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.
This is why Herodotus, the father of the history history when he came to Egypt in the middle of the 5th century BC he never talked about the things
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
Herodotus devotes much of Book II of the Histories to Egypt, including detailed descriptions of the Giza pyramids, yet never mentions the Great Sphinx, an omission scholars describe as astonishing. Hawass's explanation, that the Sphinx was buried in sand and therefore not visible, is a leading account: the monument was repeatedly engulfed by desert sand, documented from the Dream Stele of Thutmose IV (around 1400 BC) through its 1818 and 1926 excavations, and one review notes it was largely buried in sand around Herodotus's time. That said, the buried-in-sand reason is one hypothesis rather than settled fact, and other scholars attribute the silence to Herodotus's limited interest in such statuary or to doubts about how much he saw firsthand. The core claim that Herodotus never mentioned the Sphinx is correct; the stated reason is a plausible but debated explanation.