• Possible weathering by wind and sand. Since the body of the Sphinx is located in a hollow, it takes less than twenty years to fill the hollow and cover the body totally. The Sphinx has been covered, for most of its time, by sand since the time it was created thousands of years ago. Therefore the Sphinx was not subject to weathering exposure to wind and sand, instead it was actually protected from such natural elements. Additionally, the concave shape of the corrugation cannot be the result of wind and sand storms.
• Possible water erosion. Most scholars have resigned themselves to the fact that the water caused the erosion to the body of the Sphinx. Geologists agree that Egypt was subject to severe flooding, at the end of the last Ice Age, c. 15,000-10,000 BCE. So, if the erosion was caused by water, the Sphinx must have been carved before Egypt was under water i.e. more than 12,000 years ago.
The jury is in today. The culprit here is "water erosion" for the damage to the Sphinx. Water erosion of the Sphinx along with its dating that destroys Christian interpretations, which in turn, is too radical for scholars to swallow, as they prefer not to change their theory that Khafra (Chephren) built the Sphinx. As a result, those unfamiliar with scientific principles, suggested that the ground water, and not direct flooding, caused such erosion.
Geologists agree that Egypt was subject to severe flooding, at the end of the last Ice Age, c. 15,000-10,000 BCE. So, if the erosion was caused by water, the Sphinx must have been carved before Egypt was under water i.e. more than 12,000 years ago. Groved water marks on the Sphinx and especially in the rocks near the Sphinx undeniably points to antiquity dating further back to the time when the Sahara was not a desert but a rainy tropical paradise. The last time there was this much water in the part of Africa was over 10,000 years ago.
In order to uncover some of the mysteries that are shrouded in our mythological and religious symbols, including the Great Sphinx, we must look beyond our Earth year to a much longer cycle of our planet. We call this greater cycle, or one wobble of the Earth, the Platonic year in honor of the Greek philosopher Plato — whose ideas concerning the realities of the physical and metaphysical planes are still cherished by many of us who are seeking the wisdom of the ages. A Great year (also known as a Platonic year or Equinoctial cycle) is the time required for one complete cycle of the precession of the equinoxes, about 25,800 years. The great year is one of the longest cycles that are well known to astronomers. Given that as a fact well known by the Egytpians with a rock-steady gaze, Egypt's Great Sphinx has faced due east for over 12,000 years. If the Sphinx ever blinks, it must be in March and September, when the equinox Sun rises and shines straight in its eyes. This monumental sculpture, carved from a natural bedrock limestone outcrop on the doorstep of the Giza pyramids, is a crouched lion with a human head.
The greatest monumental sculpture in the ancient world, the Sphinx is carved out of a single ridge of stone 240 feet (73 meters) long and 66 feet (20 meters) high. The head, which has a markedly different texture from the body, and shows far less severe erosion, is a naturally occurring outcrop of harder stone. To form the lower body of the Sphinx, enormous blocks of stone were quarried from the base rock (and these blocks were then used in the core masonry of the temples directly in front and to the south of the Sphinx). While a few stubborn Egyptologists still maintain that the Sphnix was constructed in the 4th Dynasty by the Pharaoh Chephren (Khafre), an accumulating body of evidence, both archaeological and geological, indicates that the Sphinx is far older than the 4th Dynasty, and was only restored by Chephren during his reign.
There are no inscriptions on the Sphinx, or on any of the temples connected to it that, that offer evidence of construction by Chepren, yet the so-called 'Inventory Stele' (uncovered on the Giza plateau in the 19th century) tells that the Pharaoh Cheops - Chephren's predecessor - ordered a temple built alongside the Sphinx, meaning of course that the Sphinx was already there, and thus could not have been constructed by Chephren. A much greater age for the Sphinx has been suggested by R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, based upon geological considerations. Schwaller de Lubicz observed, and recent geologists (such as Robert Schoch, Professor of Geology at Boston University) have confirmed, that the extreme erosion on the body of the Sphinx could not be the result of wind and sand, as has been universally assumed, but rather was the result of water. Geologists agree that in the distant past Egypt was subjected to severe flooding. Wind erosion cannot take place when the body of the Sphinx is covered by sand, and the Sphinx has been in this condition for nearly all of the last five thousand years - since the alleged time of its 4th Dynasty construction. Furthermore, if wind-blown sand had indeed caused the deep erosion of the Sphinx, we would expect to find evidence of such erosion on other Egyptian monuments built of similar materials and exposed to the wind for a similar length of time. Yet the fact of the matter is, that even on structures that have had more exposure to the wind-blown sand, there are minimal effects of erosion, the sand having done little more than scour clean the surface of the dressed stones.
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