Sphinx Connections

Crystal Palace sphinxes again

I preferred them when they were grey, but admit that they needed to be restored.

Cracked backs and mossy bottoms:



Getting a beauty treatment:



They were still grey the last time I went to Crystal Palace. I must go and see them in the red some time.

Robert Bloch wrote Psycho. He was also a friend of HP Lovecraft.

The picture is not so crazy - people do speculate if the area had been flooded in such a manner in the past. As to whether I believe this, is more of a case of having seen no evidence to correspond to such a theory - at this time.

Some people believe that the three pyramids are or were aligned with the three stars in Orion's Belt.

Avacyn I now understand better why some people believe that the Great Sphinx might once have had a companion.

From the Greek sphinxes mentioned above through the Embankment sphinxes to the poor quality plaster specimens I saw outside a house in north London recently, they come in pairs.

Benjamin Disraeli’s trip to Egypt

I said above that people could get away with a lot in the days before photography was invented. The same applies to descriptions of and theories about the Great Sphinx and other Ancient Egyptian artefacts: people could make mistakes and mislead others, deliberately or in good faith, as there was no mass tourism and a lot less knowledge of the past about than there is today.

On the other hand, you mentioned a detailed and accurate aerial survey from the 1730s Avacyn and there are other early accounts that are still worth reading.

Benjamin Disraeli was often depicted in cartoons as a sphinx. He visited Egypt in the 1830s and described his experiences in a few chapters in his work Sketches.

He says this about the ages of the Great Sphinx and the Pyramids:

“These great creations, therefore, demonstrate the mature civilisation of Egypt far beyond three thousand years back. Rameses and his illustrious predecessors, the Thothmes and the Amunophs, are described as monarchs of the eighteenth dynasty. Thothmes the Fourth, one of these ancestors, cut the great Sphinx of the Pyramids; as for the Pyramids themselves, it is now undeniable that they were not raised at the comparatively late period ascribed to them by Herodotus and Diodorus.“

He also mentions different types of sphinx:

“From Luxor you proceed to Karnak, the other great division on this side of the river, through an avenue of sphinxes considerably above a mile in extent; and here I should observe that Egyptian sphinxes are either andro or crio sphinxes, the one formed by the union of the lion with the man, and the other of the lion with the ram. Their mystery is at length penetrated. They are male and never female. They are male and they are monarchs. This great avenue, extending from Luxor to Karnak, was raised by the two immediate successors of the great Rameses, and represents their long line of ancestry.”

This book is still in print in various editions and is available to be read online at no cost on Project Gutenberg.

Types of sphinx

I first heard of a crio sphinx in Disraeli’s book - see above.

Here is an example:

Sphinxes in The Ten Commandments

Cecil B. DeMille’s 1923 blockbuster film The Ten Commandments featured some huge plaster sphinxes. Their faces were painted red because this made them look good when photographed in black and white:

‘Chinese sphinx’ is found

Sphinxes have always been objects of great interest. Even the restoration of Victorian sphinxes is newsworthy, and new discoveries attract a lot of attention.

In 2015, archaeologists found a tiny ‘sphinx’ in the tomb of an ancient Chinese scholar:

“Excavators in Ningxia, northwest China, have unearthed what they believe to be a Chinese sphinx in a tomb that dates back to the Tang Dynasty (618–907 AD).

The burial chamber is located along the ancient Silk Road, thought to be established during the Han Dynasty (206 BC - 220 AD). It's a network of routes that run through a large portion of Asia, connecting western and eastern cultures for trading…

The well-preserved marble sphinx which is delicately carved is 14 inches tall with a base that's eight inches long and five inches wide.”



www.dailymail.co.uk/news/peoplesdaily/article-3362518/Clash-civilisations-Archaeologists-unearth-1-000-year-old-sphinx-statue-tomb-ancient-Chinese-scholar.html

Another Chinese replica of a sphinx

There are a few other sphinx replicas in China including one in Chuzhou City, Anhui province. It looks as though they have tried to recreate the Great Sphinx as it was before it got damaged:

Ivory sphinx from ancient Israel

It reminds me of Mayan figures:



“Female Sphinx Plaque. Ivory. Late Bronze Age IIB, 1300–1200 BCE. From treasury of palace at Tell el-Mutesellim (ancient Megiddo), Israel. Oriental Institute, Chicago”

Soldiers on the sphinx

No wonder it’s crumbling away!

A hand-tinted postcard from the 1920s, showing soldiers from Australia and New Zealand:

Okay, this is pretty mind-blowing. Just found this:



Looks like there is quite a bit more to do with the Sphinx, after all...

A sphinx with four heads

This is a very unusual example of a Greek-style sphinx.

It is said to be Roman, from the second century A.D.

Sphinx cartoon

Some light relief: