.....he comes off as a pompous jerk....
I cut him some slack. He is the official custodian of ancient mankind's greatest architectural, geodesic, astroomical, mathematical achievement. Letting every academic Thomas, Richard and Hanri deface the place would be unforgivable. The job in question needs to have more science brought to bear before the destructive rockwork begins.
He wakes every day and sees the noseless Sphinx, French work of a bygone era. I'd be wary of the French regardless of their credentials. A French Emperor defaced the Sphinx.
That is actually incorrect. Napoleon had nothing to do with the damage to the Sphinx.
from http://www.napoleonseries.org/faq/sphinx.cfm
"Over the centuries the Great Sphinx has suffered severely from weathering...Man has been responsible for additional mutilation. In 1380 A.D. the Sphinx fell victim to the iconoclastic ardor of a fanatical Muslim ruler, who caused deplorable injuries to the head. Then the figure was used as a target for the guns of the Mamluks."
This accusation is most often leveled at Napoleon Bonaparte, who is said to have shot the nose off the Sphinx -a claim that is manifestly incorrect, not only because earlier western representations of the Sphinx depict it with its nose missing (for example, the drawing published in 1755 by Frederick Norden) but also because medieval Arabic texts attribute the damage to a Muslim fanatic in the fourteenth century CE."