Was The Sphinx A Lion Or A Jackal Back In The Ol Days?
The ancient Sphinx casts a spell over us mere mortals, its enigmatic essence weaving an irresistible aura of mystery. 
Like a siren calling sailors to their doom, this part-lion, part-human hybrid lures us in with its colossal presence.
This colossal sculpture has been an everlasting riddle for centuries, standing guard over the famous Giza pyramid complex like an age-old sentinel.
Its stare out across the desert sands has sparked endless theories about its origins.
The Sphinx has long been regarded as the watchdog for Pharaoh Khafre’s pyramid, built around 2500 BCE.
In 1990 I first traveled to Egypt with John Anthony West (for background information see Forgotten Civilization and Origins of the Sphinx), with the sole purpose of examining the Great Sphinx from a geological perspective.
I assumed that the Egyptologists were correct in their dating, but soon I discovered that the geological evidence was not compatible with what the Egyptologists were saying
Was The Sphinx A Lion Or A Jackal? Water Erosion Theory
They suspect the Sphinx is an ancient hand-me-down from a much earlier civilization predating the pyramids themselves.
This mind-bending theory stems from telltale patterns of weathering that are a dead giveaway the Sphinx took a serious lashing from heavy rainfall over millennia.
Boston University geologist Robert Schoch was the first to sound the alarm on this rainfall erosion evidence in the 1990s.
He spotted deeply grooved erosional features that were unmistakable fingerprints of precipitation pounding the stone over vast stretches of time.
These vertical weathering patterns were like night and day inflicted by windblown sand and erosion.
On the body of the Sphinx, and on the walls of the Sphinx Enclosure (the pit or hollow remaining after the Sphinx’s body was carved from the bedrock), I found heavy erosional features that I concluded could only have been caused by rainfall and water runoff. The thing is, the Sphinx sits on the edge of the Sahara Desert and the region has been quite arid for the last 5000 years.
Schoch’s findings pointed to the Sphinx’s core body being crafted well before Egypt’s arid climate kicked in over the last 5,000 years.
The water erosion hypothesis opened a real can of worms among Egyptologists dead set on the conventional dating of around 2500 BCE.
Critics contended the erosion could have been cooked up by other factors, but Schoch’s camp has steadfastly stuck to their geological guns.
They maintain the Sphinx’s bulk was carved between 7000-5000 BCE at the earliest.
Was The Sphinx A Lion Or A Jackal? The Re-Carving
Some researchers theorize the Sphinx’s iconic human visage was re-carved from an earlier sculpture originally depicting a different critter.
Some believe its regal lion body once sported the crown of a lion’s head. 
But others are barking up the tree that its primordial head was a jackal or Anubis figure (The Egyptian God of the underworld).
I will not address his other hypotheses, which I do not find persuasive, that the Sphinx was the jackal [wild dog] Anubis (Anubis, associated with the dead and the afterlife, would look to the west, not face east as the Sphinx does) and the face seen on the Sphinx is that of the Middle Kingdom pharaoh Amenemhet II, though I note the original Sphinx has been reworked and the head re-carved
If these outlier theories have any meat on their bones, it could mean the Sphinx was originally a calling card left behind by some prehistoric culture that fell off the map ages ago.
The ancient Egyptians rising to power around 3000 BCE essentially slapped a new coat of paint on this cryptic remnant, absorbing it into their own civilization.
This monumental lion/human hybrid may have conveyed sacred mythological or spiritual meanings that became woven into the tapestry of later Egyptian beliefs and traditions.
The Sphinx captures a small window into civilizations lost to the sands of time, holding onto its chestnuts of wisdom about ancient cultures and belief systems.
As we keep chipping away at its mysteries, this ageless wonder’s piercing stare may finally spill more secrets about its true pedigree and calling card from antiquity.
References:
https://www.culturesocietyblog.com/2017/03/geologists-agree-sphinx-has-rain.html
https://www.robertschoch.com/sphinx.html