<HTML>Kat
Thanks for that - I found something similar earlier, but I'm not at all clear on this point - can you point me to further info? Where on Hawass's site do you find this for example?
Meanwhile;
<a href="[
members.aol.com] URL thing</a>
<i>But Hawass and Lehner are less clear about when the earliest stone facing blocks were applied. On one page (p. 37), they imply that the original body was finished with casing stone: "The bedrock surface is rough and uneven but against its surface there is an inner casing of large blocks of fine quality limestone, quarried from places like Turah, across the Nile Valley, which was used for finishes of stone buildings." But on the next page (p. 38), they observe: "Unless we get better exposures of the lower part of the core body, there is just not enough evidence to determine whether the 4th Dynasty builders began, or how far along they had progressed, filling in and building up with masonry the weak spots in the Sphinx."
The authors prefer to date the oldest limestone facing blocks, which they consider the first repair campaign, to the New Kingdom. "Phase I filled in the body after the surface formed from Member II bedrock had eroded drastically into a profile of deep recesses and rounded protrusions." The Old Kingdom appearance of these earliest facing stones, which resemble the blocks lining the Khafra causeway, suggests to Lehner that the New Kingdom restorers used causeway blocks for the restoration (p. 41). </i>
<a href="[
www.users.directonline.net] from Mikey's site</a>
<i>Ancient Repair Campaigns to the Body of the Great Sphinx
The body of the Sphinx has been subjected to various repair campaigns, beginning with the ancient Egyptians themselves and continuing up to the present day. The earliest of these repairs to sculpted surfaces of the monument were carried out using what appear to be Old Kingdom-style masonry techniques.[14] If the oldest repairs to the eroded body of the sculpture do date to Old Kingdom times, this is another strong argument in favor of a much earlier date for its carving.
American Egyptologist Mark Lehner has analyzed the repairs to the Sphinx [15] and concluded that, despite his own evidence to the contrary, "To seek agreement with known historical facts [e.g., his contention, among other things, that the Sphinx was carved in ca. 2500 B.C. by order of Khaf re], we should probably expect the earliest restoration to have been done in the New Kingdom [ca. 1500-1000 B.C.].[16]
In summary, in order to save the attribution of the Sphinx to King Khafre and ca. 2500 B.C., Lehner suggests that the earliest level of "large-block" (Old Kingdom-style?) masonry was added to the monument during the New Kingdom, over 1,000 years later. Furthermore, he points out that this still leaves only on the order of 500 years for the majority of the weathering and erosion experienced by the Sphinx to have occurred. Taking not only Lehner's work into account, but also the evidence for a two-stage construction of the Sphinx-associated temples (discussed above), the research that has been carried out concerning different modes of weathering on the Giza Plateau (discussed above), and the seismic surveys in the area of the Sphinx complex which give data on the subsurface depth and distribution of weathering around the monument (discussed below), and considering the fact that attribution of the carving of the Sphinx to Khatre is based on circumstantial evidence to begin with, I find one conclusion is inescapable: The initial carving of the core body of the colossal sculpture predated the time of Khafre. Lehner's own work is more easily reconciled with the hypothesis that the Fourth Dynasty Egyptians merely restored, refurbished and added on to the Sphinx and its neighboring structures, rather than being the original creators of this Giza Plateau complex.</i>
Claire</HTML>
