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Documentary, History, conspiracy Theories
The Mystery of the Sphinx is a 1993 television documentary about the Great Sphinx of Giza, with a central focus being the conflict of egyptologists against a number of modern geology and oftentimes fringe theory proponents of the Sphinx water erosion hypothesis. Charlton Heston is the host of the documentary, which features John Anthony West and geologist Robert M. Schoch.
The Mystery of the Sphinx is a 1993 television documentary about the Great Sphinx of Giza, with a central focus being the conflict of egyptologists against a number of modern geology and oftentimes fringe theory proponents of the Sphinx water erosion hypothesis. Charlton Heston is the host of the documentary, which features John Anthony West and geologist Robert M. Schoch.
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01:30But eventually, if the evidence is convincing, a theory can be accepted as common knowledge.
01:37What you're about to see could be history in the making.
01:40Tonight, we go to Egypt to examine the controversial theories of John Anthony West.
01:53West and his team of scientists challenge our long-held views about the origins of the Great Sphinx.
02:00They suggest the Sphinx was carved before Egypt became a desert, nine to ten thousand years ago.
02:07It's remarkable that for thousands of years the evidence has been in plain sight, yet till now no one has recognized its significance.
02:17If West's theories prove to be correct, the implications are staggering.
02:23We've been taught that the people who inhabited Egypt during that early period were primitives who survived by hunting and scavenging for food.
02:33John West believes that this view is incomplete.
02:36He feels that an entire chapter of man's early history is missing.
02:40West's team has uncovered new evidence which suggests that we're descendants of an unknown earlier civilization,
02:48an advanced culture capable of incredible technological feats.
02:52Tonight, we'll examine this evidence to see if man's early history needs to be rewritten.
02:57Would the legends of Atlantis be true?
03:07Egypt.
03:09A land mystery.
03:12A symbol of her enigmatic culture, the Great Sphinx.
03:19For thousands of years, travelers have visited Egypt and stood in awe of these great monuments.
03:27Of all ancient civilizations, none has left behind such a wealth of artistic and architectural mastery.
03:35These magnificent temples were the inspiration for the artists of ancient Greece and Rome,
03:41who in turn passed their knowledge on to us.
03:46But who inspired the Egyptians in the first place?
03:52History has no answer.
03:57On the easternmost boundary of the Sahara Desert, six miles west of old Cairo,
04:02the Sphinx and surrounding pyramids rest on the edge of the Giza Plateau.
04:09240 feet long, the length of a city block.
04:1360 feet high, the height of a six-story building.
04:16The Sphinx has the body of a lion and the head of a man.
04:23It was carved in one piece out of solid limestone bedrock.
04:29It rests in its own enclosure.
04:34Facing east to catch the first rays of the rising sun.
04:37Egyptologists who specialize in ancient Egyptian dynasties now believe that the Sphinx was carved
04:50by the pharaoh Chephrin in his own image 4,500 years ago.
04:55Chephrin is the pharaoh who is credited with building the second of the three major pyramids
04:59in the Giza Plateau during what's known as the Old Kingdom period.
05:08For over half its known life, the Sphinx has been buried up to its neck in sand.
05:14Despite this protection from the elements, the body of the Sphinx is deeply eroded.
05:21Although it's been dug out and repaired many times,
05:24nothing has ever been found to tell us who built the Sphinx, or when.
05:32This is John Anthony West, author and independent Egyptologist.
05:37While researching the work of French mathematician Schwaller de Lubitsch,
05:41he made a chance discovery that would change his life.
05:45Schwaller made the simple observation that the Sphinx had been eroded by water,
05:49not by wind and sand, as traditionally believed.
05:52These are two very different types of erosion.
05:57Water in the Sahara Desert.
06:01There's been no significant rainfall in the Sahara for 9,000 to 10,000 years.
06:10West was the first person to grasp the implications of this.
06:13If the Sphinx was eroded by water, it had to be at least 9,000 years old.
06:19The deep erosion is easy to see, but it takes an expert to identify its cause.
06:29Through some friends, I had an introduction to a very well-known Oxford geologist,
06:34and I went in to him with a very simple question.
06:36On the basis of a clear photograph alone,
06:39could he, as a geologist, tell the difference between weathering by water and weathering by wind and sand?
06:45The answer was cautiously expressed as a general rule, yes.
06:49I asked him if he didn't mind if I'd play a bit of a trick on him,
06:51and what I did was I took a photograph of the Sphinx,
06:55and I masked off the head and the paws,
06:57and I asked him what did he think that was responsible for that weathering.
07:02And he looked at it a moment and said,
07:04well, unquestionably, water.
07:07And I stripped the masking tape off,
07:09and he looked at it a minute,
07:11and he said,
07:12oh.
07:14The Oxford geologist realized that if the Sphinx was more than 9,000 years old,
07:19the entire history of ancient man would have to be rewritten.
07:23He wanted no part of such a controversial subject.
07:26In his book, Serpent in the Sky,
07:29West first published his theory of an older Sphinx.
07:33The scholars laughed and ignored him.
07:36West needed in a lie a recognized expert willing to examine the evidence
07:40with the courage to stand behind his conclusions.
07:47Dr. Robert Schock is an associate professor of science at Boston University.
07:52He holds a Ph.D. in geology and geophysics from Yale University.
07:56Dr. Schock is an expert in the erosional analysis of rocks.
08:02What I found was that West had one very extreme idea
08:06that the Sphinx was thousands of years older than the Egyptologists thought.
08:10So I thought it was a long shot.
08:12I thought maybe West was onto something.
08:14I thought it was very improbable,
08:16but it was worth looking at further.
08:18I'm a curious type of person.
08:24West and Schock traveled to Egypt to examine the evidence firsthand.
08:29While Egyptologists look at monuments,
08:32geologists look at the stones they're made from.
08:34And those stones told Schock that West was on the right track.
08:39Schock was encouraged by what he saw,
08:41but the team was totally unprepared for what happened next.
08:46Somehow word of their theory leaked out.
08:48They found themselves attacked in the press.
08:51They're exploiting the monuments of Egypt for personal gains.
08:54This is an American hallucination,
08:57said Dr. Zahi Hawass, director of the Giza Plateau.
09:00The team is ignorant and insensitive.
09:03This from Dr. Mark Lehner, Egyptologist.
09:07There is many theories like this has been said about the Sphinx,
09:11but all of it done with the wind.
09:13Because we Egyptologists have a solid evidence
09:16to state that the Sphinx is dated to the time of Kephrin,
09:20the builder of the second pyramid at the Giza Plateau.
09:24West and Schock were undaunted by the ridicule.
09:27They knew their theory was based on solid evidence.
09:30Virtually all of the temples and tombs on the Giza Plateau
09:38have been weathered by wind and sand.
09:42So why would the Sphinx be the only monument weathered by water?
09:48To a geologist, erosion tells the story of a rock's history.
09:53The limestone bedrock in Giza is like a layer cake
09:57composed of both hard and soft layers.
09:59The wind-driven sand scours out the softer layers,
10:03leaving the harder layers intact.
10:05An example of this is found here in the tomb of Debehen,
10:10which is carved out of the exact same rock as the Sphinx.
10:15Once a smooth wall,
10:17it's been exposed to desert conditions for over 4,000 years.
10:20On the other hand, rain weathering has an entirely different look.
10:28Rocks which have been weathered by rain have a round, undulating profile.
10:33This is very different in appearance from the hard, sharp profile caused by wind weathering.
10:38This is classic textbook example of what happens to a limestone wall when you have rains beating down on it for thousands of years.
10:49It's only found in one area on the Giza Plateau, here, on the Sphinx, and on the walls of the Sphinx enclosure.
10:56These man-made vertical walls were carved from the same layer of bedrock, a mere 300 yards apart.
11:05According to Egyptologists, they were carved at the same time.
11:09But if that's so, shouldn't they exhibit the same pattern of erosion?
11:15Shock was certain that the walls of the Sphinx enclosure were eroded by water cascading down off the Giza Plateau.
11:22Water, whose only possible source was rain.
11:26This was the key element in Shock's argument.
11:30But when did it rain?
11:35Dr. John Kutzbach is a professor of paleoclimatology at the University of Wisconsin.
11:42Paleoclimatology is the study of ancient weather patterns.
11:45The first way that we try to determine the climate of the past is by looking at observations.
11:53There are plenty of observations from North Africa that show that that region was covered with lakes in the past.
12:00Right now, it's a desert.
12:02But 10,000 years ago, there were lakes in the Sahara.
12:06And there's an entirely different way that we figure out the climate of the past, and that's with our computer models.
12:11We then can calculate what the change in climate would be like for that time.
12:17And the amazing thing is that the geologic evidence and the computer simulations both agree that around 10,000 years ago, the Sahara was wetter than it is now.
12:28If the Sphinx was damaged by rain, and the evidence suggests it was much wetter in the Sahara region 9,000 to 10,000 years ago,
12:39then the Sphinx must be at least 9,000 years old.
12:44That's twice as old as history tells us.
12:48Shock and West were now ready to test their theory.
12:51They submitted their findings to the annual conference of the Geological Society of America.
12:55It's a basic forum to express new ideas in geology.
13:01And geologists, quite honestly, are quick to shoot people down if they find fault in the theories and ideas presented.
13:08Much to my pleasure, no one pointed out any errors.
13:13In fact, they found the evidence quite interesting, even compelling.
13:18Dr. Shock was being modest.
13:19As a result of his presentation, 275 of the attending geologists offered to help with his project.
13:27The argument escalated into a battle between two unrelated branches of science, geology and Egyptology.
13:35Once they saw what was involved and understood the consequences,
13:39suddenly we were in the papers and the media all over the world.
13:42As a direct result of the raging controversy in the press,
13:56both sides were invited to debate the question of the true age of the Sphinx.
14:01The debate was held at America's most prestigious scientific forum,
14:05the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
14:09The Egyptological view was presented by Dr. Mark Lehner,
14:13considered to be the world's foremost authority in the Sphinx.
14:17West's theory was presented by Dr. Robert Shock,
14:20while West watched the proceedings from the audience.
14:23Author Paul Roberts, who was covering the debate for Canada's leading investigative journal,
14:28had these comments.
14:29If they'd allowed John West to be on the podium
14:33and not be kept off the podium because he doesn't have degrees behind his name,
14:40they would have had an even more devastating attack.
14:45Our reaction is,
14:46if it was built by a civilization or a culture that represented that much earlier,
14:51where is the other evidence of this culture?
14:53To say where is the rest of the evidence,
15:05as a number of Egyptologists have said,
15:07it's like telling Magellan that the world is still flat
15:10because where are the other guys who sailed around it?
15:13Dr. Lehner had a valid point.
15:16If there had been a previous civilization,
15:18there must be other traces of its existence.
15:21West realized that the evidence could lie buried deep in the sand,
15:25maybe deeper than anyone had ever looked before.
15:31Archaeological excavation is expensive,
15:33and permission to dig in Egypt is difficult to obtain.
15:38How could West and his team look beneath the sand without digging?
15:42The seismograph is connected to listening devices called geophones,
15:50which are placed in the ground at precise intervals.
15:53A metal plate is hit with a heavy hammer,
15:56sending shockwaves deep into the ground.
15:59These shockwaves reflect off the rock layers of different densities
16:03that are received by the geophones and then recorded by the seismograph.
16:07The final results give a graphic representation
16:10of what lies hidden beneath the surface.
16:14Dr. Thomas Dobecky has been a professor
16:17at the Colorado School of Mines,
16:18and he's worked extensively in the petroleum industry.
16:22He's a professional engineering geologist and geophysicist.
16:27His specialty is high-resolution seismography.
16:31Initially, our primary purpose
16:33for conducting the seismic surveys in and around the Sphinx
16:36was to look for buried evidence for ancient civilizations.
16:41To this end, we were able to locate unusual cavities
16:45that could be chambers within the Sphinx enclosure.
16:48But over and above this, we were also able to map
16:51the pattern of weathering depth within the limestone.
16:55And what we have found inside of the Sphinx enclosure
16:57is that this depth of weathering is not uniform.
17:00Specifically, the sides and the front of the Sphinx
17:04show a great depth of weathering,
17:07twice that what we observe along the backside of the Sphinx.
17:10What this suggests is that the sides and the front
17:13have been exposed to the elements
17:15for a substantially longer period of time than has the back,
17:19at least twice as long.
17:21Simply stated, the floor in the back
17:24was weathered only to a depth of four feet,
17:26while the front was weathered eight feet.
17:28This suggests that the front of the Sphinx
17:30is twice as old as the back.
17:33Assuming that Sheffron exposed the back
17:35to make his repairs 4,500 years ago,
17:38the front must have been carved out at least 7,000,
17:41perhaps more than 9,000 years ago.
17:46The seismograph clearly supported Schock's theory.
17:50It also revealed unusual cavities and underground chambers.
17:54Could this be evidence for the lost continent of Atlantis?
17:58We'll come back to that later in the show.
18:01When we return, we'll also learn
18:03how a New York City police detective went to Egypt
18:06to help John West in his investigation.
18:08How old is the Sphinx?
18:21Egyptologists claim the pharaoh Sheffron carved the Sphinx
18:24in his own image 4,500 years ago.
18:28All Egyptologists, and especially everyone who studied the Sphinx,
18:32and all the archaeological evidence that we have,
18:35dated the Sphinx back to 4,500 years ago,
18:40which is the time of Kephren,
18:42the builder of the second pyramid at Giza.
18:45Even Mark Liener, who's a colleague of mine,
18:47tried to make a computer modeling of the Sphinx,
18:51and through a statue found in museum,
18:53it's now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston,
18:56he, with the computer, they found that the face of the Sphinx now
19:00exactly look like Kephren.
19:02The National Geographic article showed the face of Sheffron
19:06imposed by a computer on the Sphinx.
19:09According to Dr. Mark Liener, with the face of Sheffron,
19:12when the Sphinx came alive, alive, maybe.
19:18But does the face of the great Sphinx even resemble the pharaoh Sheffron?
19:23The traditional view says it does.
19:25But to John West, that answer was unsatisfactory.
19:31He decided to consult an expert,
19:33someone who works with faces every day.
19:36New York City detective Frank Domingo
19:38is one of America's leading forensic experts.
19:41A 26-year police veteran, he wrote a manual
19:45in the art and technique of facial identification
19:48used today by police investigators all across the nation.
19:52If you had those photographs taken exactly...
19:56If anyone could tell if the Sphinx was Sheffron,
19:59it was Detective Frank Domingo.
20:01The faces that I've seen in Egypt are wonderful.
20:18There's a whole myriad of different racial types
20:22and different types of facial features.
20:24And in those features, I've seen elements
20:28that I see in the statues from ancient Egypt.
20:35The Cairo Museum was established in 1902.
20:38It contains the largest collection of Egyptian art in the world.
20:42Statues here in the Old Kingdom Room demonstrate the skill
20:46of which the ancient sculptors captured their subjects.
20:50The eyes of this magnificent wooden statue of Sheikh El Beled
20:53seem to look back at you.
20:57The Old Kingdom artists even used various crystals
21:00to simulate the refraction of the human eye.
21:04Detective Domingo and team photographer Caroline Davies
21:10went to photograph and measure the controversial statue
21:13of the Pharaoh Sheffron.
21:16Using standard police procedure, Caroline photographed
21:19side and frontal views eye level to the statue.
21:22These mug shots would be compared to similar views of the Sphinx.
21:26In addition, precise measurements of facial features
21:29and angular proportions were taken.
21:32If the face of the Sphinx was meant to be the Pharaoh Sheffron,
21:36then it should resemble his statue in the Cairo Museum.
21:41Look at the prognathism on the Sphinx.
21:43That's the extension of the lower portion of the face.
21:47You won't find that on the statue of Sheffron.
21:51This statue does not protrude.
21:53That's this part of the face.
21:54Frank also observed that the face of the Sphinx is more square,
21:58while Sheffron's face is more oval.
22:02Proportionately, the mouth of the Sphinx is larger,
22:05while Sheffron's mouth is a little finer.
22:08The eyes of the Sphinx are quite large in comparison to those of Sheffron.
22:14After completing his initial observations in Egypt,
22:17Detective Domingo returned to New York to analyze his findings.
22:21Does the Sphinx look a little worried to you?
22:24I wonder what the penalty is for impersonating a Pharaoh.
22:36A procedure for measuring proportions, angles, and shapes had to be established before a comparison could be made.
22:43Comparison of the facial shapes was made more difficult due to the severe damage on the face of the Sphinx.
22:59Nevertheless, Detective Domingo established enough points of reference to make a comparison with the statue of Sheffron possible.
23:09These points were the chin, the outer corner of the eye, and the brow ridge.
23:17While a study of the frontal view showed significant differences, the comparison of the lateral view was decisive.
23:25When the reference points in this lateral view were connected with vertical and horizontal lines,
23:30the difference of angles on the two works was extreme.
23:34The most conclusive finding was the angle between the outer eye and the vertical.
23:39In Sheffron, that angle measured 14 degrees.
23:44But on the Sphinx, the angle was more than double, 32 degrees.
23:51This explains the protrusion of the lower jaw found on the Sphinx, but not on Sheffron.
24:00After reviewing all the measurements, angles, and proportions,
24:03it's my conclusion that the great Sphinx of Giza is not the same individual represented in the statue of the Pharaoh Sheffron.
24:14All the monuments on the Giza Plateau are carved in stone, but some of the theories explaining them are not.
24:24One of the main arguments that the Sphinx was carved by Sheffron is found on this granite stela.
24:29This tablet tells how the Sphinx appeared to Thutmose IV in a dream and promised him the crown of Egypt if he would remove the sand that covered it.
24:43The hieroglyphics read,
24:44Look at me, Thutmose, my son. I am your father Horace in the horizon. To you I turn my face and heart for protection, since I am sick in all my limbs. The sands of the sanctuary on which I rest have covered me.
25:02Thutmose is cleared away the sand and indeed became king.
25:09But what does this stela actually say about Sheffron?
25:15On the bottom of this tablet there once existed a few of the hieroglyphs that make up Sheffron's name. They have since flaked off.
25:23But nowhere does the steelists say anything about Sheffron carving the Sphinx.
25:27Egyptologists continue to use this circumstantial evidence in their argument that the Sphinx was carved in his lifetime.
25:35The ancient Egyptians were masters at building with large blocks of stone.
25:47Visitors from all around the world are still impressed by these magnificent structures built thousands of years ago.
25:55The Great Pyramid of Giza is perhaps the most famous example. Two and a half million blocks of limestone are stacked 480 feet high.
26:07The average weight of the blocks is two and a half tons. The interior chambers are lined with blocks which weigh up to 70 tons each.
26:20As impressive as these numbers are, there is an even greater mystery, which until now has been completely overlooked.
26:29In order to expose the body of the Sphinx, enormous blocks of limestone were quarried out.
26:35Block by block the stone was removed as the lion's shape took form.
26:42These blocks were used to build the Sphinx and valley temples.
26:47Some of these blocks measure 30 feet long, 10 feet high and 12 feet wide.
26:54They each weigh 200 tons.
26:58That's roughly the weight of a diesel locomotive.
27:02Nowhere else in all of Egypt are blocks this size used in the construction of temple walls.
27:08The question is, how were these giant blocks moved onto the site, then raised and precisely fitted into position 50 feet above the ground?
27:17Egyptologists maintain that it was done with ramps, levers, ropes and a lot of manpower.
27:27To put the problem in perspective, John went to a Long Island construction site to see how today's engineers lift and maneuver heavy loads.
27:40A crew of 20 men had been working for six weeks to prepare for the lift of one object, a 200-ton boiler.
27:49This crane is one of the largest land-based cranes in existence.
27:54Its boom reaches 220 feet into the air.
27:58A concrete counterweight of 160 tons is required to keep it from tipping over.
28:04A second crane was needed to precisely fit the boiler into place.
28:10I'm looking at what you're showing me here, these pieces, and looking at the distance involved.
28:17I don't know if we would be able to pick if any of these are 200 tons from the position that I see available to us.
28:24I mean, I've looked at these over the years because in my business, when we pick heavy loads, we look to see how heavy loads were picked by other people before us.
28:32In seeing how they moved these heavy blocks, 200-ton blocks, possibly thousands and thousands of years ago, I have no idea how they did this job.
28:42It's a mystery. It'll probably always be a mystery to me, and maybe to everybody.
28:51If modern engineers have a problem maneuvering blocks of that size, how were the ancient builders able to do it?
28:57Was it possible to move 200-ton blocks into place using simple levers, as Egyptologists suggest?
29:06Or did they possess a technology that our science is only beginning to understand?
29:11A technology based on the vibrations of sound?
29:16Project director Boris Saeed demonstrates that the ancient Egyptians understood acoustic principles,
29:22and they incorporated them in their architecture.
29:26This broken obelisk still resonates when it's struck like a giant tuning fork.
29:35The Bible tells of the battle of Jericho.
29:41And it shall come to pass that when they make a long blast with a ram's horn,
29:45and when ye hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout,
29:50and the walls of the city shall fall down flat.
29:55Were the walls destroyed by sound?
29:59Some of you may remember this famous commercial.
30:03Can the amplified voice of Ella Fitzgerald shatter this glass?
30:09Believe it.
30:10Clearly, sound can affect matter.
30:13But can it levitate a heavy object?
30:19For many of us, this is levitation.
30:21Well, that's magic.
30:32But the scientists at the space-age research facility outside of Chicago have a different definition of levitation.
30:38Acoustic levitation is a non-magical way of floating an object in mid-air using very loud sound.
30:47The levitation that we do is done by having one or two sound sources and a reflector.
30:57And the sound bounces off the reflector, and on its way back down, the two sound fields pass through each other.
31:07In that region where there's the interference of those two sound fields,
31:12there are little wells that you can actually levitate small objects the size of a pea.
31:18Could this levitation by sound provide a clue as to how the ancient Egyptians were able to raise these gigantic blocks?
31:25I'd love to go to Egypt, but lifting the block is a little beyond what we can do currently.
31:35The frequency required is much lower than we can produce at sufficient intensity,
31:42and the reflector that you'd have to have above the object would be approximately a quarter of a mile across.
31:49Today's most advanced science can levitate a small rock,
31:53but nothing that compares with the blocks in the sphinx and valley temples.
31:58The fact remains, these 200-ton blocks of stone were somehow raised and fitted together with great precision.
32:06No one today knows just how this was done.
32:09Would it surprise you to know that the face on the sphinx, one of the best known faces on earth, may not be the original face?
32:19When we come back, we'll learn why this head doesn't seem to belong on the body of the sphinx.
32:24If you look at the sphinx, you may notice that the head seems too small for the body.
32:33Detective Domingo reasoned that if the sphinx was carved in the shape of a lion, it should be consistent with the proportions of a real lion.
32:41Although much of the sphinx has eroded away, Domingo found four valid reference points for his comparison.
32:48And those points confirmed that the base was indeed in correct proportion to a lion's body.
32:54But the sphinx has the head of a human.
32:57When Domingo compared the dimensions of the sphinx to a typical sphinx at the Cairo Museum,
33:02he found that their bases were also in correct proportion.
33:07Why then were the heads so different?
33:12Domingo speculated that because the original head was already so eroded by rain,
33:17it had to be re-carved in order to create the face we see today.
33:25For centuries, the mysteries of Egypt have drawn visitors from all over the world.
33:30Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon, Florence Nightingale.
33:35They came to enjoy the culture of ancient Egypt.
33:45Today, travelers find a country which is still rich in tradition.
33:51The Egyptians are warm, friendly people.
33:54Some of them, masters of the fine art of bargaining.
34:01I prefer Nefertiti. She's more beautiful than those entrepreneurs.
34:09To the thousands of tourists who visit the sphinx every day,
34:13it appears to have been built from blocks of stone.
34:15In actuality, the blocks were used to repair the heavily eroded body of the sphinx.
34:21For West and his team, these repair blocks contain a valuable clue
34:25which other experts have not taken into account.
34:30The deeply weathered body of the sphinx has been repaired many times throughout the course of its long history.
34:35Each of these repair campaigns has its own individual style.
34:41Here's the tail of the sphinx.
34:44And right above it, various repairs.
34:47Right on the tail, different styles, different types of repairs.
34:51This is obviously a much older repair block.
34:53These are more recent ones, 20th century repairs.
34:56Egyptologists have determined that some of these oldest repairs date back to Old Kingdom times.
35:05So this statue, this magnificent monument, has had people working on it, repairing it, for the last 4,500 years.
35:17Here we're looking at a cross section of the repairs.
35:19In order to restore the sphinx to its original lion's form,
35:23two to three feet of repair blocks were necessary.
35:27Egyptologists tell us that the earliest repairs to the sphinx were made during the Old Kingdom.
35:33And this period ended around 300 years after Chephrin died.
35:37This presents a problem.
35:39If Chephrin carved the sphinx, why would it need repairs after only 300 years?
35:44They say that the stone the sphinx is carved from is of such poor quality that it eroded 3 feet in 300 years.
35:54That's an erosion rate of approximately 1 foot every 100 years.
35:59The sphinx, we're told, is 4,500 years old.
36:03That totals 45 feet of erosion.
36:06Since the sphinx is only 40 feet wide, it would have completely disappeared 500 years ago.
36:11Dr. Hawass has his own ideas about how the sphinx was made.
36:18He describes how the sculptor may have worked in the great statue.
36:22He made the face of the sphinx, but he found that the whole body is deteriorated.
36:27Then he cased the sphinx with rocks, with limestone, and after that made the carving.
36:32In other words, the limestone was so deteriorated that the sculptors had to repair the body while they were carving it.
36:41Dr. Schock carefully examined the stone and came to a very different conclusion.
36:46You look at these blocks, you can see the strata, you can see the fossils, the pneumulites.
36:51This is exactly the same rock as the sphinx enclosure.
36:56Really a fairly nice limestone, good, solid, certainly capable of using it to build a structure like this.
37:06Certainly not the situation where it just powders and crumbles immediately upon cutting it out.
37:11If that were the case, they wouldn't be able to use it to assemble a temple like this.
37:16According to Schock and West, by the time Chaffron became Pharaoh, the sphinx was already highly eroded from thousands of years of rainfall.
37:27Chaffron didn't build the sphinx, he repaired it.
37:31Perhaps this is why his name and his image have been so closely associated with the great monument.
37:37What you've just seen is the result of 17 years of research.
37:44To visualize how this new information fits together, we've created a computer graphic sequence to illustrate the possible life history of the sphinx.
37:57Long ago, before Egypt became a desert, the Giza Plateau was a fertile savannah.
38:04At the very edge of this plateau was a large outcrop of natural rock.
38:08A group of sculptors, taking advantage of its prominent location, carved this rock into a gigantic face.
38:17Originally it may have been the face of a lion, nor it might have been the face of a god, or the face of a queen.
38:33To create the lion's body, blocks of limestone were queried out, forming an enclosure around the sphinx.
38:44Somehow these huge blocks were transported and lifted into position, creating the sphinx and valley temples.
38:51Time passed.
38:54Shifting weather patterns brought torrential rains to the area, signaling the end of the ice age.
39:01The rains eroded the sphinx to virtually the state it's in today.
39:05For this had been the great flood described in the Bible.
39:15When the rains stopped, the vast, once fertile savannah became the Sahara Desert.
39:24The wind-blown sands filled in the heavily weathered enclosure and buried the statue up to its neck.
39:29This thick blanket of sand protected the sphinx from further erosion for thousands of years.
39:37But what about the face?
39:38Almost certainly it's been recarved, maybe several times.
39:43Since nothing's been found to identify the sphinx, we may never know who it was meant to represent.
39:48Under the reign of the pharaoh Chephrin, the sphinx was uncovered and the first of many repairs was begun.
39:59Time passed.
40:01The desert reclaimed the sphinx.
40:04A thousand years later, Thutmose IV again uncovered and repaired the great statue.
40:10This cycle was repeated several times over the next 3500 years.
40:14There are many stories about how the sphinx lost its nose.
40:20Some legends suggest it was Napoleon's army.
40:23Others say that Arab gunners were to blame.
40:27According to ancient lore, you could kill the spirit of the statue by destroying its nose.
40:33But the spirit of this great statue lives on.
40:36Fifty years ago, America's most famous psychic made some startling statements about the origins of the sphinx and the identity of its builders.
40:49Next, some surprising revelations.
40:51The computer recreation we've just seen illustrates the history of the sphinx, according to Dr. Shock and John West.
41:02But it doesn't address the question, who built the sphinx?
41:05I think our initial investigation around the sphinx was very successful from a couple of different perspectives.
41:12One, we got hard defensible data on the degree and the nature of the weathering of the limestone surrounding the sphinx,
41:19all of which supports Bob Shock's theories.
41:22But even more exciting and more interesting to me is the unexpected discovery of several large cavity features around and under the sphinx.
41:35This is a fairly large feature.
41:36It's about 9 meters by 12 meters in dimension and buried less than 5 meters in depth.
41:43Now, the regular shape of this rectangular is inconsistent with naturally occurring cavities.
41:49So there's some suggestion this could be man-made.
41:53Man-made.
41:54It's very interesting. Keep that in mind for just a minute.
41:58There have been many predictions about the role the sphinx would play in our future.
42:03One of the most compelling was by this man.
42:06Edgar Cayce gained popularity in the mid-40s as America's sleeping prophet.
42:12In deep trance, Cayce revealed detailed information about ancient Egypt.
42:16Fifty years ago Cayce predicted that a chamber would be found under the front paws of the sphinx.
42:23This chamber, he said, would contain records of the civilization that inspired the entire Egyptian culture.
42:30He called that civilization Atlantis.
42:33According to Cayce, the Atlanteans were a technologically advanced society who fled to Egypt when their continent of Atlantis sank into the ocean to be lost forever.
42:42Fantasy, wild dreams, maybe, but the unexpected cavities detected by the seismograph were located precisely where Edgar Cayce said they would be, under the front paws of the great sphinx.
42:58The seismograph does not dream.
43:08Well, for 20 years I've been putting up mainly with neglect and occasional abuse and ridicule.
43:12And that's really to be expected.
43:16Any new idea, the history of science, or in fact the history of art and scholarship, is such that anything that's genuinely new is automatically discounted and ridiculed by the establishment.
43:27The most accepted ideas are sometimes the hardest to overturn.
43:32They seem so obvious.
43:34The earth is flat.
43:36Man cannot fly.
43:38Man will never walk in the moon.
43:40Man will never walk in the moon.
43:43I guess, for me though, the idea of looking back at earth from deep space and seeing it in a new perspective, that's the most profound experience of the entire space program.
43:59Dr. Edgar Mitchell, ex-Navy astronaut, is one of the few men to walk in the moon.
44:04If geological evidence and dating evidence suggest that the sphinx is much older than we previously believed, it raises great questions for our concepts of how humanity evolved over the last hundred thousand years.
44:22If the sphinx is proven to be much older, it raises a huge question mark as to what sort of sophisticated civilization could possibly have existed to create this monument.
44:35There is simply not a single shred of evidence that has been presented by any competent Egyptologist that suggests that there was any high culture before the pre-dynastic period.
44:49Can we have missed it? Sure we can have missed it.
44:53I could also grow wings and fly back home tonight, but I think the probability of that happening is just about as good as the probability of us having missed the evidence of such a high culture.
45:04Many archaeologists and Egyptologists have been highly resistant to my ideas.
45:10If my findings are in conflict with their theories, maybe it's time for them to reevaluate their theories about the rise of civilization.
45:21I'm not saying that the sphinx was built by Atlanteans or people from Mars or extraterrestrials.
45:26I'm just following the science where it leads me and that leads me to the clue that the sphinx was built much earlier than previously thought.
45:36West and his team have presented compelling new evidence that the sphinx was eroded by rain.
45:45Now does this prove that the sphinx and its temple complex are thousands of years older than history tells us?
45:51The geology says yes, but we need more evidence.
45:54Recently, scientific techniques have been developed which could shed new light in the mysterious cavities under the sphinx.
46:02West and his team are presently awaiting the invitation of the Egyptian government to continue their investigation.
46:11An older sphinx would drastically revise our current view of man's early history.
46:16Are we heirs to a richer legacy than we ever dreamed of?
46:21A civilization not of hunter-gatherers, but of great artists, architects, and scientists?
46:27A civilization in command of technologies we do not yet understand and cannot reproduce.
46:33Perhaps there were Egyptians before the flood.
46:37Some think they were Atlanteans.
46:39Tocraftians.
46:41But whoever they were, a sphinx stands in mute testimonies of their existence.
46:46.
47:09Transcription by CastingWords
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