Rating: 
Summary: Interesting but overstated
Review: I was pleased, upon finishing this book, to note that it omitted the dippier elements (earth crust displacement, lost civilizations in Antarctica, etc.) of Hancock's "Fingerprints of the Gods." I was dismayed, however, to note that once again a bestselling book supposedly concerned with history and archaeology had been penned by authors with little real experience in either field. Hancock's "research" involves reading and incorporating speculations made by others while roundly ignoring (or ridiculing) those that do not easily agree with his own predilections. Bauval's contribution as an engineer is perhaps notable, but not convincing. While soundly criticizing Egyptologists and other scientists, it seems that neither of these men ever bothered to learn to read hieroglyphics, to seriously study Egyptian history beyond a few basic texts, or to otherwise gain real expertise in the fields that apply to their arguments regarding the Sphinx. For example, the claim that the Sphinx exhibits extensive signs of water erosion is interesting, and borne out by a cursory examination of the photos available, but one wonders if the supposed consensus on this point among geologists really exists. Are there other ways to produce the erosion patterns seen today on the Sphinx? One would never know from reading this book, but a brief search on the web gave me a good hypothesis for one. From reading this book, one might also come away with the impression that most research on the Sphinx over the past 30 years has been performed under the auspices of Edgar Cayce's organization; don't modern archaeologists do anything? In the end, I find the notion that the Sphinx, and the ground plan of the monuments at Giza, predates the supposed origin of Egyptian civilization to be provocative and worth a closer look. I just wish someone more diligent, more even-handed, and more informed would take that closer look.
Rating: 
Summary: Very educational with excellent engineering explanations
Review: The pyramid is an 1:43,000 scale model of the earth, the height and base measurements are geometries based on PI and calculus used 4,000 to 15,000 years ago. Inside the pyramid are the King Chamber, Queens Chamber, and Terrestial Chamber mapped out against a siliquotte it produces an image of a throne with a seated God-king, whose feet are horizonal with the terrestial chamber, symbolizing a reigning God-King over the earth: 8.5 million tons of rock, 2.3 million blocks, one pyramid the stone weighted in over 200 tonnes. About 2500 BC Khufu built the first pyramid of Giza, followed by Kharfe, and last by Menekura. These pyramids formed a project of Orions belt and a map to milky, 12 constellations and their movements, and the path of the sun through the constellations. The suns path eventually intersect with the paws of Leo and when the earths poles flip, the order through the constellations will reverse.The sphinx faces the east, it aligns with Leo constellation and is orthogonal with the Orion constellation. These building map to constellation projections and represent projections of constellation positions, as they existed 10,000 years ago. Four star chambers point to various constellations. Winter and Summer solace deviate 28 degrees off due east which is the direction the sphinx faces. The walkways between the structures form angles pointing to Leo, the Vernal Point, and the Sun; as of about ten thousands years ago. There is a lot of proof that alignment with the stars means a lot. Alignment has an observable effect on gravitional pull. Stone Hendge is aligned. The pyramids are aligned, the Sphinx is aligned, etc. The Nile represents a projection of the milk way. The layout proves the designers saw and understood the coordinate system and location of the earth in relationship to the universe and how the milkway moves in relationship to the other constellations: Aquarius, Pices, Aries, Tarus, Cancer, Gemni, and Leo. The Pyramid is thought to be a cosmic clock or perhaps a monument. The pyramid demonstrates orientation and the power of the cosmos and mans relationship to the cosmos. How do we gain True understanding? Why did the designers use pyramids to prove the power of creation? Why did the pyramid designers build the pyramid as an universal clock? The pyramid is a constellation clock mapping out the sun's path as it overlays various constellations. Each one degree of movement represents 72 years. So, using these constants, the sun path through the twelve constellations completes its cycle every 25 thousand years. The Khufu pyramid is positioned perfected to the earth's center of mass. The meridian lines South to North with Orion and East with Leo off center of the vernal point. The path of Orion is moving from South to North along the Meridian. The three pyramids are orthogonal projections of the three stars on Orion's belt. The red pyramid is a projection of Sirus. How come the length of a day is so standard in our solar system? That couldn't have happened by chance. Who built the pyramids? The slave theory is very weak. Slaves could not have build such a percise architecture. To suggest such an idea is like suggesting a clock maker could build an atomic clock. Some think, man did not come into the pyramid picture until 2500 BC. Egyptian myth says the Gods themselves designed, dictated measurements; and in the first 15 thousand years engaged directly with the people. The last 11 thousand years, the Horus Kings ruled and built pyramids with 33 dynasties of power. The pyramid is a compass orientating the earth observer with the milkway and the milkway to other constellations. The end result is the sun path demonstrated in relationship to other constellations, as a measurement of time.
Rating: 
Summary: Get a cup of coffee--you'll want to be up all night
Review: Message of the Sphinx is just as interesting as watching a program on the Discovery Channel--only with this book you get much more information. Hancock offers theories about the actual age of the Sphinx and the Giza Pyramids. He gives you the evidence to back up his claims. In his book, he gives accounts from noted archaeologists who have dared to think outside the norm, but they later end up changing their minds about their unaccepted theories. It makes the reader wonder if the theories are being kept quiet for some reason. This book is not simply by any means, but it is also not packed so full of technical terms that a reader will not be able to understand what he or she is reading. Hancock and Bauval masterfully get their point across without hinderig the reader. This book is well worth the time to any fan of archaeology, Egypt, or Discovery channel show. So, if you are up for the ride brew yourself a pot of coffee or a cup of tea, sit back and get ready to be amazed.
Rating:
Summary: compelling and well researched
Review: When I first saw this book at a bookstore, I figured it was another one of those goofy conspiracy-theory books. This time the bad guy was academia and they were conspiring to keep us from the truth about the Sphinx. Thank goodness I actually gave the book a try. It's incredibly well written, full of well-documented facts and packed with footnotes and pictures. Hancock and Bauval turn out not to be conspiracy cranks at all; they have found amazing evidence about the age and orientation of the Sphinx and the pyramids. The problem is that the evidence flies in the face of everything that Egyptologists want to believe. I went on to read source material on the Sphinx and am now reading Hancock's "Fingerprints of the Gods" and am now more convinced than ever that Hancock and Bauval speak the truth. Pseduo-scientists? Well, only if you think that you have to be a PhD to do painstaking research. Sometimes all it takes is a dediction to discovering the truth.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting but overstated
Review: I was pleased, upon finishing this book, to note that it omitted the dippier elements (earth crust displacement, lost civilizations in Antarctica, etc.) of Hancock's "Fingerprints of the Gods." I was dismayed, however, to note that once again a bestselling book supposedly concerned with history and archaeology had been penned by authors with little real experience in either field. Hancock's "research" involves reading and incorporating speculations made by others while roundly ignoring (or ridiculing) those that do not easily agree with his own predilections. Bauval's contribution as an engineer is perhaps notable, but not convincing. While soundly criticizing Egyptologists and other scientists, it seems that neither of these men ever bothered to learn to read hieroglyphics, to seriously study Egyptian history beyond a few basic texts, or to otherwise gain real expertise in the fields that apply to their arguments regarding the Sphinx. For example, the claim that the Sphinx exhibits extensive signs of water erosion is interesting, and borne out by a cursory examination of the photos available, but one wonders if the supposed consensus on this point among geologists really exists. Are there other ways to produce the erosion patterns seen today on the Sphinx? One would never know from reading this book, but a brief search on the web gave me a good hypothesis for one. From reading this book, one might also come away with the impression that most research on the Sphinx over the past 30 years has been performed under the auspices of Edgar Cayce's organization; don't modern archaeologists do anything? In the end, I find the notion that the Sphinx, and the ground plan of the monuments at Giza, predates the supposed origin of Egyptian civilization to be provocative and worth a closer look. I just wish someone more diligent, more even-handed, and more informed would take that closer look.
Rating:
Summary: The missing Link in Ancient History
Review: Here is a revolution in Egyptology. The reviews I've read of this book, the ones who have dismissed it only prove how narrow-minded people can be, after being spoon-fed a certain history for all their lives. Hancock and Bauval capture, in comprehensive detail many of the riddles of the origin of the Sphinx and solve many of them. From other recent books, we know that the pyramids mirror the exact position of the constellation Orion in the skies as it was in about 10,500 b.c.,that they are aligned exactly north, and we also know that the Sphinx and the pyramids show signs of water damage in an area that has been arid according to scientists for at least 8,000 years. The question is this, what if the pyramids, and the Sphinx, were built by a civilization far older than Egypt, not 2500 b.c., but in 10,500 b.c.? Egyptologists and the narrow minded scoff at this, of course, because it would mean a radical rewriting of Egyptology, not to mention human history, but consider this: even the best archeology is just guesswork, no matter how educated the academic, no matter how logical the theory sounds. The bottom line is no one really knows why or when the pyramids were truly built, carbon-dating is inaccurate, and the Pyramids of Giza were built with more advanced design methods than any other pyramids in Egypt, not only the ones that came before, but after. In fact, some that came after are mere piles of rubble now on the sands. None of the bodies of the three pharoahs the pyramids were supposedly built for were ever found in any of them and Khufe himself, supposedly the builder of the Great Pyramid, said in his records that he only did repair work on it, was not the one to build it. History attributes the Pyramids to Khufe and his descendents, the pharoahs themselves do not. The three smaller pyramids to the side of the monument were the tombs Khufe actually built for himself and his family. In fact, Egyptian myths themselves attribute the Great Pyramid, not to any of their Pharoahs, but to the more advanced methods of their "Gods of Old." No other pyramids in Egypt, before and after, were built with the same design methods and scale of these three,and Egyptologists have long been baffled as to why the pyramid progression happened as it did. Who built them then? Frankly, I don't think it was aliens, but I don't agree with the traditional historical assumption either. Egyptian chronologies attribute the Age of the Gods, to about 10,500 b.c., the same time frame that Plato places for Atlantis in his dialogues. Now, before critics harp on any mention of Atlantis, accept that humanity has been around as we know it, for at least one hundred thousand years, and that civilization has only risen to it's current status in the last five thousand, and you can see we are missing more than a little of our history. Humanity has risen and fallen many times throughout the ages, with little that the generations before us built remaining. Accept that, and also that the whole of Egyptian civilization, it's pyramids and it's gods, are simply a copy of an earlier civilization, one with far more advanced methods, and all the mysteries, the inconsistencies of the other pyramids, all seem to fall neatly in place. Hancock's and Bauval's theories are as good as any of the others that have been accepted over the last two thousand years. And actually, no one can even say that they are really right or wrong, mostly because none of us were really there, and no one can say for sure.
Rating: 
Summary: The new "Chariot of the Gods?"
Review: After a couple of decades it appears that two new hucksters have appeared to claim Erick Von Daniken's mantle as the top purveyors of nonsense dressed up as serious intellectual inquiry into the past. All in the name of making a buck on the ignorant, of course. This book is so laughably ridiculous that its amazing to me that anyone takes it seriously. Of course, the authors base their entire case on their readers NOT knowing much of anything about their subject matter. If they did then they'd see this stuff for the tripe it is. If you want to read a good book on early Egypt go get Toby Wilkinson's "Early Dynastic Egypt" or something by Mark Lehner. This book is just garbage with a distinctly New Age odor to it.
Rating:
Summary: The Message of the Sphinx
Review: Guardian of the ancient mysteries, the keeper of secrets... For thousands of years the Great Sphinx of Egypt has gazed toward the east, its eyes focused on eternity, reading a message in the stars that mankind has long forgotten. And today, as our civilization stands poised at the end of a great cycle, it is a message that beckons insistently to be understood.
All the clues are in place. Geology and archeo-astronomy have already indicated that the lion-bodied Sphinx may be vastly older than Egyptologists currently believe, dating not from 2500 B.C., but from 10,500 B.C.-- the beginning of the astrological Age of Leo. And we now know that the three pyramids of Giza, standing on high ground half a mile to the west of the Sphinx, are in fact a precise map of the three stars of Orion's belt, formed in 15 million tons of solid stone. Are these monuments trying to tell us something? And, if so, what? In The Message of the Sphinx, Robert Bauval and Graham Hancock present a tour de force of historical and scientific detective work that unravels the millennial code embodied in these structures. Using sophisticated computer simulations of ancient skies, they unravel the riddle of the Sphinx, and they present a startling new theory concerning the enigmatic Pyramid Texts and other archaic Egyptian scriptures. Their discoveries lead the authors to this question: Does mankind have a rendezvous with destiny -- a rendezvous not in the future, but in the distant past, at a precise place and time?
Rating:
Summary: Wrong... but still thought-provoking.
Review: The Message of the Sphinx is an interesting read to say the least, but it is important that it not be taken as gospel by those wishing to learn more about Egypt's true history. Hancock does provide compelling arguments and superb diagrams to suport his theories. If I had not been educated in the field and had not researched it myself (both here and in Egypt), I must say that I could fall for it personally. Maybe. When reading "The Message of the Sphinx", it is important to realize what made this work a best-seller. It appeals to the populace. It is NOT a scholarly masterpiece by any means, but it does present an argument that compels anyone interested in ancient Egypt to read more. The merits of this work are twofold: 1. It inspires individuals with little knowledge of ancient Egypt to want to learn more about the magnificent ancient civilization, and 2. It does keep us Egyptologists from getting too comfortable in our ways. It never hurt anyone to look at something in a different way, no matter how far-fetched it may be. The problem with this work is that nothing is explained in full. The highpoints of his argument are explained repeatedly in an attempt to draw attention away from the holes, and he raises more questions than answers. Some of the holes are more massive than the celestial bodies he uses to back his claims. When he does attempt to provide a viable alternative to the mainstream view, it fails miserably because of a lack of evidence. This should not be taken in any way as fact, but it is a fun read nonetheless. Remember: History is made by those who write it. When serious contradictions occur, seek the hard evidence out yourself. Then you can decide. Who knows? Maybe you will agree with Hancock and prove him right. It would be magnificent if his claims were correct. I just don't buy it.
Rating:
Summary: Good starting point
Review: This is the book that hooked me. I am a logical person by nature - a corporate lawyer with a pretty strong bs-o-meter. This book makes some interesting points that sound very plausible, and it overcame my skepticism rather easily. Bauval adds some credibility to Hancock - Hancock is constantly defending his more fanciful speculations as merely that: speculation - and actually makes Hancock seem, well, less like Eric van Daniken (Hancock still reminds me of von Daniken sometimes, especially when he's on his own). And slowly I found myself thinking that, at the very least, some really cool unsolved mysteries that could reasonably point to a lost civilization - even though they could also point to something else entirely. Read this book and see what you think.
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