About Sphinx
The Sphinx is a statue of a legendary creature with a lion's body and human head carved out of limestone. It is likely that it was originally covered with a layer of plaster and colored, and traces of the original colors are still visible next to one of his ears.
Located on the Giza plateau on the west bank of the Nile in Giza, Egypt, the Sphinx is also a guard of the plateau. It is the oldest known large sculptures, with a length of about 73.5 meters, including 15 meters length of the front legs, a width of 19.3 m, and the highest height of the ground about 20 meters to the top of the head. The ancient Egyptians are believed to have built it during the reign of Pharaoh Khafre (2558-2532 BC), the builder of the second pyramid in Giza.
The Sphinx's head.
It is believed that the Sphinx was quarried before King Khafre thought of sculpting it in the form of a statue. This statue is seen to the east, so the original sides were changed in the last century to match the Sphinx.
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Opinions differed in what this statue represents, the old view that it represents the king Khafre, combining the power of Assad and the wisdom of man. Some archaeologists believe that it was King Khufu who built it where the face of the Sphinx resembles a statue of Khufu, (not similar to the statues of Khafre). The question of who is the Sphinx is still open for discussion.
He is said to represent the sun god Hor-im-Akhit, as evidence of the temple facing the statue where the ritual was held. This has been entrenched in the minds of the Egyptians throughout their history as a statue of the god "Hor-em-sister," (ie Horus in the horizon), a picture of the god Atom, the largest Egyptian gods, the sun at sunset. He was visited by more than a king of the Pharaohs and the inscription on the occasion of the visit of them (Re-Ms) II in Cairo or Ramses II. And King Tutankhamun, who set up a rest next to the Sphinx. King Ramses II was before Tutankhamun, where Tutankhamun's mother-in-law was Amenhotep IV, who changed his name to Akhenaten when he called for the unification of the gods under the name of the god Aten, symbolized by the sun disk. This religion did not continue in ancient Egypt and ended with his death, where the priests of the god Amun resisted it. , Whose worship was common in Egypt and was the center of his temples in Luxor. From the Roman era, Emperor Septimius Severus visited.
Sphinx nose
The statue had a long nose, but the statue lost its nose, which is 1 meter wide. Other rumors accuse the British, Mamluks or others. But the drawings made by the Danish explorer Frederick Lewis Norden to the Sphinx in 1737 and published in 1755 in his book "The Journey to Egypt and Nubia" illustrate the statue without a nose, and this is consistent with the opinion of Egyptologist Dr. Muhannad Abu Hadid.
Al-Maqrizi pointed out that the nose of the Sphinx was destroyed by the Sufi fasting aeon who lived next to this idol, which was considered revered by the people at the time, and talked about Ali Pasha Mubarak in his book of compromise plans. .
There are other opinions to explain this:
1. The sons of the pharaoh kings were competing against them in archery.
2 - erosion factors may be the cause.
3 - It is said that basically without a nose.
However, all theories agreed that the main reason was that the nose was the weakest point in the Sphinx.
Throughout the ages, the Sphinx was covered with sand, which was removed several times. He removed the sand around the Sphinx, before he ascended the throne of Egypt in 1401 BC.
The Dream Painting, a molded model of gypsum is found in the Egyptian Museum in San Jose.
The sphinx or the dream painting between the arms of the sphinx has a rectangular shape with its upper edge arched, and the height of the painting is 144 centimeters wide and 40 centimeters wide and 70 centimeters thick. In the upper part there are two sculpted figures of Pharaoh Tuthmosis the fourth to the right and to the left offering our offering to the Sphinx.
Foreign archaeologists have taken molds from the painting and prepared molds from gypsum to translate and explain their hieroglyphs and drawings.
Other forms of the Sphinx
The Sphinx was so inspiring to old and new artists that we also find what was also made during the nineteenth century in Europe, especially in Italy and France, when the Egyptian civilization began to spread throughout Europe and America. But the ancient Egyptians were making similar statues of the Sphinx in smaller sizes. For example, several statues were placed on either side of the road between Karnak and Luxor. However, her heads as rams and her body and the body of the lion and take the position of the Sphinx, and this road is called the "way rams. Sometimes the small Sphinx statues were made to glorify the kings, such as a statue of a pharaoh in Fayoum and another statue representing Queen Hatshepsut.
There are several Egyptian statues in the form of the Sphinx representing kings and gods of the sun, and the face of the statue is often bearded beard traditional Egyptian braided creatures and similar ideas appeared in several other civilizations, including South and Southeast Asia, and the Sphinx occupied a place in the art of European decoration began from the era Renaissance.
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