Who Built the Sphinx?Name:

Date:

Suspects

Suspect #1

Suspect #2

Suspect #3

CSI: Ancient HistoryAncient Egypt

What evidence is there to support that suspect #2 built the sphinx?

What evidence is there to support that suspect #3 built the sphinx?

What evidence is there to support that suspect #4 built the sphinx?

Which suspect is the least likely to have built the sphinx? Why?

Which suspect do you believe built the sphinx and why does that evidence outweigh all of the other evidence?

What evidence is there to support that suspect #1 built the sphinx?

Who does the Sphinx look like the most?

After watching the debriefing, has your conclusion changed? Why / why not?

Suspect #4

Images for your consideration 

 The Sphinx   

A Picture of Khufu with headress 

 Sphinx in profile 

 Best known statue of Khufu 

 Djedefre, one of the few images of him. 

 Khafre, as is typically represented  

 

   

Riddle of the Sphinx http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/greeks/literature/oedipus.htm

When Oedipus got to the town of Thebes, a little later, he found the great Sphinx there. The Sphinx sat in front of Thebes and asked everyone who came there a riddle. If you could answer it, the Sphinx let you go, but if you could not answer the riddle, then the Sphinx ate you. Nobody ever knew the answer. This was the Sphinx's riddle: What goes on four feet in the morning, two feet at noon, and three feet in the evening? When Oedipus answered the riddle correctly, the Sphinx was so upset that she killed herself. Oedipus went on into Thebes. When he got there, the Thebans were very upset because somebody had killed their king, Laius. But they were happy to hear that Oedipus had figured out the riddle of the Sphinx. So they made Oedipus their new king.  

 

   

 At the base of the sphinx lies this document, called a stela.  It was written by Thutmosis IV at least one thousand years after the sphinx was built.  The following pages is a transcript of the hieroglyphs and could provide some insight regarding the builder of the sphinx. 

 

 

 

 

Sphinx stela of Thutmose IV 1 Year I, third month of the first season, day 19, under the majesty of Horus: Mighty-Bull-[Begetting (?)]-Radiance; Favorite of the Two Goddesses: Enduring-in-Kingship-like-Atum; Golden Horus: Mighty-of-Sword, Repelling-the-Nine-Bows; King of Upper and Lower Egypt; Menkheprure (mn-xpr[w]ra), Son of Re: [Thutmose (IV), Shining]-in-Diadems; beloved of ///, given life, stability, satisfaction, like Re, forever. 2 Live the Good God, son of Atum, Protector of Harakhte, living image of the All-Lord, sovereign, begotten of Re; excellent heir of Khepri; beautiful of face like his father; who came forth [///] equipped with the form of Horus upon him; a king who /// the gods; who /// favor with the ennead of gods; who purifies Heliopolis, 3 who satisfies Re; who beautifies Memphis; who presents truth to Atum, who offers it to Him-Who-is-South-of-His-Wall; who makes a monument by daily offering to Horus; who does all things, seeking benefits for the gods of South and North; who builds their houses of limestone; who endows all their offerings; son of Atum, of his body, Thutmose (IV), Shining in Diadems, like Re; 4 heir of Horus upon his throne, Menkheprure, given life.

The text on the stela is not original but was redrawn during the first millennium BCE.

Horus:.... concerning the pharaonic titles see The pharaoh - man, ruler and god.

who came forth [///] equipped with the form of Horus upon him: Breasted: He was born with the royal insignia upon him, as in Papyrus Westcar.

Him-Who-is-South-of-His-Wall: Ptah, the main god of Memphis.

When his majesty was a stripling like Horus, the youth in Khemmis, his beauty was like the protector of his father, he seemed like the god himself. The army rejoiced because of love for him, the king's-children and all the nobles. Then his strength overflowed him, and he 5 repeated the circuit of his might like the son of Nut. Behold, he did a thing that gave him pleasure upon the highlands of the Memphite nome, upon its southern and northern road, shooting at a target with copper bolts, hunting lions and wild goats, coursing in his chariot, his horses being swifter 6 than the wind; together with two of his followers, while not a soul knew it.

Khemmis: capital of the 9th nome of Upper Egypt, modern Akhmim.

protector of his father: Breasted: Harendotes, a title of Horus.

shooting at a target with copper bolts: according to C. el Mahdy [1] he was shooting at a target of copper.

lions: the Nubian lions became extinct in Egypt about 200 years ago.

with two of his followers: according to C. el Mahdy he had just one companion.

while not a soul knew it: at times royal hunts were rather like army operations where the aim was to slaughter as many animals as possible.

Now, when his hour came on for giving rest to his followers, (it was always) at the [shoulder (?)] of Harmakhis, beside Sokar in Rosta, Renutet in [/// ///] in heaven, Mut /// /// of the northern /// the mistress of the Wall of the South, Sekhmet 7 presider (fem.) over Khas (xAs) [/// ///] the splendid place of the beginning of time, over against the lords of Khereha (xr-axa), the sacred road of the gods to the necropolis west of On (Heliopolis). Now, the very great statue of Khepri, rests in this place; the great in prowess, the splendid in strength; upon which the shadow of Re tarries. The quarters of Memphis and all the cities which are by him come to him, (raising) their hands for him in praise to his face, 8 bearing great

Rosta: C. el Mahdy: cemetery Renenutet: harvest goddess [/// ///] in heaven: According to C. el

Mahdy Tamut in the region of the pyramids.

[/// ///] the splendid place: C. el Mahdy: Seth, the eldest magician, in the hallowed place.

necropolis: C. el Mahdy: horizon

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oblations for his ka. One of those days it came to pass that the king's-son, Thutmose, came, coursing at the time of midday, and he rested in the shadow of this great god. A [vision (?)] of sleep seized him at the hour (when) the sun was in the zenith, 9 and he found the majesty of this revered god speaking with his own mouth, as a father speaks with his son, saying: "Behold thou me! See thou me! my son Thutmose. I am thy father, Harmakhis-Khepri-Re-Atum, who will give to thee my kingdom 10 on earth at the head of the living. Thou shalt wear the white crown and the red crown upon the throne of Keb, the hereditary prince. The land shall be thine in its length and breadth, that which the eye of the All-Lord shines upon. The food of the Two Lands shall be thine, the great tribute of all countries, the duration of a long period of years. My face is thine, my desire is toward thee. Thou shalt be to me a protector 11 (for) my manner is as I were ailing in all my limbs [///]. The sand of this desert upon which I am, has reached me; turn to me, to have that done which I have desired, knowing that thou art my son, my protector; [come hither (?)], behold, I am with thee, I am 12 thy leader."

this great god: Breasted: the sphinx

My face is thine: C. el Mahdy thinks that the god's face is turned towards Thutmose.

Thou shalt be to me a protector: according to el Mahdy: You are mine.

turn to me: el Mahdy: I have waited.

When he had finished this speech, this king's-son [awoke (?)] hearing this /// ///; he understood the words of this god, and he kept silent in his heart. He said: "Come, let us hasten to our house in the city; they shall protect the oblations for this god 13 which we bring for him: oxen [///] and all young vegetables; and we shall give praise [to] Wen-nofer, /// /// /// Khaf[re], the statue made for Atum-Harmakhis 14 /////////

this king's-son: i.e. Thutmose they shall protect: el Mahdy: we shall

dedicate

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Layouut of the Necrop

 

polis of GGiza 

 

I have solved riddle of the Sphinx, says Frenchman

By Nic Fleming, Science Correspondent Last Updated: 1:03AM GMT 14 Dec 2004

Archaeologists, who are able to tell us who built the pyramids of Ancient Egypt, have puzzled over the riddle of the Sphinx for generations.

The identity of the ruler who ordered the building of the 65ft high, 260ft long limestone half-human statue that has guarded the Giza Plateau for 4,500 years has been lost in the sands of time.

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Now, following a 20-year re-examination of historical records and uncovering new evidence, Vassil Dobrev, a French Egyptologist, claims to have proved that the largest single stone statue on Earth is the work of a forgotten pharaoh.

The most popular theory of the origins of the Sphinx is that it was conceived by Khafre, a king of the Fourth Dynasty whose pyramid sits behind the statue.

However, in Secrets of the Sphinx, a documentary to be broadcast tonight on Channel Five, Dr Dobrev says it was created by Djedefre, Khafre's half brother and a son of Khufu, the builder of the Great Pyramid.

Dr Dobrev, of the French Archaeological Institute in Cairo, said: "It is incredible. The most important image in Egypt, the Sphinx, and we can't say who it was with certainty.

"This is the first time it has been proposed that the Sphinx has been built after the death of Khufu by his son Djedefre who succeeded him."

Khafre, the builder of the nearby second pyramid at Giza who ruled from 2558 to 2532 BC, has traditionally been credited with creating the Sphinx.

He is referred to in the Dream Stella, a stone tablet that tells of a young prince who dreamed that the Sphinx promised to make him king if he cleared the sand from its paws. He built both the pyramid behind the Sphinx and two temples in front of it.

Workers on the Sphinx in a television reconstruction

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However Dr Dobrev noticed that the causeway connecting Khafre's pyramid to the temples was built around the Sphinx - meaning it was already in existence.

All known statues of Khafre show him with a beard - but the Sphinx has none. Dr Dobrev says fragments of a giant beard found beneath the sphinx that survive in Cairo Museum were a later addition.

Several years ago Rainer Stadelmann, the former director of the German Institute of Archaeology in Cairo, suggested an alternative theory, that Khafre's father Khufu - the builder of the Great Pyramid at Giza - created theSphinx.

A small statuette of Khufu, the only commonly acknowledged image of the pharaoh, shows him to have a very square chin, like the Sphinx.

Dr Dobrev says he has uncovered other images of Khufu, none of which have beards, and that this proves the sphinx represents Khufu.

The nemes, the sphinx's headdress, has markings representing two small pleats and one large. Khufu is shown with a similar nemes in at least one other statue.

Dr Dobrev says the Sphinx was built by Djedefre in the image of his father Khufu, identifying him with the sun god Ra in order to restore respect for their dynasty.

George Reisner, a respected American archaeologist in the 1930s, portrayed Djedefre as a plotter whose tomb was built away from Giza because he tried to murder his brother Kawab. Dr Dobrev says Reisner's theory is unsubstantiated. He asks why a carved stone list of donations made to Kawab's daughter would have an emblem of Djedefre on it if he was her father's murderer. He says that Djedefre was a visionary builder who built a sun temple at Abu Roash, six miles from Giza, a structure so far believed by archaeologists to be a pyramid.

Dr Dobrev re-examined graffiti carved by workers at a site called Zawiyet el-Aryan and believes this shows he has uncovered Djedefre's pyramid tomb

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Who Built the Sphinx?

New information casts doubt on one of alternative Egyptology's boldest claims: that the Sphinx had nothing to do with Khafre.

by Jason Colavito > Read more about this topic in THE CULT OF ALIEN GODS

When Pharoah Thutmosis IV fell asleep before the head of the Great Sphinx at Giza, he recorded that the statue had spoken to him in a dream. He said the Sphinx had told him to clear away the centuries of sand that choked its body and hid all but its head from view. The Sphinx then promised the young Thutmosis (also spelled Tutmosis) the throne of Egypt for doing this work. And so he cleared the Sphinx of its sand and set up between the massive lion's paws a stela on which he recorded his dream and promised to restore the statue of the Pharoah Khafre. Or did he?

Alternative authors have long claimed that the traditional attribution of the Sphinx to Khafre is flawed because Egyptologist James Henry Breasted had said the stela before the Sphinx that bore Khafre's name did not contain a cartouche, the circle enclosing the name of a king or god. Alternative authors Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval quoted this belief in their Message of the Sphinx (1996): "It is therefore extremely difficult to understand how on the granite stela between the paws of the Sphinx the name of as powerful a king as Khafre--or indeed any other king--could have been written without its pre-required cartouche." (p. 12) New evidence shows this is not the case. The original attribution of the Sphinx to Khafre came about when Egyptologist Henry Salt made a facsimile of the damaged stela set up before the statue by the later Pharoah Tutmosis IV. The last line still legible bore the syllable "Khaf," assumed to be Khafre. Other people copied this copy because the stela's inscriptions had worn off with time. Thomas Young made the most famous secondary copy and based his translation on it. The accepted version of thirteenth line of the stela, the one bearing the syllable "Khaf," reads in the Young translation: "...which we bring for him: oxen... and all the young vegetables; and we shall give praise to Wenofer ...Khaf.... the statue made for Atum-Hor-em-Akhet." The last name refers to the Egyptian gods Horus and Atum in their joint form as the Sphinx. Young then added the syllable "re" to "Khaf" on the assumption that it referred to the Pharoah of that name. In 1905 James Henry Breasted concluded that Young's translation was wrong because his copy of the stela showed no cartouche around the "Khaf" syllable: "The mention of King Khafre has been understood to indicate that the Sphinx was the work of this king--a conclusion which does not follow; Young has no trace of a cartouche." However, Young had derived his copy from Salt, and no one thought to check on the condition of the original. Mystery of the Sphinx co-author Robert Bauval said on June 5, 2001: "No we didn't see Salt's manuscript... We accepted Breasted on this issue, and still do." The next day everything changed. Through a complicated maze of textual references, posters on Hancock's message board found that the later copies (from which Hancock and Bauval derived their knowledge of the stela) missed an important detail of the original facsimile: the 1820 copy showed a cartouche, implying the "Khaf" syllable belonged to King Khafre. Bauval promised to consult the British Museum's copy of Salt's orginial facsimile. On June 6, he broke the news: "I can report that there is little doubt now that Henry Salt had recorded a half-cartouche in 1820 around the two syllab[les] 'Kh' (rising sun) and 'f' (slug) supposedly forming Khafre's royal name." Bauval says this new finding contradicts his earlier claims but does not alter his view that someone earlier than Khafre built the Sphinx: "It still does not prove or disprove that Khafre actually 'built' the Sphinx, but it does show that Tutmosis IV associated his 'dream' and/or the Sphinx with Khafre." In 1900, the French Egyptologist Gaston Maspero took the Khafre reference to imply that there was a clearing of the monument "under this prince, and consequently the more or less certain proof that the Sphinx was already covered with sand during the time of [Khafre's brother] Khufu and his predecessors..." In Fingerprints of the Gods (1995), Graham Hancock presented opinions from 19th and early 20th century Egyptologists saying the Sphinx was older than Khafre. He quotes the British Museum's E. A. Wallis Budge's 1904 opinion that the Sphinx "was in existence in the days of Khafre, the builder of the Second Pyramid, and was, most probably, very old even at that period." These opinions accorded well with the other important theory circulating about the origin of the Sphinx: that it was, in fact, a relic from a lost civilization. EROSION AND THE SPHINX In the early 1990s a small group of maverick researchers began to look at the distinctive pattern of rippling waves visible on the body of the Sphinx and the walls surrounding it. When they examined the erosion on the limestone body of the statue, they came to a stunning conclusion: the Sphinx had been weathered by water, not by wind. Up until that point, most Egyptologists had believed that wind had carved out channels on the Sphinx, abated only by long periods when the statue was hidden beneath encroaching desert sands. The team consisted of geologist Robert Schoch and maverick archaeologist and tour guide John Anthony West. West did extensive work on the statue, measuring and photographing all of the weathering on the body of the lion and the walls of the "Sphinx enclosure" surrounding it. His conclusions were mind-blowing. West concluded that the weathering occurred by falling water, not blowing wind. This meant that extensive

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rainfall must have weathered the statue before the desert sands had buried it. Since the last Egyptian rainfall of that magnitude was over 7,000 years ago, this meant that history as we know it needed an overhaul. A team of geologists led by Dr. Robert Schoch of Boston University reached the same conclusions, and it seemed a number of prominent geologists agreed, though today that is in dispute. Archeaologist Michael Brass says "West said to me he couldn't supply any names because they hadn't paid attention and gotten names. Yet he still continues to claim this anonymous support, which cannot be tested, and to say these names can be provided." West says he can provide names "but before going to the time and trouble it takes to dig this out of our files, I think it only fair that we are first provided with [the] qualifications and credentials [of those who ask]." As of June 2001*, West had not supplied any of the 250 names he claimed supported the water-weathering hypothesis, but a few scientific journal articles have appeared both for and against the West-Schoch theory. Egyptology regrouped and arrived at a new theory, that the Sphinx was weathered by "salt crystal exfoliation" where Nile salts were sucked into the sand-covered Sphinx enclosure and performed a leeching of the limestone walls. Geologist August Matthusen sums up the criticisms of Schoch: "Schoch's ideas ignore several things. 'Precipitation-induced weathering' versus 'wind-induced weathering' producing different weathering morphologies is not an accepted idea, rather variations in the rock usually account for the different weathering morphologies." Matthusen claims that different densities of the layers of Giza limestone account for the weathering pattern. However, neither side has absolute proof, and the water-weathering is a seductive hypothesis, much simpler to understand and agree with than an obscure "hydrostatic exfoliation." West went on to say that Schoch's proposed building date of 5,000-7,000 B.C. did not go far enough. Without any formal geological training, West revised the figure to 10,500 B.C. based on French mathematician R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz's 1961 book Sacred Science. In it, Lubicz postulated, "A great civilization must have preceded the vast movements of water that passed over Egypt [in 10,000 B.C.], which leads us to assume that the Sphinx already existed... whose leonine body, except for the head, shows indisputable signs of aquatic erosion." West, Hancock and Bauval then go on to use the assumption that the Sphinx predated dynastic Egypt to prove that the a lost civilization existed. Their proof? The Sphinx already existed. In other words, based on Lubicz's assumption of an old Sphinx, they conclude that an ancient civilization existed because the "evidence" shows they built the Sphinx. Thus the assumption is also the conclusion. * As of today, this situation had not changed.

© 2001 Jason Colavito. All rights reserved.

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