63-6 The Great Sphinx: A New View on the Erosion Enigma

Session: Geoarchaeology of Sites to Landscapes: Current Research on Long-Term Water and Soil Management and Maladaptation (Posters)

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Abstract:

Archaeologists and geologists all agree that the Sphinx appears to have undergone significant erosion at some time following construction. Prompting some researchers to conclude that the Sphinx is thousands of years older than archaeologists believe. Geologists Robert Schoch and Colin Reader proposed that precipitation was responsible for most of the erosion, pushing construction back to sometime during, or perhaps prior to, the last Green Sahara Period (12,000 to 5,500 years ago). They assert that erosion itself serves as evidence of a lost predynastic civilization responsible for constructing the Sphinx. This challenges the current understanding of ancient human history and the development of civilization. Archaeologists reject the notion of an older Sphinx as pseudoscience, still they have no alternative explanation for the erosion, fueling a debate between geologists and archaeologists.

I conclude that there is very little erosion on the Sphinx. Instead, what has been described as erosion was actually part of the construction process. The Sphinx and other Old Kingdom structures were carved using two-handed stone pounders, stone hammers, and copper chisels. While the head and lower body were carved in-situ, I propose that the softer, weathered limestone layers of the Sphinx body were pounded back, then covered with a high-quality limestone block veneer from the start. The block veneer was then sculpted to form the surface of the Sphinx body. Buried in windblown sand for most of the past 4,500 years (only the head and upper sections of the body were exposed), the sand provided protection from the elements. Over millennia, exposed veneer blocks were looted, revealing the rough-carved body beneath that has been misidentified as erosion.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 57, No. 6, 2025

doi: 10.1130/abs/2025AM-9176

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