Geologist Robert Schoch argued in the 1990s that the Sphinx enclosure shows weathering from heavy rainfall, not wind and sand, implying a construction date of 7000 BC or earlier, millennia before dynastic Egypt. Popularized by Hancock's Fingerprints of the Gods.
Assessment: A minority view. Most geologists attribute the erosion to salt crystallization, flooding Nile water, and the soft limestone itself, all consistent with the standard date.
Documented
The conventional case
The Sphinx sits in a quarry context tied to Khafre's pyramid complex (c. 2500 BC), matches Old Kingdom masonry, and its temple's statues depict Khafre. No artifacts anywhere in Egypt predate 3000 BC at comparable sophistication.
Assessment: The mainstream dating stands on multiple independent lines of evidence, not authority.
Stories
Napoleon's cannonballs
The story every tourist hears: French soldiers shot the nose off for target practice, or in rage at the face's African features. It is told with total confidence in Cairo and in classrooms worldwide.
Assessment: Drawings made decades before Napoleon was born show the nose already gone. A 15th-century account blames an iconoclastic Sufi, who was lynched for it. The Napoleon story survives because it flatters our sense that vandals wear uniforms.
Sources and further reading
Dream Stele of Thutmose IV, between the paws, c. 1400 BCE
Inventory Stela, Late Period, the Khufu claim the card debates
John Anthony West & Robert Schoch, Serpent in the Sky, 1992, the weathering argument
Worth asking
How much of what we call history is a date agreed upon before the evidence was in?