The REAL Mystery of the Sphinx

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  • Byrnzie
    Byrnzie Posts: 21,037
    It's also interesting that the head of the Sphinx is considerably smaller than the rest of the body, suggesting that it's been re-carved many times. It more than likely once had the head of a lion, not an Egyptian pharaoh.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Sphinx_of_Giza
    '...Robert Temple has suggested that the Sphinx was originally not a lion, but rather a dog or jackal, and was intended as a huge statue of the god Anubis, who in Old Kingdom times was the primary god of the dead. The Great Sphinx was thus believed to stand as guardian of the tombs on the Giza Plateau, facing out from the world of the dead towards the rising sun.[34]

    Colin Reader has proposed that the Sphinx was probably the focus of solar worship in the Early Dynastic Egypt, before the Giza Plateau became a necropolis in the Old Kingdom (2686–2134 BC).[9] He ties this in with his conclusions that the Sphinx, the Sphinx temple, the Causeway and the Khafra Mortuary Temple are all part of a complex which predates the 4th Dynasty. The lion has long been a symbol associated with the sun in ancient Near Eastern civilizations. Images depicting the Egyptian king in the form of a lion smiting his enemies date as far back as the Early Dynastic.'

    In the New Kingdom, the Sphinx became more specifically associated with the god Hor-em-akhet (Hellenized: Harmachis) or Horus at the Horizon, which represented the pharaoh in his role as the Shesep-ankh (Living Image) of Atum. Pharaoh Amenhotep II (1427-1401 or 1397 BC) built a temple to the north east of the Sphinx nearly 1000 years after its construction, and dedicated it to the cult of Hor-em-akhet.

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