Zahi Hawass on archaeology: what the evidence says · JRE #2321
SUBJECT: ARCHAEOLOGY
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
He came to the Sphinx and he worked with us for a season. And he came and we published many articles that the erosion that you see outside and inside the Sphinx is from wind and not from water.
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
The geologist Hawass refers to is K. Lal Gauri, whose peer-reviewed work argued against Robert Schoch's claim that the Sphinx is thousands of years older based on ancient rainfall, and it did support a conventional pharaonic date. But Gauri and the mainstream account do not conclude the erosion is from wind and not water: the leading explanation, described by Egyptologist Mark Lehner, is that intermittent wet periods dissolved salts in the limestone, which recrystallized and caused softer stone to crumble, with wind then blowing away the loosened flakes (Smithsonian). Moisture, whether from dew, groundwater, or wet-dry climate cycles, is central to this salt-crystallization mechanism, so wind alone is not the cause. Separate research shows wind erosion can shape natural sphinx-like landforms (yardangs) that humans may later have carved, but that too works alongside water and rock composition, not instead of water (Science News). Framing the mainstream position as wind and not water oversimplifies it: what geologists actually reject is Schoch's prolonged prehistoric rainfall and early dating, not the role of water or moisture in the weathering. This claim is misleading.