A great civilization must have preceded the vast movements of water that passed over Egypt, which leads us to assume that the Sphinx already existed, sculptured in the rock of the west cliff at Giza – that Sphinx whose leonine body, except for the head, shows indisputable signs of water erosion.’2 While working on Serpent, West was struck by the possible significance of this remark and decided to follow it up: ‘I realized that if I could prove Schwaller’s offhand observation empirically, this would be ironclad evidence for the existence of a previously unidentified high civilization of distant
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