The tunnels and chambers of the Great Sphinx of Giza Part 2 - Death and Resurrection

The 19th Century

In 1798, during Napoleon's Egyptian expedition, his savants examined and partially cleared the Great Sphinx of Giza. A particularly magnificent depiction of the Great Sphinx from Description de l'Égypte (a series of books released between 1809-29 that recorded their discoveries during their time in Egypt) reveals an interesting yet often overlooked detail. A person can be seen digging on the back of the Sphinx almost exactly at the point of the fissure that Helfricch and Von Haimendorff had speculated was an entrance to the hollow head and that Vansleb had later identified as the burial place of Pliny's King Harmais (see The Tunnels and Chambers of the Great Sphinx 1 - Origins).

In the years that followed, a rumour emerged that Napoleon's team were forced to finish their investigations shortly after finding a door that led into the interior of the Great Sphinx.

So when Giambattista Caviglia excavated the Sphinx in 1817 that is exactly what he set out to find.

Henry Salt who was present during Caviglia's excavations recorded:

From various reports in circulation in Egypt I was given to understand, that the French engineers had made a considerable excavation in front of the Sphinx, and that they had just discovered a door at the time, when they were compelled to suspend their operations...[it was reported ] that the door led into the body of the Sphinx ; while others affirmed, that it conducted up to the Second Pyramid. Though little stress could be laid upon such statements, yet they rendered Capt. Caviglia very unwilling to give up his researches without at least doing all in his power to ascertain the fact.

To this end he first began to open a deep trench on the left, or northern, side, opposite the shoulder of the statue..." ((p108-109) The Sphinx. An account of M. Caviglia's Excavations in 1818 taken from the papers of the late Mr Salt. in Operations Carried on at the Pyramids of Gizeh in 1837 With an Account of a Voyage Into Upper Egypt and an Appendix Vol .3 (1842) by Howard Vyse)

And we have this account of Caviglia's excavations on the north side of the Sphinx in search of the door:

in digging a very deep trench on the left, or northern side, near the shoulder...he ascertained that the external surface of the body below was composed of irregular shaped stones...and that the joints mentioned by some authors were nothing more than veins in the stones. (Art. VIII.- Observations relating to some of the Antiquities of Egypt, from the Papers of the late Mr. Davison. Published in Walpole's Memoirs. 1817., London Quarterly Review (1818) Vol. xix)

No door was found and in the end, the hole in the head was confirmed to conform to Colonel Coutelle's report:

“The head, with an opening in its skull, which is about 7 feet deep, was cleared...."** (“A Description of Giambattista Caviglia's Excavation of the Sphinx" by Annibale Brandi (1823))

The tales of tunnels, chambers, burials and gateways appear to have been temporarily laid to rest by Caviglia's investigations. And, as more detailed information from the reports of Caviglia's excavations seeped into Europe, more sober speculations started to be made regarding the Sphinx.

In 1835 Sir John Gardner Wilkinson made a more moderate judgment of the hole in the head of the Sphinx, identifying it as an architectural feature that would have allowed a crown to be fitted to the monument in antiquity:

“The cap of the Sphinx, probably the pshent, has long since been removed, but a cavity in the head attests its former position, and explains the mode in which it was fixed.” (Topography of Thebes, and General View of Egypt (1835), p331)

By the 1850s the fantasy was over, the Sphinx had yielded to excavation, study, and brutal examination and finally revealed one of its secrets. It was not hollow, it contained no tunnels or secret chambers or burials.

Resurrection

Auguste Mariette re-excavated the Great Sphinx in the 1850s. He verified Colonel Coutelle's and Caviglia's discoveries regarding the hole in the head:

While climbing on the top of the head of the sphinx, one notes that a vertical hole, one meter wide, one and a half meters deep, has been made there...The hole is intended to receive the symbolic headdress which, according to the holidays to be celebrated, was adapted on the head of the sphinx...Many Egyptian statues, especially among the colossi, have similar holes. (Le Sérapéum de Memphis Auguste Mariette (1882) p.95)

But an 1855 article from a French journal, Athenaeum Francais, provided a brief, but exciting account of another aspect of Mariette's excavation of the Sphinx:

In the back and towards the rump of the statue, Mr. Mariette recognized the vertical well whose existence had already been pointed out by Vansleb and Pockocke, who thought that one could enter this way into the existing apartments, according to their supposition, in the interior of the colossus. This well, explored with care, presented in its bottom a roughly cut chamber, which was in reality only a natural crack widened by human hands. In this room lay a few fragments of wood which spread [gave off?] while burning a strong smell of resin, which would tend to make believe that this wood came from a sarcophagus. (translated from the French by Google translate) (Excavations of Monsieur Mariette at the Great Sphinx, Athenaeum Francais, Vol4 (1855) p391-2 )

Vansleb's original conjecture of a burial within the fissure - an idea that seemed to have been laid to rest first by Caviglia, and then rather brutally by Vyse - was dramatically and literally rekindled. The tale was resurrected, refusing to die.

At the very end of the 19th century CE, Ludwig Borchardt, a German Egyptologist who would later discover the bust of Nefertiti in Amarna, used the evidence from Mariette's excavations provided in the Athenaeum Francais to conclude that there must have once been a mastaba tomb structure covering the fissure entrance to the burial chamber below. He argued that the mastaba must have been cleared away during the creation of the Great Sphinx - an event that he attributed to the 12th dynasty pharaoh Amenemhat III - leaving the exposed shaft in the back of the Sphinx:

“...the occurrence of two [?] vertical shafts on the back of the Sphinx, one of which ended in a burial chamber in which coffin boards were found. From this it can be concluded that a mastaba existed earlier on the back of the Sphinx.” (p759 Über das Alter des Sphinx bei Giseh by Ludwig Borchardt in the journal Sitzungsberichte der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, Vol.35, 1897)

The 20th Century

George Reisner excavated the Valley Temple of Menkaure's pyramid complex in 1908-1910. His discoveries there, particularly the magnificent triad statues of Menkaure that were preserved under a thick covering of flood-borne mud, drew attention back to the Giza plateau and the Sphinx.

In 1913 a literally incredible article appeared in the Sphere newspaper in the UK with the headline, "Remarkable Discoveries within the Sphinx". The article appeared in the March 22 edition of that year on pages 302-303 accompanied by a spectacular drawing entitled "Diagrammatic view of the discoveries recently made of hidden temples with the Sphinx"*** The image, attributed to the pseudonymous G. Bron (William Brown Treeby b.1853 -d.1940), showed a cutaway section of the Great Sphinx with two chambers in the head and a further massive temple in the body. The original image was annotated with details such as: "The Main temple filling the body of the Sphinx & connected by tunnels with other temples & tombs in various directions"; "The first of a connected series of Temples (dedicated to the Sun) in the head & body of the Sphinx".

The accompanying article on the preceding page claimed:

Extraordinary interest is reported from Egypt concerning the discovery by Professor G. A. Reisner that the head of the Sphinx is the antechamber of a great series of temples...A depression had previously been observed in the top of the head of the Sphinx, but it seems that Professor Reisner was the first man who realised what this might lead to...the explorer found himself in a chamber 60 ft long and 14 ft wide, which constituted a little temple complete in itself, yet, connecting through a tunnel running down the neck, with a far mightier temple occupying the entire body of the monster...The head...must have been the holy of holies of the greater temple below. The main temple is comparatively spacious, extending even below the body of the Sphinx, itself filled with columns, engraved in ancient figures, and adorned with gold and figures of the gods....an inclined plane leads from the head to the great Temple of the Sun below...other planes lead to a great subterranean city, which probably was once inhabited but has been buried in the sand so long as to be absolutely forgotten...

One year later an illustration, clearly based on the drawing by G.Bron, appeared in a book entitled "Scenario of the Photodrama of Creation" by Charles Taze Russell. Charles was the president of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society (now known as Jehovah's Witnesses).

Around the same time Edgar Cayce, famously linked a yet undiscovered Hall of Records built by an Atlantean civilisation to the Great Sphinx of Giza. His evidence was derived from a series of clairvoyant readings that were recorded from 1901-1944.

The fire, relit by the tenuous reports of a burial found in Mariette's excavations, had now re-ignited the 16th-18th century tales of tunnels and chambers within the Great Sphinx with an explosive mix of modern-day journalism, religion and spiritualism.

Two further discoveries made later in the 20th century continued to fan the flames of speculation albeit in a much less dramatic fashion.

Excavations by Émile Baraize and Pierre Lacau

During excavation and restoration work at the Great Sphinx in the 1920s-30s, Émile Baraize and Pierre Lacau of the Egyptian Antiquities Service left a photographic record of what they uncovered but sadly no formal report of their discoveries. The photographic record, usually referred to as the Archives Lacau, has only recently been made available to the wider public via the online ARCE Sphinx Project 1979-1983 Archive. In the collection of images, there are none that record the incredible discoveries claimed by the Sphere newspaper in 1913. However, there are some that clearly show a cavity on the north-facing side of the Sphinx and what appears to be a tunnel entrance on the south side. There is virtually nothing known about these curious features as they were subsequently covered over during the restoration works carried out at the time.

In addition to covering over these poorly recorded features, Baraize and Lacau also sealed the cavity on the head and also the natural fissure across the back of the Great Sphinx with concrete, although leaving maintenance holes in the features to allow restricted access to a few.

ARCE SPHINX PROJECT (1979-1983)

The Arce Sphinx Project (1979-1983) ushered in a new era of scientific rigour to the study of the Great Sphinx.

According to their webpage:

The ARCE SPHINX PROJECT (1979-1983) aimed to produce scale drawings (plans and elevations) of the Great Sphinx of Giza, where no scale drawings of this unique monument had been produced before...Objectives included elevations, profiles, and a detailed master plan of the Sphinx, detailed section and profile drawings showing the masonry restorations added to the statue, topographical maps of the Sphinx ditch and larger quarry, and maps of the structural geology of the site, showing stratification and faults.

Remote Sensing

Continuing in this long history of speculation and conjecture regarding chambers and tunnels linked to the Sphinx various new scientific methods were used to try and find yet undiscovered chambers around the Great Sphinx towards the end of the 20th century. Zahi Hawass, quoted on the Nova/PBS webpage Online Responses to Your Questions (posted February 10, 1997), neatly summarises the various remote sensing projects that have been carried out at the Great Sphinx between 1977-96:

"Florida State University, on behalf of the Schor Expedition, carried out a remote sensing survey around the Sphinx and elsewhere on the plateau for three weeks in April 1996. They claimed to have found "rooms and tunnels" in front of the Sphinx and running from the rear of the Sphinx. Several other projects have made similar claims:

SRI International did an electrical resistivity and acoustical survey in 1977-78.

In 1987 a Japanese team from Waseda University (Tokyo), under the direction of Sakuji Yoshimura carried out an electromagnetic sounding survey of the Khufu Pyramid and Sphinx. They reported evidence of a tunnel oriented north-south under the Sphinx, a water pocket 2.5 to 3 m below the surface near the south hind paw, and another cavity near the north hind paw.

In 1991 a team consisting of geologist Robert Schoch (Boston University), Thomas Dobecki, and John Anthony West carried out a survey of the Sphinx using seismic refraction, refraction tomography, and seismic reflection. The investigators interpreted their data to indicate shallower subsurface weathering patterns toward the back and deeper weathering toward the front, which they take to indicate that the back of the Sphinx and its ditch were carved by Khafre later than the front. They interpret their data to likewise indicate subsurface cavities in front of the front left paw, and from the left paw back along the south flank.

In 1992 Imam Marzouk and Ali Gharib from the Egyptian National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics carried out a study of the ground below the Sphinx using shallow seismic refraction. Their evidence indicated the subsurface rock is composed of four layers and no faulting. They report no evidence of cavities."

And that is where things remain today at this time of writing.

Could there really be yet undiscovered chambers inside the Sphinx, or beneath it or around it? Was King Harmais buried inside it as Pliny the Elder once described? If you believe Edgar Cayce, or everything that you read in the newspapers, then the answer to the former must be yes. If not, the evidence presented here is sometimes unclear, sometimes unreliable, sometimes conflicting but sometimes it feels just tantalising enough to suggest at least the possibility of discoveries yet to be made.