The origin of the tale of this famous statue is so strange come with me to know it.....
the sphinx of Giza is the biggest and oldest sphinx in Egypt. the word sphinx is a greek word that means the combination between the human and the animal....if you notice it has a human head and a body of a lion. In pharaonic the word sphinx means " the living image of the god"
the story of its construction is very funny...As during the building of the great pyramid the workmen used to get the local limestone from a quarry near by the pyramid and after they finished they left a huge block of limestone of avery bad quality ...Later on after 20 years , during the building of the second pyramid of king chephren his architect found out that this ugly stone will disfigure the whole appearance of the complex ...that's why they changed this stone of the bad quality into the form of the sphinx to be the guardian of Giza complex
If you look at the the face you can see the nose is destroyed and there are two opinions about that...
the first is that the nose was destroyed by the soldiers of Napoleon Ponabart during the french campaign on Egypt ...
the second opinion is that it was destroyed by one of the strict Moslems because he believed that the sphinx is the sign of unbelieving in ALLAH
the false beard of the sphinx is now in the british museum in London...
between the two bows on the sphinx feet there is a tablet which is called the tablet of the dream dates back to the new kingdom made by king Tutmosis the 4th..when he was a prince he came to this area for hunting then he felt tired and slept in the shade of the sphinx ...He dreamt that the sphinx asked him to clear the sand which covered his body till the neck and if he did that he would be the king of Egypt ....So he did what he was asked to do ...and he actually became the king....That's why we called it the dream tablet and it's about 3500 years old .
I forgot to tell you that this face of the sphinx looks exactly like the face of king chephren....
see you soon in other posts about Egypt...