Page 339 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

Sphinx is now so confidently attributed to Khafre:
1 Because of the cartouche of Khafre on line 13 of the Sphinx Stela
erected by Thutmosis IV: Maspero gave a perfectly reasonable
explanation for the presence of this cartouche: Thutmosis had been a
restorer of the Sphinx and had paid due tribute to an earlier
restoration of the monument—one undertaken during the Fourth
Dynasty by Khafre. This explanation, which bears the obvious
implication that the Sphinx must already have been old in Khafre’s
time, is rejected by modern Egyptologists. With their usual telepathic
like-mindedness they now agree that Thutmosis put the cartouche on
to the stela to recognize that Khafra had been the original builder (and
not a mere restorer).
Since there had only ever been this single cartouche—and since the
texts on either side of it were missing when the stela was excavated, is
it not a little premature to come to such hard-and-fast conclusions?
What sort of ‘science’ is it that allows the mere presence of the
cartouche of a Fourth Dynasty pharaoh (on a stele erected by an
Eighteenth Dynasty pharaoh) to determine the entire identification of
an otherwise anonymous monument? Besides, even that cartouche has
now flaked off and cannot be examined ...
2 Because the Valley Temple next door is also attributed to Khafre:
That attribution (based on statues which may well have been intrusive)
is shaky to say the least. It has nevertheless received the wholehearted
endorsement of the Egyptologists, who in the process decided to
attribute the Sphinx to Khafre too (since the Sphinx and the Valley
Temple are so obviously connected).
3 Because the face of the Sphinx is thought to resemble the intact
statue of Khafre found in the pit in the Valley Temple: This, of
course, is a matter of opinion. I have never seen the slightest
resemblance between the two faces. Nor for that matter had forensic
artists from the New York Police Department who had recently been
brought in to do an Identikit comparison between the Sphinx and the
statue (as we shall see in Part VII).
29
All in all, therefore, as I stood overlooking the Sphinx in the late
afternoon of 16 March 1993, I considered that the jury was still very
much out on the correct attribution of this monument—either to Khafre
on the one hand or to the architects of an as yet unidentified high
civilization of prehistoric antiquity on the other. No matter what the
30

29 Ibid., pp. 230-2; Mystery of the Sphinx, NBC-TV.
30 At least one orthodox Egyptologist, Selim Hassan, has admitted that the jury is still
out on this issue. After twenty years of excavations at Giza he wrote, ‘Except for the
mutilated line on the Granite Stela of Thutmosis IV, which proves nothing, there is not
one single ancient inscription which connects the Sphinx with Khafre. So, sound as it
may appear, we must treat this evidence as circumstantial until such a time as a lucky
turn of the spade will reveal to the world definite reference to the erection of this
statue.’ Cited in Conde Nast Traveller, February 1993, pp. 168-9.

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