Excerpt number nineteen (B) from the interview conducted by Marc Chartier with Jean-Pierre Houdin Without noticing, the architects built a gutter for the rainwater (B) Jean-Pierre Houdin : Figure 1: The erosion by rain water runoff left the trace of the former Royal Causeway as one can notice on site nowadays. The level of the “sidewalk-gutters” of this Causeway is slightly lower than the level of the original foundations which are still visible on the Plateau. Figure 2: After the completion of Khafre’s pyramid, the eastern part of the northern quarry, overhanging the pit of the Sphinx (inside the red ellipse), and the northern sidewalk in the South-West corner of the pit were at the same level. Figure 3: That led to a new modification of the path of rainwater runoff in this area of the Plateau, as indicated by the red arrows on the 3D model below; a bottle-neck was thus formed in the South-West corner above the pit of the Sphinx (inside the red ellipse), the water runoff running down in the gutter and the one from the area North of the Causeway entering in collision. During violent storms, the runoff would have been quite tumultuous in this junction point: thus, the pit was becoming an outlet, the vertical walls being deeply gullied by the water in the area as also at the bottom of the pit before finding its path towards the port and the Nile. This more important erosion was not due to more frequent and stronger rains, but because of a violent increase of the quantity of the runoff in a precise spot during strong rains. As a clue, anyone who has been under a thunderstorm in Cairo will have noticed the violence of this event, the quantity of water falling on the ground in a short period of time often being very impressive. Figure 4: Even if over time the quarries on the North side of the Khafre’s Causeway became filled with sand, looking at the panoramic view below, one can easily understand that all the rain runoff converged towards the area pointed out by the red ellipse on both pictures. CREDITS: emhotep.net/2013/07/21/locations/lower-egypt/giza-plateau-lower-egypt/the-great-sphinx-a-pyramidales-interview-with-jean-pierre-houdin-part-2-of-3/
Posted on: Tue, 06 Aug 2013 10:15:44 +0000
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