“The Great Sphinx” is the
largest, oldest, and probably the most famous monumental statue in the world; yet
basic facts about it are still a topic of heated debate, such as who built it, when
it was constructed, and for what purpose. The current universally accepted name was
given to it about 2000 years after the date of its believed erection. Though
there has been contradictory evidence and many theories over the years, the
view held by modern Egyptology, by and large, is that the structure we know as
the Great Sphinx was constructed in
approximately 2500 BC by the 4th Dynasty Pharaoh Khafre (2575—2465 BC);
however that doesn’t quite add up because . . .
There are no writings on the Sphinx or on any
of the temples connected to it suggesting that Khafre had anything to do with
its construction. On the other hand, the so-called “Inventory Stele” (discovered on the
Giza plateau in the 19th century) tells that the Pharaoh
Khufu (2589-2566
BC), father and predecessor in title to Khafre - ordered a temple to be built
alongside the Sphinx, meaning of course that the Sphinx was already there, which
consequently demonstrates the it could not have been built by Khafre.
Most of the Great Sphinx’s body was sculpted
from a single block of the same soft, natural limestone used to build the
neighboring Pyramids and temples located in its “back yard”; only the forepaws were
made separately from nearby blocks of limestone.
Perhaps the biggest oddity about the
sculpture is that the head’s size is out of proportion to its body. The possibility certainly exists that
the head was re-shaped several times by succeeding Pharaohs after the first face
was carved. Some historians believe the original head was
that of a ram or hawk and was re-cut into a human shape sometime later. Such
explanations could easily account for the small size of the head in relation to
the body, especially if the Sphinx is older than is traditionally believed.
On a related issue, the body of the Sphinx is
not the body of a lion, as you have undoubtedly been taught, and it never was! You’ve been told it was a lion primarily
because of the legend deriving from a Greek mythological beast which had a lion’s
body, a woman’s head, and the wings of an eagle but anyone can see that the Sphinx
has no wings and if it was originally graced with the head of a female Pharaoh (there were at least 7 after all), it’s unlikely a
latter day male Pharaoh would have the audacity to “deface” it. To a lesser degree the argument can be made
that the Egyptian lion-god Aker is
forever at work in the sculptured depiction.
Then too, Egypt is in Africa, and you can be
assured that the original sculptures were aware that a crouching lion was apt
to display a sloping back. Loins were relatively few in ancient Egypt but
they did live
on the edges of the desert and interestingly it was the lion-god Aker who guarded the gateway to the Egyptian
underworld. So yes, the lion was associated with death and
rebirth.
However a crouching dog or Jackal
denoted Anubis; in early Egypt, he
was none other than the god of the dead; Anubis
was often depicted as a black jackal or a black dog but he was most often
portrayed as a man with the head of a jackal with “alert” ears. Anubis supervised the embalming of bodies,
received mummies into the tomb, and directed the soul to “Eternal Paradise” or
“the Field of Celestial Offerings”, but most importantly he protected the dead
from deception they might encounter from “netherworld” beings along the way; deception,
of course, could lead to eternal death while in route to “Paradise” . . .
. . . And since Egypt’s pharaohs expected to become
gods in the afterlife they prepared
for the next world by erecting massive
pyramid tombs for themselves, and since they had been such “privileged” individuals
while among the living, they desperately needed Anubis close by to help them along the way via his many talents. To simply be “guarded” by the lion-god Aker couldn’t have possibly fulfilled
their needs; after all, the recently deceased pharaohs had plans to proceed to
the Field of Celestial Offerings in short order, sooo, why bother
with a guard?
Okay, but what about those pesky weathering
patterns on the Sphinx that is consistent with water erosion rather than wind
and sand erosion? These patterns seemed
peculiar to the Sphinx and are not found on other structures on the Giza plateau. Trouble is, Egypt is arid today but around
10,000 years ago the land was wet and rainy.
Temple goes even further in his observations
/ conclusions—in part: “The three main pyramids and the Sphinx were
part of an integral complex all designed at once. The pyramids were not built
through the successive whims of a series of pharaohs, but were all designed at
the same time, and the precise size and general shape of the Sphinx as Anubis
was specified in relation to the three pyramids.”
Armed with this information you might think
the massive sculpture we call the “Great
Sphinx” was probably called the “Great
Anubis” of Giza by his builders.
Sources
. . .
