 Robert Temple states that the first time he went to Egypt and saw the Sphinx with his own eyes, he was deeply shocked because it looked nothing like a lion with a human head as we are so told to believe that this is what the Sphinx is. What the Sphinx is and what it originally was are two separate things. We see it as a monument of a lion with the head of the pharaoh, but at the same time we can sense that there is more. The arrival of knowledge and the substantial misunderstanding of the ancient things is an afterthought. We are willing and readily open to believe just about anything that our educators will tell us. It's nobody's fault that we are misguided in this way because we are misguided ourselves as a whole and therefore hindering our understanding as a collective species. The history of our people is in that of a hidden one. Nowhere does it say however that we can't find out these truths for ourselves. The problem is simply manifesting itself as time goes by with the incorporation of different cultures and their belief systems colliding with other well-established cultures. The documentation of these things within these cultures is a mismatch of events that are said to have occurred and glorified falsely in our willingness to believe in these things. Not them even having actually happened. The pre-dynastic period in Egyptian history is the time of the builders. The only problem is that we aren't dating this culture correctly. You simply must consider that the history of these things is far older than we ever thought possible and that the Great Sphinx was already in existence when the civilization known as the Ancient Egyptians emerged. In fact on the dream stele it tells us the Great Sphinx was a very ancient and derelict figure during the reemergence of our civilization in the Egyptian region. It even tells us they repaired it and repurposed it to make it look like the figure we see present today. Wait! Do you hear this? Robert Temple simply couldn't see a lion and it must be said that it probably was originally a depiction of Anubis but this is something that is completely up for debate. For one thing the back of the monument, the spine of the animal is flat. It neither rises nor falls along its length and striking contrast to the many representations of lions from ancient Egyptian art which commonly portrayed the animal with a hair mane, broad shoulders, and muscular sloping back. During the New Kingdom Pharaoh thought most of the fourth had the beast excavated from the desert sand and had it restored. This was around 2500 years ago and you must consider that to the Egyptians this thing was already ancient and in existence way before this culture emerged. The notion that this was a lion has seen later cultures like the Romans restore the huge paws to shape it like a lion. In fact it would appear that the restoration work carried out by both the dynastic Egyptians, Romans and even modern fixes are actively shaping this thing to look like a lion. Of course this is because we have assumed it was a lion in the first place when in actual fact it could have been anything at all from a jackal to a falcon and it's hard to see how we could ever know what it truly was as an original structure. The four paws may not have even been part of it originally. One leading theory proposed by Robert Temple suggests that the finks was not a lion but in fact was a jackal, a deity worshipped by the Egyptians and it is also a native species to the region and closely related to the Egyptian wolf. Strangely the precise breed as to Anubis is representing is unknown. It could be the Egyptian wolf or the jackal or may even be a breed that has since went extinct. Crazy but true. Of course Anubis was guardian of the dead in Egyptian cosmography with special provenance and power that he held between this life and the next. A highly worshiped and respected deity and also one that you would want to please for say passage into the afterlife. Temple recollects. As I looked at the sphinx that first time noting the straight back of the creature I was struck by the fact that I appeared to be staring at a dog. The more he thought about it the more since it made. Anubis guardian of the dead looming over this most famous and ancient of ceremonies. The iconography of the sphinx as a human headed beast was a comparatively late one in Egyptian art. The human headed sphinx is a motif in Egyptian art is really something that became popular in the middle kingdom only after about 2000 BC and was not a motif of the old kingdom contrary to popular belief and perhaps he has found a clue to this notion in an obscure journal published in 1897 by the German Egyptologist Ludwig Borchard. Mr. Borchard conducted a careful analysis of the paint stripes emanating from the back of the eyes of the sphinx and the pleading patterns visible on its headdress or Nimmis. Egyptian eye makeup and royal headwear were like all such trappings subject to fashionable trends. Borchard asked in which dynasty were the accoutrements seen on the sphinx in pharaonic fashion. Remember Borchard was fortunate that in his day the sphinx was still buried up to its neck in sand allowing for a closer scrutiny of the head than is possible now that the sphinx stands a full seven stories from the floor of the cleared sphinx pit. After careful examination of the stripe pattern running down the sides of the sphinx Nimmis Borchard concluded the following. The group stripes of the king's bonnet are only found during the 12th dynasty, perhaps only under Pharaoh Amonhet III because those pieces which are precisely dated and which have such an arrangement of stripes are all from his time. Egyptologists say Chefren from whom the case is strong though circumstantial, Chefren the 4th king of the 4th dynasty sought to have been the son or brother of Cheops whom antiquity has wrongly cited as the architect of the great pyramid of Giza. Chefren is also thought to have constructed a pyramid which like his predecessor still stands on the Giza Plateau. A long limestone causeway shoots down the plateau from this pyramid culminating in a cluster of megaliths which includes the sphinx and two strange temples, at least one of which the temple situated directly in front of the sphinx was apparently constructed from giant limestone blocks quarried out of the sphinx enclosure itself leading archaeologists to believe the two monuments were constructed in tandem. The problem is that there is no evidence that this temple was actually built by Chefren as it contains no identifying inscriptions or artifacts of any kind. The second temple however directly to the south of the sphinx and known as the Valley Temple was found to contain a magnificent diorite statue of Chefren and fragments of what may have been hundreds of others. In addition the roof of this valley temple opens up on the causeway that proceeds up the plateau to the pyramid attributed to Chefren. It is the sphinx's place among this mortuary complex of Chefren that has led archaeologists to assume that it too was built by the old kingdom pharaoh. Another tantalizing clue was found on the so-called dream Stila, a commemoration of the new kingdom restoration of the sphinx, placed between the paws of the sphinx by Thotmos IV himself. This Stila when originally excavated was found to contain the hieroglyphics representing the symbol KF and RA. Unfortunately those hieroglyphics along with much of the original inscription on this Stila have since flaked off leading to a fierce debate among scholars. Did they actually represent the name Chefren? If so in what context? As builder or only restorer no one knows for sure. Complicating matters still further some scientists have in recent decades presented evidence that the body of the sphinx is far older than the conventionally accepted date for Chefren's reign. Since of years older in fact these notions are vigorously disputed by archaeologists who cling to the circumstantial case for Chefren with a curious fervor. Egyptologist Peter A. Clayton and Chronicle of the Pharaohs sums up the prevailing view of such heresies. He states, Some recent nonsensical theories have suggested that the sphinx is many thousands of years older than the pyramids but there is no foundation for such fantasies. Some among these nonsensical theories are those proposed by geologist Robert M. Schach of Boston University. Schach who earned his PhD in geology and geophysics at Yale has personally conducted a number of extensive geologic surveys of the sphinx and its enclosure. To the dismay of most Egyptologists Schach claims that there is evidence of heavy precipitation over prolonged periods of time on the sphinx. The problem as Schach maintains is that the Giza Plateau has not been subject to these kinds of rains since before pre-dynastic times. A time when the inhabitants of the Nile Valley and indeed the world are thought to have lived the primitive existence of stone age hunter gatherers with hardly any conscious ability to evoke the imaginative thinking that is necessary for such undertakings. What we are witness to here is the crossover of existence and therein lies the confusion. These very ancient things were already here when civilization emerged again. We simply repurposed them. What do you guys think of this anyway? Comments below and as always thank you for watching.