TITLE:
Mehit’s Stump: Unmasking the Great Sphinx of Giza
AUTHORS:
Robert S. Neyland
KEYWORDS:
Great Sphinx, Giza, Lioness, Mehit, 4th Dynasty, Khafre
JOURNAL NAME:
Archaeological Discovery,
Vol.8 No.1,
November
7,
2019
ABSTRACT: The current mainstream model of history proposes that 4th Dynasty King Khafre had the Great Sphinx carved from the bedrock of the Giza Plateau in approximately 2500 B.C.E., and that the entire statue including its head, neck, and body was sculpted from the three raw substrate limestone layers of the Mokattam Formation de novo at the same time. However, a growing body of evidence suggests that the Great Sphinx is older than the date commonly ascribed to its construction, and that the head and neck were merely remodeled from a prior sculpture to create the face of the Great Sphinx sometime during the Old Kingdom. The following archaeo-sculptural analysis of the Great Sphinx subjects the monument to a detailed reconstructive examination to demonstrate the existence of a previously unreported contour signature, which suggests a modification to a prior sculpted structure that was partly removed and/or altered. This discovery provides a basis for an empirical method, which may aid in the relative dating of the stone layers belonging to the neck and body of the Great Sphinx to determine if they were indeed created at the same time or in different eras.