<HTML>Katherine Writes:
Did you read Colin Reader's paper - Khufu Knew The Sphinx btw? He suggests that Khafre's Proto-mortuary temple (and the causeway) may pre-date the pyramids....
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Yes. I did read it.
I don't mean to be controversial here but the greater acceptance shown to Reader's position - as opposed to that of Schoch - shows just how little the Sphinx debate has relied upon the evidence of Geology and just how disingenuous has been much of the attempt to blast Schoch's methodology. Reader's arguments are virtually indistinguishable from Schoch's. Only their dates set them apart
Yet Reader arrives at his final date not from the evidence of Geology, but from the evidence of Archeology (or lack thereof I should say). This is fine - but those who accept Reader's Geological arguments may not criticize Schoch's methodology - for they are the same.
This <i>does not</i> mean Schoch's date must also be accepted!
Reader is a case in point where it is possible to concur with Schoch's process and yet reject Schoch's date -- on the basis of secondary evidence. I personally do not agree that Reader's grounds for dismissing Schoch's date (Archeological, rather than Geological) are valid - but I accept that this is not an irrational position on the subject.
What I do reject are attempts to tout Reader's arguments as being "pursuasive" while criticizing Schoch's method as junk science (as the authors of a certain well known book about Giza have attempted), for the two Geologists rely upon almost exactly the same means and data to reach a common conclusion: the Sphinx must be older than currently believed.
The only real difference between them is that Reader - not on Geological grounds but on the basis of Archeological evidence - keeps his date <i>very</i> concervative. Schoch reaches his conclusions solely on the basis of Geology (and keeps his date <i>moderately</i> concervative). ;-)
Both positions are rational. Neither is "pseudo-science."
Now....I find their idea facinating and potentially meaningful to the very debate in which we are engaged (regarding the mt-OCT)
<i>If</i> the Mortuary Temples are older than the pyramids, we may not need concern ourselves so much with the solar simbolism implied by an eastern orientation. If the pyramids did not exist at the time in which the mortuary temples were constructed, obviosuly, the temples did not lie on the eastern side of anything.
We still have the problem of the east-west alignment of the causeways and the entrances to the Mortuary Temples of course, so all the "solar symbolism" objections are not answered even if we pluck the pyramids off the plataue.
But perhaps it gets us a little closer to resolving the issue.
ISHMAEL</HTML>
