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Ptologists at large remains that the Great Sphinx was built in approximately 2500 bc by the pharaoh Djedefre, the supposed builder of the second pyramid at Giza

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destroyed the nose, and was hanged for vandalism. Al-Maqrīzī describes the Sphinx as the “talisman of the Nile” on which the locals believed the flood cycle depended. Some legends claim that the nose was broken off by a cannonball fired by Napolйon’s soldiers and that legend 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. The lack of visible damage supports his theory that the beard was a later addition.


Mythology

Colin Reader has proposed that the Sphinx was probably the focus of solar worship in the Early Dynastic Egypt, before the Giza Plateau became a necropolis in the Old Kingdom (2686–2134 BC). 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 the 4th Dynasty. 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.


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 (Living Image) of 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.


Mysterious Chamber Under the Sphinx Paw

In 1996, a team of archaeologist found a hidden chamber underneath the paws of the sphinx by using ultrasound from the surface. The last known investigation into this was done in 1998 and nothing more came of it. Supposedly, this chamber may have held a pool or was flooded and this was one reason why Dr. Zahi Hawass did not pursue opening it because of possible risk to the structural integrity of the Sphinx. To this day, no one knows what this chamber contains.


Images over the centuries

In the last 700 years there have been a proliferation of travelers 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 travellers, such as George Sandys, Andrй Thйvet, Athanasius Kircher, Balthasar de Monconys, Jean de Thйvenot, John Greaves, Johann Michael Vansleb, Benoоt de Maillet, Cornelis de Bruijn, Paul Lucas, Richard Pococke, Frederic Louis Norden and others, gained fame and fortune due to their often highly popular works. 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 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), Benoоt de Maillet (1735) and Elliot Warburton (1844).


When one looks at the pencil and paint renderings by European travellers (see the gallery below), one realizes that it took Europeans some time to focus accurately on the image of the Sphinx. Seven years after visiting Giza, Andrй Thйvet (Cosmographie de Levant, 1556) described the Sphinx as "the head of a colossus, cause to be made by Isis, daughter of Inachus, then so beloved of Jupiter". He 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 Franзois 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. Norden made the first nearly true drawing of the Sphinx (Voyage d'Egypte et de Nubie, 1755) and he was the first known to depict clearly that the nose was missing.


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.

Строитель и временные рамки

Несмотря на противоречивые данные и точки зрения спустя время, традиционный взгляд, которого придерживаются современные египтологи, в целом остается прежним в том, что Большой Сфинкс был создан около 2500 года до н.э. фараоном Джедефрой, предполагаемым строителем второй пирамиды в Гизе.

Селим Хасан, который в 1949 году писал о недавних раскопках вокруг Сфинкса, резюмировал проблему следующим образом:

Принимая во внимание все обстоятельства, по-видимому за возведение этой самой замечательной статуи в мире мы должны быть благодарны Хафре, но с учетом того, что нет ни единой заметки того времени, которая бы позволила связать сооружение Сфинкса с Хафрой, и пока она не появилась, мы должны рассматривать эти данные как косвенные до тех пор, пока не наступит момент, когда лопата землекопа не откроет миру точное упоминание о возведении Сфинкса.