Frank J. Yurco (Letters to the Editor. December 11) criticized my suggestion that the Great Sphinx of Giza predates its standard attribution to the Pharaoh Khafre, circa 2500 B.C. ("Research Notes: Study suggests Sphinx is thousands of years older than believed." November 13).

Yurco raises a number of issues which may superficially sound convincing, but do not stand up to close scrutiny. Yes, the body of the Sphinx is composed of a very poor-quality limestone. and the base of the Sphinx was subjected to the highest Nile floods: flood waters are known to have flooded the bases of the Sphinx and Valley Temples and lapped around the bottoms of the paws of the Sphinx in historical times. However, these observations do not falsify my hypothesis of an older age for the Sphinx.

If the water erosion seen on the body of the Sphinx and the walls of the Sphinx ditch was due primarily to the periodic Nile flooding, one would expect the heaviest erosion to be at the base, resulting in the undercutting of the limestone. Instead what one observes on the body of the Sphinx and along the walls of the Sphinx enclosure is that the heaviest erosion has occurred at the top of the back and neck of the Sphinx, consistent with precipitation-induced erosional features. The head is composed of harder, probably partially dolomitic, limestone that was probably recarved in dynastic times. Contra Yurco, there is no solid evidence that the limestone of the head ever capped the rest of the Giza Plateau, and, as far as is known, the cores of the pyramids are not composed of this limestone.

If we are to explain the observed erosional features via Nile floods, as Yurco suggests, we must posit that the Sphinx was consistently flooded at least up to its neck in standing water for much of the period between its initial carving (standardly said to be circa 2500 B.C.) and the first ancient repair campaigns that attempted to restore the outlines of its badly eroded body (these initial repairs were carried out no later than circa 1400 B.C., according to the consensus of the Egyptological community).

Based on historical records. it is known that rather than being flooded. the Sphinx was buried in desert sands during much of this period. Furthermore, even if it were the case that the Sphinx was flooded up to its neck consistently during this time period, this does not explain why the limestone around the base of the Sphinx shows major discrepancies in the depth of weathering, as seen on seismic-refraction profiles. Rather than hypothesize such drastic flooding, I suggest that the body of the Sphinx was eroded by precipitation during the wet period of circa 7000 or 5000 to 3000 B.C. This, of course, means that the body of the Sphinx dates back to at least this time period.

Once one abandons the notion that the "water damage" (as Yurco calls it) seen on the Sphinx was produced primarily by gigantic floods that covered the back and reached to the neck of the Sphinx, it becomes valid to compare the weathering modes exhibited by the Sphinx to those exhibited by somewhat higher-lying tombs cut from the identical bedrock as the Sphinx. The overall pattern one observes is predominantly well-developed, precipitation-induced erosion on the body of the Sphinx and the walls of the Sphinx enclosure, as compared to the predominantly wind-induced erosion seen on the Old Kingdom tombs. These observations are compatible with my hypothesis that the body of the Sphinx pre-dates Old Kingdom times and suffered an earlier and wetter climatic regime. These, observations are virtually impossible to explain within the context of insisting that the Sphinx dates back no further than Old Kingdom times...

In his letter, Mr. Yurco succinctly presents the traditional story told by Egyptologists as to why and when the Great Sphinx was built by the Old Kingdom Egyptians: unfortunately this standard story does not hold up under close examination. I suggest that the Egyptological community needs to rethink its story.



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