Credible Evidence Establishes The Great Sphinx and Great Pyramid of Giza Were Built Much Earlier Than Currently Accepted

I regret the forfeiture by my friend and opponent, Dr.Spy. Even though he has stipulated in the Description that forfeiture of a round is allowed, I must remind my opponent that forfeiture, by DART policy, cannot exceed one-half of arguments. If the forfeiture of his first round is a strategy to have my fifth round waived, no such strategy was offered or agreed upon by description nor comments, nor PMs, so I do not accept the strategy. Regardless, I will make a first round argument, and a fifth round, and all other rounds to which Pro offers argument.
 
First, a bit of disclosure to my opponent and to readers/judges:
I am fluent in New Kingdom [18thdynasty] hieroglyphs [from the 16thcentury BCE]. I have, at my disposal, Egyptian Grammar,Sir Alan Gardiner, third edition, Oxford University Press, 1969, the text I used in my junior year’s Egyptian grammar course, as potential reference to offer translation of any images which feature hieroglyphic text. Further, I have made a life-long study of ancient Egyptian culture.
 
 
I Brief History of the Egyptian Civilization
 
I.a A bit of history of Egypt is needed to equate the Old Kingdom, of particular relevance to this debate, the Middle Kingdom, and the New Kingdom of ancient Egypt.[1] In the list below of these kingdoms, the third column are approximate dates, having no real relevance to Egyptian history with the exception of the Moses Exodus, but having naught to do with the Sphinx and Great pyramid, other than both are already many centuries old by that point in history. I add “relevant history” as a guide to those uninitiated in ancient Egyptian culture by reference to more common knowledge of Ancient Hebrew [House of Israel] culture.
 
The Old Kingdom is the period by early 20thcentury estimation, and then later, designation of the original construction of the Great Pyramid [the pyramid of Khufu, Old Kingdom Pharaoh, born: est. 2615] [2]and the Sphinx [along with other architecture] of Khufu’s son, Khafre [Old Kingdom Pharaoh, born: 2560 BCE].[3]
I note, in particular the equivalence of relative Middle and New Egyptian kingdoms to the lifetimes of Abraham,✭father of the House of Israel, and who sojourned among the Egyptians in his lifetime, and Moses,✻deliverer of the House of Israel from Egypt as slaves for better than 400 years. 
 
Kingdom designation         Dates                          Relative history
I.a.1 Old Kingdom                 2686 – 2181 BCE     Noah Flood 2900 BCE
1.a.2 Middle Kingdom          2025 – 1700 BCE     ✭Abraham birth 2054 BCE
1.a.3 New Kingdom               1550 – 1069 BCE     ✻Moses Exodus 1400 BCE
 
II The Great Pyramid of Giza: Khufu
 
II.a Perhaps no single architecture on earth is as studied as is Khufu’s Great Pyramid on the plateau of Giza. Enduring as the tallest structure on earth until the completion of the Lincoln Cathedral in Lincoln, England in 1311,[4] there is also no other architecture on earth that is as mysterious and unwilling to reveal its secrets than the Great Pyramid.[5]
 
II.a.1 But, the debate is not about those mysteries, per se, but, rather, about its age. Fortunately, there are several clues, more than one might imagine, that contribute to the notion that we have currently defined the accurate age of the Great Pyramid. I will be exploring these clues over the next three rounds, including this first, using the first three rounds for all Con arguments, leaving the fourth round to finish rebuttal to Pro’s arguments, and leave the fifth round for final conclusions.
 
II.b One obvious dating method that could be applied is by measure of the radioactive isotope of Carbon, designated as 14C, or Carbon-14 dating, a method that has been around for over 70 years. Let’s simply apply the method to the stones of the Great Pyramid. It could be done on interior stones, to which we have, now, easy access, and which have not suffered the obvious weathering, and obvious thievery of collectable samples. “Yes, I have a piece of the Great Pyramid,” countless individuals over the long history of the pyramid can claim.
 
II.b.1 The problem with 14C dating is obvious, or is it? 14C depends on the presence of organic material, and Khufu’s tomb is inorganic. It is stone, not wood. Everybody knows this.
 
II.c Hold! Back-up. Let’s not let that idea of stone go unturned. We make so many presumptions about ancient technology, we have a whole generation of people being taught new theories by such television programs as “Ancient Aliens” of the History Channel, which generally present our ancients as bumbling buffoons who had to learn their tech from aliens. No not from over the border, but from beyond the planet.
 
II.c.1 I refute such programs, based on such ‘science’ presented as fact that, for example, DNA is made up of three amino acids [a claim I watched in disbelief because, as a 16-year-old, I attended a lecture at UCLA given by Dr. James Watson, Nobel Prize recipient for the discovery of the construct of the DNA molecule, who, early in his lecture, established that DNA is a construct of fouramino acids. I trust him over “Ancient Aliens,” thank you. 
 
II.c.2 Contrary to “A-A,” I attribute the ancients of having developed technology, in cases beyond even our own today. Such as the development of various recipes for concrete. The ancient Romans, for example, knew of a formula enabling curing under water, but that formula is lost to history. We have developed one of our own, but that feat was not accomplished until at least a century after we first re-developed a successful air-cured concrete in 1820.
 
II.c.4 In that vein, but much earlier, as early as the Old Kingdom, the Egyptians created a recipe of “concrete” using limestone, quartz, and other materials, and water, to cast stones of immense size using this limestone slurry.[6] Immense, as in Great Pyramid size. It was always thought that the limestone blocks of Khufu’s tomb were quarried and shaped using copper chisels. Copper was mined by the ancients, and is abundant in Egypt, but copper is a relatively weak material to use as a chisel.[7] Not to mention that, as extensively as the Giza plateau has been archeologically excavated, not one copper chisel has ever been found.[8]
 
Casting offers an answer to the age-old mystery of the laser-like precision of the sides of the stones – Ancient Alien method – such that it is observed that a sheet of paper cannot be passed through the joined edges. Bye-bye, aliens.
 
Moreover, the blocks of the limestone in the Great Pyramid exhibit a higher water content than contained, for example, in the natural limestone of the sculpted Sphinx, which was sculpted in-place of a solid mass, not constructed by blocks, and then sculpted.[9] “A recent paper [2007] “…reporting these findings, the researchers reflect that it is ‘ironic, sublime, and humbling’ that this 4,500-year-old limestone is so true to the original that it has mislead Egyptologists and geologists and, ‘because ancient Egyptians were the original – albeit unknowing – nanotechnologists.’”[10]
 
II.c.5 So, have we abandoned the idea of dating the Great Pyramid by 14C? No, not entirely. 14C dating is a measure of the ratio of 14C present in plant or animal tissue compared to normal Carbon present, knowing that 14C has a half-life of 5,730 years, well outside of the dating that applies to the Great Pyramid if it is a construct ion of Khufu’s tomb.[11] However, unless the construction of buildings uses sufficient organic material, it was thought that such structures could not be dated by 14C.
 
II.c.6 However, in the 1960s, it was discovered that while limestone, itself, as a block of stone, ostensibly containing little or no organic material, the fabrication of limestone-based mortar does, in effect, contain the critical radioactive carbon isotope, 14C, and thus can be measured by the method established in the 1940s.[12]
 
What was missing was the discovery in 2007 that the Great pyramid was not only constructed of a cast limestone slurry, looking nearly identical to naturally-occurring limestone, therefore hiding in plain sight, but that these fabricated, not hewn blocks of stone were sealed together with limestone mortar. The whole of them, being water-borne, contained atmospheric CO2, and 14C, and were, therefore, measurable by the 14C dating method.
 
With the discovery, 13 years ago, of the cast limestone-based concrete formula used by Old Kingdom construction, and the added discovery of a similar formula mortar between the stones, the quarry just got turned on its head, along with the aliens who allegedly gave our intrepid Egyptians their technology.
 
 
II.c.7 The completion if the Great Pyramid is thus dated at 2490 BCE[13]
 
Consulting a map of the Giza plateau reveals the complex of architecture on site approximately 1.4km2.[14] Approximately top [North] central on the site is Khufu’s Great Pyramid. Directly to the Southeast on a 45˚ angle, the Pyramid of Khafre, Khufu’s son, was erected. Due east of Khafre’s structure across a distance of approximately 450m is the Sphinx, considered a construction begun, and dedicated to Khafre. 
 
 
III The Sphinx
 
III.a The Sphinx is not a unique product of Khufu’s son, Khafre, who was Khufu’s eldest son of several, and was destined to follow his father as Pharaoh. He, the son, though not the ambitious type relative to his father’s massive construction, was responsible for four construction efforts on the Giza plateau, one being the Sphinx. The others were his own pyramid, as noted due east of the Sphinx, the Funerary Temple of Khafre, due east of the pyramid approximately 50m, and the Valley Temple of khafre. Southeast of the Sphinx approximate 100m.
 
III.b One of the prominent differences between the Sphinx and the other structures on the Giza plateau is that while all other structures, other than the cast-limestone of Khufu’s pyramid tomb, appear to be standard limestone quarried blocks, but they have apparently not been studied further as was Khufu’s to determine they may have been cast limestone as well, the Sphinx is definitively sculpted in place from a natural limestone mound originally known as the Mokkatam Formation.[15]
 
III.b.1 It is believed that the partially destroyed face if the Sphinx is that of Khafre, however, there is no hieroglyph script on or around the Sphinx, nor anywhere else on the plateau that links anything to the identification of the Sphinx.
 
III.c Just the extreme erosion of the Sphinx has led some to believe the Sphinx is a far older structure than the others on plateau; as old as 9,000 years [7,000 BCE], the last era in which there was sufficient rainfall on the plateau to have caused such erosion.
 
III.d However, there are two other possible explanations:
 
III.d.1 Just within historic documentation, post Egyptian New Kingdom, has observed a more rapid erosion of the Sphinx that with typical exposed limestone observed elsewhere; the Mokkatam Formation appears to be particularly susceptible to extreme erosion in a short period of time.
 
III.d.2 In additional to the above, because there is even more extreme erosion observed around the perimeter base of the structure. This could be due to unusually high flood of the Nile. The Sphinx sits at a level of 25m above the typical shoreline, but there is other evidence of its flooding elsewhere on the plateau, and the water table beneath the Sphinx has been recorded as just 4.5M beneath the exposed level of the Sphinx, the nature of limestone is such that it will wick water, so the “flood” just through the limestone could explain the extreme erosion.[16]
 
III.e The dating of the Sphinx can be only within the lifetime of Khafre, a minimal 28 years, between 2560 and 2532 BCE. There is a known statue of Khafre wearing the same pharaonic headdress typical of the late Old Kingdom, with exposed ears, round face, and tied, straight beard, cut short [obviously broken off on the Sphinx, but once there].
 
III.f What was said in §II.a.1 of this round regarding the Great Pyramid debate structure goes as well for the Sphinx.
 
 
 
References:
 
 

Extend argument

My opponent, having now forfeited 3 successive rounds without ever entering an argument, I must declare the debate as fully forfeited by him, although, after this, 2 rounds remain. He may yet offer future argument in those rounds, but, by the protocol of debating criteria, will be to no avail. Nevertheless, I have further argument, and will pursue it.
 
I Argument: All lime-based building materials absorb CO2
 
I.a As I argued in round 1, “all building materials based on lime - concrete, mortar, plaster, whitewash – absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide as they harden.”[1] The human-innovated process is ancient, and simple. Each step was worked out in detail and within the demonstrated capability of the ancients in widely distributed regions of the ancient world; in Egypt, but also evident in Rome, Spain, and even as fart north a Finland.[2]
 
I.a.1 The process is simple: fossilized limestone is crushed, and then heated, creating quicklime [calcium oxide]. Add water and sand and/or crushed aggregate. The resulting slurry hardens by absorption of atmospheric CO2. Voilà;your now modern result of the list of building materials noted above in I.a, but also produced anciently, and fully capable of being dated by 14C, as is normal organic materials since the 1940s.
 
This argument satisfies the then unsubstantiated claim in round 1, II.c.6 §2.
 
II Argument: The Sphinx is not a stone [hewn, nor cast] block construction
 
II.a Mark Lehner, a renowned Egyptologist, after over 30 years of detailed investigation on the Sphinx, has discovered that the monument is not a block construction of either hewn or cast stone, built block by block, as are the nearby Gaza pyramids, but is a solid mass, natural “hill” known as the Mokkatam Formation.[3] It is solid limestone as natural as the pyramids are not. “Traces of [red], blue and yellow paint suggest to Lehner that the Sphinx was once decked out n gaudy comic book colors.”[4]
 
The Sphinx, since unknown time, was buried up to its shoulders in sand, revealed only as it appears today in the 1930s.[5] A claim made, unsubstantiated in round 1, says the Sphinx’s face is reminiscent of Khafre’s. I will substantiate it now:
 
II.a.1 In 1853, French archaeologist Auguste Mariette discovered a life-size statue of Khafre, sculpted of volcanic black rock, stunning in detail as if done by the ancient Greeks, but far older.[6] The face of the statue, known to be Khafre, is remarkably similar to that of the Sphinx, even though the latter face is badly damaged by erosion, and by intent of later ancients than the Sphinx’s age.
 
II.a.2 Further, Lehner discovered that the building materials [limestone] of the small Sphinx Temple located directly ahead of the statue, are of the exact material as the Sphinx, suggesting that the temple was constructed from the refuse of carving the Sphinx, itself, constructed in the same period as the caring of the Sphinx – and covered in sand as was the Sphinx for millennia, and all dated to the same period: the lifetime of Khafre, around 2500 B.C.E.[7]
 
 
 
 

Extend argument/ I will make a fifth round defense/conclusion

I Conclusion: A one-on-none conversation
 
I regret my opponent’s forfeiture of this debate. It was a good subject in which I am actually fluent in the root language; a decided advantage even though language was not essential to the debate, but it necessarily whetted my appetite for it, like dangling a sautéed, rare filet mignon in front of me. Well, so be it. However, I declare victory on the points of my arguments, to wit:
 
I.a History: Of the Great Pyramid complex on the Giza plateau are a couple of structures, the Great Pyramid of Khufu [Old Kingdom Pharaoh, born 2615 B.C.E.], and the Sphinx, formed by Khufu’s son, Khafre [Old Kingdom Pharaoh, born 2560 B.C.E], both of the 4thDynasty of Egypt. By comparison, the father-son Pharaohs existed in between the Noah Flood of approximately 2900 B.C.E. and the birth of Abraham about 2054 B.C.E.
 
I.b DrSpy proposed to debate the currently accepted dates of constr5uction of the two noted features of the Giza plateau as being “built much earlier than currently accepted.”  In two previous rounds [with two additional rounds extended] I have offered evidence that the dates of construction of the Great Pyramid and the reductive sculpture of the Sphinx from an existing mound of limestone called the Mokkatam Formation[1] were effected during the respective lifetimes of the father-son Pharaohs, Khufu and Khafre, i.e., between 2615 and 2532 B.C.E. [the latter being the estimated death of Khafre[2]]. 
 
I.c My round 1 argument centered on a concept of pyramid building that, before the early 21thcentury, was thought to be constructed with hewn blocks of limestone laboriously shaped and hauled to the building site. In 2007, it was discovered that the Great pyramid limestone blocks were cast from limestone slurry, like concrete, not hewn. As these blocks, and the mortar sealing them, are water-borne, they contain atmospheric CO2that can be dated by the 14C process, as any other organic material.[3] As a result, the theory of a much older date of construction was turned on its head.
 
I.d The “construction” of the Sphinx by Khufu’s son, Khafre was not erected like his father’s pyramid, and his own for that matter, but was carved from a natural limestone mound.[4] The extreme erosion evident on the Sphinx has led researchers to surmise that the structure is of much older making than currently estimated. However, the Sphinx has not been subjected to thousands of years of surface erosion, other than the head, because the rest of the body was buried in sand until a great storm revealed the entire Sphinx as we know it today. That storm occurred in the 1930s.[5] It was noted in my round 1, argument III.e that the Sphinx, though damaged, bears a striking resemblance to Khafre, whose image was repeated in statuary by more examples than any other Pharaoh of the pyramid-building era.[6]
 
I therefore conclude that both the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx came into being by the efforts of the father-son Pharaoh’s, Khufu and Khafre, within their respective lifetimes, as noted, between 2615 and 2532 B.C.E.
 
I thus end my arguments and conclusion, and declare victory in this debate.