[guide.chat] great sphynx of egypt
- From: vanessa <qwerty1234567a@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "GUIDE CHAT" <guide.chat@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2012 00:34:00 +0100
Great Sphinx of Giza
The Great Sphinx of Giza (Arabic: Abu al Hul, English: The Terrifying One),
commonly referred to as the Sphinx, is a limestone statue of a reclining or
couchant sphinx (a mythical creature with a lion's body and a human head) that
stands on the Giza Plateau on the west bank of the Nile in Giza, Egypt.
It is the largest monolith statue in the world, standing 73.5 metres (241 ft)
long, 6 metres (20 ft) wide, and 20.22 m (66.34 ft) high.[1] It is the oldest
known monumental sculpture, and is commonly believed to have been built by
ancient Egyptians of the Old Kingdom during the reign of the pharaoh Khafra (c.
2558?2532 BC).
The Great Sphinx is one of the world's largest and oldest statues, but basic
facts about it, such as who its face was modeled after, when it was built, and
by whom, are still debated. These questions have resulted in the popular idea
of the "Riddle of the Sphinx," [3] although this phrase should not be confused
with the original Greek legend of the Riddle of the Sphinx.
The Sphinx against the Pyramid of Khafre
Pliny The Elder mentioned the Great Sphinx in his book, Natural History,
commenting that the Egyptians looked upon the statue as a "divinity" that has
been passed over in silence and "that King Harmais was buried in it". [4][5]
[edit]Names of the Sphinx
It is not known by what name the creators called their statue, as the Great
Sphinx does not appear in any known inscription of the Old Kingdom, and there
are no inscriptions anywhere describing its construction or its original
purpose. In the New Kingdom, the Sphinx was called Hor-em-akhet (English: Horus
of the Horizon; Hellenized: Harmachis), and the pharaoh Thutmose IV (1401?1391
or 1397?1388 BC)[6] specifically referred to it as such in his Dream Stele.
The commonly used name Sphinx was given to it in classical antiquity, about
2000 years after the accepted date of its construction, by reference to a Greek
mythological beast with a lion's body, a woman's head and the wings of an eagle
(although, like most Egyptian sphinxes, the Great Sphinx has a man's head and
no wings). The English word sphinx comes from the ancient Greek Sf???
(transliterated: sphinx), apparently from the verb sf???? (transliterated:
sphingo / English: to squeeze), after the Greek sphinx who strangled anyone who
failed to answer her riddle.
The name may alternatively be a corruption of the ancient Egyptian Ssp-anx (in
MdC), a name given to royal statues of Dynasty IV (2575?2467 BC and later) in
the New Kingdom (c. 1570?1070 BC) to the Great Sphinx more specifically,
although phonetically the two names are far from identical.
Medieval Arab writers, including al-Maqrizi, call the Sphinx balhib and bilhaw,
which suggest a Coptic influence. The modern Egyptian Arabic name is ??? ?????
(Abu al Hul, English: The Terrifying One).
[edit]Builder and timeframe
Despite conflicting evidence and viewpoints over the years, the traditional
view held by modern Egyptology at large remains that the Great Sphinx was built
in approximately 2500 BC by the pharaoh Khafra, the builder of the Second
Pyramid at Giza.[7]
Selim Hassan, writing in 1949 on recent excavations of the Sphinx enclosure,
summed up the problem:
"Taking all things into consideration, it seems that we must give the credit of
erecting this, the world's most wonderful statue, to Khafre, but always with
this reservation: that there is not one single contemporary inscription which
connects the Sphinx with Khafre; so, sound as it may appear, we must treat the
evidence as circumstantial, until such time as a lucky turn of the spade of the
excavator will reveal to the world a definite reference to the erection of the
Sphinx."[8]
The "circumstantial" evidence mentioned by Hassan includes the Sphinx's
location in the context of the funerary complex surrounding the Second Pyramid,
which is traditionally connected with Khafra.[9] Apart from the Causeway, the
Pyramid and the Sphinx, the complex also includes the Sphinx Temple and the
Valley Temple, both of which display the same architectural style, with
200-tonne stone blocks quarried out of the Sphinx enclosure.
A diorite statue of Khafre, which was discovered buried upside down along with
other debris in the Valley Temple, is claimed as support for the Khafra theory.
The Dream Stele, erected much later by the pharaoh Thutmose IV (1401?1391 or
1397?1388 BC), associates the Sphinx with Khafra. When the stela was
discovered, its lines of text were already damaged and incomplete, and only
referred to Khaf, not Khafra. An extract was translated:
"... which we bring for him: oxen ... and all the young vegetables; and we
shall give praise to Wenofer ... Khaf ... the statue made for
Atum-Hor-em-Akhet."[10]
The Egyptologist Thomas Young, finding the Khaf hieroglyphs in a damaged
cartouche used to surround a royal name, inserted the glyph ra to complete
Khafra's name. However, the stela offers no indication of the relationship
between the Sphinx and 'Khafra' ? as its builder, restorer, worshipper or
otherwise. When the Stela was re-excavated in 1925, the lines of text referring
to Khaf flaked off and were destroyed.
[edit]Dissenting hypotheses
Theories held by mainstream Egyptologists about the date of the construction of
the Great Sphinx of Giza have been challenged and various alternative theories
have been proposed ? about the builder or the dating ? to explain its
construction.
[edit]Early Egyptologists
Some of the early Egyptologists and excavators of the Giza pyramid complex
believed the Great Sphinx and other structures in the Sphinx enclosure predated
the traditional date of construction (the reign of Khafra or Khephren,
2520?2492 BC).
In 1857, Auguste Mariette, founder of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, unearthed
the much later Inventory Stela (estimated Dynasty XXVI, c. 678?525 BC), which
tells how Khufu came upon the Sphinx, already buried in sand. Although certain
tracts on the Stela are considered good evidence,[11] this passage is widely
dismissed as Late Period historical revisionism.[12]
Gaston Maspero, the French Egyptologist and second director of the Egyptian
Museum in Cairo, conducted a survey of the Sphinx in 1886 and concluded:
"The Sphinx stela shows, in line thirteen, the cartouche of Khephren.[13] I
believe that to indicate an excavation carried out by that prince, following
which, the almost certain proof that the Sphinx was already buried in sand by
the time of Khafre[13] and his predecessors [i.e. Dynasty IV, c. 2575?2467
BC]."[14]
In 1904, English Egyptologist E. A. Wallis Budge wrote in The Gods of the
Egyptians:
"This marvelous object [the Great Sphinx] was in existence in the days of
Khafre, or Khephren,[13] and it is probable that it is a very great deal older
than his reign and that it dates from the end of the archaic period [c. 2686
BC]."[15]
[edit]Modern dissenting hypotheses
Rainer Stadelmann, former director of the German Archaeological Institute in
Cairo, examined the distinct iconography of the nemes (headdress) and the
now-detached beard of the Sphinx and concluded that the style is more
indicative of the Pharaoh Khufu (2589?2566 BC), builder of the Great Pyramid of
Giza and Khafra's father.[16] He supports this by suggesting that Khafra's
Causeway was built to conform to a pre-existing structure, which, he concludes,
given its location, could only have been the Sphinx.[12]
Colin Reader, an English geologist who independently conducted a more recent
survey of the enclosure, points out that the various quarries on the site have
been excavated around the Causeway. Because these quarries are known to have
been used by Khufu, Reader concludes that the Causeway (and the temples on
either end thereof) must predate Khufu, thereby casting doubt on the
conventional Egyptian chronology.[12]
In 2004, Vassil Dobrev of the Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale in
Cairo announced that he had uncovered new evidence that the Great Sphinx may
have been the work of the little-known Pharaoh Djedefre (2528?2520 BC),
Khafra's half brother and a son of Khufu.[17] Dobrev suggests that Djedefre
built the Sphinx in the image of his father Khufu, identifying him with the sun
god Ra in order to restore respect for their dynasty. Dobrev also notes, like
Stadelmann and others, that the causeway connecting Khafre's pyramid to the
temples was built around the Sphinx suggesting it was already in existence at
the time.[16]
Frank Domingo, a forensic scientist in the New York City Police Department and
an expert forensic anthropologist,[18] used detailed measurements of the
Sphinx, forensic drawings and computer imaging to conclude that Khafra, as
depicted on extant statuary, was not the model for the Sphinx's face.[19]
[edit]Water erosion debate
Main article: Sphinx water erosion hypothesis
The Sphinx water erosion hypothesis contends that the main type of weathering
evident on the enclosure walls of the Great Sphinx could only have been caused
by prolonged and extensive rainfall,[20] and that it must therefore predate the
time of the pharaoh Khafra. The hypothesis is championed primarily by Robert M.
Schoch, a geologist and associate professor of natural science at the College
of General Studies at Boston University , and John Anthony West, an author and
alternative Egyptologist.
Orion Correlation Theory: The Giza pyramids (in outline) superimposed on an
astrophotograph of Orion's Belt. Note: the pyramids have been rotated and
scaled to facilitate correlation.
The origin and identity of the Sphinx are the subject of many fringe theories
that are not generally accepted by mainstream Egyptologists or are unsupported
by scientific evidence.
[edit]Orion correlation theory
The Orion correlation theory, as expounded by popular authors Graham Hancock
and Robert Bauval,[21] is based on the proposed exact correlation of the three
pyramids at Giza with the three stars ? Ori, e Ori and d Ori, the stars forming
Orion's Belt, in the relative positions occupied by these stars in 10500 BC.
The authors argue that the geographic relationship of the Sphinx, the Giza
pyramids and the Nile directly corresponds with Leo, Orion and the Milky Way
respectively. Sometimes cited as an example of pseudoarchaeology, the theory is
at variance with mainstream scholarship; Bauval and Hancock in turn say that
archaeologists are possibly engaged in a conspiracy to ignore or suppress
evidence contradicting the established scholarly consensus.[22][23][24]
[edit]The Great Sphinx as Anubis
Author Robert K. G. Temple proposes that the Sphinx was originally a statue of
the Jackal-Dog Anubis, the God of the Necropolis, and that its face was
recarved in the likeness of a Middle Kingdom pharaoh, Amenemhet II. Temple
bases his identification on the style of the eye make-up and the style of the
pleats on the head-dress.[25]
[edit]Racial characteristics
Over the years several authors have commented on what they perceive as
"Negroid" or Ethiopian characteristics in the face of the Sphinx.[26] This
issue has become part of the Ancient Egyptian race controversy, with respect to
the ancient population as a whole.[27] The face of the Sphinx has been damaged
over the millennia, making conclusive racial identification of its
characteristics difficult or impossible, much less assuming that a part-lion
mythical creature was carved to accurate human standards.
After the Giza Necropolis was abandoned, the Sphinx became buried up to its
shoulders in sand. The first documented attempt at an excavation dates to c.
1400 BC, when the young Thutmose IV (1401?1391 or 1397?1388 BC) gathered a team
and, after much effort, managed to dig out the front paws, between which he
placed a granite slab, known as the Dream Stele, inscribed with the following
(an extract):
... the royal son, Thothmos, being arrived, while walking at midday and seating
himself under the shadow of this mighty god, was overcome by slumber and slept
at the very moment when Ra is at the summit [of heaven]. He found that the
Majesty of this august god spoke to him with his own mouth, as a father speaks
to his son, saying: Look upon me, contemplate me, O my son Thothmos; I am thy
father, Harmakhis-Khopri-Ra-Tum; I bestow upon thee the sovereignty over my
domain, the supremacy over the living ... Behold my actual condition that thou
mayest protect all my perfect limbs. The sand of the desert whereon I am laid
has covered me. Save me, causing all that is in my heart to be executed.[28]
Later, Ramesses II the Great (1279?1213 BC) may have undertaken a second
excavation.
Mark Lehner, an Egyptologist, originally asserted that there had been a far
earlier renovation during the Old Kingdom (c. 2686?2184 BC),[29] although he
has subsequently recanted this "heretical" viewpoint.[30]
In AD 1817, the first modern archaeological dig, supervised by the Italian
Captain Giovanni Battista Caviglia, uncovered the Sphinx's chest completely.
The entire Sphinx was finally excavated in 1925 to 1936, in digs led by Émile
Baraize.
In 1931 engineers of the Egyptian government repaired the head of the Sphinx
when part of its headdress fell off in 1926 due to erosion that had also cut
deeply into its neck.[31]
Limestone fragments of the Sphinx's beard
The one-meter-wide nose on the face is missing. Examination of the Sphinx's
face shows that long rods or chisels were hammered into the nose, one down from
the bridge and one beneath the nostril, then used to pry the nose off towards
the south.[32]
The Egyptian Arab historian al-Maqrizi, writing in the 15th century AD,
attributes the loss of the nose to iconoclasm by Muhammad Sa'im al-Dahr, a Sufi
Muslim from the khanqah of Sa'id al-Su'ada. In AD 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, and
was hanged for vandalism. Al-Maqrizi describes the Sphinx as the "talisman of
the Nile" on which the locals believed the flood cycle depended.
There is also a story that the nose was broken off by a cannonball fired by
Napoleon's soldiers, that still lives on today. Other variants indict British
troops, the Mamluks, and others. However, sketches of the Sphinx by the Dane
Frederic Louis Norden, made in 1737 and published in 1755, illustrate the
Sphinx already without a nose.
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 Vassil Dobrev has suggested that had the
beard been an original part of the Sphinx, it would have damaged the chin of
the statue upon falling.[16] The lack of visible damage supports his theory
that the beard was a later addition.
Colin Reader has proposed that the Sphinx was probably the focus of solar
worship in the Early Dynastic Period, before the Giza Plateau became a
necropolis in the Old Kingdom (c. 2686?2134 BC).[33] He ties this in with his
conclusions that the Sphinx, the Sphinx temple, the Causeway and the Khafra
mortuary temple are all part of a complex which predates Dynasty IV (c.
2613?2494 BC). 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 date as far back as the Early Dynastic
Period.
In the New Kingdom, the Sphinx became more specifically associated with the god
Hor-em-akhet (Hellenized: Harmachis) or Horus at the Horizon, which represented
the pharaoh in his role as the Shesep-ankh (English: Living Image) of the god
Atum. Pharaoh Amenhotep II (1427?1401 or 1397 BC) built a temple to the north
east of the Sphinx nearly 1000 years after its construction, and dedicated it
to the cult of Hor-em-akhet.
[edit]Images over the centuries
In the last 700 years there have been a proliferation of travellers and reports
from Lower Egypt, unlike Upper Egypt, which was seldom reported from prior to
the mid-18th century. Alexandria, Rosetta, Damietta, Cairo and the Giza
Pyramids are described repeatedly, but not necessarily comprehensively. Many
accounts, by no means all by people who had actually seen it, were published
and widely read. These include those of George Sandys, André Thévet, Athanasius
Kircher, Balthasar de Monconys, Jean de Thévenot, John Greaves, Johann Michael
Vansleb, Benoît de Maillet, Cornelis de Bruijn, Paul Lucas, Richard Pococke,
Frederic Louis Norden and others. But there is an even larger crowd of more
anonymous people who wrote obscure and little-read works, sometimes only
unpublished manuscripts in libraries or private collections, including Henry
Castela, Hans Ludwig von Lichtenstein, Michael Heberer von Bretten, Wilhelm von
Boldensele, Pierre Belon du Mans, Vincent Stochove, Christophe Harant, Gilles
Fermanel, Robert Fauvel, Jean Palerne Foresien, Willian Lithgow, Joos van
Ghistele, etc.
Over the centuries, writers and scholars have recorded their impressions and
reactions upon seeing the Sphinx. The vast majority were concerned with a
general description, often including a mixture of science, romance and
mystique. A typical description of the Sphinx by tourists and leisure travelers
throughout the 19th and 20th century was made by John Lawson Stoddard;
It is the antiquity of the Sphinx which thrills us as we look upon it, for in
itself it has no charms. The desert's waves have risen to its breast, as if to
wrap the monster in a winding-sheet of gold. The face and head have been
mutilated by Moslem fanatics. The mouth, the beauty of whose lips was once
admired, is now expressionless. Yet grand in its loneliness, ? veiled in the
mystery of unnamed ages, ? the relic of Egyptian antiquity stands solemn and
silent in the presence of the awful desert ? symbol of eternity. Here it
disputes with Time the empire of the past; forever gazing on and on into a
future which will still be distant when we, like all who have preceded us and
looked upon its face, have lived our little lives and disappeared. John L.
Stoddard's Lectures (1898) 2, 111.
From the 16th century far into the 19th century, observers repeatedly noted
that the Sphinx has the face, neck and breast of a woman. Examples included
Johannes Helferich (1579), George Sandys (1615), Johann Michael Vansleb (1677),
Benoît de Maillet (1735) and Elliot Warburton (1844).
Most early Western images were book illustrations in print form, elaborated by
a professional engraver from either previous images available or some original
drawing or sketch supplied by an author, and usually now lost. Seven years
after visiting Giza, André Thévet (Cosmographie de Levant, 1556) described the
Sphinx as "the head of a colossus, caused to be made by Isis, daughter of
Inachus, then so beloved of Jupiter". He, or his artist and engraver, pictured
it as a curly-haired monster with a grassy dog collar. Athanasius Kircher (who
never visited Egypt) depicted the Sphinx as a Roman statue, reflecting his
ability to conceptualize (Turris Babel, 1679). Johannes Helferich's (1579)
Sphinx is a pinched-face, round-breasted woman with straight hair; the only
edge over Thevet is that the hair suggests the flaring lappets of the
headdress. George Sandys stated that the Sphinx was a harlot; Balthasar de
Monconys interpreted the headdress as a kind of hairnet, while François de La
Boullaye-Le Gouz's Sphinx had a rounded hairdo with bulky collar.
Richard Pococke's Sphinx was an adoption of Cornelis de Bruijn's drawing of
1698, featuring only minor changes, but is closer to the actual appearance of
the Sphinx than anything previous. The print versions of Norden's careful
drawings for his Voyage d'Egypte et de Nubie, 1755 are the first to clearly
show that the nose was missing. However from the time of the Napoleonic
invasion of Egypt onwards, a number of accurate images were widely available in
Europe, and copied by others.
The Disney film Aladdin attributes the Sphinx's broken nose to a stonemason who
accidentally chipped it off after being distracted by Aladdin and Jasmine
flying past on their magic carpet. In the cartoon book Asterix and Cleopatra,
Obelix climbs up the face of the Sphinx and accidentally knocks the nose off.
In 2008, the film 10,000 BC showed a supposed original Sphinx with a lion's
head. Before the film, the theory was presented on earlier documentary films
about the origin of the Sphinx.
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