Ancient Egypt: History in an Hour. Anthony Holmes

       The Pyramid of Khafre and the Sphinx

      The Sphinx poses a different challenge for those who wish to understand ancient Egypt. The shape of the lion was carved from a rock outcrop of soft sandstone. It is thought to have been sculptured at the time the pyramids of Giza were built, some 4,500 years ago, but there is a hypothesis, based on the erosion of the body, that it is much older. The Sphinx has spent much of its existence covered by desert sand which protected it from sand and wind erosion. However, the body is deeply etched with vertical erosion channels, which suggests it may have been exposed during the wet period prior to c.8000 BC. This, however, is still much controverted.

      The head of the pharaoh was carved, supposedly as a likeness of Khafre. One theory proposes that the sculpture was originally that of a maned lion and the reshaping of the head to that of a pharaoh took place at the time of Khafre.

      The great sculpture was called the Sphinx by the Greeks who equated it with their own myth of a sphinx that had the head of a woman, the body of a lion and the wings of a bird. The Egyptian religion like many other early cults believed the sun was controlled by a god, in this case Re. The Sphinx accurately faces the eastern horizon and greets the rising of the sun god Re precisely on the mornings of the vernal and autumnal equinoxes.

      Over the centuries, the Sphinx has lost its pharaonic beard, part of which is in the British Museum, and likewise the sacred cobra from its forehead. The most disfiguring loss is that of its nose which would have been about a metre wide at the nostrils. 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 nostrils. The rods were then used to prise the nose off.

      The Egyptian Arab historian Al-Maqrīzī, writing in the fifteenth century AD, attributes the loss of the nose to the destructive act of Muhammad Sa’im al-Dahr, a Sufi Muslim. 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. He was hanged for vandalism.

      A story claiming that the nose was broken off by a cannonball fired by Napoleon’s soldiers is entirely false. A painting of the Sphinx, made sixty years before Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign, shows the Sphinx without a nose, but the cannonball legend still lives on today.

      The suggestion that there may be chambers beneath the Sphinx containing records of ‘ancient wisdom’ has persisted for decades. Ground-penetrating radar has shown that voids do exist, but experts believe these are naturally occurring spaces, and were not created or enhanced by man.

      The third pyramid on the same site at Giza is very much smaller than the two major pyramids. It was built by Menkaure, the son of Khafre. In addition there are three small satellite pyramids.

      In an endeavour to consolidate a theory as to the purpose of the pyramids, Robert Bauval and Adrian Gilbert, authors of The Orion Mystery, propose that the three pyramids of Giza reflect the position of the three stars of Orion’s Belt, using the River Nile as an earthly image of the Milky Way. It is also suggested that the many other pyramids contribute to an earthly map of the night sky over ancient Egypt. Most Egyptologists remain unconvinced by this theory.

       The Ancient Religion

      People of ancient times did not have scientific explanations for natural phenomena such as weather, floods, pestilence or even the daily sunrise, so they assumed supernatural powers were involved. Gods were invented to rationalize matters that were otherwise inexplicable. The first of the divine responsibilities was the creation of their world.

      They imagined a formless watery infinity called ‘the Nun’. There were several gods involved in creation. Ptah used the power of words to create the world. When he spoke, his words became reality through the active power of the god Atum and whatever Ptah gave a name was created. The god of air was called Shu and his wife Tefnut was the goddess of moisture. Their son Geb was the god of the earth and his sister Nut was the goddess of the sky.