The Great Pyramid and the Sphinx are the two iconic images of ancient Egypt, and have always been of the deepest possible interest to Masonry. Why? No one has ever penetrated to the heart of the mystery of the Sphinx: what is it, or should I say, what was it? Whose face is on it? What does it represent? Why is it there? Why is it in a deep pit rather than on a height where it can be seen properly? It is still the world’s largest stone statue but it is tucked away mostly below ground level, which doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. And curiously, the head is much too small for the body. Is it original?
     I have spent years studying and commenting on ancient technology, including some years working with Dr. Joseph Needham on ancient Chinese technology where we discovered that much had been misunderstood and misrepresented. The fruits of this research was presented in my book The Genius of China. I also found almost four hundred optically ground lenses in archaeological collections around the world, lenses which were used to start sacred fires ‘Fire from Heaven’, used to correct vision defects (a monocle from Nineveh), or used for surveying instruments or even an early telescope (a pair of lenses which scratch-marks seemingly from a mounting). I presented this evidence in my book The Crystal Sun.
     These lenses had languished in collections as oddities labelled as ‘religious artifacts’. No one had thought to try them out in magnifying. When I held them and showed the curators how they would magnify, they were astounded. No one had ever suggested such a thing. ‘Consensus Blindness’ I called it, which is a blindness by consent amongst experts in the field.
     Ancient Egypt has not escaped this blindness. But even worse, it has led archaeologists unknowingly - or wilfully – to destroy or cover up the evidence. Especially so when that evidence moves far from the beliefs of modern scholars.
     When my wife Olivia and I first stood and looked at the Sphinx we realised: it never had the body of a lion, and its head is not original. We just didn’t see a lion, we saw a dog. Perhaps it is because we are dog-lovers, but there was a gigantic dog crouching before us as guardian of the necropolis. But it had a tiny pimple of a head, with a man’s face carved on it, which was obviously added later, having been carved from a stump of the original head.
     In our researches over many years, involving official access also to locked areas of the Giza Plateau such as the Sphinx Temple which are never entered by tourists, I have been able to solve one mystery: which Pharaoh’s face is on the re-carved head of the Sphinx. He is Pharaoh Amenemhet II of the Middle Kingdom, who is not a pharaoh who was ever suggested before by anyone, and in any case, most experts just assume the head is original, so it must be an earlier pharaoh of the Old Kingdom.
     But most important, I researched the question of the physical structure of the Sphinx, why is the head too small? And why was it not mentioned in early texts? Why did the historian Herodotus for example not mention it? What was the meaning of the repairs carried out supposedly a few hundred years after it was built? Why have archaeologists never been able to find any early references to the structure? In fact, it is because they did not realise what the Sphinx was. Had they done so, they should have found the references in very early texts indeed.

The Original Sphinx

The Sphinx’s body is strange. His back is straight, and he has no rising massive chest and mane as a lion must have. It is the body of a dog, and the Sphinx was originally a statue of a crouching dog, image of the god Anubis, who was the guardian of the sacred necropolis. By recognising the Sphinx as Anubis, I have been able to find all the ancient texts and representations from the Old Kingdom period referring to him. There are several representations of the giant Sphinx carved on the walls of tombs of the children of the Pharaoh Cheops at Giza, just at the foot of the Great Pyramid.
     In the Pyramid Texts of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties, (around 2000 BC) he is even described as being beside a causeway at Giza, which is indeed the case. The text says: ‘… you have descended as a jackal of Upper Egypt, as Anubis … May you stand up at the causeway of Geb [the earth god, based at the foot of Giza, where the Sphinx is situated] who presides … O King, your shape is hidden like that of Anubis on his belly …’ (Utterances 659 and 677) Furthermore, the Sphinx sits in a pit beside the Khafre (Chephren) Causeway leading up from the traditional entrance of the Giza Plateau to the Pyramid of Khafre (the middle pyramid).
     Suddenly, the lack of any mention at all of the Sphinx in ancient times is replaced by a profuse number of references to him, which had merely not been recognised.
     But why was the Sphinx, or Anubis, is a pit in the ground? And why do the stones on the side of the pit show erosion patterns from flowing water? Is it because the Sphinx was built so long ago that Egypt was a wet and rainy country? There is no reason to accept this argument. In fact, there was a very good reason for its siting.
     The limestone from the pit was used for the construction of the pyramids, but that was not the reason, it merely made it easier. Anubis, the original Sphinx, was intended to sit in a moat surrounded by water. It is referred to frequently in the most ancient texts as ‘Jackal Lake’.
     I found and photographed lots of surviving visual evidence of the ancient bolt-holes and counter-weight slots for the ancient sluice gates which were used to control the inflow of the Nile Inundation water into the Sphinx Moat. In those days, the Nile at the annual Inundation rose to the level of the door of the Sphinx Temple, which sits in front of the Sphinx and whose back (western) wall forms the fourth wall of the moat. There is no communication between the Sphinx Temple and the Sphinx, because the wall had to be solid to keep the water in. The obvious water erosion in the Sphinx Moat is not due to ‘ancient rain’, as sometimes suggested, but is the result of the Moat and the dredging of the windblown sand, with the resultant water pouring down the sides repeatedly.
     Crucial sacred ceremonies took place there, including the washing of the entrails of the deceased pharaohs; after their deaths the entrails were removed from the mummies and preserved in jars.
     Most important of all, the king’s heart had to be washed in Jackal Lake inside its jar, it seems, not exposed to view as part of the purification of the body and a revivification of the heart prior to resurrection. The traditional nickname for Osiris, god of the resurrected dead, was ‘Weary Heart’. To be ‘weary’ was a euphemism for being dead, just as today we say ‘passed on’ for ‘died’. The pharaoh’s ‘weary heart’ was washed in the waters of life in Jackal Lake and revived, and the spirit of the pharaoh could then ascend to heaven and become a glorified spirit known as an akh.

Esoteric Design

I have been able to establish the relationship between the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid. In fact, all three of the main Giza pyramids and the Sphinx form a unified complex, deriving from a single design of an esoteric nature. That design is an expression of a resurrection cult, whereby the four giant monuments jointly celebrate a vision of the transcendence of physical death and the possibility of achieving immortal life. This was one of the two central sacred tenets of Egyptian civilisation.
     The second was the concept of Ma’at, cosmic order, as an expression of the all-pervasive nature of the cosmic structure ordained and upheld by the Great Architect of the Universe. The Giza plan was an expression of Ma’at through its unique
     geometrical design. The size and general shape of the Sphinx was precisely dictated by a hitherto concealed geometrical relationship with the three main pyramids, which is fully explained in the book.

Secret Passages

But even more mysteries remain. Perhaps most important of all, I have found much evidence regarding passages and openings into the Sphinx, all of which had been blocked up, except for the Rump Tunnel which was reopened in recent years. There is another tunnel which runs along the Sphinx’s body, which is propped up now inside and in danger of possible collapse. An opening in the left side of the Sphinx was blocked by the French archaeologist Émile Baraize in 1926, an underground passage between the paws was blocked in 1817 by Henry Salt, the British Consul at Cairo, as recorded by Count de Forbin, a French diplomat, and the burial chamber beneath the Sphinx really exists. I have gathered 281 years’ worth of eye-witness reports by people who entered it. I give its precise location, and a description of it. It was empty except for some coffin boards. It was sealed off by cement in 1926, and no one alive remembers it.
     So is there a secret chamber under the Sphinx? Yes! But instead of just talk and speculation, I have gone to considerable effort to gather all of the specific evidence to prove it. Naturally, I was obstructed in my research by some Egyptologists, but then what else is new?

The Sphinx Mystery by Robert Temple with Olivia Temple was published February simultaneously in the USA and UK. A review can be found here.

For further information and full colour photographs see www.sphinxmystery.info