Chapter 37 Chapter 39 Back to the past

●Geza, Egypt. March 16, 1993, 3:30 pm. It was afternoon when I started to leave the Great Pyramid.Following the way we came to this place last night, Sansa and I turned back from the north to the east, then followed the east to the south, passed some rubble and scattered ancient tombs, and finally came to a southeast-sloping, Limestone terraces covered by sandstone. At the lowest end of this gently sloped platform, which is the southwest corner of the platform about half a kilometer away from the Great Pyramid, there is a Sphinx carved out of rock.Standing 66 feet high, 240 feet long, and 13 feet 8 inches wide with a human face, this giant statue is the largest and probably the most famous stone statue in the world.

With a human face and a sphinx, looking up at the sky, it is as ruthless as the sun. I walked in the direction of the Sphinx from the northwest. I had to pass through an ancient road between the Second Pyramid and the Temple of Khafre (ValleyTempleofKhafre), and I took a trip into the temple.Situated just 50 feet south of the Great Sphinx, at the eastern end of the Giza complex, is the Riverside Temple, a highly unusual building. According to the general saying, the riverside temple was actually built long before King Khafra came to the throne. Scholars in the 19th century agreed that the temple existed before written history and had nothing to do with Egyptian dynasties.But later this statement was completely overturned, because later generations found several statues of Kafra near the temple. Although most of them were severely damaged, there is still one that is quite intact, buried head to toe in front of the temple. Deep under the hall.From this hard gem-like morphochlore statue, we seem to see the pharaoh Khafre of the fourth dynasty sitting on the throne, gazing calmly at the infinite future.

After the discovery of the new statue, ancient Egyptian scholars put forward another set of theories, which were immediately irresistible and speechless.They claim that the temple must have been built by Khafre because a statue of Khafre was unearthed in the Temple on the Bank of the River.Even Flinder Petrasseby, who has always been sensible, said: "Because the only cultural relic that can show the age can be found in the temple is the stone statue of Khafre, we have to believe that this building was built in the era of King Khafre. It is unimaginable that it was built by people of an earlier age and that it was appropriated by Khafre."

Why is it impossible to imagine? Throughout Egypt's dynastic history, too many pharaohs occupied the buildings of their predecessors.Sometimes even the marks of the original builders are erased and replaced by those of the occupants.There is no reason to assume that Khafre deliberately distanced himself from the riverside temple, not associating his name with it, especially if the temple had no connection to past rulers but to ancient myths that brought ancient Egyptian civilization to the lowlands of the Nile , if it is connected with the god who is in charge of the "God of all things" in mythology, we have more reason to believe that King Khafre is willing to create a connection between himself and the temple②.King Khafra, who had no special connection with the ancient powers, must have felt that it would be of eternal benefit to him also to keep his own beautiful life-size stone statue forever in this temple.Among the temples, the riverside temple has the deepest relationship with the god of resurrection Osiris (every pharaoh aims to follow him after death), so if we put Khafre’s own stone statue in the temple, for the purpose of Symbolically strengthening his relationship with Osiris makes it easier to understand.

Temple of Giants After passing the ancient road, I chose a gravel road that passed through the Mastaba tumulus group and walked in the direction of the riverside temple.Mastaba is a bench-like stone platform, which is the exclusive cemetery for the low-ranking nobles and clergy of the Fourth Dynasty (in modern Arabic, Mastaba means "bench", and this group of tombs is also derived from it. name).I walked along the south wall of the temple, and I couldn't help thinking that the temple, like the Great Pyramid, also faces south (the error is only 12 minutes of the arc). The base of the temple is square and each side is 147 feet long. However, because it is built on a slope platform high in the west and low in the east, although the southwest wall is only a little over 20 feet high, the east wall is more than 40 feet high. foot.

Looking from the south, the temple has a wedge-shaped structure, squatting powerfully on a high ground, but after closer observation, it reflects some strange and unexplainable features in the eyes of modern people, presumably in ancient Egypt. To the human eye it should be equally strange and inexplicable.First, there are no inscriptions or decorations in the temple, either inside or outside.In this regard, the Shrine of the Banks can be compared with several other equally undated buildings of importance on the plateau of Giza, such as the great pyramids (and the mysterious Osireion at Abydos, pp. will be explained in more detail in the next chapter), but otherwise it is quite different from all typical and well-known ancient Egyptian art and architecture.In all ancient Egyptian buildings, there is rich decoration as well as a large number of inscriptions.

Another important feature of the Riverside Temple is that the entire building is made of unusually large limestone blocks.Most of the blocks are about 18 by 10 by 8 feet in length, width and height, but some are as large as 30 by 12 by 10 feet.Each stone weighs more than 200 tons, equivalent to the weight of a modern diesel locomotive, and a building uses hundreds of stones. Isn't this phenomenon incredible? But ancient Egyptologists don't seem to find anything miraculous.Few in-depth comments have been made on the size of the stones, or how the ancient Egyptians stacked them.We also mentioned in the previous chapter that the stones used in the palace of the Great Pyramid each weigh 70 tons, which is equivalent to stacking 100 family cars together.Ancient Egyptologists are not surprised by this at all.So perhaps it is only natural that the stones in the riverside temple did not arouse their curiosity.But the size of those stones is indeed extraordinary, reflecting not only another era, but another kind of values, a kind of aesthetics born in modern times that we cannot understand, a concern for structure, and an appreciation for the scale of things. Feel.For example, modern people can never understand why people at that time insisted on using these thick stone blocks weighing 200 tons to build temples, instead of cutting the stone blocks into 10, 20, 40, or even 80 smaller pieces before stacking them. And smaller rocks that are easier to handle?Why, when the same visual effect can be achieved by other simpler methods, do they insist on building in the most difficult way?

And, how did the ancient builders lift the boulder 40 feet above the ground? At present, there are only two large above-ground cranes (crane) in the world, which can lift heavy objects like huge stones in the riverside temple.Even in today's advanced construction technology, the crane arms of these two huge industrial machines are 220 feet long, and a relative weight of 160 tons needs to be placed on the fuselage to prevent the crane from lifting the boulder and tipping forward.Moreover, before starting the crane to hoist the boulder, 20 professional and technical workers must be summoned and trained for 6 weeks before they can operate the crane⑤.

In other words, even with all the aid of modern technology and engineering know-how, humans are still barely able to hoist a 200-ton object into the air today.However, the builders of Kesha Heights, as usual, easily used boulders as building materials to build a large temple.How did they do it⑥? I walked towards the south wall below the Shrine of the Banks, and was surprised to find that the huge limestone blocks were not only indescribably large, but also arranged at various angles on the wall to form a puzzle-like pattern, but the pattern itself, with the Peruvian Sac Huaman Castle and the ancient city of Machu Picchu (please refer to Part 2 of this book) are built in very similar ways.

I also noticed that the outer walls of the River Shrine appear to have been completed in two stages.The wall of the wall is made of 200 tons of limestone blocks, and the stone blocks are still there (but the corrosion and wear are serious), but their appearance is covered with polished granite from the inside and outside. .From the inside of the building, you can still see very complete granite flakes, but the outdoor cladding stones have been severely corroded by the weather.However, there are a few remnants of granite that, although stripped from the limestone block, are still attached to it.After careful observation, I was very surprised to find that the inner side of the granite plate seemed to have traces of trimming according to the uneven shape of the limestone eroded by the weather.That is to say, the limestone block in the center of the wall may have existed alone for a considerable period of time. After being damaged by wind and rain, it corroded, and then it was covered with granite slabs on it.

ruler of rostau I followed the outer wall of the temple all the way to the entrance of the riverside temple.The entrance to the temple is located at the north end of the 43-foot-tall east wall.The granite cladding stones nearby are still well preserved, and roughly maintain their original state. Each piece weighs between seventy and eighty tons, just like the armor of a warrior, faithfully protecting the limestone pillars inside day and night. .From the dark but majestic gate, I stepped into a tall, narrow, roofless corridor, first went from east to west, passed a right-angle turn not far away, turned south, and finally arrived at a spacious front hall.It was in this room that the life-sized stone statue of Khafre was found.The Khafre stone statue carved from diorite was apparently buried head to toe in a deep cave in the room under some religious ceremony. The only decoration in the vestibule is a mosaic of granite slabs on the walls (there are such jigsaw patterns throughout the building).The pattern itself is extremely complex, and where the slabs meet other slabs, they are cut at various angles and pieced together to form patterns very similar to those found in some weird and huge buildings in the Inca Empire.It is particularly worth mentioning that there are many slabs that are very tightly joined to other slabs at the corners and ends, which is worth noting. From the front hall, I passed an elegant west-facing corridor and came to a spacious T-shaped hall.Looking west from the top of the T, there are many stone pillars, each nearly 15 feet high and 41 inches long and wide.The granite beams supported by the columns are also exactly 41 inches long and wide in the shape of a square. There are also 6 large columns on the north-south plane of the T shape, and a beam is also supported on it.On the whole, the shape of the hall is simple, solemn and refined. Why was this hall built?Why build a riverside temple?According to the ancient Egyptian scholars who believed that this was the temple of King Khafre, the reason is simple: after the pharaoh, he needs a temple that is convenient for rituals such as purification and reincarnation.However, there are no inscriptions in ancient Egyptian literature to support this statement.Instead, we can be sure from the only written evidence available that it is unlikely (at least initially) that the Temple of the Riviera had anything to do with Khafre.The reason is simple: the temple was built long before Khafre ruled Egypt.The only written evidence referred to here is the "inventory table stele" (please refer to Chapter 35 of this book).According to this inscription, both the Great Sphinx and the Great Pyramid were completed in earlier times. From the inscription on the "Inventory Table Stele", we can see that the Riverside Temple existed in the era of King Khufu before King Khafra.And at that time, the temple was regarded as an old building left over from ancient times.However, if you study the inscription carefully, it is not difficult to find that the riverside temple was not left over by the pharaohs in the ancient times, but was built by the "gods" who "earliest" came to live in the Nile Plain.The inscription refers to the riverside temple as "the ruler of Rostau, the house of Osiris". (Rose Tower is the ancient name of Kesha Metropolis) ⑥. As detailed in Part VII of this book, Osiris is in many ways very similar to the demigods Viracocha and Quetzaltel who brought civilization to Mesoamerica and the Andes, although But the wise teacher is the maker of the law.Therefore, it does not seem inconceivable that he established a "homeland" (which can also be called a holy place or a temple) in Kesha, where the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx are located. unknown ancient times Following the directions of the "Inventory Table Stele" inscription - the Sphinx should be northwest of the House of Osiris - I walked north along the west wall of the T-shaped hall of the Riverside Temple, past the limestone exit and a long The ramp (also in the northwest direction) finally reaches the bottom of the ancient road that can directly reach the second pyramid. From this end of the entrance of the ancient road, I can completely see the whole picture of the Sphinx located in the north.This stone statue is about the thickness of a street and the height of a 6-story building. It faces due east, and you can watch the sun rise from the front on the two days of the vernal equinox and autumnal equinox every year.The squatting posture of the stone statue is as if it has finally decided to move forward after sleeping for thousands of years.In terms of location selection, people at that time must have done very careful surveys and measurements before deciding on this location overlooking the Nile Valley, using local materials, and taking limestone hilltop stones that are 30 feet higher than the nearby hills. Carved into the head and neck of the Sphinx.The rectangular limestone on the lower side of the hill was carved into the body and separated from the surrounding environment to highlight the sculpture. The gap allows the Sphinx to be proudly independent and have a style of its own. The first and deepest impression of the Sphinx is that it is really very, very old, not just as generally believed and the pharaohs of the fourth dynasty have a history of thousands of years Ancient, but the real, very distant, unfathomable ancient.The ancient Egyptians in various historical stages viewed the Sphinx in this way.They believe that the Sphinx will guard "the auspicious place where the world began" (TheBeginningofallTime), and believe that it has "divine power that can pervade the whole region", and worship it⑦. As mentioned earlier, this is actually the message that the inscription on the "Inventory Table Stele" wants to convey.More precisely, this is the message that Pharaoh Thutmosis IV (Thutmosis IV) of the Eighteenth Dynasty wanted to convey when he erected the "Inventory Table Stele" around 1400 BC.It is recorded on the granite "Inventory Table Stele" that still stands quietly between the claws of the Sphinx: Before the reign of Thutmose IV, all the Sphinx was destroyed except for the head. Buried in the sand.After Thutmose IV removed the sand, he erected this stele to commemorate it. In the past 5,000 years, the wind and sand climate on the Kesha Highlands has not changed significantly. That is to say, the Sphinx and its surroundings have suffered from wind and sand damage over the years, which should not be worse than that of Thutmose IV. suffer even greater.Indeed, from modern history, we can easily see that as long as the Sphinx is a little negligent, it may be buried in sand. In 1818, Captain Caviglia (Captain Caviglia), for his personal excavation plan, once removed the sand from the Sphinx.In 1886, Maspero (Gaston Maspero) had to clear again in order to excavate the remains.But 39 years later, in 1925, the sand once again sealed the Sphinx from the neck down, forcing the Egyptian Archaeological Office to remove the sand and restore it to its original appearance. However, can we infer that the time when the Sphinx was built was very different from the climate in Egypt today?Why bother building a statue of this size if it will soon be completely buried in the sand of the Sahara Desert?From another point of view, the Sahara Desert is a very young desert geographically. The Jisha area was 11,000 to 15,000 years ago, and the soil was still quite fertile.Should we completely overturn previous hypotheses and rethink them from a completely different perspective?Is it possible that the Sphinx was carved in ancient times when the area around Giza was still green and lush?Is it possible that the desert area full of wind and sand now also had a good day full of vegetation and stable soil quality, just like Kenya and Tanzania today? Assuming that the environment at that time was as lush and happy as mentioned above, then it would not violate common sense to build a stone statue half on the ground and half underground on such wind and sand.Perhaps the people who built the Sphinx at that time did not expect that the Kesha Highlands would become dry day by day and would one day be transformed into a desert. However, if the Sphinx was really built on a piece of greenery, how, how long ago it would be!Can we imagine it? As we will see in the following texts, modern scholars of ancient Egypt study abhor this idea.Still, even they must admit: "There is no direct way of knowing the date of construction of the Sphinxes, since they were carved from natural stone." (Dr. [Dr. Mark Lehner] words).In the absence of further objective investigations, Dr. Reynard pointed out that modern archaeologists can only judge the age from the context of various clues, and since the Sphinx is located in the necropolis of Necropolis, It is also the place where the most famous Fourth Dynasty is located, so the general scholars believe that the Sphinx belongs to the Fourth Dynasty. But for such reasoning, at least some famous ancient Egypt scholars in the 19th century did not take it seriously.At one point, they theorized that the Sphinx was built long, long before the Fourth Dynasty. who built the sphinx The famous French ancient Egyptian scholar Maspero, in his "Passing of Empires" (Passing of Empires) published in 1900, specifically studied the Sphinx stele erected by Thutmose IV, and wrote: In the 13th line of the sphinx stele, a symbol of King Khafre's coat of arms appeared...showing that Khafre once presided over a restoration work to remove the sand from the Sphinx.Therefore, we can infer that the Sphinx was built at least by King Khufu, or his previous dynasty, and then buried in the sand... Another well-known ancient Egypt scholar, Mariette (AugusteMariette) also agrees with this statement.Mariette was the first explorer to discover the "Inventory Table Stele" (as mentioned earlier, it is clearly recorded in the inscription that the Sphinx existed in the Kesha Heights long before King Khufu). It is no surprise that the Sphinx already existed on the Kesha Heights. In addition, Brugsch (Brugsch, author of "Egypt under the Pharaohs" [Egypt under the Pharaohs], London, published in 1891), Flinder Petrie, Sayce and many other scholars also hold the same view. view.On the other hand, some travel writers, such as John Ward (John Ward), also successively determined that "the Sphinx must be older than the pyramids by many years"⑨.And until 1904, Sir Wallace Butch, the head of the ancient Egyptian relics management office of the British Museum and a highly respected scholar in the circle, did not hesitate to support this statement: The oldest and most exquisite Sphinx in the world should be the one on the Kesha Heights.Not only did it exist long before Khafre built the second pyramid, but it was most likely considered an antiquity at that time... It is generally believed that it has a certain degree of connection with the religion before the existence of foreigners or dynasties. However, in less than 100 years from the beginning of the 20th century to the end of the 20th century, ancient Egyptologists' views on the Sphinx have undergone tremendous changes.None of the modern orthodox ancient Egypt scholars are willing to seriously consider and discuss the age of the Sphinx, and it existed thousands of years before Khafre ruled Egypt. At the end of the 19th century, it was still It is regarded as common sense, but today, it has become a bold statement. For example, Dr Zahi Hawass of the Egyptian Archaeological Office, who is in charge of the Gisha and Saqqara regions, believes that many past theories have "gone with the wind" because "we have very solid evidence that The Sphinx is actually a product of Khafre's era." Likewise, claims that the Sphinx is older than Khafre are "simply unbelievable," says archaeologist Carol Redmont of the University of California, Berkeley.She believes: "There is no possibility that the Sphinx is older than Khafre, because in the thousands of years before King Khafre's rule in the Kesha area, not only did not have the level of craftsmanship, but also did not have the necessary management organization, and The willpower it takes to build a building of that scale." When I first started working on this topic, like Zahi Hawass, I believed that new evidence would emerge to solve the mystery of who was the builder of the Sphinx.But it is not.After careful checking, we found that modern scholars have only three indirect reasons to support the claim that the Great Sphinx was built by King Khafre: Reason ①Because of the stele of the Sphinx built by Thutmose IV, the emblem of King Khafre appeared in the blank column of the 13th row.Maspero put forward a perfect explanation for the emblem of King Kafra: After Thutmose IV restored the Sphinx, he erected a stone tablet to commemorate those who had done the same thing. The ancestors paid homage, and the object of his homage was King Khafre of the fourth dynasty.This explanation strongly implies that the Sphinx was already very old in Khafre's time.However, modern Egyptologists do not accept this claim.Modern Egyptologists seem to be equally obsessed with antiquity, and they unanimously believe that the emblem mark placed on the stele by Thutmose IV is to commemorate the builder of the original Sphinx (and non-rehabilitators). Since only the only emblem mark remains on the stele, and the other contexts have been lost, scholars can be so straightforward and affirm that the Sphinx must be a work of the fourth dynasty. Isn't it too immature?Just because of the coat of arms of a Pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty (the stele itself was built by the Pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty), it is considered that the entire sculpture is a work of that time. What kind of "science" is this?And to this day, even the emblem pattern has begun to peel off and become blurred... Reason ②Because the adjacent riverside temple was also built by King Kafra.The evidence for this claim is rather weak (since the claim that the riverbank temple was built for King Khafre is based on the presence of a statue of King Khafre in the temple. However, it is likely that the statue was placed in it later and that non-primitive is there).However, ancient Egypt scholars have supported this statement.Not only did they believe that the Riverside Temple was built by King Khafre, but they also counted the construction of the Sphinx on Khafre's head (because there is obviously some connection between the two). Reason ③Because many people believe that the face of the Sphinx is very similar to the statue of Khafre found in the cave of the Riverside Temple.This is obviously a matter of personal opinion.I personally never saw any similarities between the two.The experts of the New York Police Department, who specialize in making montage photos, recently compared the two with a computer and found that there is no similarity between the two (will be described in detail in Part 7 of this book). In any case, at dusk on March 16, 1993, I looked at the Sphinx and thought to myself: The final academic "judgment" has not yet come out. The "jury" is still debating who built this gigantic sculpture.Will it be King Khafre?Or some prehistoric architects who had a high degree of civilization but were not yet known?Whatever the month (or century) scholars decide they prefer, both are still possible.In the absence of complete, solid, unquestionable evidence, no one knows which side the truth belongs to. note ① Yeats, "The Second Coming". WB Yeats, The Second Coming. ②See Part 7 of this book for the full discussion on "creating the world". ③See the discussion in Part 7 of this book, and the comparison between the religion of the rebirth of Osiris and the sects of ancient Mexico in Part 3. ④ For the weight of stones, see "Egyptian Pyramids", page 215; "Snake in the Sky", page 242; Mystery of the Body and Face of the Sphinx), NBC show, 1993. John Anthony West, Serpent in the Sky, Harper & Row, New York, 1979. ⑤ Personal correspondence with West.See also The Mystery of the Sphinx, CNN. ⑥See Lichheim's "Ancient Egyptian Literature", Volume 2, pp. 85-86. Miriam Richtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, University of California Press, 1976, Volume Ⅱ, P.85～6. ⑦ "History of Egypt", Vol. 4, p. 80. A. History of Egypt, 1902. Volume 4, p.80ff, Stela of the Sphinx. ⑧See Chapter 35 of this book. ⑨ For holistic observations, see Ward's "Pyramids and Processes", pages 38-42. John Ward, Pyramids and Progress, 1900, p.38-42.