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Responses to Your Questions
(posted February 10, 1997)
Question:
What about the chamber in the front [of the Sphinx] between the paws? It has been verified
by sonar and because the Egyptian government would not allow it to be
investigated (dug) we thought a little earthquake to open a door may help.
It is one of the greatest finds the simple human people will ever discover.
Anonymous
Question:
Can you tell me more about the working progress near the Sphinx? I've wrote
[read?] an article that they found a chamber beneath it and that there were
intentions for closer search.
Tom Smid, Vlaardingen - Netherlands
Question:
Could the Sphinx have chambers inside it? How do you know that it doesn't
have chambers? Have you tried x-raying it? And finally, does it have chambers
underground? I hope you will be able to answer my questions.
Guy Stokes,
Fruitvale, B.C.
Response:
Zahi Hawass: The work-in-progress at the Sphinx is concerned with the conservation and
restoration of the Sphinx. At present, we are working on the north side. We
have not found any chambers inside or outside the Sphinx, except for a
passage in the northwest corner of the rump.
In 1980 I opened, in collaboration with Mark Lehner, a passage that opens at
floor level on the northwest hind part of the Sphinx. This was reported to us
by Mohammed Abd al-Mawgud Fayed, who had worked as a boy with the 1926
clearing of the Sphinx by Emile Baraize, engineer for the Antiquities
Service. Mohammed went on to work for 40 years as an Overseer of workmen and
guards for the Antiquities Service. Baraize found patches here and there
where the ancient layers of repair masonry had fallen away from the lower
part of the body, exposing the natural rock from which the statue was carved.
One such patch was at the northwest corner, along the great curve of the
base of the Sphinx rump. He remembered that the passage descended to the
water table.
I had one brick-sized stone removed in order to check the story. Nearly half
a century after he saw it, Mohammed picked just the right stone, for there
was the passage. We documented it in maps, architectural profiles, and
elevations, and these records have been published. One part of the passage
winds down under the Sphinx before it comes to a dead end about 4.5 meters
below floor level. The other part would be a open trench in the upward curve
of the rump except that it is covered by the layers of ancient restoration
stones. In 1980-81, we found that the lower part did indeed come to the water
table, and just above this point the debris contained modern items - glass,
cement, tin foil - evidence that Baraize had cleared and refilled the bottom
of the passage before he sealed the opening by his restoration of the outer
layer of masonry "skin". The passage is crudely cut, its sides are not
straight, but there are cup-shaped foot-holds along the sides. It looks like
an exploratory shaft.
For our Sphinx studies, the Centre Wladimir Golenischeff in Paris kindly
lent us a series of some 226 photographs that were taken of Baraize's Sphinx
excavation which went largely unpublished. A series of three photographs on
the Sphinx's middle north flank show what could be a recess or grotto inside
another place where Baraize found the overlying masonry fallen away. In these
photographs, a workman seems to stand inside this recess - or overhang to the
bedrock - just inside the masonry gap, with the floor level of the Sphinx
coming about to his waist. Another workman stands outside on what appears to
be floor level. Here, again, Baraize replaced the fallen limestone covering
slabs using his tell-tale gray cement. This recess may be nothing more than
the over-hanging natural rock which erodes into great recesses and projecting
layers. Mohammed Abd al-Mawgud does not remember seeing another passage here.
If we reopen the overlying masonry layers of this area, it will be in the
course of the on-going restoration work and not to look for secret tunnels.
Florida State University, on behalf of the Schor Expedition, carried out a
remote sensing survey around the Sphinx and elsewhere on the plateau for
three weeks in April 1996. They claimed to have found "rooms and tunnels" in
front of the Sphinx and running from the rear of the Sphinx. Several other
projects have made similar claims:
SRI International did an electrical resistivity and acoustical survey in
1977-78. In 1987 a Japanese team from Waseda University (Tokyo), under the
direction of Sakuji Yoshimura carried out an electromagnetic sounding survey
of the Khufu Pyramid and Sphinx. They reported evidence of a tunnel oriented
north-south under the Sphinx, a water pocket 2.5 to 3 m below surface near
the south hind paw, and another cavity near the north hind paw. In 1991 a team consisting of geologist Robert Schoch (Boston University),
Thomas Dobecki, and John Anthony West carried out a survey of the Sphinx
using seismic refraction, refraction tomography, and seismic reflection. The
investigators interpreted their data to indicate shallower subsurface
weathering patterns toward the back and deeper weathering toward the front,
which they take to indicate that the back of the Sphinx and its ditch were
carved by Khafre later than the front. They interpret their data to likewise
indicate subsurface cavities in front of the front left paw, and from the
left paw back along the south flank. In 1992 Imam Marzouk and Ali Gharib from the Egyptian National Research
Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics carried out a study of the ground below
the Sphinx using shallow seismic refraction. Their evidence indicated the
subsurface rock is composed of four layers and no faulting. They report no
evidence of cavities.
The techniques such projects use do not directly reveal chambers and
passages. They only show "anomalies," that must be interpreted as chambers
and passages. Faults and other natural features can also produce anomalies.
We cannot give permission to dig into the natural rock of the Sphinx, or to
drill into the Sphinx on the basis of anomalies, especially now that our
highest priority is to conserve the Sphinx. Remote sensing programs should
anyway be carried out elsewhere to test the techniques, and to demonstrate
that it works before it is used to make sensational claims of secret rooms in
the Sphinx.
Meanwhile, we struggle in our department to save the Sphinx and many other
sites and monuments for future generations. We work hard to organize the
site for tourism, so all can enjoy our monuments, and we try to balance
tourism with conservation. If we found evidence of a civilization older than
that of the dynastic Egyptians, we would not, and could not, keep it from the
public. Nor do we try to stop reasonable research. The list of remote
sensing surveys at the Sphinx proves that we have not prevented this kind of
research - and the list is even longer for those who have probed the
pyramids. But now other priorities are far more urgent, and we cannot allow
digging and drilling into the Sphinx on the off-chance that somehow we have
missed the only evidence of a lost civilization!
Response:
Mark Lehner, Egyptologist: All you who hear claims that recent remote sensing has discovered tunnels
and chambers under the Sphinx, and who are keenly interested in these claims,
should be aware that there have been a number of remote sensing surveys of
the Sphinx, with results that do not quite agree. We should also be aware
that the various "sonar"-like techniques do not give immediate and simple
data. All remote sensing techniques give data that first must be interpreted
as to whether it indicates "anomalies." An "anomaly" is something that
stands out from the background results of whatever technique is being used.
Next, the anomalies have to be interpreted as either artificial - "rooms and
tunnels" or as natural features, such as fissures, cavities, and areas of
weak rock.
As an example of how remote sensing data can be variously interpreted, the
data produced by Dobecki Earth Sciences in 1991 in collaboration with Robert
Schoch and John Anthony West was interpreted as indicating shallower
subsurface weathering patterns toward the back and deeper weathering toward
the front. The weathering is supposed to have been produced by rain. Schoch
and West then made the further inference that the back of the Sphinx and its
ditch were carved by Khafre, so that the front must be much older. However,
after Dobecki Earth Sciences carried out further work for the Schor
Foundation, the investigators concluded that "we found no evidence to support
the contention that the weathering had occurred during an ancient period of
higher rainfall in the region." This is fair enough. It is the way of
science to formulate hypotheses and test them, and to change our
interpretations if we find a better fit with the raw data. The point is that
remote sensing surveys do not give immediate proof of "rooms and tunnels" or
anything else. They give raw results that must be processed by several levels
of interpretation.
We have noticed that those conducting the remote sensing surveys have so far
reported very little comparison of their results with the obvious natural,
physical features of the Sphinx. Take Waseda University's interpretation of
their 1987 electromagnetic sounding data as evidence of a tunnel oriented
north-south under the Sphinx, a water pocket 2.5 to 3 m below surface near
the south hind paw, and another cavity near the north hind paw. This is just
about where a very large fissure cuts through the entire Sphinx body, running
down through the floor around the Sphinx, and up through the southern wall of
the Sphinx ditch (which is the foundation of the Khafre causeway). The Sphinx
restoration team saw parts of this deep fissure when they replaced some of
Baraize's masonry on the south hind paw, and when the stones fell away from
the north hind paw in 1981. Baraize filled these gaps in the hind paws with a
great quantity of gray cement. The fissure opens so wide at the top of the
Sphinx waist, that a person can be lowered down into it all the way down to
floor level. Baraize put an iron trap door over it. There are other examples
where a remote sensing survey team has been suspicious and excited about a
spot where there are obvious discontinuities in the natural rock.
When you hear about "sonar" readings of secret tunnels, you should ask: was
this technique tested on known artificial structures, such as known tombs and
passages, before it was used to produce evidence of "rooms and tunnels"? In
1977 SRI did such preliminary testing, for example, on tombs west of the
Khafre Pyramid. Even so, it seems they could not eliminate "noise" (natural
cavities) from "signal" ("rooms and tunnels"). Their remote sensing of the
Sphinx and the Sphinx Temple produced three anomalies that they thought
significant enough to drill, and then to probe with a micro-optics, down-hole
miniature camera. Even the most promising anomaly - in the SE corner of the
Sphinx ditch (where two major geological units, one very hard and one very
soft, meet in a very irregular interface) turned out to be only natural
cavities and irregularities in the rock.
I do not discount the possibly of rock-cut passages and chambers yet to be
found at Giza, or even at the Sphinx. It is a matter of probabilities. I have
yet to see unequivocal evidence from the combined results of the remote
sensing surveys so far. The one passage found, in the northwest pat of the
rump, was located by Mohammed Abd al-Mawgud who remembered where it had been
after more than 50 years, and not by remote sensing! But I keep an open
mind. If they exist, I believe it most probable that they would be the work
of the dynastic Egyptians who were good at cutting shafts, passages, and
chambers in the natural rock.
I would hope that when you see the next television network special about
remote sensing evidence of hidden tunnels and chambers at Giza (probably soon
on FOX), approach it with critical thinking (as you should ours or any
information), not with cultic acceptance.
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