Orion correlation theory

The idea has been further expounded by Bauval in collaboration with pseudoscientific authors Adrian Gilbert (The Orion Mystery, 1994) and Graham Hancock (Keeper of Genesis, 1996), as well as in their separate publications.

Egyptology and archaeological science maintain that available evidence indicates that the Giza pyramids were constructed during the Fourth dynasty period (3rd millennium BC[10]), while the exact date of the Great Sphinx is still unclear.

[11] Among these are critiques from two astronomers, Ed Krupp of Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles and Tony Fairall of the University of Cape Town, South Africa.

[15] Krupp and Fairall found other problems with their arguments, including noting that if the Sphinx is meant to represent the constellation of Leo, then it should be on the opposite side of the Nile (the "Milky Way") from the pyramids ("Orion"),[12][13] that the vernal equinox c. 10,500 BC was in Virgo and not Leo,[12] and that in any case the constellations of the Zodiac originate from Mesopotamia and were completely unknown in Egypt until the much later Graeco-Roman era.

On 4 November 1999, the BBC broadcast a documentary entitled Atlantis Reborn which tested the ideas of Robert Bauval and his colleague, Graham Hancock.

In regard of the nine remaining principal complaints, the BSC ruled against Hancock and Bauval, concluding that they had not been treated unfairly in the criticism of their theories concerning carbon-dating, the Great Sphinx of Egypt, Cambodia's Angkor temples, Japan's Yonaguni formation and the mythical land of Atlantis.

Robert M. Schoch has argued that the effects of water erosion on the Sphinx and its surrounding enclosure mean that parts of the monument must originally have been carved at the latest between 7000–5000 BC.

These views have been almost universally rejected by mainstream Egyptologists who, together with a number of geologists including James Harrell, Lal Gauri, John J. Sinai, and Jayanta K. Bandyopadhyay,[22][23] stand by the conventional dating for the monument.

Their analyses attribute the apparently accelerated wear on the Sphinx variously to modern industrial pollution, qualitative differences between the layers of limestone in the monument itself, scouring by wind-borne sand, or temperature changes causing the stone to crack.