Page 412 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

thought to look in the right places. I’m absolutely certain that other
evidence will be found once a few people start looking in the right
places—along the banks of the ancient Nile, for example, which is miles
from the present Nile, or even at the bottom of the Mediterranean, which
was dry during the last Ice Age.’

The problem of transmission

I asked John West why he thought that Egyptologists and archaeologists
were so unwilling to consider that the Sphinx might be a clue to the
existence of a forgotten episode in human history.
‘The reason, I think, is that they’re quite fixed in their ideas about the
linear evolution of civilization. They find it hard to come to terms with the
notion that there might have been people, more than 12,000 years ago,
who were more sophisticated than we are today ... The Sphinx, and the
geology which proves its antiquity, and the fact that the technology that
was involved in making it is in many ways almost beyond our own
capacities, contradicts the belief that civilization and technology have
evolved in a straightforward, linear way ... Because even with the best
modern technology we almost couldn’t carry out the various tasks that
were involved in the project. The Sphinx itself, that’s not such a
staggering feat. I mean if you get enough sculptors to cut the stone away
they could carve a statue a mile long. The technology was involved in
taking the stones, quarrying the stones, to free the Sphinx from its
bedrock and then in moving those stones and using them to build the
Valley Temple a couple of hundred feet away ...’
This was news to me: ‘You mean that the 200-ton blocks in the Valley
Temple walls were quarried right out of the Sphinx enclosure?’
‘Yes, no doubt about it. Geologically they’re from the identical member
of rock. They were quarried out, moved over to the site of the Temple—
God knows how—and erected into forty-foot-high walls—again God
knows how. I’m talking about the huge limestone core blocks, not the
granite facing. I think that the granite was added much later, quite
possibly by Khafre. But if you look at the limestone core blocks you’ll see
that they bear the marks of exactly the same kind of precipitation-
induced weathering that are found on the Sphinx. So the Sphinx and the
core structure of the Valley Temple were made at the same time by the
same people—whoever they may have been.’
‘And do you think that those people and the later dynastic Egyptians
were connected to each other in some way? In Serpent in the Sky you
suggested that a legacy must have been passed on.’
‘It’s still just a suggestion. All that I know for sure on the basis of our
work on the Sphinx is that a very, very high, sophisticated civilization
capable of undertaking construction projects on a grand scale was
present in Egypt in the very distant past. Then there was a lot of rain.

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