Ancient Egypt carries an unsolved mystique that archaeologists have tried to solve for decades. Although many people think about the three Pyramids of Giza when talking about Egypt, there is another equally spectacular structure beside them, which is the Great Sphinx. Covering an area of nearly 240 feet with a height of 70 feet, the Sphinx is a lion with a human face, and it is the largest statue in Egypt. This paper will summarize the origin and creation of Sphinx.
The inspiration for the classic Pyramids can be traced back to the earlier stepped Pyramids of Sycara; the same cannot be said about the Sphinx. There is no evidence of similar structures that might have served as inspiration for the Sphinx. On top of that, there is no written record about the architect of the Sphinx, which has led to many questions, such as why this structure was built. How was it built? Whose face is on the Sphinx? Two teams of scientists set out to answer these questions; one team tackled the geology, history, and archaeology of Ancient Egypt, while the second team, comprising stone carvers, tried to create replicas of the sphinx, including the nose, to understand the way it was built in the first place. The archaeologist Gunther Dryer searched for answers in the city of Abydos, which was the “city of the dead” in 3000 B.C., five hundred years before Giza became the city of the dead. Here, he found thirty-five burial sites, including the grave of Pharoah Hor-Aha. He was buried with possessions and a grave filled with animal bones, especially the skeletons of lions. These lions were sacrificed with the Pharoah to protect him in the afterlife. This is the first clue behind the Sphinx. The lion part of the sphinx was now starting to make sense, but the human face was still a mystery. The human head represents the mind, and the lion represents the power, but who’s power and control does it represent? It is assumed that it is the head of either the Pharaoh Khufu or his son Khafre as they were the ones that started the Old Kingdom; however, the debate needed to be settled, and as it turns out, an intimate connection was found that solved this mystery. At the equinox, the sun’s rays passed perfectly through the Sphinx’s temple in a straight line, passing over the shoulder of the Sphinx and connecting to Khafre’s Pyramid. This proved that the Sphinx adorned Khafre’s face.
The construction of the Sphinx perplexed the archaeologists as the paws of the Sphinx looked like they were stacked onto one another, while the body seemed like it was carved out of one stone. Upon closer research, it was found that Giza was once an ocean, and when marine life died in this ocean, it sunk to the bottom of the ocean bed, turning into limestone over the years. The Sphinx was carved from one such huge structure of limestone, and the blocks on the paws were added afterwards to protect it from weather damage. Copper chisels and pounding stones were used to create a replica of the nose to calculate the time it might have taken to build the Sphinx. After the calculations, it was estimated that it would have taken three years if a hundred stone carvers had worked on the Sphinx at the same time, thus solving the riddle of the Sphinx. The questions that puzzled the archaeologists for decades were hidden inside the Sphinx in plain sight; the only thing that was needed was a closer look (Glassman).
Works Cited
Glassman, Gary. “Riddles of the Sphinx.” Nova, 19 Jan. 2010. IMDb, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIM1NKZlUts.
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