The Sphinx is a statue of a legendary creature with the body of a lion and the head of a man located on the Giza plateau on the west bank of the Nile in Giza, Egypt. It is the oldest known large carvings, with a length of 73.5 m, width 6 m, and height of 20.22 m. It is believed that the ancient Egyptians built it during the reign of Pharaoh Khafra (2558-2532 BC), the builder of the second pyramid in Giza.
Head of the Sphinx.
Opinions differed as to what this statue represents. The old view is that he represents King Khafra, combining the power of the lion with the wisdom of man. Some archaeologists believe King Khufu is the one who built it where the Sphinx resembles a statue of Khufu, and does not resemble the statues of Khafra. Indeed, the question of who is the builder of the Sphinx is still open to research. It is said to represent the sun god "Hor-m-Akht", evidenced by the temple facing the statue where he was performing the religious rituals. They were considered as a statue of the god "Hor-m-Akht", and they worshiped him and erected the paintings in his name. The most famous of these paintings is that of King Tuthmosis IV of the 18th Dynasty, known as the dream board. As for the name "Sphinx" and its linguistic derivation, it seems that its origin dates back to the modern state when some of the Canaanites descended to the area of Giza and saw the statue representing the god "Hor" and linked it to a god they have "Huron" "Which in turn turned to" Hall "where the rule of substitution between the H and the Arabic language. The word "Abu" appears to be a distortion of the ancient Egyptian word "bo" which means "place". In this case, the name means "the place of God," while the ancient Greeks copied their feminine version of that object.
Similar creations and ideas have emerged in several other civilizations, including South and Southeast Asia. The Sphinx occupied a place in the art of European decoration from the Renaissance.
The nose of the Sphinx
The statue had a long nose but the statue had its nose, which is 1 meter wide. There are rumors that the nose was destroyed by the artillery of Napoleon's soldiers. Other rumors accuse Britons, Mamluks or others. But the drawings by the Danish explorer Frederick Louis Nordin of the Sphinx in 1737 and published in 1755 in his book "The Journey to Egypt and Nubia" illustrate the statue without a nose.
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