Writer and researcher Robert Temple recently published The Secret of the Sphinx. This is truly a gold mine of information, the book of more than five hundred hundred is supplemented with rare photographs and drawings. Highly recommended for anyone with even the slightest interest in the greatest of all Egyptian mysteries. The book will prove its importance in the near future. However, many of Temple's findings need careful evaluation.
One of the most controversial is that the Sphinx was never a recumbent lion, but was a guarding jackal or Anubis' dog.
Today it is obvious that the existing head of the monument is too small in comparison with the body. Some modern Egyptologists believe that at some point in the distant past, the Sphinx acquired the human face of a pharaoh. Indeed, the entire head was re-carved in a smaller size, possibly in place of the ancient image of the animal corresponding to the rest of the body. But was it a lion or a jackal?
The first evidence of the Sphinx in the form of a lion came to us from the overwhelming majority of Egyptian, Ptolemaic, Greek, Roman, early Christian and medieval Arabic records, as well as from eyewitness accounts - numerous European travelers and scientists. However, Temple wonders how ancient stories and legends, passed down through many generations, still manage to preserve the core of historical facts. He gives several examples. And yet, after a few chapters, in contrast to the huge number of sources about the Sphinx-lion, he proclaims the fallacy of such an idea, which has been established for millennia. If information from one set of sources is recognized as true, then why can't other observations regarding the Sphinx be credible?
Temple goes on to state that the Sphinx may not have been a feline at all, because its body is too narrow in shape and its stone back is too horizontally straight, which is more suitable for the body of a jackal. But the answer to the problem may have been the artistic limitations faced by ancient sculptors.
It is very likely that the Sphinx was formed from a hill, a bulging rock formation found in many places in the Sahara-Libyan desert, where the Giza plateau is only a small detail. To the south of the Sphinx there is still a good example of such a hill, a shapeless limestone mound surrounded by sand dunes. Undoubtedly, it is only clear how the Sphinx began, before it turned into some kind of animal.
However, we do not know what the original outline of the ancient hill was. It was not possible to cut out the curved back of the lion's figure, because the surface was already flat. What we know for sure is the existence of a vertical burial shaft in the middle of the back of the Sphinx. And at least one of the early European explorers of the Sphinx believed that this tomb was very old, even pre-dynastic. In other words, she was already present when the monument was carved, and the grave was dug out with a hill still intact.
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Measurements of the outcrops of the original hill determined how the upper layers of the Sphinx were formed. Since the sculptors cut the rock around the future animal to its base, its figure was limited by the size and shape of the hill. The intended image was the image of a lion, only slightly thin.
Perhaps the biggest objection to Temple's idea of the Sphinx-Anubis is the site's existing geology. The original, stony body of the Sphinx has a distinct layered appearance with few color differences. The reason is that the limestone from which the monument was originally carved has no consistent stratification. The base is composed of soft stone (type I), and the inclined body is made of equally soft type II limestone. Such limestone is porous, lightweight, flaky and highly susceptible to weather. It is for this reason that the continuing deterioration of the body of the Sphinx has forced a number of dynastic, Ptolemaic, Roman and modern restorers to continually add new brickwork to the original base in an attempt to keep it from further erosion.
The head, in contrast, has a much harder, more compact and heavier limestone form with noticeable dark appearances defined by type III. The advantage of such a stone is that, when carved, it retains its shape better for a much longer time - which is why the ancient sculptors chose it. But the main inconvenience is that the layer from which the entire head was cut is very heavy. Even today 's very reduced head is slowly crumbling the softer limestone of the neck and chest. Modern Egyptian restoration experts fear that the unbalanced weight of the head could dislodge the heavy stone skull as a result. For this reason, several builders of the past two centuries have added cement collars around the neck. Terribly ugly, they, however,prevented the animal from "falling asleep" and losing its gaze at the sunrise. Also, on a recent proposal to restore the Sphinx's beard from parts excavated at the base and preserved in the Cairo and British museums, the Egyptian Antiquities Department refused because the beard could pull the head forward. And this, in turn, will entail general instability, and possibly the loss of the head itself.
Geological layers of the Sphinx.
Reconstructing the Sphinx with the head of Anubis would be impossibly suicidal. The jackal's much larger head was mostly Type III limestone, which would crush the softer body stone. In addition, attempting to reproduce the most distinctive feature of Anubis' face, his long snout, would put even more stress on the weight of the entire head, which would most likely snap and fall off.
On the other hand, if the original Sphinx were a large lion with a cat's head, then a larger skull would be entirely possible. A row of small ivory carvings from the earliest dynasties depict the traditional lion with a large head protruding only slightly forward just above the forelegs. In this image in the Sphinx monument, the lion's head occupied part of the real chest and consisted of a less heavy type II stone. The thicker front legs, in turn, would serve as structural supports on the sides of the head. A heavier type III stone in this lion configuration would be part of the lion's mane, fit much better to the main strata of the wider area, and the total weight of the head would be evenly distributed from the top of the head.
When the Sphinx was re-felled, the lion's head was removed, and the overall rock surface was reduced to its existing chest and foreleg dimensions, while the body received a new human head from Type III limestone strata. The sculptors had to try very hard to proportionally reduce the lion's head. Unfortunately, this metamorphosis unbalanced the Sphinx's newly created human skull, which has since become a new problem.
It is very noteworthy that the remains of the royal tablets of the First-Third Dynasties very often repeat the image of a lion's head with a mane and front paws. Presumably, the rest of the lion's figure was either unfinished or covered with sand. Among them is the smooth face of a lion without eyes or mouth, as if its features had been obliterated by prolonged wind erosion. If this is an actual depiction of the Sphinx in Giza at a time when Egypt was just emerging as a state, then this sign clearly indicates that the monument itself is indeed much older and possibly belongs to the pre-dynastic era.
Undoubtedly, the Egyptian builders of the early dynasties would not have left such an important statue in a deplorable state and, perhaps, tried to restore it, giving the Sphinx new features. In Abu Roash, within sight of Giza towards the north, a small sphinx was found, attributed to the Fourth Dynasty. He has the body of a lion, but the face of a woman has replaced the cat's face. Perhaps here we see another reincarnation of the Sphinx, about which there are many legends and stories. You can recall the ancient Greek myth about Oedipus, in the desert, faced with a female sphinx and solved her deadly riddle.
Restoration work.
Temple's assertion about the Sphinx, once in the form of Anubis, is not confirmed. However, he offers other evidence that somewhere on the Giza plateau there was a cult shrine dedicated to the jackal god with a large statue, possibly proportionate to the Sphinx. Temple notes, for example, that several prominent royal mastabas or burial sites of the Fourth and Fifth Dynasties, which are located in the southern part of the Giza plateau, have frescoes or reliefs depicting Anubis at the top of the sanctuary. The author mistakenly mistakes this statue and sanctuary for the Sphinx and the Sphinx temple. But in reality, the Sphinx is located closer to the eastern edge of the plateau, much lower in relief, perhaps it was not even visible from the mastabs in question. If there was a statue of Anubis on the plateau, it was more likely to be in the southwest, above the mastab,dominating this area.
Temple cites the Pyramid Texts, Tomb Texts, and other ancient burial records that describe the mythical Land of Rostau. Many translators considered it a real place somewhere in the Giza area. Some sacred texts link Rostau with the Asiris sanctuary, which was located near the “road” and surrounded by water, “Lake of the Jackal”. Temple, observing the landscape surrounding the Sphinx, claims that in former times the Nile overflowed its banks every year, the floodplain reached the vicinity of the Sphinx, and through the still existing narrow channel, the water surrounded the Sphinx itself.
However, Temple, in her proof of the identity of the Sphinx and Anubis, mistakenly identifies the "road" mentioned in ancient texts as the road of the Khafre pyramid (Khafre), which runs between the south side of the Sphinx and the Sphinx moat (or "Jackal's Lake"). He ignores the fact that the texts speak of "roads" and "lakes" in the plural, so there were more than one such place. Studying the corresponding places in the burial texts, we find that several cult centers existed in Giza since ancient times. The now-lost shrine of Anubis was only one of them.
Temple makes the main erroneous assumption that all these cult centers somehow connected into one whole around the Sphinx. This is contrary to the texts themselves, which provide very different, even unique, descriptions for each center. By their very nature, these centers may never have come together.
The Anubis shrine that Temple is looking for was more than likely associated with the road pyramid of Mykerin (Menkaure) or the third pyramid of Giza. The author notes that the only sculpture of Anubis found on the entire plateau was a small green statue of diorite excavated among the ruins of the burial sanctuary of Mikerin to the east of the third pyramid. In his book, Temple reproduces a NASA photograph of the entire Giza Plateau, where signs of numerous walls and other structures are visible in the southern part of the plateau, next to the Mikerin Road. No excavations have yet been carried out here.
In ancient times, when the Nile flood season came, the floodplain reached the southern end of the plateau, the water approached the very edge of the Mikerin complex. Maybe the "Jackal Lake" was located here? Funeral letters also described Anubis as a god "on top of the hill" - and if a large statue of the jackal god did indeed sit over the plateau, it should have been clearly visible from the Nile.
It is most likely that the missing Anubis sanctuary and statue, instead of being carved from a large hill like the Sphinx, were built with stonework. They were later dismantled, or maybe they were swallowed up by the surrounding desert when chaos came to the Giza plateau at the end of the Old Kingdom.