How apropos to live time in the mind of the conscience on the planet label,
imagine a breadth lasting the length of the tell of spelling only iron as the elbow,
to that is the exit of fire on a story time Tea,
traveling the Southern bells to ring a phone on the Meet tee Ore,
places from that is the Mountain of gallant,
a balance that this world can only find closed.
The Gates to dimensions on the Aon forest as the grove is just the valley of stride,
I enjoy this land,
laughter and belly grabs,
more than a language of English would ever be level to thunder,
the sky is bright with wonderful Suns,
The Moons grasp such vibrant shadows,
Shades term in Knoll at jess per Urd
to card the tack is touch the bridle of only a pleasant memory,
prior and I shall allowance only silence for this world is Hell,
death is its seed,
people are the hour of absolute on faced!!
November 17th, 2016
ante meridiem
Legends have passed over hundreds of years regarding the simple omission in this photograph of the Sphinx and the Pyramid of Khafre, part of the Giza Pyramid (or Great Pyramid) complex in Egypt. Where is the Sphinx’s nose? Many of us have heard the tale that a cannonball fired by Napoleon’s soldiers hit the nose and caused it to break off. Sketches of the Sphinx by the Dane Frederic Louis Norden were created in 1737 and published in 1755, well before the era of Napoleon. However, these drawings illustrate the Sphinx without a nose and clearly contradicts the legend. So what really happened?
The Egyptian Arab historian al-Maqrīzī wrote in the 15th century that the nose was actually destroyed by a Sufi Muslim named Muhammad Sa'im al-Dahr. In 1378 CE, Egyptian peasants made offerings to the Great Sphinx in the hope of controlling the flood cycle, which would result in a successful harvest. Outraged by this blatant show of devotion, Sa'im al-Dahr destroyed the nose and was later executed for vandalism. Whether this is absolute fact is still debatable.
⏩http://www.smithsonianjourneys.org/blog/photo-what-happened-to-the-sphinxs-nose-180950757/
CALLS TO DESTROY EGYPT'S GREAT PYRAMIDS BEGIN
The next target on Islam's hit list.
July 10, 2012
➤According to several reports in the Arabic media, prominent Muslim clerics have begun to call for the demolition of Egypt’s Great Pyramids—or, in the words of Saudi Sheikh Ali bin Said al-Rabi‘i, those “symbols of paganism,” which Egypt’s Salafi party has long planned to cover with wax. Most recently, Bahrain’s “Sheikh of Sunni Sheikhs” and President of National Unity, Abd al-Latif al-Mahmoud, called on Egypt’s new president, Muhammad Morsi, to “destroy the Pyramids and accomplish what the Sahabi Amr bin al-As could not.”
This is a reference to the Muslim Prophet Muhammad’s companion, Amr bin al-As and his Arabian tribesmen, who invaded and conquered Egypt circa 641. Under al-As and subsequent Muslim rule, many Egyptian antiquities were destroyed as relics of infidelity. While most Western academics argue otherwise, according to early Muslim writers, the great Library of Alexandria itself—deemed a repository of pagan knowledge contradicting the Koran—was destroyed under bin al-As’s reign and in compliance with Caliph Omar’s command.
However, while book-burning was an easy activity in the 7th century, destroying the mountain-like pyramids and their guardian Sphinx was not—even if Egypt’s Medieval Mamluk rulers “de-nosed” the latter during target practice (though popular legend still attributes it to a Westerner, Napoleon).
Now, however, as Bahrain’s “Sheikh of Sheikhs” observes, and thanks to modern technology, the pyramids can be destroyed. The only question left is whether the Muslim Brotherhood president of Egypt is “pious” enough—if he is willing to complete the Islamization process that started under the hands of Egypt’s first Islamic conqueror.
Nor is such a course of action implausible. History is laden with examples of Muslims destroying their own pre-Islamic heritage—starting with Islam’s prophet Muhammad himself, who destroyed Arabia’s Ka‘ba temple, transforming it into a mosque.
Asking “What is it about Islam that so often turns its adherents against their own patrimony?” Daniel Pipes provides several examples, from Medieval Muslims in India destroying their forefathers’ temples, to contemporary Muslims destroying their non-Islamic heritage in Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Malaysia, and Tunisia.
Currently, in what the International Criminal Court is describing as a possible “war crime,” Islamic fanatics are destroying the ancient heritage of the city of Timbuktu in Mali—all to Islam’s triumphant war cry, “Allahu Akbar!”
Much of this hate for their own pre-Islamic heritage is tied to the fact that, traditionally, Muslims do not identify with this or that nation, culture, heritage, or language, but only with the Islamic nation—the Umma.
Accordingly, while many Egyptians—Muslims and non-Muslims alike—see themselves as Egyptians, Islamists have no national identity, identifying only with Islam’s “culture,” based on the “sunna” of the prophet and Islam’s language, Arabic. This sentiment was clearly reflected when the former Leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Muhammad Akef, declared “the hell with Egypt,” indicating that the interests of his country are secondary to Islam’s.
It is further telling that such calls are being made now—immediately after a Muslim Brotherhood member became Egypt’s president. In fact, the same reports discussing the call to demolish the last of the Seven Wonders of the World, also note that Egyptian Salafis are calling on Morsi to banish all Shias and Baha’is from Egypt.
In other words, Morsi’s call to release the Blind Sheikh, a terrorist mastermind, may be the tip of the iceberg in coming audacity. From calls to legalize Islamic sex-slave marriage to calls to institute “morality police” to calls to destroy Egypt’s mountain-like monuments, under Muslim Brotherhood tutelage, the bottle has been uncorked, and the genie unleashed in Egypt.
Will all those international institutions, which make it a point to look the other way whenever human rights abuses are committed by Muslims, lest they appear “Islamophobic,” at least take note now that the Great Pyramids appear to be next on Islam’s hit list, or will the fact that Muslims are involved silence them once again—even as those most ancient symbols of human civilization are pummeled to the ground?
⏩http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/136907/calls-destroy-egypts-great-pyramids-begin-raymond-ibrahim
Egyptian security authorities are taking seriously threats by a radical Salafist jihadist leader to demolish the Great Sphinx and the pyramids of Giza, the Egyptian press reported on Monday.
Murgan Salem al-Gohary told Egypt’s privately-owned Dream TV2 channel over the weekend that the Sphinx and pyramids are “idolatrous” and must be destroyed, Egyptian daily al-Masry al-Youm reported The newspaper said Gohary is a jihadist leader with links to the Taliban and that he had previously helped smash Buddha statues in Afghanistan ten years ago.
“The idols and statutes that fill Egypt must be destroyed. Muslims are tasked with applying the teachings of Islam and removing these idols, just like we did in Afghanistan when we smashed the Buddha statues,” Gohary said in a Saturday night television interview, according to al-Masry al-Youm.
The Taliban destroyed a large number of Buddhist treasures in Afghanistan, including statues that were examples of the country’s long Buddhist history. In 2001, members of the Taliban blew up a pair of giant Buddhas and smashed a large number of art forms depicting humans, according to media reports.
Gohary traveled to Afghanistan after serving two prison sentences under then-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. After his sojourn in Afghanistan, where he was injured in an US air strike, the Salafist leader ventured to Syria where he was arrested and extradited to Egypt, al- Masry al-Youm said.
The Egyptian Interior Ministry source said officials are taking the threats seriously and have “taken the necessary precautions to prevent violations of the law or any abuses of anything in the public domain or archaeological treasures including the pyramids,” according to al-Masry al-Youm.
The newspaper also cited a security official who spoke on condition of anonymity and said that the police and security authorities in Giza had “taken the necessary precautions to deal with any aggression” against the pyramids and Sphinx. “They are a source of national income and they bring tourists to Egypt,” the security source was cited as saying by al- Masry al-Youm.
Later on Thursday, Egypt’s Coalition to Support Tourism said Gohary’s threats would harm the country’s tourism industry after the international media picked up on the story.
CST leader Ihab el-Badry told Egyptian daily al-Ahram that the group planned to sue President Mohamed Morsi and other government leaders for their ‘lack of response’ to Gohary’s threats.
Badry said that the group planned to wait until Tuesday for an official response from the Morsi administration, and if one was not forthcoming they would file a lawsuit against the president and the tourism minister.
The Great Sphinx, known in Arabic as Abu al-Hul, “the father of terror,” is the world’s largest monolith statue and has stood on the Giza Plateau on the Nile’s west bank since it was built sometime during the reign of Pharaoh Khafra (2558- 2532 BCE).
Close to the Sphinx are the three pyramids of Giza, the largest of which is known as the Great Pyramid and is one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
In previous months, there have been a number of reports in the Egyptian and Arab press regarding calls by Egyptian Salafists and foreign Islamists to demolish the pyramids and Sphinx.
One of the reports, in Egypt’s Rose el-Youssef magazine, cited a prominent Bahraini sheikh, Abdellatif al-Mahmoud, as asking Morsi on Twitter to destroy the “idolatrous” pyramids.
However, the sheikh’s Twitter account was later exposed as a hoax, The New York Times reported in July.
Egyptian Salafi urges razing of Sphinx, pyramids
➤Jihadist leader with Taliban links says "idolatrous" statues must be destroyed; connected with destruction of Afghan Buddha statues.Egyptian security authorities are taking seriously threats by a radical Salafist jihadist leader to demolish the Great Sphinx and the pyramids of Giza, the Egyptian press reported on Monday.
Murgan Salem al-Gohary told Egypt’s privately-owned Dream TV2 channel over the weekend that the Sphinx and pyramids are “idolatrous” and must be destroyed, Egyptian daily al-Masry al-Youm reported The newspaper said Gohary is a jihadist leader with links to the Taliban and that he had previously helped smash Buddha statues in Afghanistan ten years ago.
“The idols and statutes that fill Egypt must be destroyed. Muslims are tasked with applying the teachings of Islam and removing these idols, just like we did in Afghanistan when we smashed the Buddha statues,” Gohary said in a Saturday night television interview, according to al-Masry al-Youm.
The Taliban destroyed a large number of Buddhist treasures in Afghanistan, including statues that were examples of the country’s long Buddhist history. In 2001, members of the Taliban blew up a pair of giant Buddhas and smashed a large number of art forms depicting humans, according to media reports.
Gohary traveled to Afghanistan after serving two prison sentences under then-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. After his sojourn in Afghanistan, where he was injured in an US air strike, the Salafist leader ventured to Syria where he was arrested and extradited to Egypt, al- Masry al-Youm said.
The Egyptian Interior Ministry source said officials are taking the threats seriously and have “taken the necessary precautions to prevent violations of the law or any abuses of anything in the public domain or archaeological treasures including the pyramids,” according to al-Masry al-Youm.
The newspaper also cited a security official who spoke on condition of anonymity and said that the police and security authorities in Giza had “taken the necessary precautions to deal with any aggression” against the pyramids and Sphinx. “They are a source of national income and they bring tourists to Egypt,” the security source was cited as saying by al- Masry al-Youm.
Later on Thursday, Egypt’s Coalition to Support Tourism said Gohary’s threats would harm the country’s tourism industry after the international media picked up on the story.
CST leader Ihab el-Badry told Egyptian daily al-Ahram that the group planned to sue President Mohamed Morsi and other government leaders for their ‘lack of response’ to Gohary’s threats.
Badry said that the group planned to wait until Tuesday for an official response from the Morsi administration, and if one was not forthcoming they would file a lawsuit against the president and the tourism minister.
The Great Sphinx, known in Arabic as Abu al-Hul, “the father of terror,” is the world’s largest monolith statue and has stood on the Giza Plateau on the Nile’s west bank since it was built sometime during the reign of Pharaoh Khafra (2558- 2532 BCE).
Close to the Sphinx are the three pyramids of Giza, the largest of which is known as the Great Pyramid and is one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
In previous months, there have been a number of reports in the Egyptian and Arab press regarding calls by Egyptian Salafists and foreign Islamists to demolish the pyramids and Sphinx.
One of the reports, in Egypt’s Rose el-Youssef magazine, cited a prominent Bahraini sheikh, Abdellatif al-Mahmoud, as asking Morsi on Twitter to destroy the “idolatrous” pyramids.
However, the sheikh’s Twitter account was later exposed as a hoax, The New York Times reported in July.
Great Sphinx of Giza
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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➤The Great Sphinx of Giza (Arabic: أبو الهول Abū al-Haul, English: The Terrifying One; literally: Father of Dread), commonly referred to as the Sphinx of Giza or just the Sphinx, is a limestone statue of a reclining (or couchant) sphinx, a mythical creature with a lion's body and a human head. Facing directly West to East, it stands on the Giza Plateau on the west bank of the Nile in Giza, Egypt. The face of the Sphinx is generally believed to represent the Pharaoh Khafre.[1]
Cut from the bedrock, the original shape of the Sphinx has been restored with layers of blocks. It measures 238 feet (73 m) long from paw to tail, 66.3 ft (20.21 m) high from the base to top of the head, and 62.6 feet (19 m) wide at its rear haunches.[2] It is the oldest known monumental sculpture in Egypt and is commonly believed to have been built by ancient Egyptians of the Old Kingdom during the reign of the Pharaoh Khafre (c. 2558–2532 BC).[3]
Contents
[hide]Construction[edit]
The Sphinx is a monolith carved down into the bedrock of the plateau which also served as the quarry for the pyramids and other monuments in the area. The nummulitic limestone of the area consists of layers which offer differing resistance to erosion (mostly caused by wind and windblown sand), leading to the uneven degradation apparent in the Sphinx's body. The lowest part of the body including the legs is solid, hard rock. The body of the lion up to its neck is fashioned from softer layers that have suffered considerable disintegration. The layer in which the head was sculpted is much harder.[4]
Origin and identity[edit]
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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. These questions have resulted in the popular idea of the "Riddle of the Sphinx",[5] alluding to the original Greek legend of the Riddle of the Sphinx.
1st century AD writer Pliny the Elder mentioned the Great Sphinx in his Natural History, commenting that the Egyptians looked upon the statue as a "divinity" that has been passed over in silence and "that King Harmais was buried in it".[4][6]
Names of the Sphinx[edit]
It is not known by what name the creators called their statue, as the Great Sphinx does not appear in any known inscription of the Old Kingdom, and there are no inscriptions anywhere describing its construction or its original purpose. In the New Kingdom, the Sphinx was called Hor-em-akhet (English: Horus of the Horizon; Hellenized: Harmachis), and the pharaoh Thutmose IV (1401–1391 or 1397–1388 BC)[7] specifically referred to it as such in his Dream Stele.
The commonly used name Sphinx was given to it in classical antiquity, about 2000 years after the commonly accepted date of its construction, by reference to a Greek mythological beast with a lion's body, a woman's head and the wings of an eagle (although, like most Egyptian sphinxes, the Great Sphinx has a man's head and no wings). The English word sphinx comes from the ancient Greek Σφίγξ (transliterated: sphinx), apparently from the verb σφίγγω (transliterated: sphingo / English: to squeeze), after the Greek sphinx who strangled anyone who failed to answer her riddle.
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.[original research?]
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 timeframe[edit]
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.[8]
Selim Hassan, writing in 1949 on recent excavations of the Sphinx enclosure, summed up the problem:
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.[10] Apart from the Causeway, the Pyramid and the Sphinx, the complex also includes the Sphinx Temple and the Valley Temple, both of which display the same architectural style, with 200-tonne stone blocks quarried out of the Sphinx enclosure.
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:
The Egyptologist Thomas Young, finding the Khaf hieroglyphs in a damaged cartouche used to surround a royal name, inserted the glyph ra to 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[edit]
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 various alternative hypotheses about both the builder and the dating.
Early Egyptologists[edit]
Some of the early Egyptologists and excavators of the Giza pyramid complex believed the Great Sphinx and other structures in the Sphinx enclosure predated the traditionally given construction date of around 2500 BC in the reign of Khafre.
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 Khufucame upon the Sphinx, already buried in sand. Although certain tracts on the Stela are considered good evidence,[12] this passage is widely dismissed as Late Period historical revisionism,[13] 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 where fighting for political attention and for financial and economic donations.[14][15]
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, that it was he who was responsible for the excavation and that the Sphinx must therefore predate Khafre and his predecessors (i.e. Dynasty IV, c. 2575–2467 BC).[16] 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,[a] 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]."[17]
Modern dissenting hypotheses[edit]
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 that the style is more indicative of the Pharaoh Khufu (2589–2566 BC), builder of the Great Pyramid of Giza and Khafra's father.[18] He supports this by suggesting that Khafra's Causeway was built to conform to a pre-existing structure, which, he concludes, given its location, could only have been the Sphinx.[13]
Colin Reader, an English geologist who independently conducted a more recent survey of the enclosure, agrees that 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.[13]
Frank Domingo, a forensic scientist in the New York City Police Department and an expert forensic anthropologist,[19] used detailed measurements of the Sphinx, forensic drawings and computer imaging to conclude that the face depicted on the Sphinx is not the same face as is depicted on a statue attributed to Khafra.[20]
In 2004, Vassil Dobrev of the Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale in Cairo announced that he had uncovered new evidence that 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.[21] Dobrev suggests that 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, that the causeway connecting Khafre's pyramid to the temples was built around the Sphinx suggesting it was already in existence at the time.[18]
Fringe hypotheses[edit]
Orion correlation theory[edit]
Main article: Orion correlation theory
The Orion correlation theory, as expounded by popular authors Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval,[22] 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.[23][24][25]
Water erosion hypothesis[edit]
Main article: Sphinx 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,[26] and that it 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 effects and noticed that the effects are selectively at 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.[27][28]
The Great Sphinx as Anubis[edit]
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 the style of the pleats on the head-dress.[29]
Racial characteristics[edit]
Over the years several authors have commented on what they perceive as "Negroid" characteristics in the face of the Sphinx.[30] This issue has become part of the Ancient Egyptian race controversy, with respect to the ancient population as a whole.[31] The face of the Sphinx has been damaged over the millennia.
Restoration[edit]
At some unknown time the Giza Necropolis was abandoned, and the Sphinx was eventually buried up to its shoulders in sand. The first documented attempt at an excavation dates to c. 1400 BC, when the young Thutmose IV (1401–1391 or 1397–1388 BC) gathered a team and, after much effort, managed to dig out the front paws, between which he placed a granite slab, known as the Dream Stele, inscribed with the following (an extract):
Later, Ramesses II the Great (1279–1213 BC) may have undertaken a second excavation.
Mark Lehner, an Egyptologist who has excavated and mapped the Giza plateau, originally asserted that there had been a far earlier renovation during the Old Kingdom (c. 2686–2184 BC),[33] although he has subsequently recanted this "heretical" viewpoint.[34]
In AD 1817 the first modern archaeological dig, supervised by the Italian Giovanni Battista Caviglia, uncovered the Sphinx's chest completely. The entire Sphinx was finally excavated in 1925 to 1936, in digs led by Émile Baraize.
In 1931 engineers of the Egyptian government repaired the head of the Sphinx. Part of its headdress had fallen off in 1926 due to erosion, which had also cut deeply into its neck.[35]
Missing nose and beard[edit]
The one-metre-wide nose on the face is missing. 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 nostril, then used to pry the nose off towards the south.[37]
The Arab historian al-Maqrīzī, writing in the 15th century, 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 local peasants making offerings to the Sphinx in the hope of increasing their harvest. Enraged, he destroyed the nose, and was later hanged for vandalism.[38] Al-Maqrīzī describes the Sphinx as the "talisman of the Nile" on which the locals believed the flood cycle depended.[citation needed]
There is also a story that the nose was broken off by a cannonball fired by Napoleon's soldiers, that still lives on today. Other variants indict British troops, the Mamluks, and others. Sketches of the Sphinx by the Dane Frederic Louis Norden, made in 1738 and published in 1757, show the Sphinx missing its nose.[39] This predates Napoleon's birth in 1769.
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.[18] The lack of visible damage supports his theory that the beard was a later addition.
Residues of red pigment are visible on areas of the Sphinx's face. Traces of yellow and blue pigment have been found elsewhere on the Sphinx, leading Mark Lehner to suggest that the monument "was once decked out in gaudy comic book colors".[40]
Mythology[edit]
Colin Reader has proposed that the Sphinx was probably the focus of solar worship in the Early Dynastic Period, before the Giza Plateau became a necropolis in the Old Kingdom(c. 2686–2134 BC).[41] 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 Dynasty IV (c. 2613–2494 BC). 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 Period.
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 (English: Living Image) of the god 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.
Reception[edit]
In the last 700 years, there has been a proliferation of travellers 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 accounts were published and widely read. These include those of George Sandys, André Thévet, Athanasius Kircher, Balthasar de Monconys, Jean de Thévenot, John Greaves, Johann Michael Vansleb, Benoît de Maillet, Cornelis de Bruijn, Paul Lucas, Richard Pococke, Frederic Louis Norden and others. But there is an even larger set 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:
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), Benoît de Maillet (1735) and Elliot Warburton (1844).
Most early Western images were book illustrations in print form, elaborated by a professional engraver from either previous images available or some original drawing or sketch supplied by an author, and usually now lost. Seven years after visiting Giza, André Thévet (Cosmographie de Levant, 1556) described the Sphinx as "the head of a colossus, caused to be made by Isis, daughter of Inachus, then so beloved of Jupiter". He, or his artist and engraver, 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 a straight haired wig; 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 François 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. The print versions of Norden's careful drawings for his Voyage d'Egypte et de Nubie, 1755 are the first to clearly show that the nose was missing. However, from the time of the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt onwards, a number of accurate images were widely available in Europe, and copied by others.
Legacy[edit]
Mystery of the Sphinx, narrated by Charlton Heston, a documentary presenting the theories of John Anthony West, was shown as an NBC Special on 10 November 1993 (winning an Emmy award for Best Research[citation needed]) A 95-minute DVD, Mystery of the Sphinx: Expanded Edition was released in 2007. Age of the Sphinx, a BBC Two Timewatchdocumentary presenting the theories of John Anthony West and critical to both sides of the argument, was shown on 27 November 1994. In 2008, the film 10,000 BC showed a supposed original Sphinx with a lion's head. Before this film, this lion head theory had been published in documentary films about the origin of the Sphinx.
Gallery[edit]
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What happened to the Sphinx’s nose?
By | December 8, 2009
The Egyptian Arab historian al-Maqrīzī wrote in the 15th century that the nose was actually destroyed by a Sufi Muslim named Muhammad Sa'im al-Dahr. In 1378 CE, Egyptian peasants made offerings to the Great Sphinx in the hope of controlling the flood cycle, which would result in a successful harvest. Outraged by this blatant show of devotion, Sa'im al-Dahr destroyed the nose and was later executed for vandalism. Whether this is absolute fact is still debatable.
⏩http://www.smithsonianjourneys.org/blog/photo-what-happened-to-the-sphinxs-nose-180950757/
*The title of this post was written and meant to be "Asterism Ore Inn The Air In Aye Land Times The Ages Touch^Chin Thee Three As^Tour^Risk!!". However after looking some of these thing up on google as I usually do after I write my locution (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenning) I am fortunate to have changed it to what it stands at now, for should I have written it as first poster it just beasts of unity with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleiades_(Greek_mythology) and also http://maps.seds.org/Const/asterism.html to the reality of what makes it all a learner's manual for the perpetual stride of the breeze on a memories footprint accidental or not. Most would call it a variable, simply put, it's just a Trident.