in any way depend on rainfall or water erosion.

If you read the man's paper, you'll find that his date is based completely on extrapolations of subsurface weathering differences between the front and rear of the sphinx enclosure.

The subsurface weathering he claims his method measures is in no way altered by water erosion - it is completely due to exposure to air (and duration of said exposure.)

It wouldn't be influenced at all by a pond of water in the enclosure, nor would sand in the enclosure influence it.

So, finding rain in the first kingdom doesn't dismiss his argument. Somebody must explain his analysis of the enclosure floor. Any takers?

Posted by Harte on January 27,2010 | 04:42 PM

I find it more than difficult to think that Kafre or Khufu, had ANYTHING to do with either the Great Pyramid or the Sphinx. No Heiroglyphics other than grafitti above the so called King's Chamber for Khufu, in an inaccesible place, and when the comparisons was made of the surviving statue of Kafre was made with the Sphinx's profile- They did not match.
Yet for some unknown reason, not well represented by either Hawass or Lehner, as pointed out by J. A. Larson, the Smithsonian has simply "gone along" with this totally unscientific representation of "facts".

Posted by E.J. Q. on January 27,2010 | 08:52 PM

Regarding the precession of the equinoxes, it's because of the earth's wobble as it spins and rotates around the sun, the merry-go-round of constellations because of the wobble, like a gyroscope, wobbling at the rate of 72 years/degree (the number of conspirators against Osiris), this rate which enabled the Egyptians to measure the earth, align the Great Pyramid precisely to true north, and determine the length for the cubit, earth commensurate, by telling time for geometry (which means earth measure), performed by the rulers in ancient times, who also navigated the earth.

Posted by James I. Nienhuis on January 28,2010 | 01:15 PM

Harte, the research by Schoch (pronounced Shock) is irrelevant because we've learned that old kingdom Egypt received rainfall sufficient to have swelled the Nile up to the Sphinx, and all across north Africa, much more rainfall too, when old kingdom Egypt obtained tropical timber and ivory from the kingdom of Yam now dried up in the Sahara.

Posted by James I. Nienhuis on January 28,2010 | 01:51 PM

question for mr. hadingham--

last year wife and i visited the sphinx and i noticed it was covered with pigeons...the guide-an official egyptologist-said this was due to the rising water table causing increased levels of calcium carbonate from the limestone which pigeons love to eat. this he said was causing recent damage.there have never been pigeons bothering the sphinx for thousands of years until the past two or three. my pigeonologist friend here at the university said this theory rubish. his theory is that pigeons can only stand a certain density per square hector and when that quantity reached they simply instinctively move on out to a less pigeon populated area on the periphery of urban ares. in your article you said water table being controled...any less pigeons? thanks--jim starling p.s. this egyptologist lecturer apparently fairly well known: bassam r. el shammaa--lehner may know.

Posted by james r. starling on January 30,2010 | 11:11 AM

With reference to comments posted by Harte on January 27,2010 01:42PM

I have done some work on this. I discuss Schoch's geophysical work in the article at http://www.hallofmaat.com/modules.php?name=Articles&file=article&sid=93

More of my papers on the age of the Sphinx which pre-date by a number of years the climate issues discussed in this article in the Smithsonian are at http://www.davidpbillington.net/sphinx2.html

Posted by Colin Reader on January 31,2010 | 12:23 AM

You mean there was climate change before Al Gore? How about that. People, pay attention.

Posted by Rebecca Pearson on February 1,2010 | 05:16 PM

IN ALBANIAN LANGUAGE YOU CAN FIND MENY EXPLANATIONS FOR MENY NAMES , TOPONIMS AND MUCH MORE

Posted by shqetesimi on February 1,2010 | 07:13 PM

There are no "SECRETS OF THE SPHINX here! I feel very cheated and my time has been wasted as I am fascinated by Edgar Cayce and the real mysteries of ancient Egypt, the Sphinx, Atlantis etc. Do not lead me or anybody else on to think that some great secret of Atlantis, some great Hall of Knowledge or Wisdom has been discovered and then fritter the whole article down to, "Yeah, the sphinx was underwater for thousands of years, that's why it looks funny today." You have wasted my time. Goddess bless.

Posted by Steve on February 1,2010 | 08:30 PM

Yah Kai....

I think this is a fabulous article!

In keeping with the National Black History Month a must read for all African-American, African peoples of the world to know that there are Great monoliths of this magnitude that give honor and renown to Black People globally! So much so, that "seemingly" there are mysteries still uncovered today, in this great technological world we live in. Phenomenal!

I am also very interested to know if there was another meaning of the "Sphinx" other than the one depicted by the Greek name/meaning. Who was this great monument to depict??? I agree, the Egyptians were great historians and would have left an indication of the meaning behind it.

Posted by hoshayah Yatsiliel on February 2,2010 | 03:13 AM

Many years ago, visiting briefly the ARE/Edgar Cayce Found. in Va. Beach, I heard a speaker talk on the Pyramids, when he said that the Great Pyramid was erected on the very crosshairs of longitude and latitude that defined the most Landmass on the Earth. I was impressed, of course, mainly wondering how "they" knew this "fact". Do you? Has anyone ever discussed this in their research?

Posted by M. L. DeLany on February 2,2010 | 10:59 AM

Thank you for including a photograph of the Sphinx in its context, situated next to a highway looking toward Cairo a short distance away. It has always been an irritant to me that photos of the Sphinx attempt an artistic view, with the pyramids in the back ground,rather than an informational view.

Posted by Thomas West on February 2,2010 | 11:33 AM

Further confirming that old kingdom Egypt received vastly greater rainfall than today, google Aswan Rock Quarry Steven Stanek, to see that the Nile flowed much deeper and wider at that time, so a canal was dug to the quarry at Aswan, to float the megaliths downstream, when the Nile flowed very near the Giza complex, and when the now-extinct canopic branch of the Nile flowed passed now-submerged Heraklion and Menouthis, built of Aswan granite, submerged when the climate changed at the time of the Exodus.

Posted by James I. Nienhuis on February 2,2010 | 10:13 PM

Hey Colin Reader, what is the evidence for the age of the Sphinx and Great Pyramid, and when do you think the much greater rainfall in ancient Egypt assuaged?

Posted by James I. Nienhuis on February 2,2010 | 10:20 PM

The discussion on the Sphinx brings to light the impact of climate change on the structures in Giza and opens up a new field in explaining why these tombs and megalithic formations were built at all. To us here in the Philippines, we have yet to find archaeological sites as good as those in Egypt. The article is really informative and must be read by all aspiring archaeologists and anthropologists, particularly those from the University of the Philippines.

Posted by marvyn n. benaning on February 3,2010 | 08:29 AM

Funny very! These comments are:) One these so called pyramids are not for a so called Pharaoh of some so called Egypt. The complex was built for the people not for one person. Second the face is of a women not a man!

Posted by Ervin Miner on February 3,2010 | 08:39 AM

To Rebecca Pearson (regarding global warming), when the Ice Age ended, it wasn't for global warming but for the dissipation of global cloudcover, therefore, any global warming today (by increased solar output) causes more cloudcover, which in turn cools the lower atmosphere back down, it's hydrology 101, but many haven't yet thought it through, to see that the Ice Age was caused by the ocean which had been geothermally, not atmosphericly, heated.

Posted by James I. Nienhuis on February 3,2010 | 11:29 AM

Is very beautiful

Posted by lucyalmond47@hotmail.com on February 4,2010 | 10:59 AM

Smithsonian for February 2010, “Uncovering Secrets of the Sphinx” by Evan Hadingham, page 32

In the first full paragraph at the top of page 38 it is stated that, “... one laborer might carve a cubic foot of stone in a week. At that rate, they say, it would take 100 people three years to complete the Sphinx.”

In the paragraph starting at the bottom of the left hand column on page 34 it states the Sphinx is approximately 66 feet tall and 240 long. I recall from being there and seeing photos that it sits in a pit excavated out of the rock with walls at least 30 feet or so from the sides and back of the Sphinx, plus who knows what had to be excavated at the front.

I calculate that 100 people carving a cubic foot of stone in a week would carve about 5,214 cubic feet a year, or 15,642 cubic feet in the three years mentioned as necessary to complete the Sphinx.

A standing stone wall one foot thick as tall and as long as the Sphinx would contain 15,840 cubic feet of stone, or 198 cubic feet more than the cited 100 laborers could carve in three years for just that one slice, and there must have been the equivalent of at least a hundred such slices to complete the Sphinx.

So if my calculations are anywhere near correct either the required number of laborers, the production per laborer per week, or the length of time to complete must be off by perhaps a factor of 100 or more.
I remember a theory some years ago based on stone erosion tests that the Sphinx must in fact be 4,000 or 5,000 years older than the Pyramids, built by unknown people, and the face was re-carved by Khafre when he built his pyramid.

I would appreciate a response from Smithsonian or Mr. Hadingham, Mr. Lehner or Mr. Brown or the other commenters to date to coordinate and evaluate the evidence on the age of the Sphinx, as well as the minor number of workers and working time issue.

Posted by Bill Barker on February 4,2010 | 03:46 PM

Since it has been theorized that the sphinx does not represent khufu and one of the supporting pieces of evidence given is that the sphinx's profile does not match the statue of khufu, has anyone ever suggested that the statue was sculpted much later than the khufu's actual reign? The statue is granite, which is very hard, and the sphinx was carved from limestone (which is soft). The egyptians of this time had only stone and copper tools, and according to this article when the prof and students experimented using copper tools to make carvings in limestone the tools became dull after a few strikes. So, does it not seem highly unlikely that the egyptians of khufu's time carved such a detailed granite statue?

Posted by Seb Ang on February 4,2010 | 04:37 PM

Corroborative of the catastrophic climate change described in the egyptian Ipuwer Papyrus and the hebrew book of Exodus was that drought which also ruined the environment for the canaanite city of Arad, now in the Negev desert, but during the bronze age, the city-state had farms when the wadis were streams, then after Israel defeated Arad, it fell into ruins for a few centuries, then David and Solomon rebuilt it as a fortress on a major trade route, but by then, the climate was far different than when Joshua led the Jews, when Canaan was a "land of milk and honey."

Posted by James I. Nienhuis on February 6,2010 | 04:48 PM

Hey James? .....Take the crazy elsewhere, pal. I'm sure there are better talk groups where you can say without any evidence the world's oceans were geothermically heated causing the last ice age and be believed. Global warming denier sites maybe?

Posted by billyd on February 7,2010 | 04:17 PM

I did a quick check with my sky simulation program with 2010 BC as the date for the sphinx (close enough) and 2010 AD. The position of the sun shifted about 6 degrees when it crossed the 10 degree elevation over the intervening centuries. Since where the observer stands makes a big difference, I suspect you can create whatever "alignment" you want, even if the sun is so rude as to be in the wrong place.

Posted by eidolon on February 7,2010 | 05:16 PM

In exploring who the Sphinx represents, this project should have used high tech tools like the computer graphics Frank Domingo, a forensics expert, employed in 1992. Domingo replicated, in exact proportions, the progathism and other facial features of the Sphinx and compared that model to existing pharonic icons including Khafre and Khufu. Domingo's conclusion? The Sphinx doesn't match either pharoah, though it's head is of a negroid human type. It seems, then, that in this current project, there was a conclusion: the sphinx is of Khafre or Khufu. And, the "evidence" was made to fit the conclusion. Not scientific!

Posted by sandram on February 8,2010 | 03:15 PM

I may be a little confused, but just because the "equinox" has changed dates (September 20 to September 22 for example) does not mean there wasn't an equinox sometime twice a year 4000 years ago. Whenever that equinox happens the statues, pyramids, stones, etc. would line up. Doesn't matter when it happens.

Posted by Pam on February 10,2010 | 02:35 PM

Hey billyd, what do you think caused the Ice Age? Cat got your tongue?

Posted by James I. Nienhuis on February 11,2010 | 11:12 AM

To M. L. Delany, well yes sir, if you inspect the "Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings," studied by Charles Hapgood, you can see that the ice age mariners had a very good grasp of the configurations of the landmasses, even Antarctica, that precise navigation achieved interestingly by the earth's wobble rate, 72 years/degree, the method explained in article #2 at http://IceAgeCivilizations.com.

And to billyd, how do you think all that moisture entered the atmosphere for the Ice Age precipitation? Well?

Posted by James I. Nienhuis on February 11,2010 | 07:11 PM

To Pam, the star Alpha Draconis, the North Star circa 2200 B.C., aligned with the northern star shaft from the King's chamber at that time, when the structure was built.

Posted by James I. Nienhuis on February 11,2010 | 07:26 PM

they didnt mention the most OBVIOUS secret of the sphinx that it is aligned with the constellation leo at the 10,500 bc star date as is the giza pyramids aligned with orion to the same star date. this was when VEGA was the pole star not polaris.

Posted by alankent on February 12,2010 | 01:13 AM

Alan Kent, you think the Sphinx was built over 12,000 years ago, so when was the Great Pyramid built in your opinion?

Posted by James I. Nienhuis on February 13,2010 | 12:30 PM

The sphinx and the sphinx temple are great works on their own as this article shows -- a mighty project for any Pharaoh to undertake. Yet not only these works, but the enormous pyramid, funerary temple, valley temple and causeway are all attributed to Khafre. And all are substantially complete, as are the pyramids of Menkaure and Khufu.

Might it not be possible, that like Stonehenge, this site was the product of many generations over hundreds, or thousands, of years? The earliest signs of construction at Stonehenge are 4000 BC or earlier, and the site was continually rebuilt and re-used for 2,500 years. Mayan pyramids often show evidence of having been enlarged and expanded repeatedly. Is the idea that each of the pyramids "belong" to a certain pharaoh distorting the interpretation of how and when they were built? Got no answers; just putting some questions out there.

Posted by Roger on February 16,2010 | 07:36 PM

It's obvious that old kingdom Egypt was much rainier, followed by the climate change described in the Ipuwer Papyrus and the book of Exodus, when the old kingdom egyptian port cities of Menouthis and Heraklion were consumed by the sea, actually when the Ice Age ended.

The carbon 14 dates from those times are exaggerated because of much unfactored volcanism then, the C12 in the CO2 which diluted, so to speak, the C14 in the atmosphere, and Manetheo, in his kings list, counted contemporaneous rulers sequentially, so the timeframe matches the biblical account, which really should be of no great surprise.

Posted by James I. Nienhuis on February 18,2010 | 09:25 AM

The sphinx was carved well before any pharaohnic times.Just look at the proportions of head vs body. The sphinx was originally carved with a lions head, probably when the sahara was open grassland. Nowhere in upper or lower Egypt does any sphinx show the disproportionment of small head to large body. Now if the Egptians had carved the sphinx the head would have been conciderably larger. The whole premise being it was carved with a lions head earlier and usurped my a pharaoh at a later date. Hence they could only carve a head within the proportions of the lions head. Nobody, not even Zahi Hawass, could definitely tell you when the sphinx was carved as there is no evidence whatsoever. Please give the Egyptians credit for very propotioned carving of sphinx after the event, but not the famous one.

Posted by alan hewitt on February 23,2010 | 03:10 PM

To Alan Hewitt, the Sahara was "open grassland" circa 2000 b.c., just google Kingdom of Yam Sahara, there's the proof you need, but when do you think the Sphinx was built?

Posted by James I. Nienhuis on February 28,2010 | 08:40 AM

THE SPHINX OF EGYPT...

Good-day-Bonjour
I was always fascinated by the Sphinx of Egypt and made lots of researches about this unique monument and the message for what it stands for...
This article is one of the best I have read and studied and would like to thank Smithsonian and all those researchers and those who participated and sharing with us their dedicated and "superbe" work. Hope one day to go and see the Sphinx and feel this magnificent monument full of mystery in person. Again all my congratulations to those involved and also thank you for the very interesting comments of knowledge from the readers. Bravo et merci encore.
Lucien Alexandre Marion, Canada (Québec) Gatineau

Posted by Lucien Alexandre Marion on March 10,2010 | 08:55 PM

There is an atlantean library there,the archeaologists just have high egos and will not admit it yet.I think anti-gravity technology built the pyramids.The japanese tried to build a smaller pyramid using modern technology and failed.

Posted by derek on March 14,2010 | 09:33 PM

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Uncovering Secrets of the Sphinx

After decades of research, American archaeologist Mark Lehner has some answers about the mysteries of the Egyptian colossus

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