From Atlantis to the Sphinx Read online

  West also pointed out that the mud-brick tombs around the Step Pyramid of Saqqara, dating back about a century before the Great Pyramid, show none of the weathering features of the Sphinx—yet are a mere ten miles away (and so subject to the same climate) as well as being softer. Why have they not weathered like the Sphinx?

  When Schoch presented his case at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Mark Lehner was chosen as the champion of the academic opposition. He raised the now familiar objection—that if the Sphinx had been built by a far older civilisation than the Egyptians, around 7000 BC, what had happened to the remains of this civilisation? ‘Show me a single potsherd.’ West was not allowed to take part in the debate; since he was not an accredited academic, he had to listen from the audience. But he was not slow to point out afterwards that Lehner’s objection was illogical. He and Schoch had demonstrated by evidence that the Sphinx was older than the surrounding tombs; it was Lehner’s job to refute that evidence, not to ask for more evidence which has not yet been found. It was, West pointed out, like objecting to Magellan’s plan of sailing round the world by saying: ‘Show me someone who has done it before.’

  Lehner also implied that Schoch was incompetent as a geologist. ‘I don’t think he’s done his geological work yet... One of the primary pillars of his case is that if you compare the Sphinx to Old Kingdom tombs, they don’t show the same rain weathering, therefore the Sphinx must be older. But he’s comparing layers in the Sphinx to other layers.’ According to Lehner, the ‘Sphinx layers’ run under the tombs, so the tombs are made of a different limestone—Lehner implied a far harder limestone—and weather more slowly.

  If this was true, then it struck a deadly blow at Schoch’s case. When the BBC decided to present the programme made by West and Boris Said, they hired an independent expert to decide whether Lehner was correct. Their expert looked closely at a tomb only a hundred yards from the Sphinx, and known to date from the same time as the pyramids. He found that the tombs were made of the very same flaky limestone as the Sphinx, and contained exactly the same types of fossil. The tomb layer was the same layer that the Sphinx was carved from. And Schoch and West had scored a major victory for their cause. It was now up to Lehner—and Dr Hawass of the Cairo Museum—to explain why the tombs had weathered so little in comparison to the Sphinx and its enclosure and temples.

  West had another argument for his ‘New Race’ civilisation. The Sphinx Temple is—as we have already noted—built in a far more simple and bleak form of architecture than later Egyptian temples. There is in upper Egypt one other temple that has the same bare style—the Oseirion, near Abydos. During the nineteenth century, the only famous temple in this area was the Temple of Osiris, built by the Pharaoh Seti I (1306-1290 BC), father of Rameses II, who figures as the oppressor of the Israelites in the Bible. But the Greek geographer Strabo (c. 63 BC-c. AD 23) had mentioned another temple nearby, and in the early twentieth century, Flinders Petrie and Margaret Murray began clearing away the sand—to reveal a temple that stood below the temple of Seti I. It was not until 1912 that Professor E. Naville cleared away enough sand to make it clear that this temple was built of megalithic blocks in a style like that of the Sphinx Temple, virtually bare of decoration. One block was 25 feet long. Naville was immediately convinced that it dated from the same time as the Sphinx Temple, and that it could well be ‘the most ancient stone building in Egypt’. Like the Sphinx, it had been excavated out of the solid rock, and had no floor, so that it soon turned into a kind of swimming pool when the excavation was finished in the early 1930s. Naville even thought that it might be some primitive waterworks. But seventeen small ‘cells’, about the height of a man, also hinted at a monastery.

  Because of delay due to the First World War, the Oseirion was not excavated by Naville, but by a younger man named Henri Frankfort. Frankfort soon concluded that it must have been built by Seti I because Seti had written his name twice on the stone, and because a broken potsherd was found with the words: ‘Seti I is of service to Osiris’. There were also some astronomical decorations on the ceilings of two ‘transverse chambers’ which were outside the temple itself; these were undoubtedly carved by Seti or his son.

  Yet Frankfort's assumptions were highly questionable. A more straightforward scenario might be as follows. When Seti I came to build his temple around 1300 BC, he found the Oseirion temple buried under the sand, a simple and massive structure dating from the same time as the Sphinx, built of massive blocks. Its presence certainly added dignity to his own temple, so he built two ‘transverse chambers’ at either end—and outside the temple itself—carving them with his own astronomical designs. He also had his own name carved in two places in the granite of the inner temple. The potsherd with its inscription about being ‘of service to Osiris’ simply meant what it said: he assumed that this ancient temple was built for Osiris, and he was being ‘of service’ by adding to it and repairing it.

  Margaret Murray doubted whether Frankfort was correct in dating it to 1300 BC, pointing out that pharaohs were fond of adding their own names to monuments of the past. But by that time, she was also regarded with some doubt by scholars, for she had created controversy with her Witch Cult in Western Europe, which argued that witches were actually worshippers of the pagan ‘horned God’ (Pan) who preceded Christianity, and her objections were ignored.

  The Oseirion raises an interesting question. If it was totally buried in the sand—as the Sphinx was at one point—is it not conceivable that other monuments built of ‘Cyclopean blocks’ by some ancient people lie buried beneath the sand? It was almost certainly not built in honour of Osiris.

  The way that Frankfort had decided that the Oseirion was more recent than anyone thought is reminiscent of how Egyptologists came to decide that the Sphinx was built by Chefren because his name was mentioned—in some unknown context—in the inscription placed between its paws by Thutmose IV. It might also remind us of how the ‘Valley Temple’—next to the Sphinx Temple—came to be attributed to Chefren. Throughout most of the nineteenth century it was assumed to date from far earlier than Chefren, because of the bareness of its architecture, and the fact that it is built with giant stone blocks removed from the Sphinx enclosure. But when a number of statues of Chefren were discovered buried in the temple precincts, Egyptologists revised their views; if statues of Chefren were found in the temple precincts, surely this proved that Chefren built it?

  The reasoning of course is flawed. The fact that Chefren set up statues of himself in the temple only proves that he wanted his name to be associated with it. If Chefren had built it, would he not have filled it with inscriptions to himself?

  Meanwhile, there is one more interesting piece of evidence that needs to be mentioned. One of the major discoveries of Auguste Mariette—the first great ‘conservationist’ among nineteenth-century archaeologists—was a limestone stela he uncovered in the ruins of the Temple of Isis, near the Great Pyramid, in the mid-1850s. The inscription declares that it is erected by the Pharaoh Cheops, to commemorate his repairs to the Temple of Isis. It became known as the Inventory Stela, and would certainly be regarded as one of the most important of all Egyptian records—for reasons I shall explain in a moment—if it were not for one drawback: its hieroglyphics clearly dated it from around 1000 BC, about 1500 years after Cheops.

  Now scholars would not normally question the authenticity of a record merely because of its late date, for, after all, the stela was obviously copied from something dating much earlier. Another valuable record of early kings is contained on a block of basalt known as the Palermo Stone (because it has been kept in Palermo since 1877). This contains a list of kings from the 1st to the 5th Dynasties (i.e. about 3000 BC to 2300 BC), and is known to date from about 700 BC, when it was copied from some original list. But the fact that this is 1500 years later than the last king it mentions causes Egyptologists no embarrassment, for they take it for granted that it is an accurate copy of the original. Indeed, why shoul
d it not be accurate? Scribes copying in stone are likely to be more accurate than scribes writing with a pen.

  Then why are they suspicious about Cheops’s Inventory Stela—to the extent of denouncing it as an invention, a piece of fiction? Because its ‘facts’ sound too preposterous to be true. Referring to Cheops, it says ‘he found the house (temple) of Isis, mistress of the pyramid, beside the house of the Sphinx, north-west of the house of Osiris.’

  The implications are staggering. Cheops found the Temple of Isis, ‘mistress of the pyramid’, beside the Temple of the Sphinx. In other words, both the Sphinx and a pyramid were already there on the Giza plateau at least a century or so before Cheops.

  This is all very puzzling. If Isis is the ‘mistress of the pyramid’, then presumably one of the Giza group must be her pyramid. Which? Cheops also mentions that he built his pyramid beside the Temple of Isis, and that he also built a pyramid for the Princess Henutsen. Now we know that Henutsen’s pyramid is one of the three small pyramids that stand close to the Great Pyramid. It is therefore just conceivable that one of its sister pyramids is the pyramid of Cheops.

  In any case, what it amounts to is that we do not know for certain that the Great Pyramid was built by Cheops. It may have been, but on the other hand it may not have been. In the next chapter we shall look at the one rather slender piece of evidence that connects it with Cheops.

  Meanwhile, one thing seems clear: that according to the Inventory Stela, the Sphinx was already there in the time of Cheops, and so was a ‘Pyramid of Isis’. It is hardly surprising that Egyptologists are anxious to consider the stela an ‘invention’.

  It was after the discovery of an undamaged statue of Chefren that Egyptologists decided that there was a strong resemblance between its face and that of the Sphinx—in fact, another statue was even in the form of a sphinx.

  At the height of the controversy that followed the San Diego geological conference, Mark Lehner launched an attack on West in the National Geographic magazine, which included a computer image of the face of the Sphinx merged with a photograph of the face of an undamaged statue of Chefren from the Valley Temple. This, Lehner claimed, proved that the face of the Sphinx was Chefren. To West’s eyes, this was absurd—the Sphinx looked nothing like Chefren. But, for better or worse, computer models make impressive arguments. West decided to counterattack. And the producer of the video, Boris Said, came up with an inspired idea: get a trained police artist to work on it.

  Enquiries about who was the best in New York pointed them towards Detective Frank Domingo, senior forensic artist with the New York City Police Department.

  Since he joined the Department in 1966, Domingo had been right up through the ranks, and ended as a major consultant in any kind of case that involved facial reconstruction. Sometimes they were straightforward criminal cases—like that of the nun who was raped, sodomised and tattooed with dozens of cross-shaped cuts by two intruders. Domingo went to see her in hospital, drew the faces of the burglars from her descriptions, and was able to provide the lead that led to the arrest and conviction of both suspects.

  As his reputation spread, he was at various times called in by archaeologists and historians. A fragment of broken potsherd showed the mouth and chin of a man archaeologists thought might be Alexander the Great, but there is no accredited portrait of Alexander—only many idealised portraits. Domingo looked at every one available, and made a kind of composite—which was found to match closely the mouth and chin of the potsherd. He was even asked to undertake the reconstruction of the face of the crystal ‘Skull of Doom’, on the supposition that it was an exact copy of the skull of some ancient princess. In another case—that of an old daguerreotype photograph whose proud owner thought it might be the young Abraham Lincoln—Domingo had to disappoint: he took one look at the photograph and said: ‘Definitely not.’

  There are times when a police artist can achieve such an astonishing likeness to the suspect—based purely on the description of witnesses—that it raises the suspicion that he must be telepathic. But in cases like the identification of Chefren, the technique requires only scientific precision.

  When West asked Domingo if he was willing to go to Giza and decide whether the Sphinx and Chefren were one and the same, Domingo asked: ‘What if I decide it is Chefren?’ ‘If that’s what you come up with, that’s what I’ll publish.’

  On this promise, Domingo went to Cairo, and took many photographs of the Sphinx and of the statue of Chefren in the Cairo Museum. His conclusion was that the chin of the Sphinx is far more prominent than that of Chefren. Moreover, a line drawn from the ear to the corner of the Sphinx’s mouth sloped at an angle of 32 degrees. A similar line drawn on Chefren was only 14 degrees. This, and other dissimilarities, led Domingo to conclude that the Sphinx is definitely not a portrait of Chefren.

  3 Inside the Pyramid

  When Herodotus visited the Great Pyramid in 440 BC, it was a white, gleaming structure that dazzled the eyes. At that time, its limestone casing was still intact; the blocks were so precisely cut that the joints were virtually invisible. Just over four centuries later, in 24 BC, the Greek geographer Strabo also visited Giza, and reported that on the north face of the Pyramid, there was a hinged stone that could be raised, and which revealed a passage a mere four feet square, which led downward to a vermin-infested pit 150 feet directly below the Pyramid. Herodotus had said that there were several underground chambers, intended as ‘vaults’, built on a sort of island surrounded by water that flowed from the Nile. ' The reality, it seemed, was a small, damp chamber, and no sign of an island or a canal.

  Eight centuries passed, and in Baghdad there reigned the great Haroun Al-Rashid, the caliph of the Arabian Nights. In fact, Haroun was not particularly great; he received his honorific title Al-Rashid (‘one who follows the right path’) as a teenager for winning a war against Constantinople under the direction of more experienced generals. His elder brother, who became caliph before him, died under mysterious circumstances suggesting murder. Haroun succeeded to a vast empire stretching from the Mediterranean to India, and he increased his wealth by permitting regional governors and princes to pay him yearly payments in exchange for semi-independence. It was his vast wealth arid conspicuous consumption that impressed his contemporaries. Tales of him roaming the streets in disguise, with his Grand Vizier Jafar and executioner Mazrur may well be true; so are tales of his uncertain temper: he had Jafar and his whole family executed for reasons still unclear. He died in his mid-forties from a disease picked up while on his way to repress a revolt in Persia.

  Haroun divided his empire between his two sons, Al-Amin and Al-Mamun, further contributing to the dissolution of his empire. It is Abdullah Al-Mamun who concerns us here, for when he became caliph in AD 813, at the age of 27, he set out to turn Baghdad into a centre of learning like ancient Alexandria. Haroun had been a connoisseur of art and poetry, but Al-Mamun was also interested in science, and founded a library, called the House of Wisdom, intended to rival the great library of ancient Alexandria. He also had an observatory built, and commissioned the first atlas of the stars. This amazing man was curious about the circumference of the earth, and doubted Ptolemy’s estimate of 18,000 miles. So he had his astronomers marching north and south over the flat sandy plain of Palmyra until their astronomical observations told them that the latitude had changed by one degree, which had occurred in just over 64 miles. Multiplied by 360, this gave 23,180 miles, a far more accurate figure than Ptolemy’s. (The actual circumference at the equator is roughly 24,900 miles.)

  When Al-Mamun heard that the Great Pyramid was supposed to contain star maps and terrestrial globes of amazing accuracy—not to mention fabulous treasures—he resolved to add them to his collection. In AD 820, the seventh year of his reign, he landed in Egypt—which was part of his empire—with an army of scholars and engineers. Mamun has left us no account of the expedition, but it has been described by a number of later Arab historians.

  Unfortunately, the
location of the ‘hinged trapdoor’ had been forgotten in the past few centuries and the gleaming limestone of the Pyramid offered no clue to its whereabouts. So he decided to break his way in by sheer force. The limestone casing proved impervious to chisels—days of work only produced shallow depressions. Al-Mamun decided on a cruder method—to build huge fires against the limestone, and then cool the red-hot surface with buckets of cold vinegar. The cracked limestone was then levered and battered out.

  After tunnelling through eight feet of hard limestone, the workmen found themselves confronting the inner blocks of the Pyramid, which proved just as hard. It took months to tunnel a hundred feet into it, and by that time, Al-Mamun concluded that it was solid throughout and was about to give up when one of his workmen heard a dull thud coming from somewhere to the left. They changed direction, and finally broke into a narrow and low passage that seemed to have been made for dwarfs. On its floor lay a prism-shaped stone from the ceiling, which had made the thud.

  They crawled up the slope, and finally discovered the original entrance to the Pyramid, ten courses above the entrance Al-Mamun had forced. It had cunningly been placed 24 feet left of centre, and was invisible behind huge limestone gables. Arab historians claim that the hinged stone—which required two men to move it—was still there—it vanished centuries later, when the limestone casing was purloined by builders.

  Now they retraced their steps and crawled down the passage. This simply led them to Strabo’s ‘vermin-infested pit’, with an irregular (and obviously unfinished) floor. On the further side of this there was a low passage that ended in a blank wall. Clearly, this had been abandoned.

  Again, luck favoured Mamun. The stone that had fallen from the ceiling revealed the end of a granite plug which looked as if it blocked a passage that sloped upward. This again proved too hard for their chisels, so Mamun told his men to cut into the softer limestone to the right of it. But when they came to the end of it, there was another plug, and at the end of that, yet another—each of the plugs about six feet long. Beyond this there was a passage blocked with a limestone plug, which they cut their way through with grim persistence. Beyond that there was another, then still another. The workmen were now eager, for they felt that whoever had taken so much trouble to block the passageway must certainly have concealed some marvellous treasure...