From Atlantis to the Sphinx Read Free

As far as I could see, he had proved, once and for all, that there had been a maritime civilisation in the days before the South Pole was covered with ice.
    But I had other work to do—for example, writing an enormous Criminal History of Mankind —and pushed aside the whole question of ‘Atlantis’.
    In the autumn of 1991, I was approached by the Hollywood producer Dino de Laurentiis, who was thinking of making a film about Atlantis, and who wanted to try to give it a realistic historical approach. He and his associate Stephen Schwartz commissioned me to write an outline. Naturally, I decided immediately that I would base it on John West’s theory.
    In November 1991 I found myself in Tokyo, taking part in a symposium on communication in the twenty-first century. In the Press Club, I spoke about my Atlantis project to some friends, and mentioned Schwaller’s theory that the civilisation of ancient Egypt was the heir to Atlantis, and that the Sphinx could date thousands of years earlier than 2400 BC, which is when the pharaoh Chefren is supposed to have built it. At which point my host, Murray Sayle, remarked that he had recently read a paragraph in the Mainichi News that claimed there was new evidence to support this view. Naturally, I was excited, and asked him if he could find me the item. He promised to try, but was unsuccessful.
    A week later, in the Savage Club in Melbourne, I mentioned the elusive paragraph to Creighton Burns, the ex-editor of the Melbourne Age , who said that he had also seen the story about the Sphinx. He tracked it down in a recent issue of the Age , and was able to give me a photostat.
    It was from the Los Angeles Times of 26 October 1991, and read:
    EGYPT SERVES UP NEW TWIST TO MYSTERY OF THE SPHINX

San Diego, Wednesday
    New evidence that Egypt’s Great Sphinx may be twice as old as had been thought has triggered a fierce argument between geologists who say that it must be older and archaeologists who say that such a conclusion contradicts everything we know about ancient Egypt.
    Geologists who presented their results at the Geological Society of America Convention yesterday found that weathering patterns on the monument were characteristic of a period far older than had been believed. But archaeologists and Egyptologists insist that the Sphinx could not be much older because people who lived there earlier could not have built it.
    Most Egyptologists believe that the Sphinx was built during the reign of the ‘Pharaoh’ Kafre [Chefren] in approximately 2500 BC. But scientists who conducted a series of unprecedented studies at the Giza site said their evidence shows that the Sphinx was already there long before Kafre came to power.
    The evidence suggests that Kafre simply refurbished the Sphinx.
    Boston geologist Robert Schoch said his research suggests that the Sphinx dates back to between 5000 BC and 7000 BC. That would make it double the age of the Great Pyramid and make it the oldest monument in Egypt, he said.
    But California archaeologist Carol Redmount, who specialises in Egyptian artefacts, said, There’s just no way that could be true.’
    The people of that region would not have had the technology or the will to have built such a structure thousands of years earlier, she said.
    Other Egyptologists said that they cannot explain the geological evidence, but they insist that the theory simply does not match up with the mountains of archaelogical research they have carried out in that region. If the geologists are right, much of what the Egyptologists think they know would have to be wrong.

    So it seemed that there was evidence, after all, that the Sphinx might be far older than anyone thought.
    Back in England I wrote my outline based on Schwaller’s idea in the form of a kind of novel, and sent if off to Hollywood. What happened to it then I am uncertain—probably it was handed to half a dozen other script writers to improve. But it seemed to me that I had succeeded in writing a