Sphinx Mystery [Paperback]

This book is full of information about the sphinx and its surrounding structures that has been compiled by an enormous amount of work by the author. Every person who reads this book will learn some new things, and correct some of their misconceptions about the sphinx. It is inspiring to encounter a researcher who has the abilities to find information from so many different sources--where none of them involve the Internet. His data is based on keen on-site observation, historical documentation, and measurable analysis. The book is mostly written well, and it is a fun and rewarding read. Temple's analysis is creative and gives the reader a lot of things to think about.

Temple does offer many speculations that the reader can ponder. The book is not perfect, and I do not agree with several of Temple's conclusions. For example, after undertaking a fascinating analysis of the Sphinx Temple and its adjacent Valley Temple, the author points out much evidence regarding water weathering due to filling and emptying the moat from the Nile river, the buildings' functional purposes, and underground chamber placement. However, he doesn't mention anything about how the granite block in the Valley Temple are cut to fit the already weathered, and much larger, limestone blocks.

Thus, one of the major arguments presented by John West and Robert Shoch are not considered when Temple dismisses the rainfall theory of the weathering. The author apparently considers the interior granite blocks to have been in existence since the origin of the Valley Temple, which does not seem to fit the on-site evidence. And even though the author is fully aware of other megalithic structures across the world, they are not considered here at all.

In addition, the author simply states that he is not an expert on the climate history of the Giza plateau, and does not even consider this worthy of analysis. This is not an insignificant point, because much of Temple's view regarding Egyptian textual interpretation depends on the Giza plateau being a somewhat sandy desert for several centuries or millenia prior to 3000 BC.

It also seems illogical at times to ascribe high knowledge and understanding to the middle and new kingdom Egyptian priests, and then at other times, to assume a very low level of understanding and petty and/or egotistical behavior that it inconsistent with highly enlightened and spiritually adept priestly initiates.

Another shortcoming of the book is that it does not present the exact date at which the author would place the building of the Giza plateau; rather, it only gives the opinion that it must precede 2700 BC by several centuries. The author makes many references to his forthcoming book, which is titled "Egyptian Dawn." This book will apparently provide Temple's opinion on this matter as well as many others. This is somewhat annoying because it leaves Temple's conclusions on certain issues in limbo. Nonetheless, it is a given that the reader will certainly read this next book when it is published.

The book would have read better if Temple would have stated his thesis and conclusion to each section at the first of the section, rather than forcing the reader to explore whole chapters and then lead up to the climax at the end. Sometimes, this made me impatient for the author to just get straight to the point.

There are many long picture captions that strain the eyes a little, but the captions are at least fully explained. The text does an excellent job of referencing the numbers of the figures and the pages where they occur--and there are lots and lots of pictures and figures!

For those readers interested in Temple's analysis of the Anubis-Sphinx-Sirius connection, it should be mentioned that the author does not mention this at all. Perhaps this will be addressed in his next book. In fact, Sirius is mentioned only once in passing.

It would also have been helpful if Temple would have considered the shamanic interpretation of the relevant Egyptian texts, such as that presented by Jeremy Naydler's book, "Shamanic Wisdom in the Pyramid Texts," rather than only the funerary interepretation.

Altough the book has several shortcomings, is still an excellent read for everybody.

Every once in a while, I go on an "alternative" history binge, reading a book that's supposed to turn the common knowledge of history on its ear. This time, when that urge hit me, I picked up Robert Temple's (along with his wife Olivia) The Sphinx Mystery, a book subtitled "The Forgotten Origins of the Sanctuary of Anubis." It's quite an interesting book, though it tails off at the end and becomes a bit of a slog to get through. Still, I persevered and was rewarded. Temple makes his case well. While I don't know enough about Egyptology to definitively say that Temple is right or wrong, the book is certainly plausible. It has its fun moments as well.

Yes, I did say "Sanctuary of Anubis" in the last paragraph. One of the obvious things about the Sphinx is that the head is much too small for the huge body that it's sitting on top of. Was it recarved into a pharaoh's image? If so, whose? Temple not only makes the case for who actually did the recarving, but he also his an interesting theory about what the Sphinx was before this. He states that the Giza plateau, where all of the Great Pyramids sit and where the Sphinx sits just off to the side, is a sacred entrance to the realm of the dead, and that the Sphinx is the guardian of that entrance. While the Sphinx is commonly described as having the body of a lion, Temple says there is no way that this is a lion. Instead, it's a giant statue of the god Anubis, the dog/jackal that deals with those crossing over from the living to the dead. He proposes that the statue was disfigured during the 150 years of chaos between the Old and the Middle Kingdom of Egypt, and that a pharaoh decided to make it his own face instead.

The cover of the book is interesting, with a picture (both on the front and on the spine) showing how easily the Sphinx converts to a dog figure , along with a huge picture of the Sphinx's face, a picture he uses later on in the book to compare with a statue of the pharaoh he says did the revamping. Temple continues the wonderful use of pictures by cramming the book with a huge number of valuable photographs, both old and new. Wonderfully, each picture has a huge caption where Temple describes what you're seeing and the relevance to the point he's making. These photos range from those taken in the 1800s by the various expeditions who unburied the Sphinx from the drifting desert sands to those taken in the 1900s when the Sphinx was finally uncovered for good. Finally, we get photos taken by Temple himself, or his wife, when they were given almost unprecedented access to the Sphinx, the Sphinx Temple and the various landmarks around the Giza plateau. These pictures illustrate Temple's arguments beautifully and they're interesting to look at, too.

If the Sphinx as Anubis was the only idea presented in the book, it would still be a radical (though short) book. Temple then takes on those who have tried to establish the age of the Sphinx, especially those (like Edward Malkowski in Before the Pharaohs) who want to use the various water erosion signs to date the Sphinx to earlier than 10,000 BC. He claims that there is a good reason for all of the water erosion that would still make the Sphinx only date back around 4000 years or so. The Nile river flowed near Giza back in ancient Egypt, and would regularly flood every year. He claims that there is a channel around the Sphinx so that, for religious reasons, the Sphinx was an island unto itself for a large part of the year. Water flowed in and out of what he calls the "Sphinx Moat", either from the river itself or from collected rainwater (there was much more rain in Egypt back then) that the Egyptians funneled into the moat. The constant inflow and outflow of water into this moat accounts for the water erosion. It's a fascinating theory for those who are familiar with the other arguments.

There is a lot more in The Sphinx Mystery that is interesting, though it does seem to get a lot more tedious when Temple begins talking the geometry of the "Golden Angle" and how prevalent its use was by the Egyptians, as well as getting into the geometry of resurrection and how the Sphinx (and the whole of Giza) was involved in all of this. By this point, however, Temple has you hooked. If you're not hooked, you wouldn't have made it this far to begin with. The book finishes with a long section with every documented mention of the Sphinx from Roman times to 1837, then moving on to a short article on the age of the Sphinx and various accounts of excavations of the site.

One thing I loved about The Sphinx Mystery was Temple's writing style and his crankiness. Twice in the first 100 pages, he goes off on a tangent about the failures of the modern educational system. He claims that Egyptology is dying because nobody is teaching it well (and if they are, nobody's learning it). He decries the over-specialization of today's historians, the "consensus reality" we all live in, where we all believe the same thing and nothing can alter our views because we're too lazy to have our eyes opened. This also leads to "consensus blindness", where people can take what's right in front of their face and try to rationalize it to fit their belief rather than allowing what they "know" to be proven wrong. There are constant asides to this sort of thing throughout the book, where he chastises current thinking for not believing the evidence he says is right in front of their face.

This sort of arrogance made the book worth reading to me, as I was constantly picturing Temple as the old man grumbling about all the kids tracking all over his lawn. However, what also made the book worth reading is the logical nature of Temple's argument as he traces it from the beginning to the end. A lot of mysterious references from old texts make sense once they are applied to Temple's ideas, which does add credence to them. Whether or not Temple is right in his theories, the way he presents his case makes The Sphinx Mystery an interesting book if you're into Egyptology. I found it has rekindled my interest in the subject and should be read. It may wash the consensus blindness from your eyes.

Originally published on Curled Up With a Good Book © David Roy, 2009

The "complete" review/listing of everthing ever written in regard to the Sphinx - for me too much of the historical review (one can just skip over those areas if so inclined!), but still very worthwhile for new insights/explanations and bringing back to public attention things already discovered about the Sphinx (inner/lower chambers, inscriptions, original likeness and even a good case for the correct pharoah who had it re-carved). Highly recommend for the specialist or the lay reader. Quite the "hefty tome", but a must read if one intends to comment intelligently on the Sphinx and it's "checkered" history. The Egyptologists should read what the "professional" Egyptologists have forgotten/ignored.