The Great Sphinx

The Great Sphinx

Aug. 20, 2004
By Alan Boyle
Source

Rethinking the Sphinx: After years of fighting the critics of his controversial theory on the age of the Great Sphinx, John Anthony West wants them to join him.

West — an author whose 1993 TV documentary, "Mystery of the Sphinx," laid out an unorthodox tale about Egypt's best-known sculpture — says he is trying to organize a panel of geologists to take an in-person look at the weathered limestone and render their judgment.

It could be a tough sell. After all, it was more than a decade ago that West and his colleague, Boston University geologist Robert Schoch, made the claim that the Sphinx could be thousands of years older than the 4,500 years accepted by most scientists. Since then, a lot of harsh words have been exchanged.

Critics scoffed at West's suggestions that a mysterious Atlantis-type civilization might have chiseled the Sphinx somewhere between 7,000 and an amazing 38,000 years ago. West gave as good as he got, calling mainstream Egyptology "the mental equivalent of Agent Orange" and referring to the venerable society that frequently funds Egypt expeditions as "National Pornographic."

Now West wants to stop the jeering and focus on the geology.

"The plan now is to put together a panel of absolutely independent geologists who have never been there ... a dozen geologists and a handful of experts in other fields," he said in an interview last week. The panel, including "maybe four or five geologists who are committed to the opposition point of view," would make their own study of the Sphinx and its surroundings.

The problem is finding the money. "We're talking about $250,000 to get this crew over there and spend two weeks," West said. "But it seems next to impossible to get that out of any funding source."

If those sources are unavailable, West said he has a Plan B: "We're going to do it Howard Dean-style by soliciting small contributions over the Internet."

West hopes that the independent analysis will back up the geological theory Schoch proposed back in the early ’90s: that the rounded vertical cracks seen on the Sphinx and the walls of its enclosure had to have been created by water erosion rather than wind erosion, and specifically by rainfall. West and Schoch went on to conclude that the Sphinx must go back to a time when Egypt's Giza Plateau was a much wetter place.

West contends that the arguments against the theory "are so transparently inadequate that they don't hold water — or sand, for that matter." And it's true that Schoch's theory has led geologists to reconsider how the Sphinx was affected by the sands (or rivulets) of time. But the controversy is far from cut and dried.

"There are alternate explanations for what Schoch's seen there. It's not as simple as what he said," said Alex Bourdeau, a cultural archaeologist who has taken on the Sphinx theories in online forums, even though he's not a trained Egyptologist (but then, neither is West).

The mainstream explanation for the Sphinx's weathering patterns goes by the unwieldly label of "salt crystal stress-induced exfoliation," or SCrySIE in Egypto-geekspeak. The idea is that moisture percolates up through the limestone, depositing salt crystals in naturally occurring vertical cracks. As the crystals grow, they push the stone apart — and eventually fragments of stone break off the surface.

"That essentially puts an end to any of their arguments," Bourdeau said. "If you have a good alternative explanation, why turn everything on its head and start all over again as to when the Sphinx was made?"

West tried to explain why.

"It's a very minor sort of thing, and it's quite clear that it simply does not and cannot produce the pattern of erosion that we see, nor can it account for the severity. ... The long and short of it is that each time a new wrinkle is added to these scenarios, we are obliged to answer," West said.

West is hoping that further research will help turn the tide. If he can get his panel of geologists together, he's fairly confident the venture will pass muster with Zahi Hawass, Egypt's head of antiquities. Even though he and Hawass have argued bitterly over the Sphinx, "through an amazing set of circumstances, on a personal level we've become quite good friends," West said.

Assuming West gets his way on the geological question, there would be a natural follow-up: If the Sphinx predates the pharaohs, who actually built it? "The second question is difficult to address, but of course that's the interesting question," West said.

Could it have been Zulus, or Atlanteans, or Martians? Some of the suggestions seem pretty kooky, but West refuses to rule anything out — even a connection to the Face on Mars. "There are a number of people who say that it's still an open question," he said.

For now, West continues working on his writing, his lectures, his tour ventures — and on his unorthodox theory about the Sphinx.

"One of these days somebody is going to get over there and prove it once and for all," he said, "but I really would like it to be during my lifetime."