THE SPHINX MYSTERY. THE FORGOTTEN ORIGINS OF THE SANCTUARY OF ANUBIS Robert Temple with Olivia Temple, Inner Traditions, Rochester (Vt), 2009. Paperback, 576 pages, £19.99. ISBN 978-1-59477-271-9

Some years ago Robert Temple coined the term ‘consensus blindness’. He had found hundreds of ancient optical lenses languishing in museums around the world forgotten and ignored under the label of ‘religious artifact’. But they magnified. Nevertheless, because everyone knew that optical lenses did not exist two thousand years ago or more their practical quality was ignored: Consensus blindness. Temple wrote about this in his book The Crystal Sun.
     Robert Temple however, knows what he is talking about; he is an expert in ancient technology and has applied his great talents for research and investigation to ancient Egypt, in particular the Sphinx.
     Here, he reveals, consensus blindness remains alive and well. The story explained in The Sphinx Mystery is fascinating, illuminating and cannot help but raise some anger at those who have sought to cover up or even destroy solid evidence of a host of tunnels and crypts within, beneath or near to the Sphinx. The early explorers – whose accounts Temple reproduces together for the first time – knew about them but most have since been blocked up or covered over. Now, thanks to Robert and Olivia Temple, we know that they are there.
     But the biggest mystery of the Sphinx for Egyptologists is the apparent lack of any mention of its existence in early texts.
     Temple demonstrates an alternative: it is well known that the Sphinx’s head was recarved at some time with the face of a Pharaoh, some say Khafre; Temple reveals the likely candidate to be Amenemhet II (about 1876-1842 BC). But it is obvious that the head is now out of proportion to its body; it is too small. Temple argues convincingly that the head was originally not that of a Pharaoh but of the jackal god, Anubis, the ancient Egyptian guardian of the place of the dead – which, as it happens, was the Giza Plateau. Anubis appears in many very early texts including the first known, those carved on the walls of the 5th Dynasty Pyramid of Unas at Saqqara. It seems likely that Temple is correct, in which case the Sphinx, that is, Anubis, was, contrary to accepted wisdom, frequently mentioned.
     For anyone interested in ancient Egypt this book is required reading. It is a fascinating and compelling study of how consensus blindness, adopted too often with a dogged arrogance, is the perennial enemy of research and understanding.

Michael Baigent