As to the exact age of the Sphinx, and to whom we should attribute its erection, no definite facts are known, and we have not one single contemporary inscription to enlighten us on this point.46
Neither, for that matter, are there any inscriptions from the First Intermediate Period, or from the Middle Kingdom, or from the Second Intermediate Period. Indeed, it is not until we come to the New Kingdom, roughly 1550 BC onward, supposedly about a thousand years after it was carved out of the bedrock of the Giza plateau, that the pharaohs of Ancient Egypt suddenly start talking about the Sphinx.
What Selim Hassan rightly describes as “the earliest authentic opinion” is given by Amenhotep II (1427-1401 BC) who built a small temple that can still be seen today on the north side of the Sphinx enclosure.47 There on a limestone stela, this New Kingdom pharaoh refers to the Sphinx under the names Hor-em-Akhet and Horakhti,48 and also makes a direct reference to the Giza pyramids which—to the annoyance of Egyptologists—he does not ascribe to his Fourth Dynasty predecessors Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure, but rather nominates as “the Pyramids of Hor-em-akhet.”49 The clear implication is that in Amenhotep’s time—far closer to the Fourth Dynasty than our own—there existed no historical archives, nor even any tradition, that linked the pyramids with the three pharaohs whom modern Egyptologists now insist were their builders. On the contrary, as Selim Hassan explains, the use of the epithet “Pyramids of Hor-em-Akhet” suggests (since Hor-em-Akhet was one of the names by which the Sphinx was known) that Amenhotep:
considered the Sphinx to be older than the Pyramids.50
Chronologically, the next inscription referring to the Sphinx occurs on the famous “Dream Stela” of Thutmosis IV. The story goes that before he ascended to the throne the future pharaoh was out hunting one day around Giza where the Sphinx lay forgotten, buried up to its neck in sand. Thutmosis took a siesta in the shade of the giant head at which point:
A vision of sleep seized him at the hour when the sun was in the zenith, 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 Thutmosis! I am … Hor-em-Akhet … who will give thee my kingdom on earth” …51
However, there was a condition for, the Sphinx said, “the sand of this desert upon which I am has reached me … My manner is as if I were ailing in my limbs … Thou shalt be to me a protector…”52
To cut a long story short, Thutmosis understood that if he were to clear the Sphinx of sand and restore it to its former glory he would become pharaoh. Accordingly he did as he was instructed and, when the restoration was complete, and the throne was his as prophesied, he erected the Dream Stela in commemoration.
If you visit the site today you can still see the huge stela—it’s nearly 12 feet high and more than 7 feet wide—standing between the paws of the Sphinx directly in front of the monument’s chest, but much of the original inscription, from the thirteenth line onward, has flaked away. In the 1830s, however, a cast was taken of it, at which time some—though unfortunately not all—of the thirteenth line was still intact. There the single syllable Khaf (no longer present today) was noted and from this, as the American Egyptologist James Henry Breasted comments in his authoritative translation of the stela, many have been inclined to conclude that the Sphinx was the work of Khafre. Such a conclusion, Breasted adds dryly, “does not follow.” He points out that there is in fact “no trace of a cartouche” (the oval sign that normally enclosed royal names) on the copies and casts of the stela that were made in the nineteenth century—which suggests strongly that the syllable Khaf did not refer at all to the Fourth Dynasty Pharaoh Khafre.53
Moreover, as Selim Hassan later added, even if the cartouche had been there, we are not at liberty to conclude from the damaged line that Khafre made the Sphinx. At the most it would tell us that “Thutmosis in some way connected the Sphinx with Khafre.”54 Even Gaston Maspero, who was the Director of the Department of Antiquities at the Cairo Museum in the late nineteenth century, and who did believe the cartouche had once been present, saw no reason to deduce from such flimsy evidence that the Sphinx was Khafre’s work. On the contrary, his preferred interpretation was that the purpose of Thutmosis in this part of the inscription was to recognize a former renovation and clearance of the Sphinx undertaken by Khafre. “Consequently,” Maspero wrote, “we have here almost certain proof that the Sphinx was already buried in sand in the time of Khufu [Khafre’s father] and his predecessors.” 55
Maspero would later change his view, grudgingly stating that the Sphinx “probably represents Khafre himself”56and thus falling in line with the growing consensus among Egyptologists of the twentieth century. His initial opinion that the monument was older than Khafre, and indeed had been buried in sand in the time of Khufu, had in part been based on information contained in yet another stela, the so-called Inventory Stela, discovered at Giza in the 1850s by the French archaeologist, Auguste Mariette. The gist of the Inventory Stela, once also referred to as the Stela of Khufu’s Daughter,57 was that the Great Sphinx and the Valley Temple, as well as a number of other structures on the plateau, were already in existence long before Khufu came to the throne.58
What apparently “debunked” it, however, and no doubt contributed to Maspero’s change of mind, was firm evidence that the hieroglyphic writing system used in the inscription was not consistent with the style of the Fourth Dynasty, but belonged to a much more recent period—Selim Hassan suggests the Twenty-sixth Dynasty.59 This interesting little stela has therefore subsequently come to be regarded as a work of fiction, most likely fabricated by a group of priests who wished to magnify the name of the goddess Isis (who was popular in the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, 664-525 BC) and thus of no value in our attempts to determine what happened at Giza nearly 2000 years earlier in the Fourth Dynasty—or perhaps long before.
That is certainly how things look when viewed through the prism of “Egyptologic”—i.e. that special form of reasoning, with a built-in double standard, deployed only by Egyptologists. According to Egyptologic, if evidence supports established theories then that evidence will be accepted. But if evidence undermines established theories, then that evidence must be rejected. Thus Egyptology uses entirely circumstantial and non-contemporary data to support its present claim that the Sphinx and its megalithic temples were the work of the Pharaoh Khafre of the Fourth Dynasty (as we’ve seen, Selim Hassan admits that “we have not one single contemporary inscription” to enlighten us as to the exact age of the Sphinx). So the dating of the monument to the Fourth Dynasty—something that Egyptologists tout as a “fact,” that is taught as such in universities and that is widely disseminated by the media—rests entirely on its “context” (the nearby pyramids and megalithic temples) and on that single syllable Khaf, which was once present on the Eighteenth Dynasty Dream Stela.
The flimsy case of Egyptology
As to context, even if the pyramids were exclusively the work of the Fourth Dynasty—which is called into question, as we’ve seen, by the surface luminescence dating of the pyramid attributed to Menkaure—we could still not safely deduce that the Sphinx is also Fourth Dynasty work. Indeed, it could be the case that the pyramids were built where they are precisely because the Sphinx was already there, bestowing an air of ancient sanctity on the site.
Neither do the megalithic temples really prove anything about the Sphinx since there is no evidence that unequivocally dates their own construction to the Fourth Dynasty. The most that can be said is that a black diorite statue of Khafre (now in the Cairo Museum) was found dumped upside down in a deep pit in the Valley Temple. However, this tells us only that Khafre at some point required his statue to be placed in the temple and that he therefore identified with the temple in some way, not that he built it.
Superficially more persuasive is the claim made by some Egyptologists that Khafre’s name was found inscribed at the Valley Temple. On his “Guardians” website, National Geographic Explorer in Residence Dr.
Zahi Hawass, the former Director of the Giza Plateau and Secretary General of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, has this to say about the Valley Temple:
inscriptions in the building are around the entrance doorways; they list the King’s names and titles, those of the goddess Bastet (north doorway) and those of Hathor (south doorway).60
Wikipedia, which is influential in shaping public perceptions of Giza, and which routinely labels non-mainstream approaches as “pseudoscience,” goes even further than Hawass when it says of the Valley Temple that:
Blocks have been found showing the partial remains of an inscription with the Horus name of Khafre (Weser-ib).61
On closer examination, however, Wikipedia turns out to be misinformed. Stephen Quirke, Professor of Egyptian Archaeology at University College London, was kind enough to look into this for me when I raised it with him and in due course reported the results of his investigation. The partial inscription with the Horus name of Khafre does not in fact appear on blocks from the Valley Temple, but rather on blocks from an entirely different building at Giza.62
What, then, of Dr. Hawass’s statement about “the King’s names and titles.” It is clear, at any rate, what his source is because in the first (1947) edition of his classic study The Pyramids of Egypt, I.E.S. Edwards, formerly Keeper of Egyptian Antiquities at the British Museum, wrote several pages about the Valley Temple which, along with the rest of the Egyptological profession by this time, he identified as being the work of Khafre.63 “Around each doorway,” he stated:
is a band of hieroglyphic inscription giving the name and titles of the King; no other inscriptions or reliefs occur anywhere else in the building.64
That would seem to settle the matter were it not for the fact that many years later, when Edwards produced the definitive final edition of his book, he revised the above passage with important information that he did not present in 1947. “Around each doorway,” we now read:
was carved a band of hieroglyphic inscriptions giving the name and titles of the King, but only the last words “Beloved [of the goddess] Bastet” and “Beloved [of the goddess] Hathor” are preserved. No other inscriptions occur anywhere else in the building.65
Needless to say the words “Beloved of Bastet” and “Beloved of Hathor” do not, in isolation like this, prove that Khafre was the King referred to as being the “beloved” of these deities. They could apply to anybody and therefore cannot legitimately be used to support the claim that the Valley Temple was the work of Khafre.
Is there anything else to support that claim? The obscure and eye-wateringly expensive Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt contains an entry on the “Khafre pyramid complex.” Written again by Zahi Hawass, the entry informs us that the Valley Temple:
is identified with Khafre from inscriptions on granite casing blocks from the western end of the Valley Temple. Reliefs from this complex were discovered at el-Lisht, where they were used as fill for the pyramid of Amenemhat I (Twelfth Dynasty).66
Now this is really clutching at straws! Since they are miles away at el-Lisht, cannibalized as filler material for a later monarch’s pyramid, the reality is that these blocks tell us nothing reliable at all about the Valley Temple. Perhaps they were taken from there, but then again, perhaps they came from somewhere else entirely.
Besides, nobody is claiming that any of the inscriptions were made on the limestone core masonry of the Valley Temple. All of them appear on “granite casing blocks” and as we’ve seen, the granite casing blocks of the Valley Temple give every appearance of being a veneer that was applied long after the core limestone blocks were set in place—in some cases perhaps as early as 3640 BC and in others perhaps as late as 1190 BC. That Khafre may well have been one of several pharaohs who carried out restoration work on the Valley Temple during this long period, and that he commemorated his good deeds with an official inscription and some statues of himself—perhaps at the same time as he also appears to have carried out a restoration project on the Sphinx—does not mean that he was the original builder either of the Sphinx or the Temple.
So we are left, then, with that single syllable Khaf on the Eighteenth Dynasty Dream Stela, which modern Egyptologists (unlike their nineteenth-century predecessors) have eagerly grasped as “proof” that Khafre built the Sphinx. Needless to say the Eighteenth Dynasty and the Fourth Dynasty are not contemporary with one another. Moreover, there is a strong case to be made that even the Eighteenth Dynasty attribution of the stela is questionable. Breasted, for example, points to “errors and striking irregularities in orthography” and to a number of other “suspicious peculiarities” leading him to conclude that the inscription was not in fact the work of Thutmosis IV but was a “late restoration” dating to between the Twenty-first Dynasty and the Twenty-sixth (Saitic) Dynasty.67
In other words, it is quite possible that the Dream Stela is as young as the Inventory Stela. Yet “Egyptologic” requires the shaky evidence of the Khaf syllable on the former to be accepted as proof that Khafre made the Sphinx, whereas the several clear statements on the latter that absolutely contradict the attribution to Khafre are rejected as “preposterous fictions.”
Dynamite revelations
Here are some extracts from the text of the Inventory Stela. Note before reading that all the pharaohs of Egypt were regarded as incarnations of the god Horus68 and the name Horus was therefore routinely included in their titles. Each King also had a “Horus name,” which in Khufu’s case was Mezer:69
Live Horus, the Mezer, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Khufu, given life. He found the House of Isis, Mistress of the Pyramid, by the side of cavity of the Sphinx, on the northwest of the House of Osiris, Lord of Rostau … The plans of the Image of Hor-em-akhet were brought in order to bring to revision the sayings of the disposition of the Image … He restored the statue all covered in painting … He made to quarry the hind part of the nemes headdress, which was lacking, from gilded stone, and which had a length of about 7 ells (3.7 meters or 12 feet). He came to make a tour, in order to see the thunderbolt, which stands in the Place of the Sycamore, so named because of a great sycamore, whose branches were struck when the Lord of Heaven descended upon the place of Hor-em-akhet … The figure of this God, being cut in stone, is solid, and will exist to eternity, having always its face regarding the East.70
The language of the Inventory Stela is obscure, but Selim Hassan’s analysis brings some clarity. “If we could believe its inscriptions,” he writes:
we should have to credit Khufu with having repaired the Sphinx, apparently after it had been damaged by a thunderbolt. As a matter of fact, there may be a grain of truth in this story, for the tail of the nemes headdress of the Sphinx is certainly missing, and it is not a part, which, by reason of its shape and position, could be easily broken off, except by a direct blow from some heavy object, delivered with terrific force. There is actually to be seen on the back of the Sphinx the scar of this breakage, and traces of the old mortar with which it was repaired. This scar measures about 4 meters which accords with the measurements recorded on the stela … Therefore, it is perhaps likely that the Sphinx was struck by lightning, but there is not a particle of evidence to show that this accident happened in the reign of Khufu.71
Neither, however, is there any evidence to prove that the “accident” to the Sphinx did not happen in the reign of Khufu. All we have is the Egyptological bias that it could not have happened then, because the Sphinx is supposed to be the work of Khafre, undertaken after Khufu’s death, and therefore—obviously—should not have existed in Khufu’s time.
Figure 39: The Inventory Stela. The gist of the inscriptions, which Egyptologists reject, is that the Great Sphinx and the Valley Temple, as well as a number of other structures on the Giza plateau, were already in existence long before Khufu came to the throne.
The same goes for the second dynamite revelation of the Inventory Stela, namely the mention of “the House of Osiris, Lord of Rostau.”72 We can gath
er the location of this structure because “the cavity of the Sphinx” is said to lie on its “northwest”73—which means, to put things the other way round, that “the House of Osiris, Lord of Rostau” is located immediately southeast of the Sphinx. The only structure which fits these coordinates is the Valley Temple which does indeed lie immediately southeast of the Sphinx. As with the references to the Sphinx itself, therefore, the testimony of the Inventory Stela is that the Valley Temple was not made by Khafre since it was already in existence in the time of his predecessor Khufu.
These, then, are the real reasons why the Inventory Stela has been rejected by Egyptologists as a preposterous fiction—rather, say, than as an inscription that preserves and transmits to a later age, using language and terminology suitable to that age, a much older but genuine tradition. Certainly the rejection cannot be because the Inventory Stela is not contemporary with the reign of Khufu, or because of its Twenty-sixth Dynasty “orthography”—since such factors do not prevent Egyptologists from accepting the Dream Stela, which suffers from the same non-contemporaneity and the same “striking irregularities in orthography.” In short, is it not obvious that the Inventory Stela has been rejected and ignored, while the Dream Stela has been accepted and embraced, because the former blows the established theory of Egyptian history completely out of the water, while the latter can be conveniently “spun” to support the established theory?
A bolt from heaven and an ancient archive
Quite apart from its implications of a much older Sphinx, there are two other aspects of the Inventory Stela that merit further investigation.
The first is the information that the Sphinx had been damaged by a “thunderbolt.” Selim Hassan is willing to accept there might be some truth to that, but we cannot be sure that a thunderbolt means a lightning strike as he assumes. The thunderbolt in question is said in the inscription still to have been present for Khufu to “see” when he made his “tour.” This would not be the case with lightning, which would leave damage but not a physical object that could be viewed. On the other hand a meteorite, after striking and damaging the Sphinx, would have been there, on the spot, for inspection by the King—and descending in fire from the sky amidst awesome noise, burning a great old tree in its passage, a meteorite might easily be described as a thunderbolt (indeed in a number of cultures that was exactly how meteorites were described).74