The Great Sphinx of Giza is the most instantly recognizable statue associated with ancient Egypt and among the most famous in the world. The sculpture, of a recumbent lion with the head of an Egyptian king, was carved out of limestone on the Giza plateau probably in the reign of the king Khafre (2558-2532 BCE) during the period of the Old Kingdom of Egypt (c. 2613-2181 BCE), although some scholars (notably Dobrev in 2004 CE) claim it was created by Djedefre (2566-2558 BCE), Khafre's brother who tried to usurp the throne after the death of the king Khufu (2589-2566 BCE), the creator of the Great Pyramid.
Origin and identity
The Great Sphinx is one of the world's largest and oldest statues, but basic facts about it are still subject to debate, such as when it was built, by whom and for what purpose.
Names of the Sphinx
The statue was never known as 'the sphinx' by the ancient Egyptians. The word 'sphinx' is Greek and came to be applied to the Egyptian sculpture at Giza, according to Verner (and others) through a translation of the Egyptian name shesep-ankh ("living image") by which the Egyptians referred to the piece as well as to other representations of royal figures. While that may be, it is also quite likely that the statue simply reminded Greek writers of their own mythical sphinx, such as the one famous in the story of Oedipus, with the body of a beast and head of a woman. Greek visitors to the site, scholars such as Verner claim, mistook the nemes (the striped headcloth of the king) for a woman's shoulder-length hair.
During the time of the New Kingdom of Egypt (1570-1069 BCE), the Sphinx was known by the Egyptians as Horemakhet (Horus of the Horizon) and a cult grew up around the statue associating it with the god Horus. A 'cult' in ancient Egypt should be understood along the lines of a sect of a religious movement in the present day; not a cult as a modern reader understands that term. This was a solar cult which venerated Horus in his role as a sky god. Amenhotep II (1425-1400 BCE) may have patronized this cult. He honored the Sphinx with a temple praising Khufu and Khafre, representatives of Horus on earth as many Egyptian kings claimed, but his choice in naming these two strongly suggests he understood a connection between these rulers of the 4th Dynasty and the statue. Amenhotep II's inscriptions, therefore, suggest a probable date and names of kings associated with its creation.
Amenhotep II's son, prince Thutmose, fell asleep one night near the Sphinx and had a dream in which the statue spoke to him complaining of its state and how the sand pressed upon it. The Sphinx offered Thutmose a deal: if he would agree to clear the sand away from the statue and restore it, he would become the next pharaoh of Egypt. The young prince took the deal, restored the Sphinx, and had the now-famous Dream Stele erected in front of it, carved of pink granite, to tell the story of how the prince became Thutmose IV, Pharaoh of Egypt (1400-1390 BCE). The cult of the Sphinx grew up after the reign of Thutmose IV, most likely in response to the Dream Stele which encouraged people to look upon the statue as a living deity able to influence the future.
The 4th-century CE Coptic Christians called the statue Bel-hit (The Guardian), and this name is still used today. Egyptians of the present day do not refer to the statue as 'the Sphinx' unless they are discussing it with foreign tourists. The piece is known in Egyptian Arabic as Abu al-Hawl, 'The Father of Terror,' and has been claimed to be an idolatrous abomination by some extreme factions of Islam. In 2012 CE, in fact, clerics associated with the taliban called for the destruction of the Sphinx and the pyramids of Giza for this reason.
The name may alternatively be a linguistic corruption of the phonetically different ancient Egyptian word Ssp-anx (in Manuel de Codage). This name is given to royal statues of the Fourth dynasty of ancient Egypt (2575–2467 BC) and later in the New Kingdom (c. 1570–1070 BC) to the Great Sphinx more specifically.
Medieval Arab writers, including al-Maqrīzī, call the Sphinx balhib and bilhaw, which suggest a Coptic influence. The modern Egyptian Arabic name is أبو الهول (Abū al Hūl, English: The Terrifying One).
Builder and time-frame
Though there have been conflicting evidence and viewpoints over the years, the view held by modern Egyptology at large remains that the Great Sphinx was built in approximately 2500 BC for the pharaoh Khafra, the builder of the Second Pyramid at Giza.
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.
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. Apart from the Causeway, the Pyramid and the Sphinx, the complex also includes the Sphinx Temple and Valley Temple, both of which display similar design of their inner courts. The Sphinx Temple was built using blocks cut from the Sphinx enclosure, while those of the Valley Temple were quarried from the plateau, some of the largest weighing upwards of 100 tons.
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 stele 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.
The Egyptologist Thomas Young, finding the Khaf hieroglyphs in a damaged cartouche used to surround a royal name, inserted the glyph rato complete Khafra's name. When the Stele was re-excavated in 1925, the lines of text referring to Khaf flaked off and were destroyed.
Dissenting hypotheses
Theories held by academic Egyptologists regarding the builder of the Sphinx and the date of its construction are not universally accepted, and various persons have proposed alternative hypotheses about both the builder and dating.
Early Egyptologists
Some early Egyptologists and excavators of the Giza pyramid complex believed the Great Sphinx and associated temples to predate the fourth dynasty rule of Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure. Petrie wrote in 1883 regarding the state of opinion regarding the age of the nearby temples, and by extension the Sphinx: "The date of the Granite Temple [Valley Temple] has been so positively asserted to be earlier than the fourth dynasty, that it may seem rash to dispute the point".
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, this passage is widely dismissed as Late Period historical revisionism, a purposeful fake, created by the local priests with the attempt to certify the contemporary Isis temple an ancient history it never had. Such an act became common when religious institutions such as temples, shrines and priest's domains were fighting for political attention and for financial and economic donations.
Gaston Maspero, the French Egyptologist and second director of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, conducted a survey of the Sphinx in 1886. He concluded that because the Dream stela showed the cartouche of Khafre in line thirteen, it was he who was responsible for the excavation and therefore the Sphinx must predate Khafre and his predecessors—possibly Dynasty IV, c. 2575–2467 BC. English Egyptologist E. A. Wallis Budge agreed that the Sphinx predated Khafre's reign, writing in The Gods of the Egyptians (1914): "This marvelous object [the Great Sphinx] 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 [c. 2686 BC]." Maspero believed the Sphinx to be "the most ancient monument in Egypt".
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 the style is more indicative of the Pharaoh Khufu (2589–2566 BC), builder of the Great Pyramid of Giza and Khafra's father. He supports this by suggesting Khafra's Causeway was built to conform to a pre-existing structure, which, he concludes, given its location, could only have been the Sphinx.
Colin Reader, an English geologist who independently conducted a more recent survey of the enclosure, agrees 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.
Frank Domingo, a forensic scientist in the New York City Police Department and an expert forensic anthropologist, used detailed measurements of the Sphinx, forensic drawingsand computer imaging to conclude the face depicted on the Sphinx is not the same face as is depicted on a statue attributed to Khafra.
In 2004, Vassil Dobrev of the Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale in Cairo announced he had uncovered new evidence 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. Dobrev suggests 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, the causeway connecting Khafre's pyramid to the temples was built around the Sphinx suggesting it was already in existence at the time.
Fringe hypotheses
Orion correlation theory
The Orion correlation theory, as expounded by popular authors Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval,[29] is based on the proposed exact correlation of the three pyramids at Giza with the three stars ζ Ori, ε Ori and δ 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.
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, and 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.
Colin Reader, a British geologist, studied the erosion patterns and noticed that they are found predominantly on the western enclosure wall and not on the Sphinx itself. He proposed the rainfall water runoff hypothesis, which also recognizes climate change transitions in the area.
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 style of the pleats on the headdress.
Racial characteristics
Over the years several authors have commented on what they perceive as "Negroid" characteristics in the face of the Sphinx. This issue has become part of the Ancient Egyptian race controversy, with respect to the ancient population as a whole. The face of the Sphinx has been damaged over the millennia.
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| the Breastplate of the sphinx |
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