“All Egyptologists, especially those who have studied the Sphinx and all the archaeological evidence that we have, dated the Sphinx back to 4500 years ago, about 2500 BC, which is the time of Khafre.” That is Zahi Hawass, in an old interview I quote in Echoes of History. Notice what the sentence leans on. It does not give a reason. It gives a headcount.
So how old is the Sphinx? The mainstream answer is about 4,500 years: carved from the Giza bedrock in the Fourth Dynasty, usually credited to Khafre around 2500 BC. The geological challenge from John Anthony West and Robert Schoch says the water erosion on the Sphinx and its enclosure points to at least 10,000 BC, when Egypt was far wetter. My own view goes further back still: the Sphinx was carved before the Great Flood by Sabeh, son of Enoch, with his father’s face on a lion’s body.
In this article
- How old is the Sphinx according to Egyptologists?
- The water erosion argument
- Why other geologists disagree
- The head, the body and the Khafre statue
- The Book and the Geologist at the Sphinx enclosure
How old is the Sphinx according to Egyptologists?
The Khafre date does not come from an inscription saying “Khafre made this.” No such text exists. It comes from context.
The Sphinx sits beside the causeway of Khafre’s pyramid complex, next to his valley temple. In front of it stands the Sphinx Temple, built of limestone blocks that Mark Lehner and others argue were cut from the Sphinx ditch itself as the body was freed from the rock. That makes the Sphinx and the temples, in their view, one project. In 1860 Auguste Mariette found the diorite-like statue now called Khafre Enthroned in the valley temple next door.
Much later, around 1400 BC, Thutmose IV set up his Dream Stele between the paws, recording that he cleared the sand from the Sphinx after it promised him the throne. So the monument was already old and half-buried in the New Kingdom.
The water erosion argument
In the early 1990s, West brought Schoch, a geologist with a Yale doctorate, to Giza. West had raised the erosion question years before in Serpent in the Sky (1979). Schoch presented the results to the Geological Society of America in 1992.
Their argument, as I set it out in the book, has three parts:
- Rain, not wind or sand. The walls of the Sphinx enclosure and the body show deep, rounded vertical fissures and an undulating profile that Schoch reads as the work of prolonged rainfall. Wind-blown sand cuts horizontally.
- Reused blocks. The large stones of the neighbouring temples show the same weathering, which I take to mean the builders reused stones that were already weathered.
- Depth under the floor. Seismic surveys around the base measured how deep weathering had gone into the limestone. The book reports a depth of about 3 metres, which only centuries of heavy rain could produce.
From this, West and Schoch placed the Sphinx at least two thousand years before 7000 BC, and as early as 10,000 BC or before. “Their findings challenged established beliefs about the age of the Sphinx and, by extension, the timeline of ancient Egyptian civilization,” I write.
Why other geologists disagree
The critics are not just Egyptologists defending a date. Several are geologists, and they deserve a fair hearing.
James Harrell argued in 1994 that the fissures could come from wet sand lying against the rock for long periods, soaking the limestone and dissolving it in place, which fits the conventional date. K. Lal Gauri studied salt crystallization: moisture rising into the stone, then drying, pushes salt crystals outward and flakes the surface away. Different layers of the Sphinx limestone are of very different quality, which Egyptologists say explains why some erode much faster.
Even among those who accept rain damage, the conclusions differ. The British geologist Colin Reader agreed the enclosure shows water runoff, but argued for an Early Dynastic date, a few centuries before Khafre, not many thousands of years.
And Lehner asks a fair archaeological question: if a civilization carved the Sphinx in 10,000 BC, where are its tools, homes, pottery and dead?
The head, the body and the Khafre statue
Anyone who looks at the Sphinx side-on notices the head is too small for the body. West and Schoch suggested the original head was a lion’s, badly eroded over thousands of years, and later re-carved by a ruler into a human face. That would explain why the head is in better condition than the body.
My view is different. I think the head was re-carved, yes, but as a restoration that kept the original image: a human face, possibly that of Thoth. Since I hold that Thoth, Enoch and Idris are one man, this matches the tradition that Sabeh carved his father’s face. The Nemes headdress, in my reading, was originally Enoch’s symbol of wisdom. And the Sphinx looks to the sunrise toward the constellation of Leo, “symbolizing the anticipation of the return of the ‘son of man.’”
West also asked Frank Domingo, a New York police forensic artist, to compare the Sphinx’s face with Khafre Enthroned. Domingo found differences in eye size, the angle between chin and eyes, nose shape and overall structure. Egyptian sculptors were precise, so one of the two cannot be Khafre. Personally, I doubt either is. The cartouche on the statue is crudely cut compared with the rest of the work, which tells me it was added later by a far less skilled hand. Khafre, in my reading, put his name on something older.
Robert Bauval’s work on the Orion correlation adds another layer. His star software placed the alignment of the Giza pyramids with Orion’s belt, and the Nile with the Milky Way, around 10,500 BC. I differ with Bauval on how he connects this to the later Egyptian myth of a dying and reborn star, but the alignment itself is part of the case.
The Book and the Geologist at the Sphinx enclosure
The Book: Your side says Khafre carved the Sphinx. What’s the actual evidence, apart from the fact that everyone agrees?
The Geologist: The quarry sequence. The temple blocks match the layers cut from the Sphinx ditch. The enclosure, the temple and Khafre’s causeway fit together as one plan.
The Book: Or the temple builders took already-weathered stone from an old monument. Schoch saw the same rain weathering on those blocks.
The Geologist: He saw weathering. Whether it’s rain is the question. Wet sand against limestone, salt crystallization, the poor quality of certain beds: all of those can produce rounded fissures.
The Book: Then why is the head so much better preserved than the body? It’s the same rock exposed to the same air.
The Geologist: It isn’t quite the same rock. The head is cut from a harder layer. The body runs through softer beds that crumble.
The Book: I’ll grant you the layers differ. But the seismic work showed weathering going about three metres under the floor in front of the Sphinx. That takes rain, and a lot of time.
The Geologist: Subsurface weathering rates depend on moisture, rock type and burial. Schoch’s rate is an assumption, and colleagues like Colin Reader who accept rain damage still don’t get anywhere near 10,000 BC.
The Book: Reader still moves it before Khafre. That’s my point. Once you admit the Sphinx may be older than Khafre, Hawass’s consensus is gone and the real question opens.
The Geologist: Older than Khafre by a few centuries is a very different claim from older than agriculture. A culture that could carve this would leave settlements.
The Book: It might, unless a flood buried them, or the desert did. You found Göbekli Tepe only in the 1990s, and it rewrote the date of monumental building by thousands of years. Why is Giza the one place where that’s impossible?
The Geologist: It isn’t impossible. It needs evidence beyond the erosion.
The Book: Then go and look under the sand, rather than counting how many of your colleagues agree.
FAQ
How old is the Sphinx according to Egyptologists?
About 4,500 years. Egyptologists date the Great Sphinx to the Fourth Dynasty, usually to Khafre around 2500 BC, based on its link with Khafre’s causeway and valley temple and on the Sphinx Temple’s blocks, which appear to have been quarried from the Sphinx enclosure. No inscription names its builder directly.
What is the Sphinx water erosion theory?
Geologist Robert Schoch and writer John Anthony West argued in the early 1990s that the Sphinx enclosure shows weathering from long periods of heavy rain. Since Egypt was much wetter before about 7000 BC, they proposed a date of at least 10,000 BC. Geologists including James Harrell and K. Lal Gauri offered other explanations.
Was the Sphinx’s head re-carved?
Many researchers think so, because the head looks too small for the body. West and Schoch proposed it was originally a lion’s head. Echoes of History agrees it was re-carved but argues it was a restoration of an original human face, possibly Thoth, whom the book identifies with Enoch.
Who built the Sphinx, according to Echoes of History?
The book says Sabeh, son of the prophet Enoch, carved the Sphinx before the Great Flood after his father was taken by God. He gave it his father’s face, and its gaze toward Leo marks the expected return of the “son of man.” Khafre later added his name to older work.
Sources
- Robert M. Schoch, “The Great Sphinx,” robertschoch.com, the author’s own account of his dating argument
- James A. Harrell, “The Sphinx Controversy: Another Look at the Geological Evidence,” KMT 5:2 (1994)
- Ancient Egypt Research Associates, “Who Built the Sphinx?,” aeraweb.org
- John Anthony West, Serpent in the Sky (1979)
- Robert Bauval and Adrian Gilbert, The Orion Mystery (1994)
Keep Reading
- Who Built the Pyramids of Giza?
- Göbekli Tepe: The 12,000-Year-Old Site That Rewrote History
- Who Was Enoch? Idris, Hermes and Thoth as One Man
- Egypt Before the Pharaohs: Predynastic Egypt and the Kingdom of the Gods
The Sphinx chapter of Echoes of History goes through West and Schoch’s work, the Khafre statue and the story of Sabeh in more detail. If the headcount answer has never satisfied you, start there.
Go deeper: explore our full guide in this topic hub, read a free sample, or get the complete argument in Echoes of History.