Great Sphinx of Giza
The Great Sphinx of Giza is a limestone statue of a reclining sphinx, a mythical creature with the head of a human and the body of a lion. The monument was sculpted from the limestone bedrock of the Eocene-aged Mokattam Formation and faces east on the Giza Plateau, on the west bank of the Nile in Giza, Egypt. The oldest known monumental sculpture in Egypt, the Sphinx is part of the Memphite Necropolis and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Archaeological evidence suggests the Sphinx was created by Egyptians of the Old Kingdom during the reign of Khufu or Khafre. Scholars and Egyptologists believe the face of the Sphinx was carved to represent either the pharaoh Khufu or one of his sons, pharaohs Djedefre and Khafre, but a consensus has not been reached and the person in whose likeness the Sphinx was carved remains in dispute.
The Sphinx has undergone multiple restorations, the most recent of which involved replacing layers of limestone blocks around the base. The monument is long from paw to tail, high from the base to the top of the head, and wide at its rear haunches.
The circumstances of the destruction of the Sphinx's nose are unknown, but examinations of the face have shown evidence of a deliberate act with rods or chisels. Contrary to a popular myth, the nose was not destroyed by cannonfire from Napoleon's troops during his 1798 Egyptian campaign. Sketches and drawings predating Napoleon clearly detail the missing nose, and the damage is referenced in descriptions by 15th-century historian al-Maqrīzī.
Names
The original name the Old Kingdom creators gave the Sphinx is unknown, as the Sphinx temple, enclosure, and possibly the Sphinx itself was not completed at the time, and thus little is known about its cultural context. In the New Kingdom, the Sphinx was revered as the solar deity Hor-em-akhet, and the 14th century BC pharaoh Thutmose IV specifically refers to it as such in his Dream Stele.The commonly used name "Sphinx" was given to it in classical antiquity, around 2,000 years after the commonly accepted date of its construction by reference to a Greek mythological beast with the head of a woman, a falcon, a cat, or a sheep and the body of a lion with the wings of an eagle. The English word sphinx comes from the ancient Greek Σφίγξ apparently from the verb σφίγγω, after the Greek sphinx who strangled anyone who failed to answer her riddle.
Medieval Arab writers, including al-Maqrīzī, call the Sphinx by an Arabized Coptic name Belhib, Balhubah ''Belhawiyya, which in turn comes from Pehor or Pehorn, a name of the Canaanite god Hauron with whom the Sphinx was identified. It is also rendered as Ablehon on a depiction of the Sphinx made by François de La Boullaye-Le Gouz. The medieval Egyptian Arabic name is Abū il-Hawl, meaning "father of terror", which may be a folk etymological reinterpretation of the name of the god Ḥwr. In other source the medieval Egyptian Arabic name is Abul-Hun.
History
Old Kingdom
The archaeological evidence suggests the Great Sphinx was created between 2600 and 2500 BC for the king Khufu, the builder of the Great Pyramid of Giza, or his son Khafre, the builder of the second Pyramid at Giza. The Sphinx is a monolith carved from the bedrock of the plateau, which also served as the quarry for the pyramids and other monuments in the area. Egyptian geologist Farouk El-Baz has suggested the head of the Sphinx may have been carved first, out of a natural yardang: a ridge of bedrock sculpted by the wind. These can sometimes achieve shapes resembling animals. El-Baz suggests the "moat" or "ditch" around the Sphinx may have been quarried out later to allow for the creation of the full body of the sculpture. The stones cut from around the Sphinx's body were used to construct a temple in front of it; however, neither the enclosure nor the temple were completed, and the relative scarcity of Old Kingdom cultural material suggests a Sphinx cult was not established at the time. Selim Hassan, writing in 1949 on recent excavations of the Sphinx enclosure, makes note of this circumstance:In order to construct the temple, the northern perimeter wall of the Khafre Valley Temple had to be deconstructed; therefore, the Khafre funerary complex preceded the creation of the Sphinx and its temple. Furthermore, the angle and location of the south wall of the enclosure suggests the causeway connecting Khafre's pyramid and Valley Temple already existed before the Sphinx was planned. The lower base level of the Sphinx temple also indicates it does not pre-date the Valley Temple.
New Kingdom
Some time around the First Intermediate Period, the Giza Necropolis was abandoned, and drifting sand eventually buried the Sphinx up to its shoulders. The first documented attempt at an excavation dates to, when the young Thutmose IV gathered a team and, after much effort, managed to dig out the front paws, between which he erected a shrine housing the Dream Stele, an inscribed granite slab. When the stele was discovered, its lines of text were already damaged and incomplete. An excerpt reads:The Dream Stele associates the Sphinx with Khafre. However, this part of the text is not entirely intact:
Egyptologist Thomas Young, finding the Khaf hieroglyphs in a damaged cartouche used to surround a royal name, inserted the glyph ra to complete Khafre's name. When the stele was re-excavated in 1925, the lines of text referring to Khaf flaked off and were destroyed. Later, Ramesses II the Great may have undertaken a second excavation.
In the New Kingdom, the Sphinx became more specifically associated with the sun god Hor-em-akhet or "Horus-at-the-Horizon". The Pharaoh Amenhotep II built a temple to the northeast of the Sphinx nearly 1,000 years after its construction and dedicated it to the cult of Hor-em-akhet.
Graeco-Roman period
In Graeco-Roman times, Giza had become a tourist destination—the monuments were regarded as antiquities—and some Roman emperors visited the Sphinx out of curiosity and for political reasons. The Sphinx was cleared of sand again in the first century AD in honor of Emperor Nero and the Governor of Egypt Tiberius Claudius Balbilus. A monumental stairway—more than wide—was erected, leading down to a pavement in front of the paws of the Sphinx. A podium positioned at the top of the stairs allowed a view into the Sphinx sanctuary. Farther back, another podium neighbored several more steps. The stairway was dismantled during the 1931–32 excavations by Émile Baraize. Pliny the Elder describes the face of the Sphinx being colored red and gives measurements for the statue:A stela dated to 166 AD commemorates the restoration of the retaining walls surrounding the Sphinx. The last emperor connected with the monument is Septimius Severus, around 200 AD. With the downfall of Roman power, the Sphinx was once more engulfed by the sands.
Middle Ages
Some ancient non-Egyptians saw the Sphinx as a likeness of the god Hauron. The cult of the Sphinx continued into medieval times. The Sabians of Harran saw it as the burial place of Hermes Trismegistus. Arab authors describe the Sphinx as a talisman guarding the area from the desert. Al-Maqrizi describes it as the "talisman of the Nile" upon which locals believed the flood cycle depended. Muhammad al-Idrisi stated those wishing to obtain bureaucratic positions in the Egyptian government gave incense offering to the monument.Early modern period
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 description was made by John Lawson Stoddard:From the 16th to the 19th centuries, European observers described the Sphinx having the face, neck and breast of a woman. Examples included Johannes Helferich, George Sandys, Johann Michael Vansleb, Benoît de Maillet and Elliot Warburton. 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 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 depicted the Sphinx as a Roman statue. Johannes Helferich's Sphinx is a pinched-face, round-breasted woman with a straight-haired wig. George Sandys stated the Sphinx was a harlot; Balthasar de Monconys interpreted the headdress as a kind of hairnet, and François de La Boullaye-Le Gouz described the Sphinx as having a rounded hairdo with bulky collar. Richard Pococke's Sphinx was an adaptation 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 drawings for his Voyage d'Egypte et de Nubie, 1755 clearly show the missing nose.
Modern excavations
In 1817, the first modern archaeological dig, supervised by the Italian Giovanni Battista Caviglia, uncovered the Sphinx's chest completely.One of the people working on clearing the sands from around the Great Sphinx was Eugène Grébaut, a French Director of the Antiquities Service.
Opinions of early Egyptologists
Early Egyptologists and excavators had conflicting opinions regarding the age of the Sphinx and the associated temples. In 1857, Auguste Mariette, founder of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, unearthed the much later Inventory Stela, which tells how Khufu came upon the Sphinx, already buried in sand. Although certain tracts on the stela are likely accurate, this passage is contradicted by archaeological evidence, thus considered to be Late Period historical revisionism, a purposeful fake, created by the local priests as an attempt to imbue the contemporary Isis temple with an ancient history it never had. Such acts became common when religious institutions such as temples, shrines, and priests' domains fought for political attention, and for financial and economic donations.In 1883, Flinders Petrie wrote, regarding the state of opinion of the age of the Khafre Valley Temple, and by extension the Sphinx: "The date of the Granite Temple has been so positively asserted to be earlier than the fourth dynasty, that it may seem rash to dispute the point. Recent discoveries, however, strongly show that it was really not built before the reign of Khafre, in the fourth dynasty." Gaston Maspero, the French Egyptologist and second director of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, conducted a survey of the Sphinx in 1886. Maspero concluded because the Dream Stela showed the cartouche of Khafre in line 13, it was he who was responsible for the excavation and therefore the Sphinx must predate Khafre and his predecessors—possibly Fourth Dynasty,. Maspero believed the Sphinx to be "the most ancient monument in Egypt".
Ludwig Borchardt attributed the Sphinx to the Middle Kingdom, arguing the particular features seen on the Sphinx are unique to the 12th dynasty and the Sphinx resembles Amenemhat III. E. A. Wallis Budge agreed the Sphinx predated Khafre's reign, writing in The Gods of the Egyptians : "This marvelous object was in existence in the days of Khafre, or Khephren, 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 ." Selim Hassan reasoned the Sphinx was erected after the completion of the Khafre pyramid complex.