New discoveries show clear signs of water erosion across the Giza landscape, including the Pyramids and Sphinx, and this has led several scholars to believe that the ancient necropolis was once submerged under the sea.
Working extensively on the Giza Plateau for more than twenty years, archaeologist Sherif El Morsi and his colleague Antoine Gigal have made a discovery that reinforces this theory, but Gigal and El Morsi were not the first to propose or study this idea.
Dr. Robert M. Schoch was one of the first experts to address the idea that Egyptian structures are much older than scholars suggest, and that the entire region was once submerged.
In the early 1990s, Dr. Schoch proposed that the Great Sphinx of Giza was a structure thousands of years older than archaeologists currently accept and that it was created around 9,000 BC.
This theory was based on patterns of water erosion that were discovered in the monuments of Giza and the surrounding landscape.
El Morsi and his colleagues have been trying to prove this theory by searching for clues that reveal the true nature of the monuments, and their search for answers has ultimately culminated in a discovery that many suggest is conclusive evidence.
As researchers analyzed and documented erosion marks from the Giza monuments, they discovered a fossil and the evidence led El Morsi and his colleagues to propose that the Giza Plateau was flooded in the distant past.
Archaeologists have focused on the site of the Menkare temple, which may have been an ancient lagoon when water levels covered the entire Necropolis, including the Great Sphinx, as well as the temple complexes that surround it.
Despite the fossil’s discovery, not everyone is convinced that the artifact is convincing evidence of a flooded plateau.
Skeptics argue that the echinoid found in the limestone was exposed by erosion and that the fossilized creature was, in fact, part of the original limestone formed about 30 million years ago.
However, El Morsi explained that the creature was petrified relatively recently.
The researcher indicated that the creature was found placed gravitationally on the ground and in almost perfect conditions, located within the intertidal range of the lagoon, the name given in marine environments to the area of coastal substrate that is exposed to the air only during low tide, remaining submerged with the high tide.
“We can clearly see the pristine condition and details of the exoskeleton’s perforations, which means that the sea creature must have been petrified in recent times,” explained El Morsi.
Furthermore, the researcher notes that the flooding of the plateau was quite significant, reaching 75 meters above current sea level.
This produced a coastline that probably extended as far as Khafre’s precinct, near the Great Sphinx and the temple of Menkare.
“The evidence is there. We only have to look at the monuments and surrounding blocks that show clear erosion marks produced by tidal waves, while suggesting that an intertidal zone of approximately two meters existed in the past,” argues El Morsi.
The Sphinx, as well as the Great Pyramid of Giza, also show evidence of a great flood.
According to El Morsi, the first 20 levels of the Great Pyramid of Giza show evidence of erosion caused by deep water saturation.
But if water levels were so high and the Giza Plateau was flooded, how long ago would this have happened?
According to the researchers, providing an exact timeline is difficult, as over the last 100,000 years sea levels in the region would have fluctuated by more than 120 meters.
