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The great Sphinx of Egypt, keeper of the ancient mysteries, guardian of the ancient secrets.
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The Sphinx is considered to be the greatest statue on earth.
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Good evening.
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I'm Charlton Heston.
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For nearly 300 years or so, an idea comes along that can shake the world.
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An idea so revolutionary that at first no one believes it could be true.
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When Galileo showed evidence that the earth moved around the sun, the authorities arrested him,
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many people refused to believe that the Wright brothers could fly even after they'd been doing it for two years.
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But eventually, if the evidence is convincing, a theory can be accepted as common knowledge.
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What you're about to see could be history in the making.
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Tonight we go to Egypt to examine the controversial theories of John Anthony West.
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West and his team of scientists challenge our long-held views about the origins of the great Sphinx.
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They suggest that the Sphinx was carved before Egypt became a desert, 9,000 to 10,000 years ago.
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It's remarkable that for thousands of years the evidence has been in plain sight,
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yet till now no one has recognized its significance.
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If West's theories prove to be correct, the implications are staggering.
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We've been taught that the people who inhabited Egypt during that early period were primitives
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who survived by hunting and scavenging for food.
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John West believes that this view is incomplete.
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He feels that an entire chapter of man's early history is missing.
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West's team has uncovered new evidence which suggests that we're descendants of an unknown,
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earlier civilization, an advanced culture capable of incredible technological fields.
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Tonight we'll examine this evidence to see if man's early history needs to be rewritten.
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Could the legends of Atlantis be true?
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Egypt, land of mystery.
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A symbol of her enigmatic culture, the great Sphinx.
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For thousands of years, travelers have visited Egypt and stood in awe of these great monuments.
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Of all ancient civilizations, none has left behind such a wealth of artistic and architectural mastery.
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These magnificent temples were the inspiration for the architecture of the ancient Sphinx.
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The ancient Sphinx was the first of its kind.
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The ancient Sphinx was the first of its kind.
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The ancient Sphinx was the first of its kind.
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The ancient Sphinx was the first of its kind.
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The ancient Sphinx was the first of its kind.
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The ancient Sphinx was the first of its kind.
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The ancient Sphinx was the first of its kind.
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The ancient Sphinx was the first of its kind.
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The ancient Sphinx was the first of its kind.
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In the ancient Sphinx, the Sphinx and surrounding pyramids rest on the edge of the Giza Plateau.
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240 feet long, the length of a city block.
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60 feet high, the height of a six-story building.
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The Sphinx has the body of a lion and the head of a man.
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It was carved in one piece out of solid limestone bedrock.
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It was carved in one piece out of solid limestone bedrock.
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The Sphinx rests in its own enclosure.
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Facing east to catch the first rays of the rising sun.
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Egyptologists who specialize in ancient Egyptian dynasties
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now believe that the Sphinx was carved by the pharaoh, Chephrin,
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in his own image 4,500 years ago.
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Chephrin is the pharaoh who is credited with building the second of the three major pyramids
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in the Giza Plateau during what's known as the Old Kingdom period.
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For over half its known life, the Sphinx has been buried up to its neck in sand.
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For over half its known life, the Sphinx has been buried up to its neck in sand.
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Despite this protection from the elements, the body of the Sphinx is deeply eroded.
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Although it's been dug out and repaired many times,
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nothing's ever been found to tell us who built the Sphinx or when.
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This is John Anthony West, author and independent Egyptologist.
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While researching the work of French mathematician, Schwaller de Lubitsch,
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he made a chance discovery that would change his life.
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Schwaller made the simple observation that the Sphinx had been eroded by water,
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not by wind and sand, as traditionally believed.
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These are two very different types of erosion.
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Water in the Sahara Desert.
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There's been no significant rainfall in the Sahara for 9,000 to 10,000 years.
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West was the first person to grasp the implications of this.
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If the Sphinx was eroded by water, it had to be at least 9,000 years old.
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The deep erosion is easy to see, but it takes an expert to identify its cause.
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Through some friends I had an introduction to a very well-known Oxford geologist.
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And I went into him with a very simple question.
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On the basis of a clear photograph alone, could he, as a geologist,
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tell the difference between weathering by water and weathering by wind and sand?
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The answer was cautiously expressed as a general question.
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The answer was, well, it's a very simple question.
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I cautiously expressed as a general rule, yes.
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I asked him if he didn't mind if I play a bit of a trick on him.
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And what I did was I took a photograph of the Sphinx and I masked off the head and the paws.
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And I asked him what did he think was responsible for that weathering.
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And he looked at it a moment and said, well, unquestionably, water.
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And I stripped the masking tape off and looked at it a minute.
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And he said, oh.
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The Oxford geologist realized that if the Sphinx was more than 9,000 years old,
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the entire history of ancient man would have to be rewritten.
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He wanted no part of such a controversial subject.
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In his book, Serpent in the Sky, West first published his theory of an older Sphinx.
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Scholars laughed and ignored him.
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West needed in a lie a recognized expert willing to examine the evidence
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with the courage to stand behind his conclusions.
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Dr. Robert Schock is an associate professor of science at Boston University.
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He holds a Ph.D. in geology and geophysics from Yale University.
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Dr. Schock is an expert in the erosional analysis of rocks.
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What I found was that West had one very extreme idea
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that the Sphinx was thousands of years older than the Egyptologists thought.
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So I thought it was a long shot. I thought it was a very long shot.
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And I thought it was a very long shot.
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So I thought it was a long shot. I thought maybe West was onto something
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I thought was very improbable, but it was worth looking at further.
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I'm a curious type of person.
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West and Schock traveled to Egypt to examine the evidence firsthand.
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While Egyptologists look at monuments,
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geologists look at the stones they're made from.
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And those stones told Schock that West was on the right track.
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Schock was encouraged by what he saw, but the team was totally unprepared
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for what happened next.
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Somehow word of their theory leaked out, and they found themselves attacked in the press.
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This is an American hallucination. They're exploiting
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the monuments of Egypt for personal gains, said Dr. Zahi Hawass,
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director of the Giza Plateau. The team is ignorant and insensitive.
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This from Dr. Mark Lehner, Egyptologist.
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There are many theories like this that have been said about the Sphinx,
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but all of it is gone with the wind, because we Egyptologists
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have solid evidence to state that the Sphinx is dated
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to the time of Cephron, the builder of the second pyramid at the Giza Plateau.
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West and Schock were undaunted by the ridicule.
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They knew their theory was based on solid evidence.
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Virtually all of the temples and tombs in the Giza Plateau
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have been weathered by wind and sand.
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So why would the Sphinx be the only monument weathered by water?
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To a geologist, erosion tells the story of a rock's history.
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The limestone bedrock in Giza is like a layer cake
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composed of both hard and soft layers.
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The wind-driven sand is made of a layer of sand.
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The wind-driven sand scours out the softer layers,
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leaving the harder layers intact.
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An example of this is found here in the tomb of Debenh,
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which is carved out of the exact same rock as the Sphinx.
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Once a smooth wall, it's been exposed to desert conditions
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for over 4,000 years.
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On the other hand, rain weathering has an entirely different look.
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Rocks which have been weathered by rain have a round undulating profile.
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This is very different in appearance from the hard, sharp profile
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caused by wind weathering.
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This is a classic textbook example of what happens
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to a limestone wall when you have rains beating down on it for thousands of years.
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It's only found in one area on the Giza Plateau,
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here, on the Sphinx and on the walls of the Sphinx enclosure.
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These man-made vertical walls were carved from the same layer of bedrock,
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a mere 300 yards apart.
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According to Egyptologists, they were carved at the same time.
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But if that's so, shouldn't they exhibit the same pattern of erosion?
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Dr. Lehner has an entirely different explanation.
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Dr. Schock is saying we have the same layer, and here on the Sphinx
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it's weathered, and here on this old kingdom tomb it's not.
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Carved out of the same layer.
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And we are saying, and I bow to Dr. Gorey on this as a geologist,
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no, those are two different layers, they're weathered, different rates.
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It all comes down to that, basically, aside from the massive problem
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that Dr. Schock has with no cultural context.
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When you think of water in Egypt, you automatically think of the Nile.
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Do you think any legendary Nile floods have eroded the Sphinx?
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Well, that's a nice hypothesis, but it just doesn't
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hold up to scrutiny. What you have here are rocks
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where the lowest most rocks, which are a bit softer than the rocks
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at the very top, jet out further. If it were Nile floods coming in,
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you would expect these soft rocks to erode it way back.
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As the waters rose up, you would expect this to erode it way back,
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but the upper most rocks, that in fact is not what we see.
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If we look up there, we see a little undercutting where you have a very soft layer,
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but the next layer above, which is harder than this layer,
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is receded way back. So no, it's not Nile floods that are causing
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this erosion, it's clearly rain precipitation causing
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these erosional features.
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One thing I think one has to realize is that the Sphinx itself
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is in very bad shape in the 20th century. It's deteriorating
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very quickly. You can literally stand in front of the Sphinx and watch stones
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fall off of it. Smog, pollution, acid rain
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are all affecting it drastically and weathering it very quickly.
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And one thing that some critics have suggested is that, in fact, I'm not taking
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these factors into account, that when I'm looking at weathering, I might
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just simply be looking at modern weathering features. I just want to assure
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everyone that I have taken this into account. Yes, it's a very serious
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problem, the modern weathering, but the weathering that I'm looking at
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is the ancient weathering, the weathering that we see under ancient repairs,
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and that's a whole different ballgame, that's a whole different
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set of evidence than the modern weathering.
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Shock was
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certain that the walls of the Sphinx enclosure were eroded by water
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skating down off the Giza Plateau, water whose only possible
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source was rain. This was the key element in Shock's argument.
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But when did it rain?
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Dr. John
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Kutzbach is a professor of paleoclimatology at the University of Wisconsin.
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Paleoclimatology is the study of ancient
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weather patterns. The first way that we
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try to determine the climate of the past is by looking at observations.
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There are plenty of observations from North Africa that
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show that that region was covered with lakes in the past.
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Right now it's a desert, but 10,000 years ago there were lakes
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in the Sahara. Then there's an entirely different way that we figure out
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the climate of the past, and that's with our computer models. We then can
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calculate what the change in climate would be like for
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that time. And the amazing thing is that the geologic evidence
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and the computer simulations both agree that
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around 10,000 years ago the Sahara was wetter than it is now.
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Music
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Music
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Shock and West felt that the evidence of water erosion was so strong
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there must be other evidence in the area to support an
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older Sphinx. Take a look at this. You can see the
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rolling, weathering, the precipitation-induced
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weathering, and here you see very nicely all these joints, which are various fault
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joints and what not. You don't see this same type of joints
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opening up in the wind-induced weathering.
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Music
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I'm standing in a vertical fissure on the southern wall
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of the Sphinx enclosure. This vertical fissure was clearly
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formed by water running down the wall. It would pick out
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the weak spots in the rock, open them up
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into these fissures. This is clear evidence to me as a geologist
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that this erosional feature we see was caused
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by rain beating down on the rocks. Here is
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the actual photograph of the back of the Sphinx enclosure. You see the rolling,
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undulating weathered profile. Here is a diagram
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of that same profile shown here, and what you're
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looking at diagrammatically here are the different beds, the different
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layers, which you can see in the photograph and see even better
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when you're in the field actually walking around looking at.
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These different layers, some of them are harder, some of them are
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softer. Professor Gowry has calculated,
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in fact, durability factors for the different layers. And the way
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this works is the higher the durability, the higher the number like
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86 versus 11, the more durable that particular rock
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is. And so we see some of the rocks which have very low
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durability factors, say of 11, they are in fact reseeded back
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and undercut the rocks above them. So 11 reseeds back further
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than 56. But notice that doesn't work in every case.
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Some of the more durable rocks like 76, 75, 86
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actually reseed back further than some of the less
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durable rocks like 42 or 56. If this started
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as a vertical or nearly vertical profile, why would these
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more durable rocks reseed back further? I would suggest
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this is consistent with precipitation induced weathering
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where you have water, rainwater, beating down from above.
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In fact, the rocks are higher up. Even if they're more durable,
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they take the brunt of more rain hitting them and they reseed back
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further than some of the less durable rocks lower in the section
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which are more protected.
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If the Sphinx was damaged by rain,
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and the evidence suggests it was much wetter in the
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Sahara region 9-10,000 years ago, then the Sphinx
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must be more than 9,000 years old. That's twice as
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old as history tells us.
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Why had no one noticed this before? When the first dinosaur bone
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was discovered in 1838, no one even knew what it was.
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There was no frame of reference for it. No one had even heard of dinosaurs then.
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As more bones were found all over the world, scientists
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put the pieces together.
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Shock and West were now ready to test their theory.
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They submitted their findings to the annual conference of the
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Geological Society of America. There was a single moment
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that really got the project rolling, and that was actually
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the moment when we were invited to the Geological Society of America's convention,
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Shock and myself. We'd put in an abstract. Shock was by this time
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absolutely convinced that the theory was valid.
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We had a basic forum to express new ideas in geology,
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and geologists, quite honestly, are quick to shoot people down
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if they find fault in the theories and ideas presented.
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Much to my pleasure, no one pointed out any errors.
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In fact, they found the evidence quite interesting, even compelling.
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Dr. Shock was being modest. As a result of his presentation,
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275 of the attending geologists offered to help
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with his project. The argument escalated into a battle between
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two unrelated branches of science, geology and Egyptology.
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We're relatively certain of the accuracy
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of our reconstruction of Egyptian civilization.
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Because if we were to take the alternative view,
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think of what we're stuck with. We have a
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anti-deluvian civilization
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with all the trappings of later pharaonic civilization, like the Sphinx,
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with the characteristic Egyptian head cloth,
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with the characteristic use of the lion in the guise of the king, and then you have nothing.
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You have nothing for how long? A thousand years, two thousand years,
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and then it starts up again. Where's the link?
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What ties this anti-deluvian culture
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to what came later? Are you saying that two
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exactly parallel cultures evolved at the same place
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three, four, five thousand years apart? It sounds like a Star Trek episode.
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It simply doesn't work that way. Culture
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evolves in a linear fashion. To accept
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the theories that you're reporting means that you've got
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culture A, culture B,
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and in between nothing. And it
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simply doesn't work that way. What's actually at stake are the implications,
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the impact it has upon accepted views of the evolution
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of civilization. We think, and it's a kind of a spin-off
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of Darwinian evolutionary theory, that human evolution
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is a linear process, that it goes from stupid cavemen
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to smart old us with our hydrogen bombs and striped toothpaste.
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In fact, the proof that the Sphinx is many, many thousands of years
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older, that it precedes by many thousands of years,
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even dynastic Egypt, means that, and when
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that's taken into consideration and you look at the way the Sphinx is carved and the
21:22.480 --> 21:26.480
incredible size of the blocks of the temple alongside of it, when you take that
21:26.480 --> 21:30.480
into consideration, you realize that there was, at some distant
21:30.480 --> 21:34.480
past in history, as the legends affirm, high
21:34.480 --> 21:38.480
sophisticated civilizations. So that's really what is responsible
21:38.480 --> 21:42.480
ultimately for the terrific opposition that the idea
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provokes.
21:46.480 --> 21:50.480
As a direct result of the
21:50.480 --> 21:54.480
raging controversy in the press, both sides were invited
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to debate the question of the true age of the Sphinx.
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The debate was held at America's most prestigious scientific forum,
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the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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The Egyptological view was presented by Dr. Mark Lainer,
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considered to be the world's first scientific expert.
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Lainer, considered to be the world's foremost authority in the Sphinx.
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West's theory was presented by Dr. Robert Schock, while
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West watched the proceedings from the audience. Author Paul Roberts,
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who was covering the debate for Canada's leading investigative journal,
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had these comments. West is really an
22:34.480 --> 22:38.480
academic's worst nightmare, because here comes somebody way out of
22:38.480 --> 22:42.480
left field with a thoroughly well thought out,
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well presented, coherently described,
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beautifully written, full of data you can't refute,
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and it pulls the rug from beneath your feet.
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So how do they deal with it? They ignore it.
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They hope it'll go away, and it won't go away.
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If they'd allowed John West to be on the podium,
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and not be kept off the podium because he doesn't have
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degrees behind his name, they would have had an even more
23:14.480 --> 23:18.480
devastating attack, and they would have been even less
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able to defend, as it was that they were unable to respond to what Dr. Schock said.
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My own reaction as a non-geologist is I was waiting to see at least
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some hardcore data that the weather in the Sphinx is in fact
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water induced, induced by periods by rain,
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such that it has to date during a period when there were heavy rains. I didn't see any
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evidence. I saw many slides of yes, this drastically undulating profile
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of what we call member two on the Sphinx, with various people mostly,
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well various people standing in the view, but I didn't see any data
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that convinces me one way or another that it is in fact rain induced.
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Our reaction is, if it was built by a civilization or a culture
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that was that much earlier, where is the other evidence of this culture?
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Where is it? Show me a pot chart. Show me a tomb. Show me
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an inscription. Show me any other piece of sculpture. Show me any archaeological site
24:12.480 --> 24:16.480
that dates to this period. To say where is the rest of the evidence
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as a number of Egyptologists have said is, it's like telling Magellan
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that the world is still flat because where are the other guys who sailed around it. It's absolutely
24:24.480 --> 24:28.480
beside the point. However,
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I recognize that if the Sphinx dated from that earlier
24:32.480 --> 24:36.480
date, you would anticipate that there ought to be
24:36.480 --> 24:40.480
something else. Whereas, if it dates from a time so old
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that practically everything has been silted over or covered over or in the bottom of what's
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now the Mediterranean Sea, then you get the idea that you might have to go looking
24:48.480 --> 24:52.480
very hard for it, and perhaps even more to the point, look in places where
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nobody else has looked. One place I would think to look
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would be wherever the course of the old Nile Valley is. The Nile
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in ancient times was not in its present course, and wherever
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the old Nile was would be a place to go working with our seismic
25:08.480 --> 25:12.480
equipment to see if we could find well under the present silt level
25:12.480 --> 25:16.480
remnants of a civilization capable of producing something like the Sphinx.
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This is the Osirian,
25:20.480 --> 25:24.480
thought to have been built in the New Kingdom 3400 years ago.
25:24.480 --> 25:28.480
Shock and West have found evidence which casts a serious doubt on this conventional
25:28.480 --> 25:32.480
dating. The floor of this temple is a good
25:32.480 --> 25:36.480
50 feet below the floor of the temple of Seti I.
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Geologically, there might be another explanation
25:40.480 --> 25:44.480
for this. I think it's possible that this temple is extremely
25:44.480 --> 25:48.480
old. It was built on the ground level, then over thousands of
25:48.480 --> 25:52.480
years from Nile flooding, sands and silts were brought in, which
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filled up the temple and eventually covered it completely.
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We think this amazing structure may relate to our work on the Sphinx.
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It's traditionally attributed to the pharaoh Seti I, around
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1300 BC, but there's virtually no evidence to support that attribution.
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We think it's older, maybe thousands of years older.
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The Osirian looks like it was built in a deep
26:18.480 --> 26:22.480
hole dug in the bedrock. This is an unthinkable departure from normal
26:22.480 --> 26:26.480
Egyptian temple building practice.
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The architectural style is unlike anything else in Egypt,
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except at Giza, the valley temple of the Sphinx.
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You can see the same massive simplicity,
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the mighty square granite pillars and the total absence of inscriptions
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and carvings, all of which produce a very similar initial impression.
26:46.480 --> 26:50.480
Could this be more evidence from the same
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culture that built the Sphinx?
26:56.480 --> 27:00.480
Music
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Music
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Music
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Music
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The step pyramid at Saqqara is said
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to be older than the Sphinx and the great pyramids at Giza.
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Like the stones of the
27:24.480 --> 27:28.480
Giza plateau, the mud bricks of Saqqara have their own story to tell.
27:28.480 --> 27:32.480
These are the mud brick tombs of the earliest kings of Egypt,
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first and second dynasties, around 3000 BC,
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500 years before Chephrin's time. Now under any circumstances,
27:40.480 --> 27:44.480
the limestone the Sphinx is carved out of is harder than these mud bricks.
27:44.480 --> 27:48.480
Geologists agree the weathering to the Sphinx is the result of water, rainwater,
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over long periods of time. Since we're only ten miles from
27:52.480 --> 27:56.480
Giza, we can assume the weather conditions are the same.
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Music
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These mud brick walls are in relatively stable
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condition after all these thousands of years. If they'd been subjected to the same
28:08.480 --> 28:12.480
rains that weathered the Sphinx, they'd have dissolved long ago.
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How is it possible that these mud brick tombs and the
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limestone Sphinx, with channels weathered two and three feet deep into its sides,
28:20.480 --> 28:24.480
date from the same period?
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Music
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Music When this photograph was taken
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in 1860, the lion's body was not visible. If the head
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of the Sphinx hadn't protruded above the sand, it might not have been discovered
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to this day.
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Archaeological excavation is expensive, and permission to dig in Egypt
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is difficult to obtain.
28:52.480 --> 28:56.480
How could West and his team look beneath the sand without digging?
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Music
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The seismograph is connected to listening devices called geophones,
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which are placed in the ground at precise intervals.
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A metal plate is hit with a heavy hammer, sending shock waves deep into the ground.
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These shock waves reflect off the rock layers of different
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densities that are received by the geophones and then recorded by the seismograph.
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The final results give a graphic representation
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of what lies hidden beneath the surface.
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Dr. Thomas Dobecki has been a professor at the Colorado School of Mines,
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and he's worked extensively in the petroleum industry.
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He's a professional engineering geologist and geophysicist.
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His specialty is high resolution seismography.
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Initially, our primary purpose for conducting the seismic
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surveys in and around the Sphinx was to look for buried
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evidence for ancient civilizations. To this end,
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we were able to locate unusual cavities that could be chambers
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within the Sphinx enclosure. But over and above this, we were also
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able to map the pattern of weathering depth within the limestone.
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Music
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Music
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This rock surface may look rock solid, but it's actually very soft.
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It's porous, geologically speaking. Since it was cut out,
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it's weathered in the subsurface. Now, a rock when
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it's cut out begins to weather, and the degree of weathering, the depth of
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weathering in the subsurface correlates very clearly with how long
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that rock has been exposed.
30:40.480 --> 30:44.480
By deterioration, or weathering as we call it, the rock becomes
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softer, some of it dissolves, it becomes a much weaker rock.
30:48.480 --> 30:52.480
Now, how deeply the weathering goes into the rock
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mass is much a function of the type of rock, but also
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very importantly, how long it's exposed to the elements.
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Now, seismic refraction enables us to map the boundary between this weak
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deteriorated rock and the underlying very hard limestone.
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What we found is that
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north of the Sphinx along the body, south of the
31:16.480 --> 31:20.480
Sphinx, and in front of the paws, the rock has weathered down from
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the surface into the subsurface. It's weathered down approximately
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two to two and a half meters, and some places a little deeper.
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We're talking in terms of six to eight feet or so weathering.
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Behind the rump of the Sphinx, however, it's only weathered about
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1.2 meters depth, maybe 1.5 meters
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in a couple spots, about four feet deep.
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What this clearly indicates to us is that the rump was carved out later.
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I think there's good reason to believe that the back was carved out
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or cut out in Kaffir's time, in Sheffron's time,
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Kaffir or Sheffron's time, about 2500 B.C.
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If the other three sides show weathering 50 to 100 percent
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deeper, I would expect that that means that the other three sides
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were exposed or carved out at least 50 to 100 percent earlier.
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Simply stated, the floor and the back was weathered only
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to a depth of four feet, while the front was weathered eight feet.
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This suggests that the front of the Sphinx is twice as old as the back.
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Assuming that Sheffron exposed the back to make his repairs
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4500 years ago, the front must have been carved out at least
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7000, perhaps more than 9000 years ago.
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How old is the Sphinx?
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Archaeologists claim that Pharaoh Sheffron carved the Sphinx
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in his own image 4500 years ago.
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All Egyptologists, and especially everyone who studied the Sphinx,
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and all the archaeological evidence that we have, dated the Sphinx
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back to 4500 years ago,
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which is the time of Kaffir, the builder of the second pyramid at Giza.
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Even Mark Leaner, who is a colleague of mine, tried to make a computer
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modeling of the Sphinx, and through a statue found
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in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, he with the computer
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found that the face of the Sphinx now exactly looked like
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Keffron.
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The National Geographic article showed the face of Sheffron imposed
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by a computer on the Sphinx. According to Dr. Mark Leaner,
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with the face of Sheffron, the Sphinx came alive.
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Alive. Maybe. But does the face of the great
33:56.480 --> 34:00.480
Sphinx even resemble the Pharaoh Sheffron? The traditional
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view says it does. But to John West, that answer was unsatisfactory.
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He decided to consult an expert, someone who works with faces every day.
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New York City detective Frank Domingo is one of America's
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leading forensic experts.
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As a 26-year police veteran, he wrote a manual in the art and technique
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of facial identification, used today by police investigators all across the nation.
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If you had those photographs,
34:32.480 --> 34:36.480
take an exam. If anyone could tell if the Sphinx was
34:36.480 --> 34:40.480
Sheffron, it was detective Frank Domingo.
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The faces that I've seen in Egypt are wonderful.
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There's a whole myriad of different racial
34:58.480 --> 35:02.480
types and different types of facial features.
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And in those features, I've seen elements that I see in the
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statues from ancient Egypt.
35:10.480 --> 35:14.480
The Cairo Museum was established in 1902.
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It contains the largest collection of Egyptian art in the world.
35:18.480 --> 35:22.480
Statues here in the Old Kingdom Room demonstrate the skill
35:22.480 --> 35:26.480
with which the ancient sculptors captured their subjects.
35:26.480 --> 35:30.480
The eyes of this magnificent wooden statue of Sheik El-Beled
35:30.480 --> 35:34.480
seem to look back at you. The Old Kingdom
35:34.480 --> 35:38.480
artists even used various crystals to simulate the
35:38.480 --> 35:42.480
refraction of the human eye.
35:42.480 --> 35:46.480
Detective Domingo and team photographer Caroline
35:46.480 --> 35:50.480
Davies went to photograph and measure the controversial
35:50.480 --> 35:54.480
statue of the pharaoh Sheffron. Using standard police
35:54.480 --> 35:58.480
procedure, Caroline photographed side and frontal views eye leveled
35:58.480 --> 36:02.480
to the statue. These mug shots would be compared to similar views
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of the Sphinx. In addition, precise measurements of facial features
36:06.480 --> 36:10.480
and angular proportions were taken. If the face
36:10.480 --> 36:14.480
of the Sphinx was meant to be the pharaoh Sheffron, then it should resemble his
36:14.480 --> 36:18.480
statue in the Cairo Museum.
36:18.480 --> 36:22.480
One of the questions we often get about Egyptian art is just how life-like
36:22.480 --> 36:26.480
is it? How accurately does it reproduce the physical features of the subjects
36:26.480 --> 36:30.480
that are represented? Well, we often hear that Egyptian art is purely
36:30.480 --> 36:34.480
symmetrical. You could draw a vertical line bisecting the nose and all
36:34.480 --> 36:38.480
on a statue and all the features on the right would be the mirror images of those on the left.
36:38.480 --> 36:42.480
But you know what? That's not true. In fact, it's absolutely wrong.
36:42.480 --> 36:46.480
If you, in fact, do find a statue that is
36:46.480 --> 36:50.480
absolutely symmetrical, where all the features on the right are different from those on the left,
36:50.480 --> 36:54.480
you know what you have? You have a forgery. Because the Egyptians were very
36:54.480 --> 36:58.480
canny observers of the human condition. They realized that
36:58.480 --> 37:02.480
one eye on a face is always a little bit lower than another eye. One nostril
37:02.480 --> 37:06.480
may be a little bit larger than another nostril. And they showed
37:06.480 --> 37:10.480
those details.
37:12.480 --> 37:16.480
Music
37:16.480 --> 37:20.480
Music
37:20.480 --> 37:24.480
Look at the prognathism on the sphinx.
37:24.480 --> 37:28.480
That's the extension of the lower portion of the face.
37:28.480 --> 37:32.480
You won't find that on the statue of Chephrin.
37:32.480 --> 37:36.480
This statue does not protrude. That's this part of the face.
37:36.480 --> 37:40.480
Frank also observed that the face of the sphinx is more square, while
37:40.480 --> 37:44.480
the face of the face is more oval.
37:44.480 --> 37:48.480
Proportionately, the mouth of the sphinx is larger, while Chephrin's mouth is a little finer.
37:48.480 --> 37:52.480
The eyes of the sphinx are quite large in comparison to
37:52.480 --> 37:56.480
those of Chephrin.
37:56.480 --> 38:00.480
After completing his initial observations in Egypt, Detective Domingo returned to New York
38:00.480 --> 38:04.480
to analyze his findings. Does the sphinx look a little worried to you?
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I wonder what the penalty is for impersonating a pharaoh.
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Music
38:12.480 --> 38:16.480
Music
38:16.480 --> 38:20.480
A procedure for measuring proportions, angles,
38:20.480 --> 38:24.480
and shapes had to be established before a comparison could be made.
38:24.480 --> 38:28.480
Music
38:28.480 --> 38:32.480
Music
38:32.480 --> 38:36.480
Comparison of the facial shapes was made
38:36.480 --> 38:40.480
more difficult due to the severe damage on the face of the sphinx.
38:40.480 --> 38:44.480
Nevertheless, Detective Domingo established enough
38:44.480 --> 38:48.480
points of reference to make a comparison with the statue of Chephrin possible.
38:48.480 --> 38:52.480
These points were the chin,
38:52.480 --> 38:56.480
the outer corner of the eye, and the brow ridge.
38:56.480 --> 39:00.480
While a study of the frontal view showed
39:00.480 --> 39:04.480
significant differences, the comparison of the lateral view was
39:04.480 --> 39:08.480
decisive. When the reference points in this
39:08.480 --> 39:12.480
lateral view were connected with vertical and horizontal lines,
39:12.480 --> 39:16.480
the difference of angles on the two works was extreme. The most conclusive
39:16.480 --> 39:20.480
finding was the angle between the outer eye and the vertical.
39:20.480 --> 39:24.480
In Chephrin, that angle measured 14 degrees.
39:24.480 --> 39:28.480
But on the sphinx, the angle was more than double,
39:28.480 --> 39:32.480
32 degrees.
39:32.480 --> 39:36.480
This explains the protrusion of the lower jaw found on the sphinx,
39:36.480 --> 39:40.480
but not on Chephrin.
39:40.480 --> 39:44.480
After reviewing all the measurements, angles, and proportions,
39:44.480 --> 39:48.480
it's my conclusion that the great sphinx of Giza is not the same individual
39:48.480 --> 39:52.480
represented in the statue of the pharaoh, Chephrin.
39:52.480 --> 39:56.480
Music
39:56.480 --> 40:00.480
If the sphinx isn't Chephrin, who is it?
40:00.480 --> 40:04.480
Some eminent visitors over the years, among them Gustave Flaubert,
40:04.480 --> 40:08.480
thought the sphinx was black African.
40:08.480 --> 40:12.480
According to Zulu history, in ancient times,
40:12.480 --> 40:16.480
their people inhabited northern Africa. When the rain stopped
40:16.480 --> 40:20.480
and the region became Sahara, the Zulu migrated south.
40:30.480 --> 40:34.480
This view now has some support.
40:34.480 --> 40:38.480
In his detailed report, Frank Domingo suggests that the face
40:38.480 --> 40:42.480
of the sphinx is consistent with typical African facial structure.
40:48.480 --> 40:52.480
After the New York Times published its op-ed piece on Domingo's work,
40:52.480 --> 40:56.480
orthodontist Sheldon Peck wrote a letter, independently arriving
40:56.480 --> 41:00.480
at the same conclusion. Orthodontists work with facial bone structure
41:00.480 --> 41:04.480
on a day-to-day basis.
41:04.480 --> 41:08.480
Wouldn't that be a twist on history, if the face of the sphinx
41:08.480 --> 41:12.480
was meant to represent a black African king or queen?
41:12.480 --> 41:16.480
It is interesting that the Zulus, in their myths and traditions,
41:16.480 --> 41:20.480
identify their beginnings with the planet Mars.
41:20.480 --> 41:24.480
There was a great war, and the most beautiful women were placed upon
41:24.480 --> 41:28.480
a planet called the Marakaiba, the spaceship that brought them from Mars to this planet.
41:28.480 --> 41:32.480
It is interesting that this word is very similar to the Hebrew word
41:32.480 --> 41:36.480
Merkava, which means the divine vehicle used by
41:36.480 --> 41:40.480
the angels or higher intelligence in visiting the human creation.
41:44.480 --> 41:48.480
All the monuments in the Giza Plateau are carved in stone.
41:48.480 --> 41:52.480
But some of the theories explaining them are not.
41:52.480 --> 41:56.480
One of the main arguments that the sphinx was carved
41:56.480 --> 42:00.480
by Chafrin is found on this granite stele.
42:00.480 --> 42:04.480
This tablet tells how the sphinx appeared to Tut Moses IV
42:04.480 --> 42:08.480
in a dream, and promised him the crown of Egypt, if he would remove
42:08.480 --> 42:12.480
the sand that covered it.
42:12.480 --> 42:16.480
The hieroglyphics read, Look at me, Tut Moses, my son.
42:16.480 --> 42:20.480
I am your father Horus in the horizon. To you I turn
42:20.480 --> 42:24.480
my face and heart for protection, since I am sick in all
42:24.480 --> 42:28.480
my limbs. The sands of the sanctuary on which I rest
42:28.480 --> 42:32.480
have covered me.
42:32.480 --> 42:36.480
Tut Moses cleared away the sand and indeed became king.
42:36.480 --> 42:40.480
But what does this stele actually
42:40.480 --> 42:44.480
say about Chafrin?
42:44.480 --> 42:48.480
On the bottom of this tablet there once existed a few of the hieroglyphs
42:48.480 --> 42:52.480
that make up Chafrin's name, and they have since flaked off.
42:52.480 --> 42:56.480
But nowhere does the stele say anything about Chafrin carving the sphinx.
42:56.480 --> 43:00.480
Egyptologists continue to use this
43:00.480 --> 43:04.480
circumstantial evidence in their argument that the sphinx was carved in his lifetime.
43:04.480 --> 43:08.480
On the other hand,
43:08.480 --> 43:12.480
here's another piece of circumstantial evidence which would have proved
43:12.480 --> 43:16.480
West's theory if scholars had chosen to accept it.
43:16.480 --> 43:20.480
Here's a tantalizing but inconclusive piece to the puzzle.
43:20.480 --> 43:24.480
This is the inventory stele. It relates how
43:24.480 --> 43:28.480
King Keops, predecessor to Chafrin, built a temple to Isis alongside
43:28.480 --> 43:32.480
the sphinx. This means that the sphinx was there before Chafrin's time.
43:32.480 --> 43:36.480
The stele however is a later version of an earlier document.
43:36.480 --> 43:40.480
Scholars argue over the authenticity of the information it contains.
43:40.480 --> 43:44.480
There is however good reason to believe that information is authentic.
43:44.480 --> 43:48.480
The inventory stele has a very unique inscription. It is a
43:48.480 --> 43:52.480
piece of fine white limestone, some 70 by 42 centimeters.
43:52.480 --> 43:56.480
In layman's language, it refers to Khufu,
43:56.480 --> 44:00.480
the father of Chafrin, is the one who creates
44:00.480 --> 44:04.480
the temple next to the cavity of the sphinx. Clearly this throws
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into question the origin of the sphinx. It points to a much earlier
44:08.480 --> 44:12.480
point of time. Scholars have rejected this because
44:12.480 --> 44:16.480
of the modern stylized Egyptian writing. But this would be like throwing out
44:16.480 --> 44:20.480
the King James Bible simply because it is in modern English, overlooking
44:20.480 --> 44:24.480
the prime revelatory source of cosmology
44:24.480 --> 44:28.480
and theology.
44:32.480 --> 44:36.480
The ancient Egyptians were masters at building with large blocks
44:36.480 --> 44:40.480
of stone. Visitors from all around the world
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are still impressed by these magnificent structures built thousands of
44:44.480 --> 44:48.480
years ago. The Great Pyramid of Giza is
44:48.480 --> 44:52.480
perhaps the most famous example. Two and a half million
44:52.480 --> 44:56.480
blocks of limestone are stacked 480 feet high.
44:56.480 --> 45:00.480
The average weight of the blocks is two and a half tons.
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The interior chambers are lined with blocks which weigh up to
45:04.480 --> 45:08.480
70 tons each.
45:08.480 --> 45:12.480
As impressive as these numbers are, there's an even greater
45:12.480 --> 45:16.480
mystery, which until now has been completely overlooked.
45:16.480 --> 45:20.480
In order to expose the body of the
45:20.480 --> 45:24.480
sphinx, enormous blocks of limestone were queried out.
45:24.480 --> 45:28.480
Block by block, the stone was removed as the lion's shape took form.
45:28.480 --> 45:32.480
I'm standing here on the walls of
45:32.480 --> 45:36.480
the sphinx enclosure. This is a massive
45:36.480 --> 45:40.480
limestone temple that was built contemporaneously with the
45:40.480 --> 45:44.480
sphinx. We know that because we can look at the rocks that this is made out of
45:44.480 --> 45:48.480
and we see that it has exactly the same layers, exactly the same
45:48.480 --> 45:52.480
lithology. In fact, we can determine that these blocks came right
45:52.480 --> 45:56.480
out of the sphinx enclosure. They actually carved out massive
45:56.480 --> 46:00.480
blocks which they moved to in front of the sphinx and reassembled
46:00.480 --> 46:04.480
as the sphinx temple. And the size of these blocks
46:04.480 --> 46:08.480
really is enormous. How were they able to move these huge
46:08.480 --> 46:12.480
blocks with quote primitive technology? How were they able to
46:12.480 --> 46:16.480
assemble them into this temple? It really awes and inspires the imagination.
46:16.480 --> 46:20.480
Some of these blocks measure 30 feet long,
46:20.480 --> 46:24.480
10 feet high, and 12 feet wide.
46:24.480 --> 46:28.480
They each weigh 200 tons.
46:28.480 --> 46:32.480
That's roughly the weight of a diesel locomotive.
46:32.480 --> 46:36.480
Nowhere else in all of Egypt are blocks this size used in the construction
46:36.480 --> 46:40.480
of temple walls. The question is,
46:40.480 --> 46:44.480
how were these giant blocks moved onto the site, then raised
46:44.480 --> 46:48.480
and precisely fitted into position 50 feet above the ground?
46:48.480 --> 46:52.480
Egyptologists maintain that it was done with
46:52.480 --> 46:56.480
ramps, levers, ropes, and a lot of manpower.
47:00.480 --> 47:04.480
To put the problem in perspective, John went to a
47:04.480 --> 47:08.480
Long Island construction site to see how today's engineers lift
47:08.480 --> 47:12.480
and maneuver heavy loads. A crew of 20 men
47:12.480 --> 47:16.480
had been working for six weeks to prepare for the lift of one object,
47:16.480 --> 47:20.480
a 200 ton boiler.
47:20.480 --> 47:24.480
This crane is one of the largest land-based cranes in existence.
47:24.480 --> 47:28.480
Its boom reaches 220 feet into the air.
47:28.480 --> 47:32.480
A concrete counterweight of 160 tons
47:32.480 --> 47:36.480
is required to keep it from tipping over.
47:36.480 --> 47:40.480
A second crane was needed to precisely fit the boiler into place.
47:40.480 --> 47:44.480
I'm looking at what you're showing me here,
47:44.480 --> 47:48.480
these pieces, and looking at the distance involved,
47:48.480 --> 47:52.480
I don't know if we would be able to pick, if any of these are 200 tons
47:52.480 --> 47:56.480
from the position that I see available to us.
47:56.480 --> 48:00.480
I've looked at these over the years because in my business, when we pick heavy loads,
48:00.480 --> 48:04.480
we look to see how heavy loads were picked by other people before us.
48:04.480 --> 48:08.480
And seeing how they moved these heavy blocks, 200 ton blocks, possibly
48:08.480 --> 48:12.480
thousands and thousands of years ago, I have no idea how they did this job.
48:12.480 --> 48:16.480
It's a mystery, it will probably always be a
48:16.480 --> 48:20.480
mystery to me, and maybe to everybody.
48:20.480 --> 48:24.480
If modern engineers have a problem maneuvering
48:24.480 --> 48:28.480
blocks of that size, how were the ancient builders able to do it?
48:28.480 --> 48:32.480
Was it possible to move 200 ton blocks into place
48:32.480 --> 48:36.480
using simple levers, as Egyptologists suggest?
48:36.480 --> 48:40.480
Or did they possess a technology that our science is only beginning to understand?
48:40.480 --> 48:44.480
A technology based on the vibrations of sound?
48:44.480 --> 48:48.480
Project Director Boris Said demonstrates that the ancient Egyptians
48:48.480 --> 48:52.480
understood acoustic principles, and they incorporated them in their architecture.
48:54.480 --> 48:58.480
This broken obelisk still resonates when it's struck,
48:58.480 --> 49:02.480
like a giant tuning fork.
49:14.480 --> 49:18.480
The Bible tells
49:18.480 --> 49:22.480
of the Battle of Jericho.
49:22.480 --> 49:26.480
And it shall come to pass that when they make a long blast
49:26.480 --> 49:30.480
with a ram's horn, and when ye hear the sound of the trumpet,
49:30.480 --> 49:34.480
all the people shall shout with a great shout, and the walls of the city
49:34.480 --> 49:38.480
shall fall upon them, and the city shall be
49:38.480 --> 49:42.480
filled with the sound of the trumpet.
49:42.480 --> 49:46.480
And the walls of the city shall fall down flat.
49:46.480 --> 49:50.480
Were the walls destroyed by sound?
49:50.480 --> 49:54.480
Some of you may remember this famous commercial.
49:54.480 --> 49:58.480
Can the amplified voice of Ella Fitzgerald
49:58.480 --> 50:02.480
shatter this glass?
50:02.480 --> 50:06.480
Believe it. Clearly, sound can affect matter,
50:06.480 --> 50:10.480
but can it levitate a heavy object?
50:10.480 --> 50:14.480
For many of us, this is levitation.
50:14.480 --> 50:18.480
But the scientists
50:18.480 --> 50:22.480
at the Space Age Research Facility
50:22.480 --> 50:26.480
outside of Chicago have a different definition of levitation.
50:26.480 --> 50:30.480
Acoustic levitation is a non-magical way
50:30.480 --> 50:34.480
of floating an object in mid-air using very loud sound.
50:34.480 --> 50:38.480
The sound of the object
50:38.480 --> 50:42.480
is a very loud sound.
50:42.480 --> 50:46.480
The levitation that we do
50:46.480 --> 50:50.480
is done by having one or two sound sources
50:50.480 --> 50:54.480
and a reflector, and the sound bounces off the reflector
50:54.480 --> 50:58.480
and on its way back down, the two sound fields pass through each other.
50:58.480 --> 51:02.480
In that region where there's the interference of those two
51:02.480 --> 51:06.480
sound fields, there are little wells that you can actually levitate
51:06.480 --> 51:10.480
small objects the size of a pea in.
51:10.480 --> 51:14.480
Music
51:14.480 --> 51:18.480
Music
51:18.480 --> 51:22.480
I'd love to go to Egypt, but
51:22.480 --> 51:26.480
lifting the block is a little beyond what we can do
51:26.480 --> 51:30.480
currently. The frequency required is much lower
51:30.480 --> 51:34.480
than we can produce at sufficient intensity, and the
51:34.480 --> 51:38.480
reflector that you'd have to have above the object would be
51:38.480 --> 51:42.480
approximately a quarter of a mile across.
51:42.480 --> 51:46.480
Today's most advanced science can levitate a small rock, but nothing
51:46.480 --> 51:50.480
that compares with the blocks in the Sphinx and Valley temples.
51:50.480 --> 51:54.480
The fact remains these 200 tonne blocks of stone were somehow
51:54.480 --> 51:58.480
raised and fitted together with great precision.
51:58.480 --> 52:02.480
No one today knows just how this was done.
52:02.480 --> 52:06.480
Music
52:06.480 --> 52:10.480
Music
52:10.480 --> 52:14.480
If you look at the Sphinx, you may notice that the head
52:14.480 --> 52:18.480
seems too small for the body. Detective Domingo reasoned
52:18.480 --> 52:22.480
that if the Sphinx was carved in the shape of a lion, it should be
52:22.480 --> 52:26.480
consistent with the proportions of a real lion. Although much of the Sphinx
52:26.480 --> 52:30.480
has eroded away, Domingo found four valid reference points for his
52:30.480 --> 52:34.480
comparison, and those points confirmed that the base was indeed
52:34.480 --> 52:38.480
in correct proportion to a lion's body. But the Sphinx
52:38.480 --> 52:42.480
has the head of a human. When Domingo compared the dimensions
52:42.480 --> 52:46.480
of the Sphinx to a typical Sphinx at the Cairo Museum, he found
52:46.480 --> 52:50.480
that their bases were also in correct proportion.
52:50.480 --> 52:54.480
Why then were the heads so different?
52:54.480 --> 52:58.480
Domingo speculated that because the original head was already
52:58.480 --> 53:02.480
so eroded by rain, it had to be recarved in order to create
53:02.480 --> 53:06.480
the face we see today. The symbol
53:06.480 --> 53:10.480
of the Sphinx uniquely brings together the Sphinx
53:10.480 --> 53:14.480
as the guardian of knowledge, the sentinel of the opening of the door
53:14.480 --> 53:18.480
to higher knowledge, the power of human nature,
53:18.480 --> 53:22.480
that is to say the face of human intelligence, connected with the body of the lion,
53:22.480 --> 53:26.480
the forces of nature that are put in balance with that of the
53:26.480 --> 53:30.480
solar system or the greater notion of life in the universe.
53:30.480 --> 53:34.480
All three themes are brought together in one. It is the perfect symbol
53:34.480 --> 53:38.480
of initiation into life eternal.
53:38.480 --> 53:42.480
And the days before cameras and video,
53:42.480 --> 53:46.480
people had to rely on the descriptive abilities of those intrepid
53:46.480 --> 53:50.480
tourists who actually got to see the great Sphinx.
53:50.480 --> 53:54.480
These descriptions were sometimes very poetic.
53:54.480 --> 53:58.480
Music
53:58.480 --> 54:02.480
Music
54:02.480 --> 54:06.480
Music
54:06.480 --> 54:10.480
For centuries, the mysteries of Egypt have drawn visitors
54:10.480 --> 54:14.480
from all over the world. Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon,
54:14.480 --> 54:18.480
Florence Nightingale. They came to enjoy
54:18.480 --> 54:22.480
the culture of ancient Egypt.
54:22.480 --> 54:26.480
Music
54:26.480 --> 54:30.480
Today, travelers find a country which is still rich in tradition.
54:30.480 --> 54:34.480
The Egyptians are warm,
54:34.480 --> 54:38.480
friendly people.
54:38.480 --> 54:42.480
Some of them masters of the fine art of bargaining.
54:42.480 --> 54:46.480
I prefer Nefertiti. She's more beautiful.
54:46.480 --> 54:50.480
But of course it's really the monuments they're coming to see.
54:50.480 --> 54:54.480
The Egyptians consider them to be the heritage of humanity.
54:54.480 --> 54:58.480
They generously share them with the entire world.
54:58.480 --> 55:02.480
Restoring and maintaining these treasures is the enormous task
55:02.480 --> 55:06.480
of the Egyptians Antiquities Organization. Dr. Saeed Haghazi
55:06.480 --> 55:10.480
voices his concern. You know...
55:10.480 --> 55:14.480
You know we can say that we live in the present, but we also live in the past.
55:14.480 --> 55:18.480
There is much that we can learn about ourselves by studying the past.
55:18.480 --> 55:22.480
These monuments are the past, and they must survive
55:22.480 --> 55:26.480
for hundreds of years so new generations can know them.
55:26.480 --> 55:30.480
These temples have been deteriorating for centuries.
55:30.480 --> 55:34.480
It's our duty to protect them against further destruction and to do our best to restore them.
55:34.480 --> 55:38.480
Music
55:38.480 --> 55:42.480
Music
55:42.480 --> 55:46.480
Music
55:46.480 --> 55:50.480
Music
55:50.480 --> 55:54.480
Music
55:54.480 --> 55:58.480
Music
55:58.480 --> 56:02.480
Music
56:02.480 --> 56:06.480
Music
56:06.480 --> 56:10.480
Music
56:10.480 --> 56:14.480
It was here in Luxor on a casual tourist visit in 1937
56:14.480 --> 56:40.440
that the ancient Egyptian
56:44.480 --> 56:48.480
Over the course of 15 years, Schwaler measured and mathematically analyzed
56:48.480 --> 56:52.480
this temple structure.
56:52.480 --> 56:56.480
He found that it was based on strict geometrical and harmonic proportions.
56:56.480 --> 57:00.480
Through his observations, Schwaler discovered that the walls, columns, and sanctuaries
57:00.480 --> 57:04.480
tell the story of the creation of man and his relationship to the universe.
57:04.480 --> 57:08.480
The very proportions of man are embodied in the floor plan of this monument,
57:08.480 --> 57:12.480
which is why Schwaler called it the Temple of Man.
57:12.480 --> 57:16.480
Could the complex knowledge expressed in this temple,
57:16.480 --> 57:20.480
which we're only beginning to grasp today, be a legacy from the builders of the Sphinx
57:20.480 --> 57:24.480
and its temple complex?
57:24.480 --> 57:28.480
For those who visit this sacred site, it evokes a strange vitality
57:28.480 --> 57:32.480
which can be unsettling, yet exhilarating.
57:32.480 --> 57:40.080
Architecture has been called frozen in the
57:40.080 --> 57:44.080
music, and Luxor, even in ruins, is a symphony in stone.
57:44.080 --> 57:48.080
Music
57:48.080 --> 57:52.080
Music
57:52.080 --> 57:56.080
Music
57:56.080 --> 58:00.080
Music
58:00.080 --> 58:04.080
Music
58:04.080 --> 58:08.080
To the thousands of tourists who visit the Sphinx every day,
58:08.080 --> 58:12.080
it appears to have been built from blocks of stone.
58:12.080 --> 58:16.080
In actuality, the blocks were used to repair the heavily eroded body of the Sphinx.
58:16.080 --> 58:20.080
For West and his team, these repair blocks contain a valuable clue
58:20.080 --> 58:24.080
which other experts have not taken into account.
58:24.080 --> 58:28.080
The deeply weathered body of the Sphinx has been repaired
58:28.080 --> 58:32.080
many times throughout the course of its long history.
58:32.080 --> 58:36.080
Each of these repair campaigns has its own individual style.
58:36.080 --> 58:40.080
Here's the tail of the Sphinx, and right above it,
58:40.080 --> 58:44.080
various repairs, right on the tail,
58:44.080 --> 58:48.080
different styles, different types of repairs.
58:48.080 --> 58:52.080
This is obviously a much older repair block, these are more recent ones,
58:52.080 --> 58:56.080
20th century repairs.
58:56.080 --> 59:00.080
Egyptologists have determined that some of these oldest repairs
59:00.080 --> 59:04.080
date back to Old Kingdom times. So this statue, this magnificent
59:04.080 --> 59:08.080
monument, has had people working on it, repairing it
59:08.080 --> 59:12.080
for the last 4,500 years.
59:12.080 --> 59:14.080
Music
59:14.080 --> 59:18.080
Here we're looking at a cross section of the repairs. In order to restore the Sphinx
59:18.080 --> 59:22.080
to its original lion's form, 2-3 feet of repair
59:22.080 --> 59:26.080
blocks were necessary.
59:26.080 --> 59:30.080
Egyptologists tell us that the earliest repairs to the Sphinx were made during the Old Kingdom.
59:30.080 --> 59:34.080
The Sphinx was found in the Sphinx's grave, and this period ended around
59:34.080 --> 59:38.080
300 years after Chephrin died. This presents a problem.
59:38.080 --> 59:42.080
If Chephrin carved the Sphinx, why would it need repairs
59:42.080 --> 59:46.080
after only 300 years?
59:46.080 --> 59:50.080
They say that the stone the Sphinx is carved from is of such poor
59:50.080 --> 59:54.080
quality that it eroded 3 feet in 300 years.
59:54.080 --> 59:58.080
That's an erosion rate of approximately 1 foot every 100 years.
59:58.080 --> 01:00:02.080
The Sphinx is 4,500 years old. That totals 45 feet of erosion.
01:00:02.080 --> 01:00:06.080
Since the Sphinx is only 40 feet wide,
01:00:06.080 --> 01:00:10.080
it would have completely disappeared 500 years ago.
01:00:10.080 --> 01:00:14.080
Music
01:00:14.080 --> 01:00:18.080
Music
01:00:18.080 --> 01:00:22.080
One explanation for the formation of the Sphinx
01:00:22.080 --> 01:00:26.080
was provided by Farouk El-Baz, a world-renowned Egyptian geologist.
01:00:26.080 --> 01:00:30.080
He noticed the very ancient
01:00:30.080 --> 01:00:34.080
water weathering patterns on the body of the Sphinx, and suggested that the Sphinx
01:00:34.080 --> 01:00:38.080
was a yardang. A yardang is a land form
01:00:38.080 --> 01:00:42.080
shaped by natural forces such as wind-driven sand.
01:00:42.080 --> 01:00:46.080
These forces, according to El-Baz, gave the
01:00:46.080 --> 01:00:50.080
land form its basic shape, which the Egyptians merely modified to create
01:00:50.080 --> 01:00:54.080
the Sphinx we see today.
01:00:54.080 --> 01:00:58.080
He chose this diagrammatically. Here's a sort of
01:00:58.080 --> 01:01:02.080
a lump of rock that was sticking out of the desert. The winds flow around
01:01:02.080 --> 01:01:06.080
and start to shape it, make it look more and more like a Sphinx.
01:01:06.080 --> 01:01:10.080
And then the Egyptians came and touched it up a little bit
01:01:10.080 --> 01:01:14.080
to make it into the Sphinx we see today.
01:01:14.080 --> 01:01:18.080
Music
01:01:18.080 --> 01:01:22.080
Relative to the yardang hypothesis suggested by Farouk El-Baz, I really
01:01:22.080 --> 01:01:26.080
don't think this holds under close scrutiny. One reason is
01:01:26.080 --> 01:01:30.080
as you look at the Sphinx enclosure, and here we see the rear of the Sphinx enclosure,
01:01:30.080 --> 01:01:34.080
the Sphinx is cut out of the bedrock, and the
01:01:34.080 --> 01:01:38.080
ditch, the enclosure surrounding it, is very tight, it's very narrow,
01:01:38.080 --> 01:01:42.080
and it has these sharp right angles in it, as you see here.
01:01:42.080 --> 01:01:46.080
It's very hard to conceive of how natural processes would
01:01:46.080 --> 01:01:50.080
cut it so tightly and cut these sharp right angles.
01:01:50.080 --> 01:01:54.080
Furthermore, the blocks, at least some of the blocks that were cut out
01:01:54.080 --> 01:01:58.080
of the Sphinx ditch were used to build temples that sit in front of the Sphinx.
01:01:58.080 --> 01:02:02.080
So it's very hard to conceive of how natural processes would have
01:02:02.080 --> 01:02:06.080
cut blocks out, removed them, and reassembled them as
01:02:06.080 --> 01:02:10.080
temples in front of the Sphinx.
01:02:10.080 --> 01:02:14.080
Music
01:02:14.080 --> 01:02:18.080
Music
01:02:18.080 --> 01:02:22.080
Also, the head of the Sphinx does sit
01:02:22.080 --> 01:02:26.080
above the general level of the Giza Plateau in this area, and
01:02:26.080 --> 01:02:30.080
the head may have in fact originated as a yardang, but I don't believe
01:02:30.080 --> 01:02:34.080
that the body as a whole was a yardang.
01:02:34.080 --> 01:02:38.080
Dr. Hawass has his own ideas about how the Sphinx was made.
01:02:38.080 --> 01:02:42.080
He describes how the sculptor may have worked in the great statue.
01:02:42.080 --> 01:02:46.080
He made the face of the Sphinx, but he found that the whole body is
01:02:46.080 --> 01:02:50.080
deteriorated. Then he cased the Sphinx with rocks,
01:02:50.080 --> 01:02:54.080
with limestone, and after that made the carving.
01:02:54.080 --> 01:02:58.080
In other words, the limestone was so deteriorated that the sculptors
01:02:58.080 --> 01:03:02.080
had to repair the body while they were carving it. Dr. Schock
01:03:02.080 --> 01:03:06.080
carefully examined the stone and came to a very different conclusion.
01:03:06.080 --> 01:03:10.080
You look at these blocks, you can see the strata,
01:03:10.080 --> 01:03:14.080
you can see the fossils, the numulites. This is exactly the same
01:03:14.080 --> 01:03:18.080
rock as the Sphinx enclosure. Really a fairly
01:03:18.080 --> 01:03:22.080
nice limestone, good, solid, certainly
01:03:22.080 --> 01:03:26.080
capable of using it to build a structure like this,
01:03:26.080 --> 01:03:30.080
certainly not the situation where it just powders and crumbles immediately
01:03:30.080 --> 01:03:34.080
upon cutting it out. If that were the case, they wouldn't be able to use it to
01:03:34.080 --> 01:03:38.080
assemble a temple like this.
01:03:38.080 --> 01:03:42.080
According to Schock and West, by the time Chephrin became pharaoh,
01:03:42.080 --> 01:03:46.080
the Sphinx was already highly eroded from thousands of years of
01:03:46.080 --> 01:03:50.080
rainfall. Chephrin didn't build the Sphinx, he repaired it.
01:03:54.080 --> 01:03:58.080
He also repaired the Sphinx and the Valley Temple, which were
01:03:58.080 --> 01:04:02.080
already highly eroded when he became pharaoh. How do we know this?
01:04:02.080 --> 01:04:06.080
This is an inscription found on the granite of the
01:04:06.080 --> 01:04:10.080
Valley Temple in style, it is typical of Old Kingdom
01:04:10.080 --> 01:04:14.080
work. Roughly translated, it says, Beloved of, living
01:04:14.080 --> 01:04:18.080
forever. What it says to us, however, is that this granite
01:04:18.080 --> 01:04:22.080
was here in Old Kingdom times. Now we've established that the
01:04:22.080 --> 01:04:26.080
limestone core blocks of the temple are much older than this granite.
01:04:26.080 --> 01:04:30.080
If this granite was here in Old Kingdom times, the temple itself
01:04:30.080 --> 01:04:34.080
must have been built considerably earlier.
01:04:34.080 --> 01:04:38.080
This is a side view of the Valley Temple, one of the sides of the Valley
01:04:38.080 --> 01:04:42.080
Temple. It was stripped of its granite ashlar some time
01:04:42.080 --> 01:04:46.080
ago and they were used to reconstruct and to build other structures
01:04:46.080 --> 01:04:50.080
in the Cairo area. And what you see under the granite
01:04:50.080 --> 01:04:54.080
ashlar is this rough, higgledy-piggledy
01:04:54.080 --> 01:04:58.080
surface. And what I interpret this as representing is that
01:04:58.080 --> 01:05:02.080
ancient Egyptians had a weathered surface on very old temple.
01:05:02.080 --> 01:05:06.080
They cut it back just a little bit to get a more compact surface before
01:05:06.080 --> 01:05:10.080
covering it with the granite ashlar. But they didn't cut it back enough
01:05:10.080 --> 01:05:14.080
to make a nice smooth surface.
01:05:14.080 --> 01:05:18.080
Now this is what I mean by the two-stage construction. You see the huge limestone core
01:05:18.080 --> 01:05:22.080
blocks that come from the ditch that was quarried out to free the Sphinx and the
01:05:22.080 --> 01:05:26.080
granite sheathing that was added later. You see exactly the same thing over here
01:05:26.080 --> 01:05:30.080
with the granite sheathing and the limestone blocks on top. And my contention
01:05:30.080 --> 01:05:34.080
is that the limestone core blocks originally had that rolling weathering that you see
01:05:34.080 --> 01:05:38.080
on the Sphinx. The weathering was cut off and the granite was then married
01:05:38.080 --> 01:05:42.080
to the limestone core. Now can you, as a geologist,
01:05:42.080 --> 01:05:46.080
tell if the limestone is actually pre-weathered? In other words,
01:05:46.080 --> 01:05:50.080
if it's old limestone when the granite is put on? Yeah, I think so. Because on the other
01:05:50.080 --> 01:05:54.080
side where the granite facing has been removed, you can see the limestone
01:05:54.080 --> 01:05:58.080
surface very clearly. And you can see that there was an old weathered feature there
01:05:58.080 --> 01:06:02.080
which was just sort of skimmed down, cut up down a little bit in order to put the new
01:06:02.080 --> 01:06:06.080
granite on it. In fact, the back of the granite was cut to fit the old weathered
01:06:06.080 --> 01:06:10.080
surface. So it's impossible to have built it all at one time and get that effect.
01:06:10.080 --> 01:06:14.080
You had to put the limestone there first, let weather for a long period of time,
01:06:14.080 --> 01:06:18.080
and then marry the granite to it. Yeah, my feeling was this was an important piece of the
01:06:18.080 --> 01:06:22.080
puzzle. I think so. Let me show you another one. Okay.
01:06:33.080 --> 01:06:38.080
This is a picture of a wall of the Valley Temple. And you can see, for instance,
01:06:38.080 --> 01:06:42.080
here how the granite seems to have been cut to meet
01:06:42.080 --> 01:06:46.080
the weathered limestone, the older limestone surface.
01:06:46.080 --> 01:06:50.080
This two-stage construction of the Sphinx Temple
01:06:50.080 --> 01:06:54.080
and also the Valley Temple is something that greatly impressed me on my
01:06:54.080 --> 01:06:58.080
first trip to Egypt and led me to believe that this project
01:06:58.080 --> 01:07:02.080
was worth pursuing further. When
01:07:02.080 --> 01:07:06.080
Chephrin's stonemasons refaced the two temples, they needed room to work.
01:07:06.080 --> 01:07:10.080
They cut back the limestone bedrock, creating the shear
01:07:10.080 --> 01:07:14.080
wall. This vertical wall is what the walls of the Sphinx
01:07:14.080 --> 01:07:18.080
enclosure would have looked like originally. Now traditional Egyptologists
01:07:18.080 --> 01:07:22.080
argue that this wall was carved out at the same time as
01:07:22.080 --> 01:07:26.080
the walls of the Sphinx enclosure and also at the same time as this
01:07:26.080 --> 01:07:30.080
wall made out of the same material. This is a wall of the Sphinx
01:07:30.080 --> 01:07:34.080
Temple. Notice how eroded it is. In fact, this is not even all
01:07:34.080 --> 01:07:38.080
of the original erosion because some of it was cut off by the ancient Egyptians,
01:07:38.080 --> 01:07:42.080
we believe, when they restored this temple. Now my
01:07:42.080 --> 01:07:46.080
contention is that clearly this wall and the nice
01:07:46.080 --> 01:07:50.080
vertical wall that we see here, plus the walls of the
01:07:50.080 --> 01:07:54.080
Sphinx enclosure, these could not have been made at the same time.
01:07:54.080 --> 01:07:58.080
Clearly the more heavily eroded walls are older than this vertical
01:07:58.080 --> 01:08:02.080
wall.
01:08:02.080 --> 01:08:06.080
Music
01:08:06.080 --> 01:08:10.080
Music
01:08:10.080 --> 01:08:14.080
Music
01:08:14.080 --> 01:08:18.080
Music
01:08:18.080 --> 01:08:22.080
Music What you've just seen is the
01:08:22.080 --> 01:08:26.080
result of 17 years of research. To visualize how
01:08:26.080 --> 01:08:30.080
this new information fits together, we've created a computer graphic
01:08:30.080 --> 01:08:34.080
sequence to illustrate the possible life history of the Sphinx.
01:08:34.080 --> 01:08:38.080
Music Long ago,
01:08:38.080 --> 01:08:42.080
before Egypt became a desert, the Giza Plateau was a
01:08:42.080 --> 01:08:46.080
fertile savanna. At the very edge of this plateau was
01:08:46.080 --> 01:08:50.080
a large outcrop of natural rock.
01:08:50.080 --> 01:08:54.080
The group of sculptors taking advantage of its prominent
01:08:54.080 --> 01:08:58.080
location carved this rock into a gigantic face.
01:08:58.080 --> 01:09:02.080
Music
01:09:02.080 --> 01:09:06.080
Music Originally
01:09:06.080 --> 01:09:10.080
it may have been the face of a lion, nor it might have been the face of a
01:09:10.080 --> 01:09:14.080
god, or the face of a queen.
01:09:14.080 --> 01:09:18.080
Music To create the lion's
01:09:18.080 --> 01:09:22.080
body, blocks of limestone were queried out, forming an enclosure
01:09:22.080 --> 01:09:26.080
around the Sphinx. Somehow these huge blocks
01:09:26.080 --> 01:09:30.080
were transported and lifted into position, creating the Sphinx
01:09:30.080 --> 01:09:34.080
and valley temples. Time passed.
01:09:34.080 --> 01:09:38.080
Shifting weather pattern, he brought torrential rains to the
01:09:38.080 --> 01:09:42.080
area, signaling the end of the Ice Age. The rains
01:09:42.080 --> 01:09:46.080
eroded the Sphinx to virtually the state it's in today.
01:09:46.080 --> 01:09:50.080
Could this have been the great flood described
01:09:50.080 --> 01:09:54.080
in the Bible?
01:09:54.080 --> 01:09:58.080
When the rains stopped, the vast, once fertile savanna
01:09:58.080 --> 01:10:02.080
became the Sahara Desert.
01:10:02.080 --> 01:10:06.080
The windblown sands filled in the heavily weathered enclosure
01:10:06.080 --> 01:10:10.080
and buried the statue up to its neck. This thick
01:10:10.080 --> 01:10:14.080
blanket of sand protected the Sphinx from further erosion for thousands of years.
01:10:14.080 --> 01:10:18.080
But what about the face?
01:10:18.080 --> 01:10:22.080
Almost certainly it's been recarved, maybe several times.
01:10:22.080 --> 01:10:26.080
Since nothing's been found to identify the Sphinx,
01:10:26.080 --> 01:10:30.080
we may never know who it was meant to represent.
01:10:30.080 --> 01:10:34.080
Under the reign of the Pharaoh, Chephrin, the Sphinx was uncovered
01:10:34.080 --> 01:10:38.080
and the first of many repairs was begun.
01:10:38.080 --> 01:10:42.080
Time passed. The desert reclaimed
01:10:42.080 --> 01:10:46.080
the Sphinx. A thousand years later, took
01:10:46.080 --> 01:10:50.080
Moses the fourth, again uncovered and repaired the great statue.
01:10:50.080 --> 01:10:54.080
This cycle was repeated several times over the next
01:10:54.080 --> 01:10:58.080
3500 years. There are many stories about how the
01:10:58.080 --> 01:11:02.080
Sphinx lost its nose. Some legends suggest it was Napoleon's
01:11:02.080 --> 01:11:06.080
army. Others say that Arab gunners were to blame.
01:11:06.080 --> 01:11:10.080
According to ancient lore, you could kill
01:11:10.080 --> 01:11:14.080
the spirit of the statue by destroying its nose.
01:11:14.080 --> 01:11:18.080
But the spirit of this great statue lives on.
01:11:20.080 --> 01:11:24.080
The computer recreation we've just seen
01:11:24.080 --> 01:11:28.080
illustrates the history of the Sphinx, according to Dr. Schock and John West.
01:11:28.080 --> 01:11:32.080
But it doesn't address the question, who built the Sphinx?
01:11:32.080 --> 01:11:36.080
I think our initial investigation around the Sphinx was very successful
01:11:36.080 --> 01:11:40.080
from a couple of different perspectives. One, we got hard defensible
01:11:40.080 --> 01:11:44.080
data on the degree and the nature of the weathering of the limestone
01:11:44.080 --> 01:11:48.080
surrounding the Sphinx, all of which supports Bob Schock's theories.
01:11:48.080 --> 01:11:52.080
But even more exciting and more interesting to me
01:11:52.080 --> 01:11:56.080
is the unexpected discovery of several large
01:11:56.080 --> 01:12:00.080
cavity features around and under the Sphinx.
01:12:00.080 --> 01:12:04.080
This is a fairly large feature. It's about 9 meters by 12 meters
01:12:04.080 --> 01:12:08.080
in dimension and buried less than 5 meters in depth.
01:12:08.080 --> 01:12:12.080
Now the regular shape of this rectangular
01:12:12.080 --> 01:12:16.080
is inconsistent with naturally occurring cavities.
01:12:16.080 --> 01:12:20.080
I think there's some suggestion this could be man-made.
01:12:20.080 --> 01:12:24.080
Man-made? It's very interesting. Keep that in mind for just a minute.
01:12:24.080 --> 01:12:28.080
There have been many predictions about the role the Sphinx would play in our future.
01:12:28.080 --> 01:12:32.080
One of the most compelling was by this man.
01:12:32.080 --> 01:12:36.080
Edgar Cayce gained popularity in the mid-40s as America's
01:12:36.080 --> 01:12:40.080
sleeping prophet. In deep trance, Cayce revealed
01:12:40.080 --> 01:12:44.080
detailed information about ancient Egypt. 50 years ago,
01:12:44.080 --> 01:12:48.080
Cayce predicted that a chamber would be found under the front paws of the Sphinx.
01:12:48.080 --> 01:12:52.080
This chamber, he said, would contain records of the civilization
01:12:52.080 --> 01:12:56.080
that inspired the entire Egyptian culture. He called that
01:12:56.080 --> 01:13:00.080
civilization Atlantis. According to Cayce, the Atlanteans
01:13:00.080 --> 01:13:04.080
were a technologically advanced society who fled to Egypt
01:13:04.080 --> 01:13:08.080
when their continent of Atlantis sank into the ocean to be lost forever.
01:13:08.080 --> 01:13:12.080
Fantasy, wild dreams,
01:13:12.080 --> 01:13:16.080
maybe. But the unexpected cavities
01:13:16.080 --> 01:13:20.080
detected by the seismograph were located precisely where Edgar Cayce
01:13:20.080 --> 01:13:24.080
said they would be, under the front paws of the great Sphinx.
01:13:24.080 --> 01:13:28.080
A seismograph does not dream.
01:13:32.080 --> 01:13:36.080
If the Greeks were inspired by the Egyptians, and the Egyptians
01:13:36.080 --> 01:13:40.080
were inspired by the mythological Atlanteans, then who inspired the Atlanteans?
01:13:40.080 --> 01:13:44.080
One of the most unusual and intriguing ideas I found
01:13:44.080 --> 01:13:48.080
in my research is the possible connection between the Sphinx
01:13:48.080 --> 01:13:52.080
and the planet Mars.
01:13:52.080 --> 01:13:56.080
In 1976, NASA sent two Viking
01:13:56.080 --> 01:14:00.080
spacecraft to Mars to photograph the planet and test for the presence of life.
01:14:00.080 --> 01:14:04.080
Two of these photographs revealed a large human face
01:14:04.080 --> 01:14:08.080
accompanied by a massive five-sided pyramid.
01:14:08.080 --> 01:14:12.080
Some call the face the Martian Sphinx.
01:14:12.080 --> 01:14:16.080
These findings were presented at the United Nations
01:14:16.080 --> 01:14:20.080
to an audience of scientists and journalists.
01:14:20.080 --> 01:14:24.080
Here's an excerpt from that presentation by Richard C. Hoagland,
01:14:24.080 --> 01:14:28.080
science writer and winner of the Angstrom Medal for Excellence in Science,
01:14:28.080 --> 01:14:32.080
for his research in the Mars investigation.
01:14:32.080 --> 01:14:36.080
And in 1976, during the unmanned mission to Mars,
01:14:36.080 --> 01:14:40.080
the Viking mission, lo and behold, on frame 35A72,
01:14:40.080 --> 01:14:44.080
taken on an afternoon on Mars of a northern Martian
01:14:44.080 --> 01:14:48.080
desert called Sedonia.
01:14:48.080 --> 01:14:52.080
We, the human race, NASA, the United States of America,
01:14:52.080 --> 01:14:56.080
the American people who paid for the mission, spotted
01:14:56.080 --> 01:15:00.080
and noted an enigmatic artifact that did not
01:15:00.080 --> 01:15:04.080
belong, the so-called face on Mars.
01:15:04.080 --> 01:15:08.080
Now many things have happened in the ensuing years, but I wanted to show
01:15:08.080 --> 01:15:12.080
you the original data to show you how far we have come, because of course the
01:15:12.080 --> 01:15:16.080
official response when this photograph was first presented to the media
01:15:16.080 --> 01:15:20.080
and to the world was that it was, in fact,
01:15:20.080 --> 01:15:24.080
a trick of light and shadow. Well,
01:15:24.080 --> 01:15:28.080
from that has come an investigation, some books,
01:15:28.080 --> 01:15:32.080
some videos, a lot of discussion, and we are here this afternoon.
01:15:32.080 --> 01:15:36.080
Now this is a computer enhanced version of exactly
01:15:36.080 --> 01:15:40.080
the same image done 15, 16 years later.
01:15:40.080 --> 01:15:44.080
Notice the remarkable level of detail, crossed lines
01:15:44.080 --> 01:15:48.080
in the forehead, scalloping on the left side here, the suggestion of
01:15:48.080 --> 01:15:52.080
teeth in the mouth, deep set eyes.
01:15:52.080 --> 01:15:56.080
But again, if we only had one picture, we would never know if
01:15:56.080 --> 01:16:00.080
as NASA has said consistently for 16 years, this
01:16:00.080 --> 01:16:04.080
was merely the most marvelous trick of erosion on the surface of any planet,
01:16:04.080 --> 01:16:08.080
or in fact was something else. For that
01:16:08.080 --> 01:16:12.080
you require another set of data, such as this.
01:16:12.080 --> 01:16:16.080
This is now a second frame taken 35 days after
01:16:16.080 --> 01:16:20.080
the first frame, and De Pietro and Molinar,
01:16:20.080 --> 01:16:24.080
two imaging engineers at the Goddard Space Flight Center who got into this very early on
01:16:24.080 --> 01:16:28.080
in 79 and 80, they were the ones, not NASA,
01:16:28.080 --> 01:16:32.080
to cull through the 60,000 Viking images in the archives
01:16:32.080 --> 01:16:36.080
and to find this picture, and when they processed it, lo and behold,
01:16:36.080 --> 01:16:40.080
this object turned out to be remarkably
01:16:40.080 --> 01:16:44.080
bilaterally symmetric. Now we mean by that, that it seems
01:16:44.080 --> 01:16:48.080
to have a left and a right half. There appear to be two eye sockets, the mouth goes
01:16:48.080 --> 01:16:52.080
through, the hairline appears to go around, there's proportion of symmetry
01:16:52.080 --> 01:16:56.080
about 95%. Now facial expressions
01:16:56.080 --> 01:17:00.080
we see in mountains or in landscapes here on Earth
01:17:00.080 --> 01:17:04.080
are inevitably perspective shots, profiles where if you move 100 meters
01:17:04.080 --> 01:17:08.080
one way or the other, they go away. What made this
01:17:08.080 --> 01:17:12.080
different was it was a frontal, full-on facial
01:17:12.080 --> 01:17:16.080
view as if you were looking at yourself in some kind of cosmic
01:17:16.080 --> 01:17:20.080
mirror, and maybe that's a telling metaphor for exactly what this
01:17:20.080 --> 01:17:24.080
was intended to be. If and when we climbed up
01:17:24.080 --> 01:17:28.080
the ladder to space flight, journeyed across space to Mars,
01:17:28.080 --> 01:17:32.080
and looked down and saw it staring back, time will tell.
01:17:32.080 --> 01:17:36.080
Music
01:17:36.080 --> 01:17:40.080
Music
01:17:40.080 --> 01:17:44.080
Music
01:17:44.080 --> 01:17:48.080
Music For the last nine
01:17:48.080 --> 01:17:52.080
years, the argument has raged regarding the reality of this object
01:17:52.080 --> 01:17:56.080
as a constructed artifact. Well our focus has now begun to shift.
01:17:56.080 --> 01:18:00.080
We're looking more at the meaning of this object, including a possible
01:18:00.080 --> 01:18:04.080
connection with the Earth. The key to our apparently successful solution
01:18:04.080 --> 01:18:08.080
to the riddle of Sedonia, which is the name of the region on Mars where Viking
01:18:08.080 --> 01:18:12.080
initially photographed the face, turned out not to be the face at all.
01:18:12.080 --> 01:18:16.080
But a two-mile long, half-mile high, five-sided pyramid located
01:18:16.080 --> 01:18:20.080
a few miles away. It was Errol Torrin, our team member on loan from
01:18:20.080 --> 01:18:24.080
the Defense Mapping Agency, who cracked the code. Because Torrin found
01:18:24.080 --> 01:18:28.080
when measuring the internal geometry of the DNM pyramid,
01:18:28.080 --> 01:18:32.080
that it contains incredible geometric structure.
01:18:32.080 --> 01:18:36.080
Fundamental mathematical constants, which in the universe are the
01:18:36.080 --> 01:18:40.080
key to signifying the presence of intelligence.
01:18:40.080 --> 01:18:44.080
This is the Sphinx. We're now looking
01:18:44.080 --> 01:18:48.080
at a structure, a magnificent monumental work of
01:18:48.080 --> 01:18:52.080
art created at a time when nobody else on planet Earth
01:18:52.080 --> 01:18:56.080
is supposedly able to do anything of that magnitude or scale.
01:18:56.080 --> 01:19:00.080
There's no other contemporary civilization to pin it on.
01:19:00.080 --> 01:19:04.080
So who did it? And before you say Martians, just sit there
01:19:04.080 --> 01:19:08.080
and listen, okay? I don't want you to leap here.
01:19:08.080 --> 01:19:12.080
Science has now opened. I mean rigorous science has opened
01:19:12.080 --> 01:19:16.080
the doorway to what, and I think it was John's parlance, the dreaded
01:19:16.080 --> 01:19:20.080
A-word, Atlantis.
01:19:20.080 --> 01:19:24.080
Is it conceivable that the mythos that came down to us through
01:19:24.080 --> 01:19:28.080
Plato, speaking of a prior high civilization,
01:19:28.080 --> 01:19:32.080
capable of things like this, is maybe
01:19:32.080 --> 01:19:36.080
not a myth. But in fact we're seeing
01:19:36.080 --> 01:19:40.080
at least one surviving, albeit very ancient,
01:19:40.080 --> 01:19:44.080
artifact that you can touch of that
01:19:44.080 --> 01:19:48.080
halcyon day when we could do things that we no longer can do.
01:19:48.080 --> 01:19:52.080
Something ineffable brushed an earlier phase of
01:19:52.080 --> 01:19:56.080
human history and left a monument that recorded in some
01:19:56.080 --> 01:20:00.080
form the echo of that signal.
01:20:00.080 --> 01:20:04.080
The basic model of the Sphinx is this lion-man
01:20:04.080 --> 01:20:08.080
interface. We began to look seriously
01:20:08.080 --> 01:20:12.080
at the possibility that there was more than a
01:20:12.080 --> 01:20:16.080
passing connection between this awesome structure
01:20:16.080 --> 01:20:20.080
and the monuments of Mars. Well take a look.
01:20:20.080 --> 01:20:24.080
As you progress through the various imaging enhancements,
01:20:24.080 --> 01:20:28.080
this is high sun now, alright, you can very definitely see that this
01:20:28.080 --> 01:20:32.080
guy has a simian, proto-human look. What you then do
01:20:32.080 --> 01:20:36.080
is you take the halves, alright, and you fold over,
01:20:36.080 --> 01:20:40.080
alright, let me go back one, you fold over this half, alright,
01:20:40.080 --> 01:20:44.080
and you fold onto that half so that you can actually get a mirror image, and it's very
01:20:44.080 --> 01:20:48.080
definitely primitive hominid, it's not Marilyn Monroe or Paul Newman.
01:20:48.080 --> 01:20:52.080
Why is it primitive hominid? Might it have something
01:20:52.080 --> 01:20:56.080
to do with how old we think this thing might be, circa half
01:20:56.080 --> 01:21:00.080
a million years? Hold that thought. Then what
01:21:00.080 --> 01:21:04.080
we do is we go back to the original, alright,
01:21:04.080 --> 01:21:08.080
and we then take the right half and we do the same thing, we fold
01:21:08.080 --> 01:21:12.080
that over, and we get this.
01:21:16.080 --> 01:21:20.080
And I'm really gratified by your response, guys, because
01:21:20.080 --> 01:21:24.080
that's exactly my feeling. The hair on the back of my neck,
01:21:24.080 --> 01:21:28.080
when I realized that what we were looking at in the monument of Mars,
01:21:28.080 --> 01:21:32.080
the face on Mars, was the fusion of the hominid
01:21:32.080 --> 01:21:36.080
and the feline, the fusion of
01:21:36.080 --> 01:21:40.080
this persona,
01:21:40.080 --> 01:21:44.080
from this, I realized that what
01:21:44.080 --> 01:21:48.080
we were seeing was, of course, Sphinx's
01:21:48.080 --> 01:21:52.080
literal embodiments of Sphinx's on
01:21:52.080 --> 01:21:56.080
two worlds linked by the fundamental constants
01:21:56.080 --> 01:22:00.080
of Sedonia over and over and over again.
01:22:06.080 --> 01:22:10.080
The most accepted
01:22:10.080 --> 01:22:14.080
ideas are sometimes the hardest to overturn.
01:22:14.080 --> 01:22:18.080
They seem so obvious. The Earth is flat.
01:22:18.080 --> 01:22:22.080
Man cannot fly. Man will never
01:22:22.080 --> 01:22:26.080
walk in the Moon.
01:22:26.080 --> 01:22:30.080
For me, though, the idea of
01:22:30.080 --> 01:22:34.080
looking back at Earth from deep space,
01:22:34.080 --> 01:22:38.080
and seeing it in a new perspective,
01:22:38.080 --> 01:22:42.080
that's the most profound experience of the entire
01:22:42.080 --> 01:22:46.080
space program. Dr. Edgar Mitchell, ex-Navy astronaut,
01:22:46.080 --> 01:22:50.080
was one of the few men to walk in the Moon.
01:22:50.080 --> 01:22:54.080
An example of changing thought
01:22:54.080 --> 01:22:58.080
structure is the classic one that begins with Copernicus,
01:22:58.080 --> 01:23:02.080
when Copernicus challenged the existing notions that all the heavens
01:23:02.080 --> 01:23:06.080
moved around the Earth, that the Earth was the center of creation,
01:23:06.080 --> 01:23:10.080
and it didn't appear from his observations that was true.
01:23:10.080 --> 01:23:14.080
And so he invented or created the heliocentric
01:23:14.080 --> 01:23:18.080
theory that said all the planets move around the Sun.
01:23:18.080 --> 01:23:22.080
And that was certainly resisted at the time. Fortunately, Copernicus
01:23:22.080 --> 01:23:26.080
was a rather wise man. He didn't challenge the existing system until
01:23:26.080 --> 01:23:30.080
he was near death, and it was published after his death, as a matter of fact.
01:23:30.080 --> 01:23:34.080
It was Galileo that came along with his telescope
01:23:34.080 --> 01:23:38.080
and saw planets moving around, like moons,
01:23:38.080 --> 01:23:42.080
moving around the planet, and suggested that maybe Copernicus
01:23:42.080 --> 01:23:46.080
was right, that Earth was moving around the Sun. Unfortunately, the
01:23:46.080 --> 01:23:50.080
authorities of the day didn't want to even look through Galileo's telescope.
01:23:50.080 --> 01:23:54.080
They were quite confident they knew the answer without looking at new evidence.
01:23:54.080 --> 01:23:58.080
If geological evidence
01:23:58.080 --> 01:24:02.080
and dating evidence suggest that the Sphinx is much older
01:24:02.080 --> 01:24:06.080
than we previously believed, it raises great
01:24:06.080 --> 01:24:10.080
questions for our
01:24:10.080 --> 01:24:14.080
concepts of how humanity evolved over the
01:24:14.080 --> 01:24:18.080
last 100,000 years. If geological evidence
01:24:18.080 --> 01:24:22.080
and dating evidence suggest that the Sphinx is much older than we previously
01:24:22.080 --> 01:24:26.080
believed, it raises great questions
01:24:26.080 --> 01:24:30.080
for our concepts
01:24:30.080 --> 01:24:34.080
of how humanity evolved over the last 100,000
01:24:34.080 --> 01:24:38.080
years. And those are pretty well established notions as well.
01:24:38.080 --> 01:24:42.080
So, if the Sphinx is proven to be much older,
01:24:42.080 --> 01:24:46.080
it raises a huge question mark as to what sort of sophisticated
01:24:46.080 --> 01:24:50.080
civilization could possibly have existed to
01:24:50.080 --> 01:24:54.080
create this monument. There is simply not a single shred
01:24:54.080 --> 01:24:58.080
of evidence that has been presented by any competent
01:24:58.080 --> 01:25:02.080
Egyptologist that suggests that there was any high
01:25:02.080 --> 01:25:06.080
culture before the pre-dynastic period.
01:25:06.080 --> 01:25:10.080
Can we have missed it? Sure we can have missed it. I could also grow
01:25:10.080 --> 01:25:14.080
wings and fly back home tonight, but I think the probability of that happening is
01:25:14.080 --> 01:25:18.080
just about as good as the probability of us having missed the evidence
01:25:18.080 --> 01:25:22.080
of such a high culture. Archaeologists, you have to remember, are not
01:25:22.080 --> 01:25:26.080
the sort of Indiana Jones with the bullwhip and set the dynamite charge
01:25:26.080 --> 01:25:30.080
kind of people that the films portray us to be.
01:25:30.080 --> 01:25:34.080
They're very meticulous workers who
01:25:34.080 --> 01:25:38.080
pour over every scrap of material
01:25:38.080 --> 01:25:42.080
that comes out of the ground. They don't use picks and shovels.
01:25:42.080 --> 01:25:46.080
They use brushes and scalpels to scrape away
01:25:46.080 --> 01:25:50.080
the dirt and to examine what's there. You're talking about an enormous
01:25:50.080 --> 01:25:54.080
amount of care that is put into the work that archaeologists do and I doubt
01:25:54.080 --> 01:25:58.080
very much that the hundreds,
01:25:58.080 --> 01:26:02.080
the thousands of Egyptologists who have worked in the Nile Valley since let's say
01:26:02.080 --> 01:26:06.080
the 1880s would have missed even one
01:26:06.080 --> 01:26:10.080
little bit of evidence for such a purported earlier
01:26:10.080 --> 01:26:14.080
civilization. Many archaeologists and Egyptologists
01:26:14.080 --> 01:26:18.080
have been highly resistant to my ideas. If my
01:26:18.080 --> 01:26:22.080
findings are in conflict with their theories, maybe it's time for
01:26:22.080 --> 01:26:26.080
them to re-evaluate their theories about the rise of civilization.
01:26:26.080 --> 01:26:30.080
I'm not saying that the Sphinx was built by Atlanteans
01:26:30.080 --> 01:26:34.080
or people from Mars or extraterrestrials. I'm just
01:26:34.080 --> 01:26:38.080
following the science where it leads me and that leads me to conclude
01:26:38.080 --> 01:26:42.080
that the Sphinx was built much earlier than previously thought.
01:26:44.080 --> 01:26:48.080
Shock and I have a friendly debate going about the
01:26:48.080 --> 01:26:52.080
age of the Sphinx. Shock holds to his 5000 to 7000 BC
01:26:52.080 --> 01:26:56.080
date mainly by taking the most conservative
01:26:56.080 --> 01:27:00.080
view allowed by the data to hand. I think for a
01:27:00.080 --> 01:27:04.080
variety of both intuitive and scholarly reasons that the date is
01:27:04.080 --> 01:27:08.080
much, much older. Shock isn't even in disagreement about this, but
01:27:08.080 --> 01:27:12.080
he prefers to take the most conservative view. I think that
01:27:12.080 --> 01:27:16.080
when and if our isotopic analysis and other areas
01:27:16.080 --> 01:27:20.080
that we're working in provide a date that, or
01:27:20.080 --> 01:27:24.080
provide data that we think is trustworthy, that date is going to be
01:27:24.080 --> 01:27:28.080
very, very old indeed. I think older than 10,000 BC,
01:27:28.080 --> 01:27:32.080
really older than 15,000 BC, and it wouldn't even surprise me if
01:27:32.080 --> 01:27:36.080
the date was a lot older than that. I really do believe that when we get a date
01:27:36.080 --> 01:27:40.080
it's going to be something so staggering that nobody's going to believe the data.
01:27:42.080 --> 01:27:46.080
West and his team have presented compelling new evidence that the
01:27:46.080 --> 01:27:50.080
Sphinx was eroded by rain. Now does this prove that the Sphinx and
01:27:50.080 --> 01:27:54.080
its temple complex are thousands of years older than history tells us?
01:27:54.080 --> 01:27:58.080
The geology says yes, but we need more evidence.
01:27:58.080 --> 01:28:02.080
Recently scientific techniques have been developed which could
01:28:02.080 --> 01:28:06.080
shed new light in the mysterious cavities under the Sphinx. West and
01:28:06.080 --> 01:28:10.080
his team are presently awaiting the invitation of the Egyptian government to
01:28:10.080 --> 01:28:14.080
continue their investigation.
01:28:14.080 --> 01:28:18.080
What is it about this legendary guardian of sanctuaries that continues
01:28:18.080 --> 01:28:22.080
to fascinate mankind?
01:28:22.080 --> 01:28:26.080
Well, the Sphinx is one of the best known images in the universe.
01:28:26.080 --> 01:28:30.080
I mean, everybody knows about the Sphinx. It's certainly the symbol of Egypt.
01:28:30.080 --> 01:28:34.080
And I think it's a symbol of mystery and
01:28:34.080 --> 01:28:38.080
intrigue, and there's something very magical about the Sphinx.
01:28:38.080 --> 01:28:42.080
I think everybody that looks at its image feels that mystery and
01:28:42.080 --> 01:28:44.080
that magic.
01:28:44.080 --> 01:28:48.080
I'm a typical scientist slash engineer that I love my
01:28:48.080 --> 01:28:52.080
data, I love to play with my data, and I love to see what it's telling me.
01:28:52.080 --> 01:28:56.080
And ensuring that what I'm producing is the best possible product.
01:28:56.080 --> 01:29:00.080
But now you take that to saying that
01:29:00.080 --> 01:29:04.080
something that I did with a sledgehammer and trying to avoid camels
01:29:04.080 --> 01:29:08.080
and horses may have some impact on how the world looks at its own
01:29:08.080 --> 01:29:12.080
past history. It's kind of mind boggling. And like I said, I really haven't, that hasn't
01:29:12.080 --> 01:29:14.080
settled with me that much yet.
01:29:14.080 --> 01:29:18.080
Each branch of science operates within its own individual paradigm.
01:29:18.080 --> 01:29:22.080
We're rocking the boat. We're looking at this problem from a new perspective,
01:29:22.080 --> 01:29:26.080
and we're providing some new and different answers. Answers that perhaps
01:29:26.080 --> 01:29:30.080
the establishment is not comfortable with. We're setting out
01:29:30.080 --> 01:29:34.080
to re-date history, and the evidence certainly points to the fact that
01:29:34.080 --> 01:29:36.080
John West's theory is correct.
01:29:36.080 --> 01:29:40.080
An older Sphinx would drastically revise
01:29:40.080 --> 01:29:44.080
our current view of man's early history. Are we heirs to a
01:29:44.080 --> 01:29:48.080
richer legacy than we ever dreamed of? From a civilization not of hunter-gatherers,
01:29:48.080 --> 01:29:52.080
but of great artists, architects, and scientists?
01:29:52.080 --> 01:29:56.080
A civilization in command of technologies we do not
01:29:56.080 --> 01:30:00.080
yet understand and cannot reproduce. Perhaps there were
01:30:00.080 --> 01:30:04.080
Egyptians before the flood. Some think they were Atlanteans.
01:30:04.080 --> 01:30:08.080
But whoever they were, the Sphinx
01:30:08.080 --> 01:30:12.080
stands in mute testimony to their existence.
01:30:26.080 --> 01:30:30.080
Music
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