42 Which statement about John West is true?
(A) He was the first to publicly question the origin of the Sphinx.
(B) He published a book about biology in Egypt.
(C) He was one of the world’s famous Egyptologists.
(D) He worked full-time as an archaeologist.

For a long time, Egyptologists埃及古物學者 agreed that the Sphinx人面獅身像 was created during the time of the pharaoh法老 Khafre卡夫拉 (2520-2494 B.C.).

However, it was clear that the Sphinx was unlike the pyramids金字塔 and other monuments古跡 at Giza吉薩（地名）in some important ways.

First, the Sphinx was not built with blocks大塊 of stone. It was carved out of the living bedrock基岩.

Second, it is not a temple, nor a pyramid. It is a huge statue雕像 with the head of a man and the body of a lion.The eyes of the “lion man” stare凝視 forever at the eastern东部 horizon地平線.

However, no one voiced any doubts about the origin起源 of the Sphinx until 1979, when John West, an amateur业余 archaeologist考古學家 and Egyptian埃及人tour guide, published a book called Serpent in the Sky.

In this book, he claimed聲稱 that the Sphinx was actually built thousands of years before the time of Khafre. His evidence was based on a careful examination of erosion侵蝕 on the stone.

West noticed that erosion patterns on the Sphinx were not horizontal水平 like those on other monuments at Giza.

He knew that such horizontal weathering風化 was the result of prolonged長期 exposure to strong winds and sandstorms.

But the marks on the Sphinx were vertical垂直. Sandstorms couldn’t have caused them. It looked like erosion from water, but where could the water have come from in the arid region干旱地区?

According to West’s theory, the vertical垂直 weathering was caused by rain.

Therefore因此, the Sphinx must have been built thousands of years earlier when Egypt had a much rainier climate.

Unfortunately, West had no scientific credentials憑證—he wasn’t a professor and he had no Ph.D.—so his revolutionary革命性的 theory was not taken seriously.