Great Sphinx of Giza
|
The head of the Great Sphinx at Giza, Egypt |
The
Great Sphinx of Giza is a large half-human
Sphinx statue in
Egypt, on the
Giza Plateau at the west bank of the
Nile River, near modern-day
Cairo (). It is one of the largest single-stone statues on Earth, and is commonly believed to have been built by
ancient Egyptians in the
3rd millennium BC.
What name ancient Egyptians called the statue is not completely known. The Western name "
Sphinx" was given to it in
Antiquity based on the
legendary Greek creature with the body of a
lion, the head of a woman and the wings of a bird, though Egyptian sphinxes have the head of a man. The
ancient Greek term itself is postulated to be a corruption of the ancient
Egyptian Shesep-ankh. This name was applied to royal statues in the
Fourth Dynasty, though it came to be more specifically associated with the Great Sphinx in the
New Kingdom. In medieval texts, the names
balhib and
bilhaw referring to the Sphinx are attested, including by Egyptian historian
Maqrizi, which suggest
Coptic constructions, but the
Egyptian Arabic name
Abul-Hôl, which translates as "Father of Terror", came to be more widely used.
|
The Great Sphinx in 1867. Note its unrestored original condition, still partially buried body, and a man standing beneath its ear. |
The Great Sphinx is a statue with the face of a man and the body of a
lion. Carved out of the surrounding
limestone bedrock, it is 57 metres (260 feet) long, 6 m (20 ft) wide, and has a height of 20 m (65 ft), making it the largest single-stone statue in the world. Blocks of stone weighing upwards of 200
tonnes were quarried in the construction phase to build the adjoining Sphinx Temple. It is located on the west bank of the
Nile River within the confines of the
Giza pyramid field. The Great Sphinx faces due east, with a small temple between its paws.
After the
necropolis was abandoned, the Sphinx became buried up to its shoulders in sand. The first attempt to dig it out dates back to
1400 BC, when the young
Tutmosis IV, falling asleep beneath the giant head, dreamt that he was promised the crown if he would only unbury the Sphinx. The young prince immediately formed an excavation party which, after much effort, managed to dig the front paws out. To commemorate this effort, Tutmosis IV had a
granite stela known as the
Dream Stela placed between the paws.
Ramesses II may have also performed restoration work on the Sphinx.
It was in
1817 that the first modern dig, supervised by
Captain Caviglia, uncovered the Sphinx's chest completely. The entirety of the Sphinx was finally dug out in
1925, to the great pleasure of its numerous visitors.
The one-meter-wide
nose on the face is missing. A legend that the nose was broken off by a cannon ball fired by
Napoléon's soldiers still survives, as do diverse variants indicting
British troops,
Mamluks, and others. However, sketches of the Sphinx by
Frederick Lewis Norden made in 1737 and published in 1755 illustrate the Sphinx without a nose. As well, it is believed that
Napoléon admired history and its great structures, so it is unlikely he would have vandalized one. The Egyptian historian
al-Maqrizi, writing in the fifteenth century, attributes the vandalism to Muhammad Sa'im al-Dahr, a
Sufi fanatic from the
khanqah of Sa'id al-Su'ada. In 1378, upon finding the Egyptian peasants making offerings to the
Sphinx in the hope of increasing their harvest, Sa'im al-Dahr was so outraged that he destroyed the nose. Al-Maqrizi describes the Sphinx as the "Nile talisman" on which the locals believed the cycle of inundation depended.
Curious & droll fictional explanations of the nose's disappearance occasionally appear in modern entertainment set in vaguely appropriate times, such as in
Asterix and Cleopatra.
In addition to the lost nose, a ceremonial pharaonic beard is thought to have been attached, although this may have been added in later periods after the original construction. Egyptologist Rainer Stadelmann has posited that the rounded divine beard may not have existed in the Old or Middle Kingdoms, only being conceived of in the New Kingdom to identify the Sphinx with the god Horemakhet. This may also relate to the later fashion of pharaohs, which was to wear a plaited beard of authority—a false beard (chin straps are actually visible on some statues), since Egyptian culture mandated that men be clean shaven. Pieces of this beard are today kept in the
British Museum and the
Egyptian Museum.
The Great Sphinx was believed to stand as a guardian of the
Giza Plateau, where it faces the rising sun. It was the focus of solar worship in the
Old Kingdom, centered in the adjoining temples built around the time of its probable construction. Its animal form, the lion, has long been a symbol associated with the sun in
ancient Near Eastern civilizations. Images depicting the Egyptian king in the form of a lion smiting his enemies appear as far back as the
Early Dynastic Period of Egypt. During the
New Kingdom, the Sphinx became more specifically associated with the god
Hor-em-akhet (
Greek Harmachis) or Horus at the Horizon, which represented the
Pharaoh in his role as the
Shesep ankh of
Atum (living image of Atum). A temple was built to the northeast of the Sphinx by King
Amenhotep II, nearly a thousand years after its construction, dedicated to the cult of Horemakhet.
The Great Sphinx is one of the world's largest and oldest statues, yet basic facts about it such as the real-life model for the face, when it was built, and by whom, are debated. These questions have collectively earned the title "Riddle of the Sphinx", a nod to its Greek namesake, although this phrase should not be confused with the original
Greek legend.
|
The Sphinx against Khafra's pyramid |
The person behind the Great Sphinx has been a subject of debate. While there is no contemporaneous evidence indicating with certainty whom it represents, the Dream
Stela erected by
Pharaoh Thutmose IV in the
New Kingdom associates the Sphinx with King
Khafra (also known by the Hellenised version of his name,
Chephren). This would place its construction during the
Fourth dynasty of Egypt (
2723 BC–
2563 BC). Its super-colossal design is characteristic of
Old Kingdom architecture, especially during Khafra's reign. Khafra is known to have ordered the building of twenty-two stone structures that were more than three times life-size, but the largest is believed to be the Great Sphinx.
The Sphinx's link with Khafra therefore continues to be the most widely held view by
Egyptologists, but other hypotheses exist. In
2004, French Egyptologist Vassil Dobrev announced the results of a 20-year reexamination of historical records and uncovering of new evidence that suggest the Great Sphinx may have been the work of the little known Pharaoh
Djedefre, Khafra's half brother and a son of
Khufu, the builder of the
Great Pyramid of Giza. Dobrev suggests it was built by Djedefre in the image of his father Khufu, identifying him with the sun god
Ra in order to restore respect for their dynasty.
["I have solved riddle of the Sphinx, says Frenchman", newspaper article from The Daily Telegraph. Last retrieved June 28, 2005.]In common with many famous constructions of remote antiquity, the Great Sphinx has over the years been the subject of numerous speculative theories and assertions by non-
specialists,
mystics,
pseudohistorians,
pseudoarchaeologists and general writers. These alternative theories of the origin, purpose and history of the monument typically invoke a wide array of sources and associations, such as neighboring cultures,
astrology,
lost continents and civilizations (e.g.
Atlantis),
numerology,
mythology and other
esoteric subjects.
Egyptologists and the wider scientific community largely ignore such claims; however, on occasion they are drawn into public debate when a claim purports to rely upon some novel or re-interpreted data from an academic field of study.
Water erosion
In recent years professor
Robert M. Schoch of
Boston University and
Colin Reader have speculated that the Sphinx may display evidence of prolonged water erosion. Egypt's last time period where there was a significant amount of rainfall ended during the
3rd millennium BC. Schoch claims that the amount of water erosion they feel that the Sphinx has experienced indicates a construction date no later than the
6th millennium BC or
5th millennium BC, at least two thousand years before the widely accepted construction date and 1500 years prior to the accepted date for the beginning of Egyptian civilization. Reader's assessment is that the Sphinx is a few hundred years older than the traditionally accepted date.
This theory has not been accepted by mainstream Egyptologists or experts in related fields. Alternative theories for the erosion include wind and sand,
acid rain,
exfoliation or the poor quality of the limestone used to construct the Sphinx.
Hancock and Bauval
One well-publicised debate
[BBC Horizon programme (2000) on alternate theories of Hancock and Bauval] was generated by the works of two writers,
Graham Hancock and
Robert Bauval, in a series of separate and collaborative publications from the late 1980s onwards. Their claims include that the Great Sphinx was constructed in
10,500 BC; that its
lion-shape is a definitive reference to the
constellation of
Leo; and that the layout and orientation of the Sphinx, the
Giza pyramid complex and the
Nile River is an accurate reflection or "map" of the constellations of Leo,
Orion (specifically,
Orion's Belt) and the
Milky Way, respectively.
Their initial claims regarding the alignment of the Giza pyramids with Orion ("…the three pyramids were an unbelievably precise terrestrial map of the three stars of Orion's belt"— Hancock's
Fingerprints of the Gods, 1995, p.375) are later joined with speculation about the age of the Sphinx (Hancock and Bauval,
Keeper of Genesis, published 1997 in the U.S. as
The Message of the Sphinx). By 1998's
The Mars Mystery, they claim:
...we have demonstrated with a substantial body of evidence that the pattern of stars that is "frozen" on the ground at Giza in the form of the three pyramids and the Sphinx represents the disposition of the constellations of Orion and Leo as they looked at the moment of sunrise on the spring equinox during the astronomical "Age of Leo" (i.e., the epoch in which the Sun was "housed" by Leo on the spring equinox.) Like all precessional ages this was a 2,160-year period. It is generally calculated to have fallen between the Gregorian calendar dates of 10,970 and 8810 BC. (op. cit., p.189)
A date of 10,500 B.C. is chosen because they claim this is the only time in the
precession of the
equinoxes when the
astrological age was
Leo and when that constellation rose directly east of the Sphinx at the
vernal equinox. They claim also that in this epoch the angles between the three
stars of Orion's Belt and the horizon was an "exact match" to the angles between the three main Giza pyramids. This time period also coincides with the American
psychic Edgar Cayce's "dating" of
Atlantis, and together these claims are used to support the overall belief in some advanced and ancient, but now vanished, progenitor
civilization.
These claims, and the
astronomical and archaeological data upon which they are based, have been refuted by scholars who have examined them, notably the astronomers
Ed Krupp and
Anthony Fairall[Tony Fairall's criticisms]. The refuting evidence includes noting that the correspondence of the angles between the pyramids and the angles in Orion's Belt at that epoch is not in fact precise or even very close, that the "Age of
Leo" (period when the
Sun's path appears in this constellation at the equinoxes) in fact starts 1500 years later than this, that the
Zodiac of
western astrology is known to have originated in
Mesopotamia and not pre-ancient Egypt, and that if the Sphinx is meant to represent Leo, then it should be on the other side of the Nile (the "Milky Way") from the pyramids ("Orion"). Hancock and Bauval maintain their positions and continue to publish books on their speculations. The scientific community regards these as
pseudoscience[critiques on the theory as pseudoscience].
Ethnicity
|
The head of the Giza Sphinx in partial shadow, its prognathous profile in silhouette |
Over the years, casual observers, as well as at least one forensic expert have characterized the face of the Sphinx as "
Negroid". One of the earliest known descriptions of a "Negroid" Sphinx is recorded in the travel notes of French scholar
Constantin-François de ChassebÅ"uf, Comte de Volney, who visited in Egypt between
1783 and
1785. Volney described it as "typically Negro in all its features…." Likewise, French novelist
Gustave Flaubert traveled to Egypt in 1849 and recorded the following observation:
We stop before a Sphinx ; it fixes us with a terrifying stare. Its eyes still seem full of life; the left side is stained white by bird-droppings (the tip of the Pyramid of Khephren has the same long white stains); it exactly faces the rising sun, its head is grey, ears very large and protruding like a negro's,[1] [see prognathism] its neck is eroded; from the front it is seen in its entirety thanks to great hollow dug in the sand; the fact that the nose is missing increases the flat, negroid effect. Besides, it was certainly Ethiopian; the lips are thick….[2]
More recently, in 1992, the
New York Times published an article reporting the findings of Frank Domingo, a senior
forensics artist with the
New York City Police Department who had traveled to Egypt to take exact measurements of the Sphinx's head. Domingo, credited with convening the first national gathering of forensic artists almost ten years earlier, generated a model of the head of the Sphinx both by hand and utilizing computer graphics [
3], and determined that the Sphinx represented a person other than Khafra.
Robert M. Schoch of
Boston University further suggests that the face has "a distinctive 'African,' 'Nubian,' or 'Negroid' aspect which is lacking in the face of Khafra." [
4]
The
New York Times subsequently published a letter to the editor submitted by
orthodontist Sheldon Peck, who concurred with Domingo:
The analytical techniques…Detective Frank Domingo used on facial photographs are not unlike methods orthodontists and surgeons use to study facial disfigurements. From the right lateral tracing of the statue's worn profile a pattern of bimaxilliary prognathism is clearly detectable. This is an anatomical condition of forward development in both jaws, more frequently found in people of African ancestry than in those from Asian or Indo-European stock. [5]
*
Great Pyramid of Giza*
Sphinx*
An academic article arguing the case for water erosion evidence*
Egypt—The Lost Civilization Theory*
Satellite images of Great Sphinx of Giza at
WikiMapia = Google maps + wiki
*
The Sphinx's Nose*
Sphinx photo gallery*
Al Maqrizi's account in Arabic
