Vol.01.p.014

Display page dates: 01/23/1910

Diary Transcription: microfilm: begin page 14

Sunday, January 23, 1910 (continued)

continuous. Thus the thickness of the wall at this point remains unexplained.
Cutting through the floor of the house room I 18, 19, we revealed the niched face of the wall of the courtyard. This is exactly as the fore court of the upper temple. In other words, quite contrary to Borchardt's conclusions at the Dynasty 5 temples at Abusir, our valley temple is nearly the same in plan and in size as the upper temple.
In room III 2, the back wall had been replaced by a wall of Dynasty 6 restoration. Today we cut through this Dynasty 6 wall and found the base of the Dynasty 4 wall about one-half meter further west. The stela was gone. The Dynasty 4 wall had been swept away (by water) to within 20 cm of the floor. The outer part of the Dynasty 6 wall was built on a mass of water packed rubbish (limestone chips, gravel and mud bricks).
The explanation of this is very clear. The corridor turned the rain water coming down from the northwest into the angle between itself and the northern half of the temple. The northwest corner of the temple had already been built in large limestone blocks before Menkaure died, and the west walls of room III 6-11 were held up by the stones already in place. The water broke through the unprotected west wall of III 2 and swept the walls of III 1, 2 away. Thus it was that the Dynasty 6 restoration was confined to the outer walls and to the central offering place as these had suffered the most damage.
The picture we now have of the successive periods of decay and reconstruction is practically complete. It may now be said without fear of contradiction that we have settled for all time the question of the date of the Sphinx and of the Khafre statue. Both are Dynasty 4 and the face of the Sphinx was originally a portrait of Khafre .

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End of Diary Transcription