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How Old is the Sphinx?

Amita Vadlamudi

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A computer systems engineer, Amita Vadlamudi works in the financial services industry. When not working, Amita Vadlamudi enjoys studying ancient cultures.

While traditional Egyptologists have dated the age of the statue of the Sphinx at no later than 2,500 BCE, a doctor of geology and geophysics from Yale University named Robert Schoch visited the statue at the Giza Pyramids in 1990, and he concluded that only rain could have caused the weathering and erosion patterns on the Sphinx. Unfortunately, the area has been a desert since 2,500 BCE, so Dr. Schoch concluded that the statue was far older than he was led to believe. There has been no substantial rainfall in that area since at least 5,000 BCE, though his most recent research suggests an origin closer to the end of the last ice age (9,600 BCE).

Mainstream Egyptologists insisted that the head of the Sphinx is of a dynastic pharaoh, and thus it must conform to the much more recent past. Schoch pointed out that the head suffers from no such weathering and is too small for the body. Therefore, the pharaoh's head must have been carved from the existing statue, which may have been a lion.