Sphinx enclosure

The Sphinx water erosion hypothesis contends that the main type of weathering evident on the enclosure walls of the Great Sphinx was caused by prolonged and extensive rainfall that would have predated the time of Djedefre and Khafre, the Pharaohs credited by most modern Egyptologists with building the Great Sphinx . Apart from the Causeway, the Pyramid and the Sphinx, the complex also includes the Sphinx Temple and Valley Temple, both of which display similar design of their inner courts. The Sphinx Temple was built using blocks cut from the Sphinx enclosure , while those of the Valley Temple were quarried from the plateau, some . Diagram from the documentary The Mystery of the Sphinx. However , I recently visited the Sphinx enclosure to study the limestone rocks and came to a .

Conventional techniques of dating the Sphinx have included analysis of its stylistic features, the stratigraphy of artifacts excavate and the record of extant historical documentation.

He did indeed effect repairs to the Sphinx and went on to become Thuthmosis IV of the Eighteenth Dynasty.

Devotional stele were built into this wall including . Pitting and tidal notches due to waves and tidal ebbing pepper the stones in . The south side of the Sphinx quarry is the north side of the Khafre causeway foundation. Khafre built enclosure walls north and south of his Valley Temple. Parts of the south wall still exist, but the ancient builders removed most . The western wall of the Sphinx enclosure , showing erosion consistently along its length.

The blocks are much more weather eroded than the bedrock wall next . A new discovery at Giza, the third largest city in Egypt, suggests that an ancient Egyptian king made serious efforts to protect the Sphinx. It was now time for our first of many, very special, our-group-only, Ruth Shilling experiences. West had supposed that Nile river flooding was the likely cause of any water weathering of the Sphinx and its enclosure. Schoch determine however, that flood levels were not high enough to produce the erosion visible on the Sphinx and its walls.

Robert Schoch, a prominent geologist and professor from Boston University to examined the unique weathering patterns on the Sphinx and its enclosure. His conclusions, which came after several months of analysis, was to convulse the world of archaeology. The vertical weathering patterns on the Sphinx . Only the Sphinx , its enclosure walls (and several other structures related to the Sphinx architecturally or stylistically, such as the Mortuary Temple at the end of the Sphinx Causeway) exhibited these telltale marks of water weathering. Everything else dating from dynastic Egypt had been weathered by wind and sand.

If we think in terms of Geological timescales rather than . The Great Sphinx of Egypt, the largest and best known Sphinx , lies near the Great Pyramid in the Giza Valley Plateau, situated about six miles west of Cairo. It is the largest single sculpted statue in the world. As told in ancient Egyptian texts, King . New Kingdom inscriptions call the Sphinx enclosure , setepet or “The Chosen. In the text of the Sarcophagi, we hear about the lustral basin, Lake of the Jackal.

After the trip, he dreamt that the Sphinx wanted him to clear the sand surrounding its body. Schoch explained by pointing out that the Sphinx Temple probably protected the rock underneath from weathering. But since the floor of the temple was two and one-half meters lower than the floor of the enclosure behind it, Reader argue the S9 . The Sphinx stands in an excavated hollow known as the Sphinx enclosure (Fig. below). Two heavily eroded walls define the southern and western perimeter of the Sphinx enclosure . What Schoch found was that the erosion on the enclosure wall of the sphinx appeared to be due to water, probably runoff of rainwater from centuries of storms .