What`s under the sand in the desert?

[plekhanov]

Dear, dear, that's very poor, Plekhanov. And don't roll your eyes at me because you can't think of anything to say

 

StarSparkle

A post consisting of 100% personal abuse and 0% content how unsurprising.

 

The barriers to entry to publishing a book are greater to those that putting up a website but that merely means it costs more to do so not that there's any filter for quality on the content of books. There's no more authority in an conspiracy theory that's made it into print that one that as yet is confined to electronic media.

[Alastair]

Oh come on, Alastair, you know better than this. The revised research on the Sphinx is no mere 'internet rumour' - the research was carried out in the early 1990s, and books discussing the water erosion of the Sphinx have been around for well over a decade.

 

Academics in geology have been involved in the research, in fact it's nothing to do with the internet.

 

StarSparkle

 

 

What's the problem with water erosion of the Sphinx? North Africa was green and fertile even in Roman times. It's not the only Sphinx either, it's a very common Egyptian figure.

[StarSparkle]

A post consisting of 100% personal abuse and 0% content how unsurprising.

 

The barriers to entry to publishing a book are greater to those that putting up a website but that merely means it costs more to do so not that there's any filter for quality on the content of books. There's no more authority in an conspiracy theory that's made it into print that one that as yet is confined to electronic media.

 

Personal abuse? You think that's personal abuse? You've led a very sheltered life

 

StarSparkle

[Mathom]

It's an UTTERLY fascinating subject, Mathom, it really is

 

StarSparkle

 

The erosion patterns on the limestone do look convincingly like rainfall erosion, and there are a lot of other anomalies too - the head being so small and also being less eroded for example (despite it having been exposed to the climate for longer than the far more eroded body).

 

I know about the theories that the complex was based on the constellation of Leo and began around 10,000 BC. Though they have been discredited to some extent, I can't swallow the discreditors' argument that the Sphinx is actually a dog/Anubis rather than a cat - mostly as Egyptian images of dogs look nothing like the Sphinx. So the theory that it was all based on 'Leo' can't be junked that way

 

There's also nothing odd about the idea the early dynasties remodelled the figure into having a human head as subsequent dynasties meddled with it anyway, by adding the beard and so on. And sites like that are meddled with over time, Stonehenge was, and our great Cathedrals and castles are constantly 'renovated'. It was also perfectly feasible for a pre-Egyptian civilisation to have made the sphinx in the first place as other cultures did indulge in 'art' - there's a sphinx-like statue dating from around 30,000 BC.

 

What's interesting me is that the idea that Egypt was once fertile, maybe even tropical, would point to older civilisations having lived there (why would you not?) - maybe improper farming techniques caused the aridity? There's also a hell of a lot of cultural evidence of a 'great inundation'.

[Longcol]

 

No, it is geologists who claim the Sphinx suffered water erosion in antiquity, which makes it very much older than the Egyptologists accept. I believe the geologist who did the original research was a man called Dr Robert Schoch, a geology professor from Boston University

 

StarSparkle

 

 

Not all geologists by any means.

 

http://www.ianlawton.com/as3.htm

[Jabberwocky]

Subjects on threads DO change direction occasionally, thats the nature of debate isnt it? Its not completely off topic and its already had one or two people running for Google to learn more so its not all bad!

[archaeobard]

I suspect I'm the only person on SF who can answer this question authoritatively, because I've been there, done that.

 

Not quite the only person. I used to work as an archaeologist in the UAE digging basically in an extension of the Rub al Khali. One year we were told to dig on a mound that could have been the remains of mud brick buildings approx 3000 years old. We dug, and we dug and we dug through tonnes of sand finding nothing more interesting than a hunk of modern concrete and of course, bedrock...we were told later that the mound had been created about 3 years previously with bulldozers while they were clearing an area for development.

[Alastair]

Not all geologists by any means.

 

http://www.ianlawton.com/as3.htm

 

Certainly not, my degree was geology and I don't believe it either.

[WallBuilder]

That Egyptian historian who seems to get everywhere does seem to be very protective about their version of history and although I know loads of their artifacts were removed by victorians i find it slightly odd that they seemingly oppose so much of the new research whether that be examining certain mummies or all the nit-picking when the robot climbing thing was used to explore one of the openings in the pyramid.

Another interesting story was the ground radar they supposedly used around some area's which seemed to reveal underground chambers one in particular located between the front feet of the sphinx. The story goes they can't dig there as it might damage the surrounding area or is it because these underground chambers hold things that would go against current thinking?