I’d heard of Dr. Robert Schoch and his unorthodox theories involving the carving date of the Great Sphinx at Giza. Since my information about Schoch and his theories was all from secondary sources, I thought it would be appropriate to read at least one of his books; thus Voyages of the Pyramid Builders.

It’s certainly true that now and then a scientist will make a significant contribution in an area outside his/her primary expertise. However, there’s also a set of scientists who go off the wall trying to do that; examples include astrophysicist Thomas Gold and abiotic oil; astrophysicist Fred Hoyle and Archaeopteryx; biochemist Linus Pauling and Vitamin C; invertebrate zoologist Barry Fell and Precolumbian America, and probably others that don’t come to instantly to mind. So with Dr. Schoch, who is a perfectly good geologist (a paleontologist, in fact; his dissertation on the taeniodonts, a group of Paleogene mammals, was sufficiently good to be published by the Yale University Press). However, like the others listed he enthusiastically goes off the high side on archaeology.

Since Schoch’s original notoriety came from his claim that the Great Sphinx of Giza was significantly older than the established date, I expected most of the book to be about that. Although the first chapter and the appendix discuss dating the Sphinx, for the rest of the book Dr. Schoch is channeling Immanuel Velikovsy. Let’s get the Sphinx out of the way first. Orthodox Egyptological opinion is that the Sphinx was built during the reign of Khafre (±2570 BCE); that the face is the face of Khafre; that an associated structure known as “the Sphinx Temple” is contemporaneous; and that the Second Pyramid at Giza and its associated Mortuary Temple also belong to Khafre. None of these structures have inscriptions specifically listing Khafre as the owner, although a statue of Khafre was found buried in the Mortuary Temple.

As mentioned in that Archive link above, the Great Sphinx is in sort of an alcove on the eastern edge of the Giza plateau. This is usually called the “Sphinx enclosure”, which is somewhat misleading since “enclosure” implies something built up around the Sphinx while it’s actually the result of digging down and removing everything that wasn’t a Sphinx; it’s also called the Sphinx quarry, which is somewhat more accurate. Schoch’s original contention was:

* The west wall of the enclosure (at the back as you look the Sphinx in the face) showed evidence of running water erosion.
* There were no rainy periods between the Old Kingdom (conventional date of the Sphinx) and now.
* Therefore the running water erosion in the Sphinx quarry must have occurred much earlier, sometime between 7000 and 3000 BCE.
* Therefore, the Sphinx quarry must have already been excavated (and presumably the Sphinx carved) long before the conventional date.

Egyptologists fell all over themselves with armwaving explanations involving things like wet sand or Nile floods to explain the putative “running water erosion”. This seemed to me to be mostly a case of “physics envy”; since Schoch came from a “hard science” field his opinion held weight in a “soft science” field like Egyptology. My personal counterargument starts with the idea that the null hypothesis hasn’t been refuted yet; Schoch’s contention that the Sphinx quarry shows running water erosion is based on visual examination only. (I’ve been to the Sphinx quarry and looked at the exposure in question; you can’t do that anymore as the quarry is closed to tourists. You know what? It looks like running water erosion to me too.) However, there are no numerical data to back this up. If Schoch could show (this is a hypothetical example, I don’t know if such a thing could actually be done) that the surface of the outcrop has been leached of water soluble minerals by an amount that could only be explained by X years of running water, then he would have something – but all he’s got is “it looks like running water erosion”. Even if the running water is granted, Old Kingdom Egypt, while not tropical, was wetter than Egypt is now; some Old Kingdom structures have downspouts and rain channels. Finally, when it does rain in Egypt it rains hard; running water can erode things pretty fast if there’s a lot of it. I see no reason why the “running water” erosion couldn’t happen in one or two hard rainstorms and there is plenty of time for that. Schoch’s counterargument is the Sphinx quarry was full of sand after the Old Kingdom and therefore no running water could occur. Well, it was certainly full of sand in Moslem time, and it was full of sand at the start of the reign of Thumose IV in the New Kingdom (there’s a stela where he explains how he dug it out – so if you believe him it was empty for at least a few years then). However, it was sand-free in Roman times, since that’s when the paws and tail were added (and, presumably, you wouldn’t go to the trouble of adding features to a statue that was mostly buried). Thus there’s no firm evidence for the Sphinx quarry being sand-filled or empty for the bulk of history, but there are a few times when it was known to be filled and a few times when it was known to be cleaned out. All it would take is one heavy rainstorm during a sand-free period to see the kind of erosion Schoch is talking about.

Schoch has since come up with a couple more arguments for his “old Sphinx”. One is that the associated structures – the Sphinx temple and the Khafre mortuary temple – have limestone cores faced with granite; the limestone cores are, according to Schoch, also water eroded (and thus these temples were built very early and later appropriated by Khafre). Don’t know for sure as I’ve never closely examined either but the “water eroded” claim has the same basis as the Sphinx quarry – visual inspection. Finally, Schoch conducted some seismic reflection surveys in the Sphinx quarry which lead him to believe that in-place weathering was much deeper than could be explained by exposure since the Old Kingdom. Haven’t seen the original data so I can’t comment; however other geologists have claimed Schoch misinterpreted other features as weathering. That leads me to another comment; for a book by a professional geologist, there’s very little geology and what’s there isn’t very convincing. For example, Schoch describes the Sphinx as built from “competent” limestone. The Sphinx – in fact, the whole Giza plateau and the bulk of all the monuments on it - are Mokattam Formation, which is interbedded limestone, siltstone, claystone and sandstone with varying degrees of intermixture – i.e., silty sandstone, sandy limestone, and every other possible combination. Some of the beds make fairly good building stone; some crumble to the touch. Pictures of the Sphinx show the head is from one of the more solid limestone layers but the body is much more irregular – and not what I would describe as “competent”. In fact, one of the conventional explanations of why the Sphinx is there is that the Pharaonic quarrymen left the bulk of it behind because the stone was too poor quality to use in a pyramid, then somebody noted this remainder looked more or less like a sphinx and decided to carve the rest of it that way. The paws are ashlar stone masonry dating from Roman times, although there may have been similar masonry paws earlier that were removed and replaced.

Well, after the Sphinx we get the whole rest of Schoch’s book – which, as I mentioned, seems to channel Velikovsky (in use of evidence, not in conclusions). Schoch’s basic idea is that there was once a great human civilization, originally centered in the Sunda archipelago, that was driven out of their homeland by rising sea level at the end of the Pleistocene glaciation and eventually spread all over the world. Then (or during this diaspora, or both) there were a bunch of comet and/or meteorite impacts that convinced the ex-Sundans to build temples to the sky gods to appease them, and those temples take the form of pyramids. Thus the Borobodur temple in Java and the Mexican pyramids and the Egyptian pyramids and the Mesopotamian ziggurats and Silbury Hill and various conical or pyramidal mounds around the world. But this “angry skies” cult goes back even further, and was somehow associated with the constellation Taurus, thus any depiction or worship of bulls is also somehow related (including the Pleistocene cave paintings at Lascaux and Altamira).

This is what I mean by Schoch channeling Velikovsky. Velikovsky’s approach was to take any mythology from anywhere in the world and somehow make it a description of the Exodus (which, in turn, was caused by the “comet” Venus being ejected by Jupiter and making multiple close passed by the Earth, stopping the Earth’s rotation, raining frogs, blood, and manna, and killing off all the firstborn as required). The astrodynamical impossibility of all this was dismissed by armwaving; the chronological inconsistencies were disposed of by claiming that radiometric dating doesn’t work. Schoch doesn’t dismiss radiometric dating, but gets around the problem of chronologic inconsistency by mostly ignoring it; thus Mexican pyramids built around year 0 are somehow related to Egyptian ones built around -2500 because – well, he never really explains how. Schoch also seems to take every woowoo book ever written at more or less face value as long as it somehow relates to his thesis; thus authors like Graham Hancock, Eric von Daniken and John Anthony West are quoted when they “fit” but not when they don’t. Although the book has an extensive bibliography, there are no footnotes; this makes it impossible to track down sources for many of Schoch’s claims. For example, he say the bones of a bull were found in the Second Pyramid (Khafre) at Giza; that’s the first time I’ve ever heard of that but he provides no source so I can’t check it out. The bull bones are possible, I suppose; the Second Pyramid was explored sometime early in the 19th century and excavation reports then were less than thorough so they may have never made it into the more recent Egyptian history books.

The book is full of difficult claims like this; another example is the Köfels “impact event” in Austria. Schoch takes this at face value as an asteroid impact in 3123 BC, including the claim of a relationship to Sodom and Gomorrah; however, it isn’t clear if the supposed Akkadian reference refers to an impact or if the supposed “crater” in Austria has an extraterrestrial source.

Obviously not recommended; the exception being if you want to be prepared to confound the standard woowoo dismissal “Well, you haven’t read his book”. ( )

I have been patiently waiting several years to track down a copy of this, and it did not disappoint. If only my book buying budget was a bit bigger. Mr. Schoch is a Ph.D. geologist who has confirmed through rigorous research that the Sphinx at Giza is far older than the accepted age given by academic Egyptologists. This is based on a geologist's study of the rain erosion that is found both on the Sphinx itself and the pit that it sits in. The Sphinx was dug out of the limestone and sits in a hole, watching the sun rise. Schoch's initial reaction was surprise, not that there was rain erosion in the Sahara, but that nobody had noticed it before. At least, not a geologist. It had been noticed, but poo-pooed off as crazy amateurs sticking their nose where it doesn't belong. Here are a few photos from Schoch's website, hopefully they will stay.

The Sphinx is attributed to the Pharaoh Khafre, as is the slightly smaller pyramid that bears his name. However, there is an inscription (the Inventory Stela) that predates Khafre which lists the Sphinx as an ancient treasure already in existence. Since this would upset the 'established' chronology of things, it must be a fake. I could go on a long rant about the stubbornness of Egyptologists (and academics everywhere) who refuse to question what they consider basic facts about their area of study, when evidence pops up that refutes it, but in the interest of brevity, I'll let it go at just that. Here's Khafre's pyramid and the Sphinx from wikipedia.

Back to the issue at hand. This type of rain erosion only occurs in two places in all of Egypt, natural terrain not withstanding. The Sphinx, and the Sphinx Temple adjoining it on Giza. In fact, the Temple has a granite reworking laid over a heavily weathered limestone building, the granite is carved and fitted to the rain channels that were already there on an obviously much older structure. Another issue is that the Sphinx enclosure rapidly fills with sand, so the main body of the monument has been buried for centuries at a time. None of this data precludes Khafre, however. Perhaps, instead of building the Sphinx from nothing, he repaired it? Heretic! Blasphemer!

What this means is that there had to be some sort of civilization that carved that thing, long before there was a 'civilization' capable of doing so, like in 10,000 to 5,000 BC, at least, if not even earlier. Who knows? There is plenty of fodder for this mill out there. Graham Hancock has written extensively on the subject, Robert Bauval, John Anthony West (who invited Schoch to Giza to geologically confirm his hunch about the water erosion), and a host of others. Hamlet's Mill is, in my opinion, a landmark study in this idea, analyzing the world's mythic systems and their consistency of astronomical data going back into and beyond the pre-dawn of history. Hancock's Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization is almost a companion volume to 'Voyages', the two authors have dived together at Yonaguni off Japan. There's a google search for you-Yonaguni and Kerama.

Schoch develops a long series of potential trans-oceanic communication of ideas, tying in reliable records from Greenland ice-core data and tree ring dendochronology, the astronomical science of comet streams, and historical records of comet sightings, leading to overthrows of governments (notably in China, the emperor has 'lost favor with the gods') and mass exodus (like in Exodus, with it's plagues and all that, there's plenty of astronomy spattered through the bible-Job, a few psalms, etc.) that coincide with cultural change in far away areas. An example would be a recorded exodus of 250,000 people eastward from China after a spate of comet sightings and collisions, at almost the same time the La Venta culture sprang up from nowhere in the Yucatan. What are the odds that those Chinese mingled with the natives? I say pretty good, but standard academia says absolutely not. There are lots of examples of such transoceanic contact, Hebrew inscriptions on a stone buried in Kentucky, Roman coins all over the east coast of the US, a classic Greek sculpture's head found in an Inca grave Peru, plenty of evidence that the East Asians crossed the Pacific (notably Jomon pottery, another interesting Google search), so on and so forth.

Needless to say, Schoch's book is excellent and opens up quite a can of worms. To me, delicious gummi worms, to a scholar with a vested interest in the status quo of history, nasty, greasy, parasitic flatworms. Take that Authority!

If the pictures don't show up in this review, you might find them on my chat thread here at message #139 or just go to robertschoch.com ( )