The Great Sphinx is one of the world's largest and oldest statues, yet basic facts about it such as the real-life model for the face, when it was built, and by whom, are debated.These questions have collectively earned the title "Riddle of the Sphinx", a nod to its Greek namesake, although this phrase should not be confused with the original Greek legend.The person behind the Great Sphinx has been a subject of debate. While there is no contemporaneous evidence indicating with certainty whom it represents, the Dream Stele erected by Pharaoh Thutmose IV in the New Kingdom associates the Sphinx with King Khafra (also known by the Hellenised version of his name, Chephren).
This would place its construction during the Fourth dynasty of Egypt (2723 BC2563 BC). Its super-colossal design is characteristic of Old Kingdom architecture, especially during Khafra's reign. Khafra is known to have ordered the building of twenty-two stone structures that were more than three times life-size, but the largest is believed to be the Great Sphinx.
The Sphinx's link with Khafra therefore continues to be the most widely held view by Egyptologists, but other hypotheses exist. In 2004, French Egyptologist Vassil Dobrev announced the results of a 20-year reexamination of historical records and uncovering of new evidence that suggest the Great Sphinx may have been the work of the little known Pharaoh Djedefre, Khafra's half brother and a son of Khufu (Cheops), the builder of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Dobrev suggests it was built by Djedefre in the image of his father Khufu, identifying him with the sun god Ra in order to restore respect for their dynasty.
In common with many famous constructions of remote antiquity, the Great Sphinx has over the years attracted speculative assertions by non-specialists, mystics, and general writers. The reasons for these alternative theories of the origin, purpose and history of the monument invoke a wide array of sources and associations, such as neighboring cultures, astrology, lost continents and civilizations (e.g. Atlantis), numerology, mythology and other esoteric subjects.Egyptologists and the wider scientific community largely ignore such claims; however, on occasion they are drawn into public debate with these theorists, particularly when the claim purports to rely upon some novel or re-interpreted data from an academic field of study.
In recent years professor Robert M. Schoch of Boston University and Colin Reader have speculated that the Sphinx may display evidence of prolonged water erosion. Egypt's last time period where there was a significant amount of rainfall ended during the 3rd millennium BC. Shoch claims that the amount of water erosion they feel that the Sphinx has experienced indicates a construction date no later than the 6th millennium BC or 5th millennium BC, at least two thousand years before the widely accepted construction date and 1500 years prior to the accepted date for the beginning of Egyptian civilization. Reader's assessment is that the Sphinx is a few hundred years older than the traditionally accepted date.This theory has not been accepted by mainstream Egyptologists or experts in related fields. Alternative theories for the erosion include wind and sand, acid rain, exfoliation or the poor quality of the limestone used to construct the Sphinx.
According to Edgar Cayce, the Sphinx was built in 10,500 BC by survivors of the vanished civilization of Atlantis.
In the bedrock under the Sphinx they had built a Hall of Records containing all the wisdom of that civilization. The opening to the Hall of Records, which holds the history of the Earth, will be found in the right shoulder of the Sphinx.If you bisect the golden mean that fits around the spiral at the Giza plateau, it passes exactly through the headdress of the Sphinx. Also, extended from the southern face of the middle pyramid and the line that bisects the golden mean, forms a cross that marks a very specific spot on the right shoulder of the Sphinx.
Cayce gave the date of the opening of the Hall of Records between 1996 -1998 by certain chosen people. He was not correct. He said that this was all relative to the level of consciousness of humanity at that time. They had to be ready to receive the information.These claims, and the astronomical and archaeological data upon which they are based, have been refuted by scholars who have examined them, notably the astronomers Ed Krupp and Anthony Fairall.
The refuting evidence includes noting that the correspondence of the angles between the pyramids and the angles in Orion's Belt at that epoch is not in fact precise or even very close, that the Age of Leo (period when the Sun's path appears in this constellation at the equinoxes) in fact starts 1500 years later than this, that the Zodiac of western astrology is known to have originated in Mesopotamia and not pre-ancient Egypt, and that if the Sphinx is meant to represent Leo, then it should be on the other side of the Nile (the "Milky Way") from the pyramids ("Orion"). Hancock and Bauval maintain their positions and continue to publish books on their speculations. The scientific community regards these as pseudoscience.
