<HTML>Mikey, thanks for the link.
Looks like it's time to dust off the old arguments agian! But there are a couple of new points too. Peter, I'd be glad to know more about your friend's observations during rain at Giza and it's run off into the enclosure - at what point did the runoff discharge into the enclosure - south wall, west wall, south west corner....please elaborate?
Yes it has rained at Giza and during storms (such as the biggey in November 1994) there will be alot of run-off. There are a number of issues, which have only recently crystalised in my mind, that reinforce the idea that I had reached earlier about the quarries protecting the Sphinx from the effects of such run-off.
1. In the XVIII Dyn Thutmose IV erected a mudbrick wall around the Sphinx enclosure. We know from Reisner's work on Menkaure's Valley temple that mud brick walls do not survive the onslaught of run-off - they get washed away. The Thutmose IV wall was, however, still present to an as yet undetermined height when the Sphinx was cleared in the 1920s and 30s. So much so that Selim Hassan was able to reconstruct it (on paper at least) - where there were missing sections Hassan showed dashed lines for the wall - there were no dashed lines along the section at the top of the west wall of the Sphinx enclosure. So the wall had survived despite the rain.
Although largely now gone - there is a surviving section of this wall in the invert of the ditch that enters the sw corner of the Sphinx enclosure. Some have argued that this ditch is a drainage feature - something I have always contested - even more so now. If it was a drainage feature - how come the mudbrick has survived?
2. On the AMUN discussion site a few weeks ago a 1920/30 aerial photo was posted - this was very revealling (Mikey may be able to provide a link???). It showed the Great Pyramid and the area to the south (between the GP and Khafre's Causeway- which was out of shot). The photo showed a number of quite well incised drainage channels - I wondered about these channels for a while and then realised what was probably going on (it's an oblique aerial photo so at times it's hard to correlate the features with a plan but I think I've about got it sussed).
The channels rise in the unquarried areas of the plateau - the area around the GP itself (probably including water shed off the pyramid) and off the unworked areas between the pyramids of Khufu and Khafre.
When they encounter the backfilled quarries they begin to cut down into the loose backfill as would any river or water course moving from hard to soft materials. By the time the channels have developed in the east (ie 'behind' the Sphinx) they have cut a good way down into the backfill - probably limited by the limestone at the base of the quarry.
The significance of this is that:
1 - it's evidence for run-off
2 - on unquarried areas the run off naturally drains to the east, towards the Sphinx
3 - at the eastern edge of the photo, the water has cut down to the base of the quarry - BELOW the level of the top of the western Sphinx enclosure wall. Therefore, to have eroded the Sphinx after Khufu's quarrying this water would have had to 'climb' out of the quarry and over the western wall -we all know water does n't flow uphill!
The fate of the water? Well it probably infiltrated the limestones along natural joints and fissures exposed in the base of the quarry.
So I am increasingly of the view that the Khufu quarries limited, if not prevented, run-off reaching the Sphinx. I'll come back to this shortly.
Alex and I have been down this road before ad nauseum (I was going to say that I'm sure Alex won't disagree with that - but he appears to have selective recollection of the debate we've engaged in!). For those of you who have n't had the pleasure, I'll address the points Alex has listed to indicate that there was no development at Giza before the IV dynasty.
There is no doubt that the site was a major IVth Dyn necropolis - the numbers of IV Dyn pottery sherds is, therefore, unsurprising. Also, see below - the discussion on Kromer's work.
The lack of pre-IV dyn pottery sherds in the enclosure - accepted - but how many times was the enclousure cleared? Thutmose IV probably cleared it, the 26th Dynasty Pharaohs cleared it - who else?
The IV dyn sherds found under the Sphinx temple masonry - masonry which both Ricke and Lehner accept as part of a second phase of Sphinx temple construction - when was the first phase of construction? See Lehner - "A Contextual Approach to the Giza Pyramids" Archiv for Orienforschung 32(1985) and see below on the degradation of the northern Sphinx encl wall.
Khafre's causeway survived quarrying to both the north and south by Khufu, when the limestone of the causeway could have simply been quarried away. Why - unless the causeway was already there and was to be preserved?
What other IV dyn objects - a poorly provenanced Sphinx from Abu Rawash? What else ???
As for the points you've missed Alex, well there are those that support pre-fourth dyn development at Giza, including:
The mid1970s excavations by Karl Kromer which encountered material generally accepted as having been removed from the sites of the pyramids during site clearance for their construction. This material included late predynastic, first and second dynasty artefacts - these findings and their interpretation have not been overturned and remain valid.
The weathered remains of niched or palace facade (Early Dynastic architecture) on a number of tombs in the south of Giza. Like Kromer's work, these features are rarely mentioned in the mainstream texts - the tombs are generally thought to be IV dyn. The architecture suggests they're earlier (and perhaps usurped) - in each case, the weathered niched facade features have been obscured by Old Kingdom development.
The late predynastic pots (Maadi) found at the foot of the Great Pyramid
As for my interpretation and the idea that it 'simply looks like the effects of run-off' to me. On a sloping limestone plateau, which received rainfall, isn't run-off to be expected? - it would be more surprising if it had n't occurred (see above on 1920/30 aerial photo). Lehner's even identified a drainage channel cutting across the floor of the Sphinx enclosure (see P 98 of Shaw The Oxford Histroy of Ancient Egypt - to the left of the Sphinx's forepaw) - how does ScrySIE explain that?
The problem for the conventional date is how do you explain the evidence for run-off in the light of what I've said above about the survival of mudbrick walls and the incised channels in the quarry backfill?
I have never though, as Alex suggests, argued that run-off operated in isolation (you accuse me of being over simplistic - natural processes NEVER operate in isolation!). The processes of run-off (what the detail of these processes may have been we're unlikely to ever know) operated together with chemical weathering and exfoliation - indeed the latter has been the dominant process since the quarrying undertaken by Khufu - hence the degree of weathering on the body of the Sphinx to which Alex refers (and elsewhere across the plateau to which he doesn't refer).
No one except myself has tried to present any reasoned interpretation that extends across the entire plateau - few have looked beyond the Sphinx. Why is it only at the Sphinx and on tombs to the south of the Sphinx (which also in the majority of cases have the niched facade) that this anomalous weathering occurs? Why not across the entire plateau - as would be expected from chem weathering (or ScrySIE or whatever???) ?
The north wall of the enclosure is not to be grouped carelessly with the degradation of the west and south (part) walls - not only is the limestone of a different member, the features here are quite different. At a point by the Amenhotep II temple, an unweathered section of limestone - cut in the IV Dyn (dated by Lehner and Hawass) ends abrubtly. Beyond this point the same limestone beds are heavily degraded. How can an unweathered IV dyn cutting be the same age as the badly weathered adjacent cut face? Quite simply it can't.
Not only did Giza receive more rainfall during the 'mid-Holocene' the climate of Egypt was wetter up to the end of the Old Kingdom than it has been since - see Butzer "Environment and Archaeology:an ecological approach to Prehistory" - 1971
And for the last time - I HAVE NEVER ADVOCATED A UNIVERSAL RATE OF WETHERING OR WEATHERING CLOCK!
Alex, when we first engaged in this matter, you knew little about Giza or the detailed issues, but you still 'knew enough' to be adamant that the Sphinx belonged to the Fourth Dynasty - I am resigned to never convincing you otherwise, but it has to be said that you'd reached a conclusion from the outset, from a position of relative ignorance about the site - where's the science in that?
I once read a very apt definition of an expert - " Someone who spends all his life studying something that, to begin with, he knew everything about!"
As for my ideas being taken seriously by Egyptology - your inference is that they have n't. I try not to name drop, but for the record, Dr Aidan Dodson (amongst others) has asked my to present my ideas on a number of occassions and has suggested a few lucrative lines of enquiry. I'm also joining the National Museums of Scotland, Saqqara Survey Project this autumn as the team geologist. So don't feel you have to defend Egyptologists on their behalf - I know many and they are familiar with my ideas - they are more than capable of defending themselves if they feel they need to - in relation to an Early Dynastic Sphinx, maybe, just maybe some Egyptologists don't see anything to defend......
Good night,
Colin</HTML>
