Sphinx water erosion hypothesis
The hypothesis is inspired by the myth of Atlantis and it contradicts the mainstream view that the Sphinx was constructed contemporaneously with the Giza pyramid complex.
[4] The hypothesis has also faced scrutiny from geologists who attribute the erosion to Nile flooding and occasional heavy rains that persisted into the Dynastic period.
[5] Readings by Edgar Cayce said that Atlantis was destroyed around 10,500 BC and that Atlantean refugees brought civilization to Egypt,[6] constructing the Great Pyramid of Giza and the sphinx within the century or so that followed.
[12] In 1979, author and alternative Egyptologist John Anthony West, inspired by Schwaller's ideas,[13] attributed the erosion to Nile floods between 15,000 and 10,000 BC.
[28] Lehner responded that the limestone wasn't deeply weathered, but that it was cut back irregularly to fit the harder granite facade to it, pointing to the Menkaure Pyramid Temple where the technique can be clearly seen.
Feder wrote: there is no evidence whatsoever for a culture capable of building the Great Sphinx much before the traditionally accepted date.
[5] Hawass criticizes that Schoch "never demonstrates why the rainfall over the last 4,500 years would not be sufficient to round off the corners", pointing to the many downpours at Giza over the past decades.
[38] Egyptologist Mark Lehner believes this climate change may have been responsible for the severe weathering found on the Sphinx and other sites of the 4th Dynasty.
After studying sediment samples in the Nile Valley, Judith Bunbury, a geologist at the University of Cambridge, concluded that climate change in the Giza region may have begun early in the Old Kingdom, with desert sands arriving in force late in the era.
[28] Lal Gauri et al.[40] also favour the haloclasty process to explain the erosion features, but have theorised that the weathering was driven by moisture deriving from atmospheric precipitation such as dew.
[28] Hawass stated that from the present-day rapid rate of erosion on the Member II surface of the Sphinx, that "[t]he eleven hundred years between Khafre and the first major restoration in the Eighteenth Dynasty, or even half this time, would have been more than enough to erode the Member II into the deep recesses behind Phase I restoration masonry".
[33] Schoch and West argued that other structures and surfaces on the Giza Plateau are made from the same band of limestone as the Sphinx enclosure, but do not show the same erosion as the walls of the Sphinx enclosure and that unspecified early dynastic mudbrick mastabas at Saqqara (close to Giza) have survived relatively undamaged, which lead them to conclude that no heavy rainfall has occurred in the region since the Early Dynastic Period.
[46][47] Lehner responded that these tombs were protected from erosion by sand and debris for most of their history, asking Schoch and West to clarify which mastabas they were referring to exactly.
