Scientists claim that the sphinx was made of natural rocks

A new study suggests that ancient Egyptians may have created the Sphinx, the 4,500-year-old monument in front of the Pyramid of Khafre at Giza, not entirely from scratch, but on a natural object that was already strikingly similar to the Sphinx. In a study published Oct. 17 in the journal Physical Examination FluidsA team from New York University has suggested that a yardang, a wind-blown ridge of rock jutting out from the ground, may naturally form into a Sphinx-like formation.

But researchers say that even if the ancient Egyptians created the Sphinx from a monstrously shaped boulder, they still had to precisely shape the iconic features of the Sphinx that remain to this day.

To investigate the shape of the Sphinx, the team took a pile of soft clay with a harder material inside and placed it in a fast-flowing water tunnel simulating thousands of years of wind erosion, the statement said. teams. At the beginning of the experiment, the team created a “semi-ellipsoid” or half-oval shape from clay. As the water eroded away some of the clay, a sphinx-like shape was left behind. They found, for example, that “harder or more durable material became the lion’s ‘head,'” and the frontal features looked a bit like a neck and paws, the statement said.

“We showed that the natural erosion process can indeed create a shape that resembles a reclining lion with its head raised,” senior author Leif Ristroff, an assistant professor of mathematics at NYU, told LiveScience in an email. University. Ristroff cautioned that a similar natural feature may exist at Giza, but we don’t know if it actually exists.

Even if such a natural feature existed, Ristroff noted: ancient Egyptians He will still make considerable efforts to create a cult structure. “There is no doubt that the facial features and details are man-made,” Ristroff said.

Egyptologists and other scientists not involved in the research said that although the findings were interesting, it did not mean that there was actually a natural sphinx-shaped feature at Giza.

The study reveals “the very real possibility that a natural limestone formation is shaped like an amorphous sphinx,” he said. Catherine BardHe is a professor of archeology and classical studies at Boston University, who has carried out important studies in Egypt. But Bard cautioned that although he had seen a yardang in the Dakhla Oasis in Egypt’s Western Desert, he had not seen a yardang like the one the team created in their study.

Even if a sphinx-shaped yardang existed at Giza, the Egyptians “would have had to support the natural formation with limestone blocks to complete the lion’s front/legs and claws,” Bard told LiveScience in an email.

Judith Bunbury“It has been assumed in the past that the outline of the Sphinx was created by natural erosion,” the University of Cambridge geoarchaeologist, who has done extensive work in Egypt, told LiveScience in an email. The current study “is a pretty good model of what a yardang with a harder inside might look like.” [сфінкса]’ said Bunbury.

Laura Ranieri Roy, Egyptologist and founding director of Ancient Egypt Alive, stated that field research conducted by archaeologist Emile Baraiz in the 1930s revealed that the Sphinx was actually built on two closely spaced yardangs, with the back of the Sphinx built on top. atop one yardang, with the Sphinx’s head and breast above the other. According to research in the 1930s, the work done by the Egyptians to build the Sphinx across two yardangs was extensive.