The Weathering of the Great Sphinx
A geologist looked at the grooves on the walls around the Great Sphinx and argued it must be thousands of years older than anyone thought.
What was reported
The Great Sphinx at Giza is generally dated to around 2500 BCE, during the reign of the pharaoh Khafre. The walls of the enclosure carved out around it are worn with deep, rounded grooves.
In 1991, Boston University geologist Robert Schoch argued that the grooves were made by years of heavy rain, which would mean the Sphinx was carved thousands of years earlier, when Egypt had a wetter climate. The idea became popular in books and documentaries about lost civilisations.
Explanations offered
Most Egyptologists and many geologists disagree. They point out that the soft limestone layers weather in this way from salt, wind and occasional rain, and that the tools, quarries and workers' settlements found at Giza fit the traditional date. No evidence of an earlier civilisation has been found at the site.
- When
- Debated since 1991
- Where
- Giza, Egypt
- Witnesses
- Geologists and Egyptologists
- Status
- Disputed
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.