John Anthony West

A leading proponent of the Symbolist school of Egyptology, John Anthony West is an author, scholar, and Pythagorean.

The author of "The Traveler's Key to Ancient Egypt" and consulting editor for the "Traveler's Key" series, John Anthony West is an authority on Sphinx water erosion hypothesis in geology. He believes in the alternative interpretation of ancient Egyptian culture in which architecture and art disclose a universal wisdom than what conventional Egyptology assumes.

In 1993 John Anthony West's work with Robert M. Schoch, a geologist and associate professor at Boston University was presented by Charlton Heston in an NBC special called ?The Mystery of the Sphinx.? Winning a News & Documentary Emmy Award for Best Research and a nomination for Best Documentary, the documentary posits that the main type of weathering evident on the Great Sphinx could only be caused by prolonged and extensive rainfall and was carved out of limestone bedrock by an advanced ancient culture. West challenged the conventional dating of the carving and suggested that the Sphinx may be over twice as old as originally determined.