The Great Sphinx Research Paper

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The Great Sphinx is a large human-headed lion that was carved from an accumulation of organic rock. It is located in Giza where it guards the front of Khafra's pyramid. Myths have been passed down for many years about the Great Sphinx. These stories notify individuals about the powers and mysteries of this sphinx. Some people even believe that there are hidden passageways or secret rooms underneath The Great Sphinx, but nothing has been established yet. The Sphinx sits in a trivial melancholy to the south of the pyramid of the Pharaoh Khafre at the west bank of the Nile River near the city of Cairo. The rock stratum out of which The Great Sphinx has been made varies from a pliable yellowish to a rigid grey limestone. The massive body is made …show more content…

The story reads that one day, a young prince fell dead to the world (asleep) next to the Great Sphinx. He had been hunting all day for animals, and was very weary. He dreamt that the Great Sphinx promised that he would become the leader of Upper and Lower Egypt if he cleared away the sand covering its body (the Great Sphinx was sheltered up to its neck with heaps of sand). The Great Sphinx is one of the world's largest and oldest statues. There are questions that have resulted in the well-known riddle known as the "Riddle of the Sphinx," cunning to the original Greek legend of the Riddle of The Great Sphinx. Pliny the Elder mentioned The Great Sphinx in his book, Natural History, stating 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". The Great Sphinx has been a symbol of Egypt from ancient times to the present. It has inspired the imaginations of artists, poets, adventurers, scholars and travelers for centuries and has also inspired endless speculation about its age, its meaning and the secrets that it might or does hold. The Great Sphinx of Giza is an immense stone sculpture of a creature with the body of a lion and the head of a human. The greatest monumental sculpture in the ancient world, it is carved out of a single ridge of limestone 240 feet long and …show more content…

The Great Sphinx is part of a complex of structures that also contains The Great Sphinx temple. This temple, like the Great Pyramid and the Oseiron temple at Abydos in Southern Egypt, may also date from Pre-dynastic times. Despite the hard superiority of the stone of the head, the face is badly damaged, and not only by natural erosion. The nose is missing altogether and the eyes and the areas around them are badly transformed from their original state. Napoleon's artillerymen have been held accountable for using the face of the Sphinx for target practice. According to orthodox Egyptology The Great Sphinx was constructed in the 4th Dynasty (2575 – 2467 BCE) by the Pharaoh Khafre. However, an accumulating body of evidence showing a human head, and having a lion body. Both archaeological and geological, indicates that The Great Sphinx is far older than the 4th Dynasty and was only restored by Khafre during his

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