AIUI, IIRC, Khafre left a stele leaning against the Sphinx boasting of repair work he did on it. That seems wholly incompatible with making it.
In general, we can almost always only establish a younger bound on age of any stone construction. Sky's the limit for how old something might be.
Giza is absolutely perforated with tunnels, most carefully not inspected. Hawass used to insist ground penetrating radar was bunk, and would not look at results, never mind commission any.
There is far more unknown about Egyptian prehistory than is known. Whoever built things there was very, very smart. They really did achieve things that seem to us impossible to people with their resources. We can anyway be certain they did not do it all with copper chisels.
We have actual documents with good dates describing work done on facing stones on one of the pyramids. But I don't think we have any way to know if it was original construction or repair work. Egyptians were always very proud of their restoration work, often to the point of chiseling out the builder's cartouche and carving their own in its place.
But the very oldest stonework had no identifying marks at all, and there must have been a serious taboo about tagging any Giza pyramid. They loved tagging everything else. So most things are identified with whoever tagged it last. This is often obviously absurd, as when the tagging is crude hackwork on an exquisite sculpture. There is absolutely no embarrassment about this, evident.
I haven't heard this claim about the Pyramids, but there's a debate about the Sphinx.
IIUC the original dating from Egyptologists relied on a comparative chronology with the known dynasties and their symbolism. This was called into doubt by a geologist[1] who noted that the erosion on the sides of the Sphinx excavation pit would have needed much longer to form, esp given that Egypt has been dry for the past 10k years.
So perhaps there is a reevaluation of the origin of the Pyramids as well?
We have the capability to directly date the stones to determine when these structures were laid down. That's been done for most of the major Egyptian sites and the results agree with traditional archeological analysis.
Not sure I see this in the wiki page[1]. Citations appreciated!
This seems to be the case for the nearby temples, which are traditionally associated with the Sphinx, but not of the Sphinx itself. The temples were laid down with stone probably quarried from the trenches near the Sphinx. And yes, they've been dated to 2k+ BCE.
But that's where Schoch and Lehner disagree. Schoch says that the stone of the Sphinx is significantly older (noting that it was encased in similar stone to the temples).
What seems to be most significant is that Lehner doesn't treat it as solved from the dating of the stone, but relies on the lack of a sufficiently advanced civilization to explain the much earlier date, and this was enlightened with the discovery of Göbekli.
This is noted elsewhere in sibling comments as well and seems to be where the debate stopped.
It's mentioned as luminescence dating on the wiki page.
Honestly, I'm not sure why gobekli tepe gets brought up so much. It's thousands of miles away, in a completely different cultural area, and it's not even the earliest site with similar construction in its area.
We do not have that ability. We can only ever establish a lower bound on age, and sometimes relative sequence. It is quite easy to confound measurements such that they indicate a younger than actual age, but not older.
Menkaure's pyramid and the Valley Temple come out 500 years older than official numbers, by a nominal reading.
What is most peculiar is that the oldest pyramids are of the best quality. They are still standing, while the younger pyramids are now just a pile of rubble. It is like technological progress regressed in Egypt.
The first pyramids also resemble piles of rubble. You can in fact visit and see both the rise and fall of their pyramid building skills, as well as the lineage from older non-pyramid burial sites.
Shortly after the great pyramids were built, Egypt underwent a time of political turmoil, with evidence pointing to some combination of invasion and civil war.
The next iteration of pyramid building was a “make Egypt great again” political statement, but without the skills. You can see this loss and gain in the quality of art and paints, in addition to the architecture.
Soon after that though, pyramid building was again abandoned as big loud pyramids failed to accomplish one of their goals - the protection of the Royal mummy and its property. It was just too much of a target for grave robbers, often being emptied out by the very workers who built it. This resulted in a transition to much more subtle, hidden tombs. One of which was undiscovered until the 20th century - king tut’s. (The rest were also found and robbed.)
> The first pyramids also resemble piles of rubble
The fringe theory is that the great Giza pyramid is much older. Those that are assumed to be the first pyramids, may actually be the first of the "make Egypt great again" period thousands of years later
We do not in fact know the order pyramids were built in. Maybe the crude rubble was first efforts, or maybe it was inept copies.
What we do know is that the very best quality stone dishware, tens of thousands of pieces, was piled up haphazardly under what is supposed to be one of the oldest pre-Giza pyramids. Nothing known to be from dynastic times ever came close.
Dating of the pyramids is based off of things left around the pyramids and one mention of Khufu. If the pyramids are much older there is not much that would be left from the original builders to date after millenia of environmental exposure and human habitation in the area.
In short, the 4,500 year old date is based on very, very thin evidence, and much other evidence of longer timeline is simply ignored because "it's not possible".
In general, we can almost always only establish a younger bound on age of any stone construction. Sky's the limit for how old something might be.
Giza is absolutely perforated with tunnels, most carefully not inspected. Hawass used to insist ground penetrating radar was bunk, and would not look at results, never mind commission any.
There is far more unknown about Egyptian prehistory than is known. Whoever built things there was very, very smart. They really did achieve things that seem to us impossible to people with their resources. We can anyway be certain they did not do it all with copper chisels.
We have actual documents with good dates describing work done on facing stones on one of the pyramids. But I don't think we have any way to know if it was original construction or repair work. Egyptians were always very proud of their restoration work, often to the point of chiseling out the builder's cartouche and carving their own in its place.
But the very oldest stonework had no identifying marks at all, and there must have been a serious taboo about tagging any Giza pyramid. They loved tagging everything else. So most things are identified with whoever tagged it last. This is often obviously absurd, as when the tagging is crude hackwork on an exquisite sculpture. There is absolutely no embarrassment about this, evident.