Page 408 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

features.’
6
Wind/sand erosion presents a very different profile of sharp-edged
horizontal channels selectively scoured out from the softer layers of the
affected rock. Under no circumstances can it cause the vertical fissures
particularly visible in the wall of the Sphinx enclosure. These could only
have been ‘formed by water running down the wall’, the result of rain
7
falling in enormous quantities, cascading over the slope of the Giza
plateau and down into the Sphinx enclosure below. ‘It picked out the
weak spots in the rock,’ Schoch elaborated, ‘and opened them up into
these fissures—clear evidence to me as a geologist that this erosional
feature was caused by rainfall.’
8
Although in some places obscured by repair blocks put in place by
numerous restorers over the passing millennia, the same observation
holds true for the scooped-out, undulating, scalloped coves that run the
entire length of the Sphinx’s body. Again, these are characteristic of
precipitation-induced weathering because only long periods of heavy
rainfall beating down on the upper parts of the immense structure (and
cascading over its sides) could have produced such effects. Confirmation
of this comes from the fact that the limestone out of which the Sphinx
was carved is not uniform in its composition, but consists of a series of
hard and soft layers in which some of the more durable rocks recede
farther than some of the less durable rocks. Such a profile simply could
9
not have been produced by wind erosion (which would have selectively
chiselled out the softer layers of rock) but ‘is entirely ‘consistent with
precipitation-induced weathering where you have water, rain water
beating down from above. The rocks higher up are the more durable ones
but they recede back farther than some of the less durable rocks lower in
the section which are more protected.’
10
In his summing up at the AAAS meeting, Schoch concluded:
It’s well known that the Sphinx enclosure fills with sand very quickly, in just a
matter of decades, under the desert conditions of the Sahara. And it has to be dug
out periodically. And this has been the case since ancient times. Yet you still get
this dramatic rolling, erosional profile in the Sphinx enclosure ... Simply put,
therefore, what I’m suggesting is that this rolling profile, these features seen on
the body and in the Sphinx ditch, hark back to a much earlier period when there
was more precipitation in the area, and more moisture, more rain on the Giza
plateau.’
11
As Schoch admitted, he was not the first geologist to have noticed the
‘anomalous precipitation-induced weathering features on the core body

6 Mystery of the Sphinx.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
Ibid.
9
10 Ibid.
11 AAAS Annual Meeting 1992.

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