Is There a Link Between Atlantis and Sphinx?

Lovers of legend have been fascinated since antiquity by tales of Atlantis, the paradise washed into the sea without a trace.

Now comes John Anthony West, an American author, playwright and travel guide. He wants to prove that survivors of Atlantis built the Sphinx, the half-man, half-beast that wears a Pharaoh’s crown and crouches at the foot of the Pyramids.

Egyptologists say West is wasting his time, that his premise is nonsense.

West, undaunted, said, “If we can prove the Sphinx is older than we think, then we can get around to which lost civilization built it”--and the lost civilization that easily comes to mind is Atlantis.

“It’s impossible to believe ancient Egyptians could produce the Sphinx if you believe Egyptologists that ancient Egyptians were priest-bound necrophiles, an intellectually inferior race obsessed with the afterlife,” he said.

Advanced writing and the technology to move stone blocks weighing 200 tons, like those in a temple beside the Sphinx, are not a development but a legacy from unknown benefactors, said West, a native of Saugerties, N.Y.

In a newspaper article, Egyptologist Zahi Hawass called West’s theories “American hallucinations.” Hawass is antiquities director of the Pyramids area, including the Sphinx.

“We have older monuments in the same area,” he said. “They definitely weren’t built by men from space or Atlantis.”

With a geologist and a geophysicist in his 10-man team, West came to Egypt in April hoping to prove that the monument is much older than its generally accepted age of 4,500 years. They planned to spend two weeks alongside the 240-foot-long limestone statue, but their close-up work was restricted to three days.

Hawass described West as an amateur with “absolutely no scientific base for any of this. It’s nonsense, and we won’t allow our monuments to be exploited for personal enrichment. The Sphinx is the soul of Egypt.”

Among West’s books is “Serpent in the Sky,” an untraditional view of ancient Egypt published in 1979. He said he plans one about the Sphinx called “The Secrets in the Stones.”

Many of West’s concepts are based on the thoughts of the late R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz, an Alsatian who believed Egypt’s monuments formed part of a larger cosmic order. De Lubicz traced the Sphinx’s decay to an ancient flood.

“Egyptologists think of him as a nut case,” West said. “Our work could prove him right.”

As evidence to support his theories, West said the Sphinx and two adjacent temples differ architecturally from other Old Kingdom monuments.

Also, he said, the Sphinx is too eroded, marred by fissures unexplainable by wind or sand erosion, considering that the monument has been buried by the desert for most of its recorded history. Similar erosion is evident in the temples.

Egyptologists trace the Sphinx to Chephren, an Old Kingdom Pharaoh who built the second Pyramid and who reigned 26 years before dying in 2494 BC. His face on statues and the Sphinx’s face bear a resemblance.

This is West’s version:

The Sphinx and the two temples were built 10,000 to 15,000 years ago, about the time the Greek philosopher Plato said Atlantis disappeared. The flood came. The monuments lay undiscovered for thousands of years, until ancient Egyptians found them and spruced them up.

Thomas Dobecki of Houston, West’s geophysicist, used seismological sounding devices to scan the Sphinx area for evidence of hidden cavities or buried relics.

“The data is good,” he said, “but I’ve got to go back and study it. Then I’ll tell West the age of the Sphinx. He may like it, or he may not.”

The Greek statesman Solon first mentioned Atlantis in the 3rd Century BC, saying that he learned of it from Egyptian priests.

Plato later embellished the story. His pupil Aristotle said the aging philosopher fabricated the whole thing.

Some scientists theorize that the Minoan civilization on Crete was Atlantis, and what Egyptian priests described to Solon was a devasting volcanic eruption in 1470 BC that destroyed several Mediterranean islands.

Geologist Robert Schoch of Boston University, whose academic credentials got the West team its permit from the Egyptian Antiquities Organization, said two visits to Egypt persuaded him that the Sphinx predates Chephren.

“How much older is it?,” he said by telephone from Boston. “I don’t know, but older. I’m not saying 10,000 or 15,000 years old. It needs more study.”

Lal Gauri, a University of Louisville geology professor, has conducted detailed studies of the Sphinx. “It’s clearly absurd to assume that the damage we see couldn’t have been caused in the past 5,000 years,” he said.

“In fact, I suspect much of it is modern and continuous. You can stand any day at the Sphinx and see rocks fall. As for the flood, there are no telltale signs, like salt or water marks.”

Kent Weeks, an Egyptologist at American University in Cairo, said there is no doubt that the Sphinx was created by the Egyptians. He said no civilization older than Egypt’s left a record of anything like the Sphinx.

“The fact is, the Giza Sphinx is the first of its kind and unique,” Weeks said. “Every kind of Sphinx we know, whether in Paris or on the steps of the New York Public Library, came later.”