I have read articles etc. that suggest that the Pyramids and the Sphinx are approximately 5,000 years old. Can someone please explain how there are "watermarks" along the length of the Sphinx if this is so? I believe that the last time the Nile/Sea-level reached such heights to produce these "watermarks" was approximately 12,500 years ago which I believe was the time of the last Polar Shift. I am quite prepared to be corrected/educated as I have an open mind and am always ready to take on board sensible, reasonable, explanations. This is something that has bothered me for quite some time and I would finally like some answers.

JV posts: Can someone please explain how there are "watermarks" along the length of the Sphinx…
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Maybe the Nile flooded the area? The Sphinx is located on the Nile flood-plain and not that far from the river itself I think.

How high up the Sphinx is this watermark and where did you read the Nile floodwaters couldn’t have reached that height? ~rore

The watermarks he is referring to may pertain to the weathering.

It is possible the age of these objects is off.

A link explaining how carbonating works: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating

To make matters worse, the pyramid was coated in marble for... some time.

"Once the entire pyramid was built, the workmen covered it with marble, to give it a smooth and beautiful finish."

Link:http://www.funsocialstudies.learninghaven....d_at_giza_1.htm

"The encasing marble which covered the outside of the pyramid has eroded or been removed over time. With this casing off, the pyramid lost 33 feet (11m) of all of its dimensions."

Link: http://interoz.com/EGYPT/cheops.htm


Anyway, a coating of marble could effect the age and make it seem younger than it was.

Also it is more then likely the Nile had short high floods over the years.

One interesting thing is that if you look at Egyptian hieroglyphs, they depict everything from childbirth to wars, so if the Pyramids were built by the Egyptian, wouldn't over a period of 40 years by thousands of workers, and still thousands of more people to run the community to support the workers, that somewhere there would be a single hieroglyph depicting a worker carrying a block? I mean it too up 40 years of their lives didn't it, or so they reckon.
Yet there is not one single depiction to my knowledge of an egyption carrying a brick.

There are numerous "watermarks" along the length of the Sphinx at different levels. I read about this on an archeology website that was dealing specifically with ancient Egypt. It was a while ago and I'm sorry but i can't recall the address of the website. The article went on to explain that the last time the Nile flooded to such a height as to cause these "watermarks" was approximately 12,500 years ago. If there is any truth/basis to the article then surely it throws out the belief that the Sphinx and the Pyramids are only approximately 5,000 years old. The post by scottman appears to be a more likely scenario concerning the supposed age of the structures.
I believe that certain people know more than they are saying about ancient Egyptian archeology and perhaps it would be more forthcoming if they finally told what they actually have learned.

Dundee.. the town where the pyramid workers lived has been found and is being excavated. There are quarry marks, work gang marks, measuring marks ALL IN Egyptian in the pyramids. The pyramids show a natural progression of progress, and is talked about in dozens if not hundreds of contemporary documents. Also.. Im not sure you understand hieroglyphics. Hieroglyphics are not pictures. They are a phonetic alphabet. They are often accompanied by pictures. But the hieroglyphics themselves are basically phonetic. We wouldnt expect to see hieroglyphics portraying anything being built. But we do have documents showing them being planned, ordered, and in the case of the curved pyramid, adjusted. In most cases we even know the name of the architect.

The sphinx may be older than Egyptologists claim. Geologists give an older age, though not always as old as Dr. Schoch claims. It seems quite possible that the pre cursor to what we call the Ancient Egyptians could have built it, with the Egyptians "inheriting" the Sphinx and re carving its head.

"The erosional circumstances of the Sphinx today were explored by the team of Egyptologists and geologists in the 1980s. The phenomenon of overnight condensation and absorption by capillary action was noted, with evaporation in the morning sun that leads to crystallization of salts within the rock's pores and spalling off of surface flakes as a result of the expansion of the crystals. It was also noted that condensation on the bedrock of the Sphinx and its enclosure could take place beneath a sand cover, leading to a situation in which the sand might be perfectly dry at the surface but wet through only a few centimeters beneath, while the rock itself could be soaked in water at some depth underneath the wet sand (‘watermarks‘? ~rore). This circumstance was judged to encourage the migration of salts from the depths of the bedrock towards the surface."
More @ http://www.touregypt.net/historicalessays/sphinxa10.htm

Quarry marks do not necessarily indicate that they were quarrying to build a pyramid though. They may have been building houses, selling brick etc to other communities?? And what about those that say that the pyramid stones themselves were cut and carved a long way away, i remember seeing a docu that indicated they were not cut locally?

And when you say contemporary documents, what do you mean? Documents from recent history, or ancient documents from Egypt
Ok no i didn't know that, so you would say that even though these projects potentially would have spanned generations for thousands of workers, that it would be normal for no pictorial recored at all of workers carrying a brick, even in Egyptian art and craft work. The Australian aboriginals frequently depict events that consumed there days in art, hunting, animals etc, so do the Native Americans. Surely the effort required to coordinate projects of that magnitude would have generated some art work depicting the actual building process?


So if it is that plain, why then is there so much debate as to how they were built?

Im only going to briefly respond because.. well..quite frankly Im right at the point where I need a break from the web site.

The quarry marks are refering to the pyramid building. There is no doubt about. We know about the organization of the work crews, we even know the work crews NAMES in some cases (i.e. Friends of Kfufu, The Drunks of Menkaure, etc). The crews competed with each other. From both hieroglyphics and even grafitti we know that both craftsmen and workmen seemed to have worked on the pyramids year round. The town that supported the pyramid builders was discovered, accidently, in 1990.

The documents are contemporary with the building of the pyramids. They date from that time. We know the life story, for example, of Imhotep, who designed the first pyramid and may have had a hand in designing the incomplete pyramid of Sekhemkhet.

Regarding hieroglyphics again.. hieroglyphics (I refer to them as one but there are several styles) are not pictures. They are a writing system. It is not surprising that there are no pictures among them generally, just as there are no pictures in my copy of "The God Delusion" by Dawkins.

The pictures that are sometimes accompany Egyptian hieroglyphics basically follow rules: They show the life and times of the gods, pharaohs, etc. They do not show the lives of commoners. Literacy was limited to the upper crust in Ancient Egypt and they certainly didnt take time to document what their construction workers were doing. You make an interesting comparison though, bringing up Native Americans. If you look, you will also find no pictures in Mayan cultural centers of their temple pyramids being built, nor will you find pictures in the Hawaiian islands of their temples being built. You will not find pictures in ancient Sudanese sites of their (smaller) pyramids being built from the period of time when they were heavily into copying Egyptian culture. When you expect these pictures you are imposing a 21st century thought process on people thousands of years ago. Papyrus was expensive, carving into stone time consuming and difficult. They did not record much of their day to day lives, and almost nothing of what the common people were doing. What we know of the common man we know mostly not from documents but from physical archeology.

However, there is a steele from Tura which clearly shows oxen pulling a sled with long runners. There is also a frieze from Ninevah. Ninevah? I think Ninevah. Im not going to do all your research.

Here are some examples of hieroglyphics:






I cant find the original.. here is a computerized version of the Tura steele:



Anyway..the last question.. why is there so much debate if it is that straight forward? The short answer you dont want to hear? There isnt. There is debate on the details. Because the details didnt make it into the records. No one bothered to write down HOW they were doing what they were doing. Only WHAT, if that. And again, they arent a people that thought like we did today. Things we consider important, they didnt. Things we think are ridiculously banal to write down, they kept studious records of. So we might have a list of every high priest of a certain temple for hundreds of years.. we might not know what the temples services were dedicated to in particular (beyond a certain god).

But, getting back to my "short answer". There isnt real debate on the pyramids. We know their names, who built them, etc. There are gaps in knowledge, but "worship of the gaps" is not a proper way of going about explanations.

As always, I recommend getting real books on the topic but if one limits oneself to the internet the following links are pretty good:

http://guardians.net/hawass/buildtomb.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egypt...ilders_01.shtml


Increasingly Egyptian archeology is finally being taken over by Egyptians.

Anything by Zahi Hawass is worth reading, though he does have an agenda which occasionally clouds his judgement in my opinion.

Since it isnt my area of expertise I asked my Uni professor for a quick link and rebuttal. He sent me this:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheEloquentPeasant

Scroll down to the Aug. 24, 2007 post for a GREAT, relatively short article on the topic by a specialist.

A very interesting and informative article. I have to take issue with one point that the writer makes. He states that the Pyramids at Giza were not intended to portray the stars in Orion's belt and this similarity is just a coincidence.
I think that the Pyramids were indeed modelled on Orion's belt as the stars of the heavens were an important part of their religion and culture. When the stars were in a certain alignment it told the Egyptians when to plant and harvest their crops etc. To the Egyptians the stars were their calender and were indeed very important in maintaining their lifestyles and also incorporated into their various Religious ceremonies and practices. There is also the question of the small shafts within the great Pyramid which, has been determined, line up with, I believe, Sirius.( It may be another star but I have a faint recollection that it was indeed Sirius).

Well, you (I) can't argue with that. But your comments seem to solve a lot of questions that seem to be still asked by other researchers with differing opinions. I wonder why they have not come to the same conclusion if the documentary evidence is so easy to see? I presume the size of your town of builders will cater for the huge numbers of workers that were needed, some estimates i have seen have been 100,000 workers/slaves over 20 to 40 years?
I also presume there is evidence that the quarry you talk about was used to cut the stones, and not for some modifications or other works that may have been happening. I have to go to work now but I have read somewhere that the stones were quarried elsewhere, a long way awauy needing them to be shipped perhaps by boat? I will look tonight if i get a chance.

Just visiting..I can see youve been reading Hancock. I have a date in 45 minutes so I dont have time to respond now..but if you take..say..20 minutes of your own time you will find easy, sensible refutations to Hancocks nonsense. Sorry to be so blunt but Hancock is someone making millions of off peoples casual interests and it really bugs me. Honest, anonymous archeologists contribute to our real knowledge every day, every year and struggle to get grants. Yet, if they invoked mysticism, etc they would make much more money by appealing to peoples attraction to hocus pocus.

Dundee, the support structure and system of the pyramid builders is now well documented. Again, a cursory search in a good library will find articles on it. If you limit yourself to the internet you will find articles but you will have to be careful in finding the articles as so much is written by the "mystics" who want UFOs to have built the pyramids.
100,000 workers is what an ancient Greek wrote. The actual number seems to be between 20,000 and 25,000 workers, for 67 years (we know the years).

The quarries are often quite nearby. Some are a bit further, for example Tura, where finer stones were taken from. Remember the stones were not as large as people like to imagine. They are an average of 2.5 tons. The quarries are undoubtedly the ones used as they are written about, have marks, have writing, and even have stones still in place and holes where other stones were cut out.

Im not sure what you think I am answering that others are still arguing about.

The moving of the stones is still argued about. But the arguments are not magic vs. people..the arguments are: were rollers used or not? To what degree were oxen used? Other questions on this are not asked by legitimate researchers, but rather by people like Hancock. Remember, the roads leading to the pyramids have also been found. The tools have been found.

Other questions that are still debated: What was the exact meaning behind the pyramids? What kind of ramps etc were used in building them?

Also, some things have only been discovered in the past 15 or 20 years.. even when I was a student we didnt have answers..so if you read older books they will come across as unanswered: Who built them (slaves or workers? Workers, not slaves)? Where did they live (in a town at the base of the pyrmaids..part of the town now covered by Cairos suburbs)? Why did they stop building pyramids (looting, theft, desecration)?

Ok.. got to take a shower. Talk to you all later!

I purposely went and had my evening meal before responding to let my....level of agitation subside, unsure how to respond. Clearly you are a man who is very confidant in what you say. I have many times in my own argument in the defense of UFO sightings said that the testimony of credible witnesses must be given the belief that there positions deserve. This is how you make your living, so your testimony must be given the weight that your experience has earned.

However, comments like...
"sensible refutations to Hancocks nonsense."
"If you limit yourself to the internet"
"articles as so much is written by the "mystics""

I read them over and can make no criticism, you were being polite, and not critical. Yet, I am still agitated. You seem to disregard any ones opinion that differs to yours in this way, be it academic or the person next door. To be honest, i have hardly ever looked at anything about the pyramids on the internet. Most of what i have seen has simply been documentaries on television over the years, and a few articles in magazines and so on. I suspect many, perhaps most peoples opinions would be formed in the same way. Many of these documentaries I guess could well have been made by "the "mystics" who want UFOs to have built the pyramids" To be honest I cannot really comment, as i did not take the time to research there credibility. I find it doubtful that all those that have come before you that have had alternate ideas about this topic are mystics or people who's research is flawed. But, you are the expert in this, i am not so....
You as a credible researcher could make a documentary, and I suspect somewhere there would be another credible academic like yourself who may say in reference to your presentation, "sensible refutations to "Vetamur's" nonsense". I don't know?
But the bottom line is, you're arguments rarely seem to have any cracks in them. Still, I am left with a level of agitation that I cannot explain.
So I guess I will go put on my Mystics robe and do some more worthy Internet research on another subject,
as clearly the long mystery of the pyramids has been stamped "CASE CLOSED by VETAMUR"

Dundee.. I asked you politely, what do you still consider to be the mysteries of the pyramid?

You accuse me of not listening to opinions, etc.. yet, basically, you do the same thing. You dont like the answers so you leave.

You dont like my labeling Hancock as being nonsense? Then make an argument. Back it up. I have literally thousands of contemporary documents, thousands of C14 tests, DNA tests, etc to back me up. Hancock? He has a nice story. And its not "me" that is being back up. These arent my ideas. Im not an Egyptologist. The last class I took on Egyptology was...jeez.. probably 1996 besides a class I audited in..'99.

You dont like my comment about the internet. Im not about to apologize for that. Internet sites are not peer reviewed, are not edited, do not have to show any merit before being published. So it is rather difficult to find the trust worthy sites. I would think being interested in UFOlogy you of all people would recognize that. THIS is a UFO site and probably 90% of the stuff grabbed from the internet and discussed on this site, by BELIEVERS is dismissed as fake. So do I consider the internet a very reliable tool? No. It is a useful one.

And I am not about to apologize for my reference to mystics. I should have also included sensationalists.


You are frustrated with me. I can see that. You see me as an arrogant jerk, tossing about ideas I dont like at whim. If thats what you see, Im sorry. But here is what I am frustrated with: The scam artists. There are people who put their life into this topic. They go to universities with good programs. They learn hieroglyphics. They spend hundreds of hours doing that. They travel the globe looking at Egyptian artifacts, piecing together meaning (the globe because so much has been looted, stolen, bought, and otherwise taken out of Egypt). Then they go to Egypt. They spend countless hours under the burning Middle Eastern sun. They pay thousands of dollars in salaries to locals and thousands more in licenses to the Egyptian government. They risk threats and theft, their health and welfare..they spend weeks digging, often fruitlessly. When they find something then they spend months in the labs, testing, checking, cross referencing. Upon finding something considered new knowledge, they then spend weeks putting it together with their notes and calculations and send it to other people in the field. Should those people agree, finally the new finding gets published to little or no acclaim, rather we all just adjust our ideas on Egypt.

The work isnt sexy. It isnt Indian Jones. Its not Earth shattering, or romantic.. its HARD work. But the nameless archeologist is doing it to further human knowledge.

And then.. someone who has never even been to Egypt makes a documentary based on someones idea who has never done proper research and THAT is accepted as "fact" or "the current idea" by people eager to believe it.

THAT is frustrating. People want the sexy answers, they dont care how or why scientists know what they know. Three pyramids? Three stars? Sounds good, sounds mysterious! Oxen pulling stones? Boring. Aliens helping build the pyramids? Amazing! Written histories of the pyramids, a demonstratable progression in their building techniques? Yawn. THAT wont cut it on FOX!

sigh.

I am sorry for your frustration, it must be difficult indeed. But no one has questioned your integrity, no one has questioned your research.
But you still don't get it, and likely never will. I won't bother trying to explain further as i doubt it would get far.

Cheers

Let me add my opinion here and what I state has no actual evidence of being accurate it is just my opinion on the topic. Well the pyramids and the sphinx in my opinion are far far far greater of an age that 5,000 years, the condition of the pyramids and sphinx have been exposed to weather for 10's of thousands of years keeping in mind the amount of sand built up around the pyramids when they were first discovered would have to of been multiple floods of enormous proportion to leave so much sand and bury almost the entire structures. The condition of the pyramids and the conditions of the sphinx in comparison to other structures such as the great wall of china which supposedly date back to the same time period, it is obvious that the pyramids are in far greater damage meaning they are far older.

Am I mistaken or are you folk trying to date the Pyramids as being built at the same time as the Sphinx? That would be a mistake as Dr. Schoch has clearly shown through geological data, that the Sphinx is considerably older than anything else on the Giza Plateau. Just my humble opinion.

Zahi Hawass is a jerk who wont let scientist explore egyptians monuments as throughly as they could. I don't know if he is afraid they will find something or not or maybe that their older than egyptian civillization.