***What If The Sphinx Is A Woman***

Stardate:0101.14

[SunkenCiv]

:’)

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks BenLurkin, Talisker, Joe 6-pack, rellimpank, Daffynition, Campion, TASMANIANRED, anyone else I’ve missed.

The two main stories I’ve seen about the nose are, Napoleon’s troops, and the Turks (both using it for target practice).

The fact is, alas, that no one knows when the nose went missing. AFAIK, the only image of the Sphinx in profile that survives is the twofold on on the Dream Stele, which dates from the 18th Dynasty, during the New Kingdom.

Breaking off the noses was a superstitious practice that was intended to “kill” the spirit of the thing. The name Sphinx is a corruption of an pharaonic Egyptian term which translates as “living image” (something like “shesep kaf”).

Given the usual state of the Great Sphinx — buried up to the neck in sand — and the quality of the bedrock, it’s pretty likely that the nose came off on its own and got carted off for construction, and it probably must have happened after the 18th Dynasty.

I’m inclined to agree with Talisker, that the Sphinx was originally a representation of Anubis, and (again, because the body’s usually been buried; Herodotus didn’t even mention the Sphinx) the stone crumbled away, which led to the stump’s being resculpted. The face could have been carved during the Nubian Dynasty, which fits very well with the physical traits others have found through analysis. That dynasty also portrayed pharaohs as sphinxes.

[Smokin' Joe]

Ahhhh. Helen. The face that launched a thousand ships...


Outbound!

[SunkenCiv]

LOL!

[SunkenCiv]

LOL!

[Joe 6-pack]

"The two main stories I’ve seen about the nose are, Napoleon’s troops, and the Turks (both using it for target practice)."

Except the loss of the nose was documented long before Napoleon...and in fact, said documentation is pretty specific. From Wikipedia:

"The Egyptian Arab historian al-Maqrīzī, writing in the 15th century AD, attributes the loss of the nose to iconoclasm by Muhammad Sa'im al-Dahr, a Sufi Muslim from the khanqah of Sa'id al-Su'ada. 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, 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.

A story claims that the nose was broken off by a cannonball fired by Napoleon'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."

[Defiant]

So it wasn’t pharaoh, it was fido?

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks, that’s a nice wiki-page-ia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Sphinx_of_Giza

[SunkenCiv]

Egad, it’s Darth Meow!

[Daffynition]

I have no notion. It's fun to speculate, though.

Vivant Denon (an eyewitness) etched the image of the Sphinx of Giza (above, right) around 1798. If the Sphinx of Giza had been defaced before 1798, is it reasonable to conclude that Denon would have at least mentioned it?

In his written account, Denon stated, "...Though its proportions are colossal, the outline is pure and graceful; the expression of the head is mild, gracious, and tranquil; the character is African, but the mouth, and lips of which are thick, has a softness and delicacy of execution truly admirable; it seems real life and flesh. Art must have been at a high pitch when this monument was executed…”

-- Universal Magazine, 1803 (owned by The Freeman Institute)

When visiting Egypt today, this is what we see of The Sphinx of Giza.

This is what Vivant Denon saw in 1798. See what he wrote above as an eyewitness.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Daffynition.

[Miles the Slasher]

Mr. A - “The Sphinx has no nose.”

Mr. B - How does it smell?

Mr. A - “awful!”