Date: Sun, 02 Jun 1996 21:08:18 -0400
To: Athena Discuss 
Subject: Re: Age of Sphinx (3)

Thomas Anderson wrote:
 
> Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean here?  Do you mean I (or
> archaeologists) do not know if some of the sites they have excavated
> date to 7,000 years ago, or 10,000 or whatever?  Or do you mean
> that I don't know if bedrock would be reached before achieving a depth
> equal to Mt. Rushmore's height?  If the latter, are not the pyramids
> themselves built on bedrock?  If the former, do not c14 tests convince
> you of the approximate age of such sites?

If they've gone all the way down to bedrock, fine... so far as the
immediate vicinity is concerned, but there is still the other problem
that they can't be sure where to look.


> and ease of transport
> from settled communities to the place of construction.  These
> considerations make a Nile-based civilization a necessary precondition
> of any theory of construction in my opinion.  Feeding large groups of
> people at any distance from supply sources for any length of
> time without riverine or marine transportation was not feasible in any
> of the societies of antiquity.

You are making two assumptions, neither of which yet seems to me to
be compelling.  First, that when the desert was well watered and presumably
green, the Nile took on the importance, both for transport and agriculture,
that it later did.  Second, that you needed "large" groups of people
to carve a rock.


> I have no real opinion on the date of the Sothic calendar, although,
> the ancient claim that its origin (a first day of the year helical
> rising) was exactly contemporary with the accession of the first
> pharaoh of the First Dynasty cannot be taken seriously.  The point I
> made was that even accepting for the sake of argument that the Sothic
> calendar is about 1600 years older than current convention, the
> revised date is still 1,000 to 3,000 younger than the Schoch/West date
> for the age of the sphinx.  Therefore, an earlier Sothic calendar does
> not support the Schoch/West theory.

Schoch-West's theory cannot date the sphinx except to suggest an
*earliest* date.  They do not assert that its carving coincided
with year 0 of the Sothic calendar.  If anything, in one speculation
that rides on the Schoch-West theory, the dating suggested is tied
to the coming of the astrological age of Leo, a dating that would
take us back to approximately 10000 BC, if I remember the documentary
correctly.


>      Let me change the focus a bit.  I've obviously been doing some
> thinking about this.  However, I don't have many resources at hand that
> deal specifically with the sphinx.  My memory though is that, while the
> common view is that its face is supposed to be that of Khafra, it has
> been argued that it was the face of his predecessor.  I seem to
> remember that this has been suggested because of some ambiguity in the
> sources: Khafra might only have claimed to restore the sphinx, not
> build it.  

The documentary showed the face of Khafra.  It looks nothing like the
sphinx.  

> I have not yet read the article by Hawass & Lehner, so I
> don't know if they suggest this or not...but, presuming for the sake of
> argument that their position has merit, if the sphinx was carved during
> the reign of Khafra's predecessor (or even somewhat earlier), the act
> of construction itself could have weakened the stone and caused the
> internal water to leech out, necessitating its restoration after a
> short period and accounting for the reported ambiguity in Khafra's
> claims.

Sorry, this sounds quite far-fetched.

>      Another possibility has also occurred to me, presuming that the
> Schoch/West dating scheme for the age of the sphinx is accepted.  We
> presume that it would take a complex civilization to construct the
> sphinx.  What if it is this idea that is flawed?  What if it only took
> a relative handful of neolithic villagers to carve it?  


This thought had occurred to me, which is why I pointedly put into
quotes the references to society of "requisite" complexity.  I asked
myself, how many people did it take to carve the faces on Mt. Rushmore?
I truly have no idea, but I rather doubt that it was the armies 
certainly required to build, say, the great pyramid.  Take away
that premise, and the modus tollendo tollens to which I objected
has even less force.  Thank you.  You finally see the light, and
defeat your own argument.

> 
> Tom

Regards,

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