by Colin Wilson
According to Schwaller, this is precisely what the Egyptians were aiming at in their temples, monuments and statues.
In A New Model of the Universe, a book written after he had become Gurdjieff’s disciple, Ouspensky had written of the Sphinx: ‘As a matter of fact the Sphinx is older than historical Egypt, older than her gods, older than the pyramids, which, in their turn, are much older than is thought.’ This sounds like a piece of information acquired direct from Gurdjieff.
But how could a work of art make the same impact on everybody—even if their emotions are ‘sufficiently developed’? Surely art appeals to what is ‘personal’ in us?
To understand why this is not so, it is necessary to speak of the founder of Greek mathematics, Pythagoras, who lived between 582 and 507 BC. According to a typical entry in a modern encyclopaedia, Pythagoras believed in reincarnation, and ‘Pythagoreans believed that the essence of all things was number and that all relationships could be expressed numerically. This view led them to discover the numerical relationship of tones in music and to some knowledge of later Euclidean geometry.’3 Pythagoreanism is sometimes described as ‘number mysticism’, and the mathematician Lancelot Hogben dismissed all such notions as the ‘dark superstitions and fanciful puerilities which entranced people who were living through the childhood of civilisation’.4
But that is to miss the point. The Pythagoreans were entranced by such things as the shape of crystals and the patterns made by frost. They suspected, rightly, that there is a mathematical reason for this. Again, consider the fact that women have two breasts, and that in female animals, the number of teats is always a multiple of two, never an odd number. Again, the Pythagoreans suspected that the processes of living nature are governed by mathematical laws, and they were right.
Let us return to an earlier question: what is music ‘saying’? Why do certain musical phrases fill us with a curious delight? Around 1910, a Viennese composer named Arnold Schoenberg decided that, since he could see no obvious answer to the problem of why music touches our feelings, the answer must lie in the word 'habit’—or conditioning. Schoenberg decided that he would create a different tone scale, and write music that was based on a number of notes arranged in arbitrarily chosen order—rather than one that ‘appeals’ to the ear. But he proved mistaken in his assumption that music is ‘arbitrary’. Almost a century later, his works and those of his disciples still sound strange and dissonant—although their dissonance is undeniably successful in expressing neurosis and tension—and their inclusion in a modern concert programme is enough to guarantee a decline in ticket sales. Any Pythagorean could have told him that his theory was based on a fallacy—a failure to grasp that there is a hidden mathematical reason why a certain order of notes strikes us as harmonious, and why arbitrary notes fail to convey a sense of musical meaning.
It is when the same insights are applied to the realm of living things that we begin to grasp the essence of Egyptian thought. Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001 popularised the idea that a computer might develop human feelings; and, in fact, many computer scientists argue that a sufficiently complex computer would be alive—that if it was complex enough to behave like a living thing, then by any sensible definition it would be a living thing. In The Emperor's New Mind, Oxford scientist Roger Penrose expended a great deal of ingenuity in demonstrating that this is a fallacy—that even if a computer was more complex than a human being, it would still not be ‘alive’.
Most biologists now accept the view that life evolved accidentally with the action of sunlight on carbon compounds: that these compounds ‘accidentally’ built up into cells that could reproduce themselves, and that these cells were the first sign of ‘life’ on earth. Penrose’s arguments about computers apply equally to this theory. No matter how complex an arrangement of carbon molecules, it would still not be alive.
The Egyptians would have found these ideas about ‘living’ computers and carbon molecules unutterably perverse. For them there were two distinct realities: matter and spirit. In living beings the two interact, and the laws that govern the interaction are mathematical. It is not meaningless to ask why carrots are long and pointed, and melons are round, and marrows are long and round. Life obeys unknown mathematical laws.
Gurdjieff also attached great importance to the concept of alchemy. In his major work, Beelzebub’s Tales to his Grandson, he explains that what is generally called alchemy is a pseudo-science, but that there was—and is—a genuine alchemy, a ‘great science’, that was known to the ancients before man began to degenerate.
It may also be noted that, in Beelzebub’s Tales, Gurdjieff makes Beelzebub—a higher being from a solar system in the Milky Way—explain that Egypt was originally populated by survivors from Atlantis, which was destroyed in two cataclysms, and that the Sphinx and the Giza pyramids were built by the Atlanteans. (Beelzebub, it should be noted, was written before Schwaller discovered ancient Egypt, so there was no mutual influence.) Some time later, around the time of dynastic Egypt, there occurred a spiritual 'cataclysm’ that caused mankind to degenerate to a lower level. Man began to believe that the material world is the only reality, and that the spiritual is a mere reflection of the material. This would seem to echo Schwaller’s conviction that mankind has degenerated from ‘giants ... to a near-animal state’.
It seems ironic that Schwaller’s interest in the age of the Sphinx—and the other great Egyptian monuments—was virtually a by-product of his interest in ‘alchemy’, and its bearing on human evolution. What he believed he had found in ancient Egypt was a completely new mode of thought—a mode that cannot be expressed in the analytical concepts of language, but only shown in myth and symbolism.
This knowledge also involved a highly sophisticated technology, capable of such incredible feats as moving 200-ton blocks (used in building the Sphinx temples) and placing them on top of one another.
In short, Schwaller believed that ancient Egypt possessed a knowledge system that had been inherited from a far older civilisation, whose modes of thought were fundamentally different from those of modern man. The secret of this knowledge system he believed lay in ancient Egypt.
It was probably because Schwaller was anxious not to undermine the reputation of his mathematical studies on the temple of Luxor that he took care not to be too specific about his view of the age of the Sphinx.
But in Sacred Science, in the chapter in which he discusses the legends of Egyptian prehistory, he speaks about ancient traditions that refer to the days before the Nile delta existed—before, that is, the Nile had brought down the billions of tons of mud that now form the delta. He continues:
A great civilisation must have preceded the vast movements of water that passed over Egypt, which leads us to assume that the Sphinx already existed, sculptured in the rock of the west cliff at Gizeh, that Sphinx whose leonine body, except for the head, shows indisputable signs of aquatic erosion.
He goes on to say: ‘We have no idea how the submersion of the Sphinx took place...’, which seems to make it plain that he is thinking in terms of a Sphinx submerged beneath the sea. But when he read these sentences, John Anthony West was struck by the obvious fact that this notion—of erosion by water—ought to be scientifically testable. He expressed this conviction in 1978, in Serpent in the Sky, his study of Schwaller and ancient Egypt. During the next decade, he tried to interest scholars in the problem. For example, he asked an Oxford geologist if he would mind if he played a trick on him, then showed him a photograph of the Sphinx in which the head and other identifying features had been hidden by masking tape, so that it looked like a fragment off cliff. ‘Would you say this is wind-erosion or water erosion?’ The geologist said without hesitation: ‘Water erosion.’ Then West stripped off the tape, revealing the head and the paws. The geologist stared at it and said: ‘Oh.’ And after more reflection he added: ‘I don’t want to say any more. You see, I’m not a desert specialist.’ Other scientists to whom West wrote did not even reply.
It
was several years more before he found a geologist who was sufficiently open-minded to go and look at the Sphinx. It was the beginning of an important new phase in the search for Atlantis.
2 The New Race
The problem of finding an open-minded scientist, West has remarked (with understandable bitterness), is about as easy as finding a fundamentalist Christian who loves Madonna. But in 1985, a friend at Boston University remarked: ‘I think I might know someone.’
The 'someone’ was Robert Schoch, a geologist at Boston University, and his entry in Who’s Who made it clear that he would be the ideal supporter. Although still in his twenties, he had published four books, and was a highly respected stratigrapher—a geologist who studies layers of sedimentary rock—and palaeontologist. But to begin with, it looked as if he was going to be as evasive as the Oxford geologist. West was advised not to try approaching him directly in case he scared him off. Periodically, reports came back: Schoch had been approached, Schoch was willing to look at the material, Schoch’s first reaction had been scepticism... Eventually, after studying all the material West could muster, Schoch began to express a cautious interest. But he was up for tenure, and it would have been insane to jeopardise this by espousing an opinion that would be sure to enrage his academic colleagues. Years went by with these occasional reports, until, at last, West travelled to Boston to meet him.
He had taken a boxful of slides, and when they had looked at them, and they had discussed the whole question, Schoch admitted what was worrying him. 'From the photograph, it looks like water weathering. It looks so obvious. If you’re right, I can’t believe that no one would have noticed it before.’
Clearly, he would have to go to Egypt to see for himself. But that would have to wait until he had tenure.
That finally came in April 1990. Two months later they were in Cairo. West was in a state of tension as they approached the Giza site, half-expecting Schoch to point out some geological gaffe that would destroy his whole theory. But Schoch seemed quietly impressed. At first sight, he could see nothing that undermined West’s belief in water-weathering. The Sphinx enclosure—the walls of limestone that surrounded the Sphinx on two sides—certainly showed the typical undulating pattern of rain weathering. But he felt that he needed a more detailed study, together with the aid of a geophysicist, as well as up-to-date seismographic equipment.
It seems probable that the original rock that formed the head of the Sphinx was an outcrop that once rose above the ground beside the Nile. Schoch theorised that it may have been carved into some kind of face—either human or animal (such as a lion) at some remote date when the surrounding countryside was still green. Then, at some later date, it was decided to add a body. For this purpose, its makers sliced into the softer limestone below and around the head—creating a two-sided wall or enclosure—thus giving themselves elbow room to work. The great blocks they removed—200 tons each—were used to construct two temples in front of the Sphinx. These ancient architects worked in a style that might be called ‘Cyclopean’, using absurdly large blocks—which could far more conveniently have been carved into a dozen smaller ones—and erecting them into structures as simple and undecorated as Stonehenge.
The next step was to hack out roughly the chunk of rock that would form the body of the Sphinx—which would eventually be 240 feet long, and 66 feet high, as tall as a six-storey building. From the point of view of posterity, it is a pity that the whole Sphinx was not carved out of the same type of rock, for the limestone body has eroded far more than the harder head and shoulders. The present damage to the Sphinx's head was done in 1380, by a fanatical Arab sheikh, and later by the Mamelukes, who used it for target practice.
And what evidence have we about the age of the Sphinx? Oddly enough, it is not mentioned by Herodotus, and so we must assume either that it was covered with sand when Herodotus visited Egypt around 450 BC, or that the outcrop of badly eroded rock sticking up above the surface bore so little resemblance to a face that he did not even notice it.
When the sand—which buried it up to its neck—was cleared away in 1817, a small temple was revealed between the paws. This contained the statue of a lion and three stelae; the one against the Sphinx’s breast bore the date of King Thutmose IV, who came to the throne in 1425 BC. The main stela told how King Thutmose IV had fallen asleep near the Sphinx when out hunting, and how the Sphinx—who was inhabited by the god Khepera (a form of the sun god Ra), creator of the universe—spoke to him in a dream and asked him to clear away the sand that buried him. Thutmose not only cleared away the sand, but made extensive repairs to the body. Apparently this was not the first time; the same stela bore the name of the Pharaoh Chefren—although its surrounding writing was flaked away, so that its significance was not clear. Sir Gaston Maspero assumed that Chefren had also performed the same service of clearing the sand, and possibly repaired the Sphinx—the rear of the Sphinx contains repairs that have been dated to the Old Kingdom, which lasted about 450 years (2575-2130 BC).
But this obviously raises a basic question. If the Sphinx was built by Chefren around 2500 BC, then why should it need repairs in the course of the next three and a half centuries? It was well protected, and was no doubt buried in sand most of the time since it was built. Dr Zahi Hawass, the keeper of the Cairo Museum and a bitter opponent of West’s theory, was to argue that the limestone of which the Sphinx was built was so poor that it began to erode as soon as the monument was completed. West’s reply was that this would involve erosion at the rate of a foot every hundred years, and that if that was the case, the Sphinx would have vanished completely about five centuries ago.
On the other hand, if Maspero was correct, then Chefren had merely repaired the Sphinx and cleared away the sand; Maspero actually stated that this was proof that ‘the Sphinx was already covered with sand during the time of Khufu [Cheops] and his predecessors’. In fact, it was a commonplace among nineteenth-centry Egyptologists to state that the Sphinx was far, far older than the pyramids. It has only been during the twentieth century, on the evidence of the name of Chefren on the stela of Thutmose IV, that Egyptologists have decided that the Sphinx was built by Chefren, and that its head is supposed to be a portrait of Chefren. They have reached that conclusion on precisely the same evidence that made Maspero decide the Sphinx was far older than the pyramids.
Another obvious question arises. Most of the Sphinx—as already stated—is below ground level, so it would have been clear to its builder that it would soon be buried in sand. (It seems to take about twenty years.) Does this not suggest that, when the Sphinx was built, the Sahara was still green, which would explain how the Sphinx came to be eroded by rainfall? We know that the Sahara was once green and fertile, and that it has been slowly eroded over the millennia. No one is certain when it was last green, but a conservative guess is 3500 BC.
It is, of course, even possible that it was still green in the time of Chefren;1 but then, even if it was built by Chefren in a green Sahara in 2500 BC, this still fails to explain why it needed repairs so soon.
Now West had the task of trying to prove that Maspero and the other nineteenth-century scholars had been right, and that the Sphinx was already old in the time of Chefren. If he could prove that the body of the Sphinx, and the Sphinx enclosure, had been eroded by water, not by wind-blown sand, then he would certainly have taken a major step in that direction. His first task would be to set about finding the necessary finance to take a team of experts to look at it. Boris Said, a maker of videos, coordinated the project, and Thomas L. Dobecki, a geophysicist, also signed on, with two geologists, an architect and an oceanographer. After an interminable struggle to persuade the authorities to grant permission, they were finally ready to start.
Now that Schoch could study it all at close quarters, his doubts vanished. If the Sphinx was the same age as the rest of the Giza site, why was it so weathered, when nearby Old Kingdom tombs were so much less weathered—and, what is more, so obviously weathered by wind-blown sa
nd? Surely the Sphinx had to be older?
The wind-weathering on these other tombs provided a convenient comparison. Limestone is a sedimentary rock, made of particles glued together; and, as everyone knows, such rocks come in strata, like layer cake. When wind-blown sand hits the side of the layer cake, the softer layers are worn away, while the harder layers stick out above and below them. The result is a series of parallel layers, with a profile of humps and hollows like the profile of a club sandwich.
When a rock face is eroded by rain water, the effect is totally different. The rain runs down in streams, and cuts vertical channels into the rock. The softer rock is still eroded more deeply than the harder, but the effect is quite distinct from wind-weathering—it can look like a series of bumps, not unlike a row of naked buttocks. The team agreed that both the body of the Sphinx and the Sphinx enclosure showed this type of weathering, not the smoother effect of wind-weathering.
The two temples in front of the Sphinx—known as the Valley and the Sphinx Temples—provided additional evidence for this thesis. If, of course, they had been left untouched, they should have exhibited precisely the same weathering as the Sphinx and its enclosure. But there is clear evidence that they were repaired by the ancient Egyptians, who set out to prevent further damage by facing them with granite slabs. Many of these granite slabs were removed by later generations, who used them in their own building. And the outer walls left exposed by this removal are so irregular that any self-respecting architect would blush with shame.