Hidden History: Lost Civilizations, Secret Knowledge, and Ancient Mysteries (10 page)

Despite this clearing, the colossal
sculpture soon found itself beneath the
sand once again. When Napoleon arrived in Egypt in 1798, he found the
Sphinx without its nose. 18th century
drawings reveal that the nose was
missing long before Napoleon's arrival;
one story goes that it was the victim
of target practice in the Turkish period. Another explanation (and perhaps
the most likely), is that it was pried off
by chisels in the eighth century A.D. by a Sufi who considered the Sphinx a sacrilegious idol. In 1858, some of the sand
around the sculpture was cleared by
Auguste Mariette, the founder of the
Egyptian Antiquities Service, and between 1925 and 1936, French engineer
Emile Baraize excavated the Sphinx on
behalf of the Antiquities Service. Possibly for the first time since antiquity,
the Great Sphinx was once again exposed to the elements.

The Great Sphinx in 1867, in its unrestored original condition,
still partially buried in the sand.

The explanation for the enigmatic
sculpture (favored by most Egyptologists) is that Chephren, a Fourth
Dynasty pharaoh, had the stone
shaped into a lion with his own face at
the same time as the construction of
the nearby Pyramid of Chephren,
around 2540 B.c. However, there are
no inscriptions anywhere that identify
Chephren with the Sphinx, nor is there
mention anywhere of its construction,
which is somewhat puzzling when considering the grandness of the monument. Despite many Egyptologists
claims to the contrary, no one knows
for sure when the Sphinx was built or
by whom. In 1996, a New York detec

tive and expert in identification concluded that the visage of the Great
Sphinx did not match known representations of Chephren's face. He maintained that there was a greater
resemblance to Chephren's elder
brother, Djedefre. The debate is still
continuing. The mystery of the
Sphinx's origin and purpose has often
given rise to mystical interpretations,
such as those of English occultist Paul
Brunton, and, in the 1940s, American
psychic and prophet Edgar Cayce.
While in a trance, Cayce predicted that
a chamber would be discovered underneath the front paws of the Sphinx,
containing a library of records dating
back to the survivors of the destruction of Atlantis.

The Great Sphinx was excavated
from a relatively soft, natural limestone, left over in the quarry used
to build the Pyramids; the forepaws
being separately made from blocks of
limestone. One of the main oddities
about the sculpture is that the head is
out of proportion to its body. It could
be that the head was re-carved several times by subsequent pharaohs since
the first visage was created, though
on stylistic grounds this is unlikely
to have been done after the Old Kingdom period in Egypt (ending around
2181 B.c.). Perhaps the original head
was that of a ram or hawk and was recut into a human shape later. Various
repairs to the damaged head over
thousands of years might have reduced or altered the facial proportions. Any of these explanations could
account for the small size of the head
in relation to the body, particularly if
the Great Sphinx is older than traditionally believed.

There has been lively debate in recent years over the dating of the
monument. Author John Anthony
West first noticed weathering patterns on the Sphinx that were consistent with water erosion rather than
wind and sand erosion. These patterns
seemed peculiar to the Sphinx and
were not found on other structures on
the plateau. West called in geologist
and Boston University professor Robert Schoch, who, after examining the
new findings, agreed that there was
evidence for water erosion. Although
Egypt is arid today, around 10,000
years ago the land was wet and rainy.
Consequently, West and Schoch concluded that in order to have the effects
of water erosion, the Sphinx would
have to be between 7,000 and 10,000
years old. Egyptologist's dismissed
Schoch's theory as highly flawed; pointing out that the once prevalent great
rain storms over Egypt had stopped
long before the Sphinx was built. More
seriously, why were there no other
signs of water erosion found on the
Giza plateau to validate West and
Schoch's theory? The rain could not

have been restricted to this single monument. West and Schoch have also been
criticized for ignoring the high level of
local atmospheric industrial pollution
over the last century, which has severely
damaged the Giza monuments.

Someone else with his own theory
regarding the Sphinx's date is author
Robert Bauval. Bauval published a
paper in 1989 showing that the three
Great Pyramids at Giza-and their
relative position to the Nile-formed
a kind of 3-D hologram on the ground,
of the three stars of Orion's belt and
their relative position to the Milky
Way. Along with best-selling Fingerprints of the Gods author Graham
Hancock, Bauval developed a theory
that the Sphinx, its neighboring pyramids, and various ancient writings,
constitute some sort of astronomical
map connected with the constellation
Orion. Their conclusion is that the best
fit for this hypothetical map is the position of the stars in 10,500 B.c., pushing the origin of the Sphinx even
further back in time. There are various legends of secret passages associated with the Great Sphinx.
Investigations by Florida State University, Waseda University in Japan,
and Boston University, have located
various anomalies in the area around
the monument, although these could
be natural features. In 1995, workers
renovating a nearby parking lot uncovered a series of tunnels and pathways,
two of which plunge further underground close to the Sphinx. Bauval
believes these are contemporaneous
with the Sphinx itself. Between 1991
and 1993, while examining evidence for
erosion at the monument using a seismograph, Anthony West's team found evidence of anomalies in the form of
hollow, regularly shaped spaces or
chambers, a few meters below the
ground, between the paws and at either side of the Sphinx. No further
examination has been allowed. Could
there have been a grain of truth in
Edgar Cayce's library of records prophecy after all?

Today, the great statue is crumbling because of wind, humidity, and
the smog from Cairo. A huge and
costly restoration and preservation
project has been underway since 1950,
but in the early days of this project,
cement was used for repairs, which
was incompatible with the limestone,
and so caused additional damage to the

structure. Over a period of 6 years,
more than 2,000 limestone blocks
were added to the structure, and
chemicals were injected into it, but
the treatment failed. By 1988, the
sphinx's left shoulder was in such a
state of deterioration that blocks
were falling off. At present, restoration is still an ongoing project under
the control of the Supreme Council of
Antiquities, which is making repairs
to the damaged shoulder and attempting to drain away some of the subsoil.
Consequently, today the focus is on
preservation rather than further
explorations or excavations, so we will
have to wait a long time before the
Great Sphinx gives up its secrets.

© Thanassis Vembos.

Ruins of the palace at Knossos, showing some of Arthur Evans's
reconstruction.

The archaeological site of Knossos
is situated on a hill 3.1 miles southeast of the city of Heraklion, the modern capital of the Aegean island of
Crete. Knossos was constructed by the
Bronze Age Minoan civilization,
named for the legendary King Minos
of Crete. The Minoan culture existed
on the island for around 1500 years,
from 2600 to 1100 B.C., and was at its
height from the 18th to 16th centuries
B.C. The main feature of the extraordinary site at Knossos is the Great Palace, a huge complex of rooms, halls, and
courtyards covering approximately

205,278 square feet. The Palace of
Knossos is closely associated in Greek
myth with Theseus, Ariadne, and the
dreaded Minotaur. In fact, the legend
of the labyrinth constructed by
Daedalus to conceal the dreaded manbeast has been understood by some to
originate with the complex layout of
the palace itself. There are even dark
hints in archaeological findings at
Knossos (and elsewhere on Crete) of
the practice of human sacrifice, as is
suggested by the myth of Athens sending 14 girls and boys every seven years
to be devoured by the Minotaur.

The site of Knossos was first discovered in 1878 by Cretan merchant
and antiquarian Minos Kalokairinos,
who excavated a few sections of the
west wing of the palace. But systematic excavations at the site did not begin until 1900, with Sir Arthur Evans,
director of the Ashmolean Museum in
Oxford, who purchased the whole area
of the site and continued his investigations there until 1931. The work of
Evans and his team at Knossos revealed (among other things) the main
palace, a large area of the Minoan
city, and various cemeteries. Evans
carried out much restoration work at
the Palace of Minos, as he called it,
much of it controversial, and the palace in its present form has been said
by some archaeologists to be as much
due to Evans's imagination and preconceptions as to the ancient Minoans.
Since Evans's time, further excavations at Knossos have been undertaken
by the British School of Archaeology
at Athens and the Archaeological Service of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture. The hilltop on which Knossos is
situated has an extremely long history
of human habitation. People were living there from Neolithic times (7000
B.c.-3000 B.C.) continually up until the
Roman period. The name Knossos derives from the Linear B word for the
city: ko-no-so. Linear B is the oldest
surviving example of the Greek language, and was in use on Crete and the
Greek mainland from the 14th to the
13th centuries B.C. Examples of Linear
B script were found at Knossos in the
form of clay tablets, which were used
by palace scribes to record details of
the workings and administration of
their main industries, such as the production of perfumed oil, gold and

bronze vessels, chariots and textiles,
and the distribution of goods such as
wool, sheep, and grain. Clay tablets
inscibed with the earlier undeciphered
Cretan Linear A script were also
found by Evans at Knossos.

The first Minoan Palace was built
on the Knossos site around 2000 B.C.
and lasted until 1700 B.C., when it was
destroyed by a huge earthquake, thus
bringing to an end what is referred to
by archaeologists as the Old Palace
Period. A new, more complex palace
was erected on the ruins of the old; this
structure heralded the Golden Age of
Minoan culture, or the New Palace
Period. This Great Palace, or Palace
of Minos, was the crowning achievement of Minoan culture and the center of the most powerful city state on
Crete. The timber- and stone-built
multi-storied complex acted as an
administrative and religious center,
with perhaps as many as 1,400 rooms.
The plan of the Knossos Palace was
similar to other palaces of this period
on Crete, such as that at Phaistos in
the south-central part of the island,
though Knossos seems to have been
the capital. Minoan palaces generally
consisted of four wings arranged
around a rectangular, central court,
which acted as the heart of the whole
complex. Each section of the Knossos
Palace had a separate function; the
western part contained the shrines,
suites of ceremonial rooms, and narrow storerooms, which were full of
huge storage jars, known as pithoi.
The elaborately decorated Throne
Room complex was also located in
this section of the complex, and had a
stone seat built into the wall facing a
row of benches. This seat was interpreted by Arthur Evans as a royal throne, and the name has stuck. In the
far west of the complex was the great
paved West Court, the formal approach to the palace. The east wing of
the structure once had four levels,
three of which remain today. Located
in this part of the complex were what
have been interpreted as residential
quarters for the Minoan ruling elite,
workshops, a shrine, and one of the
most impressive achievements of
Minoan architecture: the Grand Staircase. Other parts of the Palace include
large apartments with running water
in terracotta pipes, and perhaps the
first example of flush toilets.