Merrell wrote:

>In case it might help, this is the relevant quote from
>'Fingerprints' -

>John Anthony West on ‘ … the notion that there might have been
>people, more than 12,000 years ago, who were more sophisticated
>than we are today … The Sphinx itself, that’s not such a
>staggering feat. I mean if you get enough sculptors to cut the
>stone away they could carve a statue a mile long. The
>technology was involved in taking the stones, quarrying
>the stones, to free the Sphinx from the bedrock and then in
>moving those stones and using them to build the Valley Temple a
>couple of hundred feet away … ‘
>
>(GH) This was news to me: ‘You mean that the 200-ton blocks in
>the Valley Temple walls were quarried right out of the Sphinx
>enclosure?’
>
>(JAW) ‘Yes, no doubt about it … ‘ (450-1, ‘Fingerprints’,
>Mandarin edition, 1996).

Downhill.......... to the Valley temple, so much for the need of a modern crane mentioned earlier in that book. Schoch (2003) on page 286 states it's most probable they came from the enclosure as well and it's implied that it's not from Member II. It would seen that only leaves Member III as the main source of the limestone for such. This might be understandable since the Valley temple is less eroded than the Sphinx, so the Valley temple needs another clear reason to be built first so that it does not get inadvertently post-geodated to the 4th dynasty along with the granite repairs, Sphinx temple, and Sphinx (these last two were built after the Valley temple).

Schoch, R.M. (2003) Voyages of the pyramid builders.

Archae Solenhofen (solenhofen@hotmail.com)



Post Edited (17-Jan-13 16:23)