THE SPHINX

                               In Search of a Context for the Great Sphinx

 



          As a geologist, the current evidence taken as a whole suggests to me that the Great Sphinx of Giza is considerably older than its traditional attribution of ca. 2,500 Indeed, I am currently estimating-based on evidence at hand-that the origin of the colossal sculpture can be traced to at least 7000 to 5000 B.C., and perhaps even earlier. Of course, the Sphinx may not have looked like it does today some 8,000 years ago. The original surface details of the body have weathered away in the distant past, and the current head of the figure-which everyone agrees is almost surely the result ot recarving.


          Certainly, the Great Sphinx has suffered much work, repairs, refurbishing and abuse from prehistoric times onward to the present. Special attention seems to have been paid to it periodically, for instance during the Old Kingdom (ca. 2500 B.C.), in New Kingdom times (ca. 1400 B.C.), in the Twenty-sixth Dynasty (or Late Period, ca. 650-400 B.C.) and during the Graeco-Roman era (ca. 300 B.C.-400 A.D.). During these periods of repair or refurbishing activity, the contemporary ruler often had the Great Sphinx excavated from the sands that quickly (in just a matter of decades) fill its hollow enclosure if left unattended and, after each re-excavation of the figure, repair whites were often mortared to the weathered body in an attempt to restore the sculpture to its original outlines.[20]