Open Veils · Answer
What is the age of the Sphinx?
Geologist Robert Schoch's precipitation-weathering analysis pushes the Sphinx's origin to at minimum 7000 BCE, potentially far earlier. John Anthony West, drawing on R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, argued the weathering signature implies pre-dynastic, possibly antediluvian, construction. The geological and archaeological consensus disputes this, but the weathering debate has never been fully closed — only dismissed institutionally.
Evidence
- Robert Schoch, a Boston University geologist, presented his water-erosion hypothesis at the 1991 Geological Society of America annual meeting.
- John Anthony West had anticipated this analysis in his reading of R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz's monumental work on Luxor temple symbolism.
- Colin Reader, a British engineering geologist whose work is rarely cited in popular coverage, independently concluded the Sphinx predates Khafre — though by a more modest margin, placing it in the Early Dynastic or even pre-dynastic period based on drainage and quarry sequencing at Giza.
- Graham Hancock, in Fingerprints of the Gods and Magicians of the Gods, treats the Sphinx as a horizon marker for the constellation Leo circa 10,500 BCE — a precessional alignment argument developed with Robert Bauval and Adrian Gilbert.
- He argued the vertical, undulating fissures on the Sphinx's enclosure walls could only have been produced by prolonged, heavy rainfall — a climate condition last present in Egypt between roughly 7000 and 5000 BCE.