Major Geological Fissure through Prehistoric Lion Monument at Giza Inspired Split Lion Hieroglyphs and Ancient Egypt’s Creation Myth

Manu Seyfzadeh,Robert M Schoch

doi:10.4236/ad.2019.74011

Abstract

In search of textual references to a monumental lion at Giza predating the Old Kingdom, we focused our investigation on the earliest use of three ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs depicting the frontal and caudal halves of a lion and a fissure-like symbol. These symbols first appear in Egypt’s proto- and early dynastic era and form part of Egypt’s earliest known set of written language symbols. During the First Dynasty, these symbols were both carved into ivory tags and painted onto jars to designate the quality of oil shipped as grave goods to both royal and private tombs. The same iconography and symbols appear in the creation story recorded on the frieze and upper register of the Edfu Temple’s enclosure wall, where the frontal and caudal animal parts are used to name two of seven personified creation words, the so-called d3jsw1, uttered during the act of creating the world from the primordial flood Mehit-wrt by Ptah. Here, we show that the appearance of such unusual icons in such different contexts can be explained by a prominent physical feature (a geological fissure) affecting the appearance of the Great Sphinx, thus demonstrating that the original monument including this feature existed before these hieroglyphs were invented. We have previously argued that the Great Sphinx was remodeled from the much older monumental lioness Mehit. Here, we provide further evidence that this monument existed in the form of a lion or lioness at least seven centuries before the time of Khafre (circa 2500 B.C.E.) challenging the conventional model which attributes the original creation of the Great Sphinx to this Old Kingdom ruler.

Highlights

The original creation of the Great Sphinx monument on the Giza Plateau (Egypt) is commonly attributed to the fourth king of ancient Egypt’s Fourth Dynasty, Khafre and is dated to circa 2500 B.C.E. (Reisner, 1912: p. 13; Hassan, 1949: p. 88; Ricke, 1970: p. 32; Lehner, 1991: pp. 405-411; Hawass, 1993: pp. 180-182; Lehner & Hawass, 2017: pp. 240-241)
We provide further evidence that this monument existed in the form of a lion or lioness at least seven centuries before the time of Khafre challenging the conventional model which attributes the original creation of the Great Sphinx to this Old Kingdom ruler
If our reconstruction of the native-Buto meaning and sound (“ba-bu”) of the JAW Sign is correct, it further supports our theory that the JAW Sign-over-Mehit, an originally native-Buto construct was concretely meant to depict a key, literally an opener, inserted into a facility in the shape of a monumental lioness, located, as we have argued, at Giza long before Khafre

Summary

Introduction

The original creation of the Great Sphinx monument on the Giza Plateau (Egypt) is commonly attributed to the fourth king of ancient Egypt’s Fourth Dynasty, Khafre and is dated to circa 2500 B.C.E. (Reisner, 1912: p. 13; Hassan, 1949: p. 88; Ricke, 1970: p. 32; Lehner, 1991: pp. 405-411; Hawass, 1993: pp. 180-182; Lehner & Hawass, 2017: pp. 240-241). Such a distant prehistoric time for the original carving of this monument, as suggested by the lines of evidence cited above, precedes the currently known advent of writing in the Nile Valley and Delta by thousands of years. Any written reference to a megalithic lion monument at Giza dated to a time before the reign of Khafre, while not indicative of the date of its original creation, powerfully falsifies the orthodox model with recorded evidence handed to us by the ancient Egyptians themselves and neutralizes most if not all of the other, less compelling, archeological or conjectural evidence brought forth in support of the Reisner/Hassan/Ricke/Lehner/Hawass model which proposes that Khafre was its original builder

Results

Discussion

Conclusion