Ben van Kerkwyk
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
I mean, it's been talked about, even like, again, we go back to Diodorus Siculus and Strabo and Herodotus, they talked about the Sphinx being vastly older.
They're hearing things about it being older.
Gaston Maspero and a lot of the archaeologists, the early explorers for that region also mentioned it being 12 plus thousand years old, it being this ancient monument.
And there's strong evidence to support that in that, I mean, you have statues of Sphinxes that predate Khafra.
Like, so when he apparently built it, like there's already, we see statues and imitations of Sphinx.
There's also lions, um,
Before that time, you have what's called the inventory stelae or the stelae of Khufu's daughter, which was a statue that Khufu being Khafre's father.
So Khufu, Great Pyramid, Khafre, Middle Pyramid.
This is rarely acknowledged, but it tells the story that Khufu was trying to repair the Sphinx and dig it out of the sand.
He's Khafre's father, so this could be older.
But also the name, like the oldest name for the Sphinx is Vruti.
And it's the two lions.
It's Sekhmet and what's the name of the other lion?
I can't, I have it here.
I can't remember the name of the other lion god, but it literally means two lions and gate.
So it's like this lion's gate.
It's guarding a gate.
But this is one of the oldest names for it.