Old Kingdom Legends of the Pharoahs

By EZRA IVANOV

SPHINX OF GIZA

Many mysteries surround the Sphinx. Many tourists are confused by the Giza sand as they trudge through it. They wonder why there is such a big fuss about this dusty knoll. Many Egyptologists agree with this statement since, unlike the three enormous pyramids that stand upon the plateau above and where the tombs of pharaohs are. The Giza Sphinx is not known to have a function. This lion with a man's head was a powerful image in its day. Sphinxes and temples adjacent to the Sphinx at Giza were visited for prayers. As millennial models for later, more miniature sphinxes, the pose, workmanship, eye and ear shapes, proportions of its face, and headdress can be found on this statue. It was freed from drifting sands, and its eroding stone was restored at the command of pharaohs, emperors, and kings. Its outline was also written - a rare occurrence - on stelae upon which it was placed within a sort of hieroglyphic landscape: a great cat standing 240 feet high at the desert's edge, flanked by the pyramids of Khufu and Khafre and tended by phalanxes of priests. Later, after several millennia, the monstrous feline evolved wings and flew onto Dr. Freud's Hampstead desk via ancient Greece and neo-classical Vienna.

In temples near the Great Giza Sphinx, hundreds of small stelae were dedicated by princes, courtiers, scribes, and their families. Approximately two feet high, it is sculpted from fine white limestone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: DTTV PUBLICATIONS
• Release date: Jun 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201804244

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EZRA IVANOV

SPHINX OF GIZA

Many mysteries surround the Sphinx. Many tourists are confused by the Giza sand as they trudge through it. They wonder why there is such a big fuss about this dusty knoll. Many Egyptologists agree with this statement since, unlike the three enormous pyramids that stand upon the plateau above and where the tombs of pharaohs are. The Giza Sphinx is not known to have a function. This lion with a man's head was a powerful image in its day. Sphinxes and temples adjacent to the Sphinx at Giza were visited for prayers. As millennial models for later, more miniature sphinxes, the pose, workmanship, eye and ear shapes, proportions of its face, and headdress can be found on this statue. It was freed from drifting sands, and its eroding stone was restored at the command of pharaohs, emperors, and kings. Its outline was also written - a rare occurrence - on stelae upon which it was placed within a sort of hieroglyphic landscape: a great cat standing 240 feet high at the desert's edge, flanked by the pyramids of Khufu and Khafre and tended by phalanxes of priests. Later, after several millennia, the monstrous feline evolved wings and flew onto Dr. Freud's Hampstead desk via ancient Greece and neo-classical Vienna.

In temples near the Great Giza Sphinx, hundreds of small stelae were dedicated by princes, courtiers, scribes, and their families. Approximately two feet high, it is sculpted from fine white limestone.

The only thing traditional historians can conclude about this Sphinx is that it bears the image of a pharaoh and that it was constructed during the Fourth Egyptian Dynasty, around the time of the construction of the three great pyramids at Giza around 2550 BC. One of its enormous paws is adorned with an eroded granite stela, possibly a work of Khafre's reign. The Sphinx does not appear to have been a part of the architecture constructed for Khafre's pyramid, for when his masons built a splendid granite temple close to the Sphinx and laid a causeway connecting it to Khafre's pyramid above, both the Temple and the causeway had to be angled to accommodate the Sphinx which, one may assume, is older than either one. Thus, it is probable that the Giza Sphinx was constructed in the era before Khafre ascended the throne, i.e., in Khufu's time or that of Djedefre, his little-known successor. However, most modern theories are based on nothing more than speculation and the literature of later ages as to the meaning and purpose of that monument.

Thus, the Great Sphinx is a nameless product of the Fourth Dynasty of the Pharaohs, an archetypal and illiterate age whose pyramids signify, as does the Sphinx, an extraordinary obsession with worked stone; indeed, the Sphinx is carved from a small knoll of rock that stood in one of the quarries of the pyramid builders. Indeed, this sculpture is a synthesis of earlier works, when craftsmen along the Nile had created the most beautiful models of lions that roared in the nighttime darkness of the desert. The sculptors of the Fourth Dynasty of kings changed the earlier forms by setting the head of the Pharaoh on a colossal image of a lion beside the dusty quaysides of the Giza harbor and on the plateau up above.

The building stones for the pyramids destined for the plateau above, around the Sphinx, were towed in lighters into the harbor of Giza down a canal, which ran through the Nile-side marshes and the silty fields beyond.

As you approached this busy harbor, filled with barges and stone gangs, the perfect human head of the Sphinx would have stood gently above the dusty dock, lit by the pavements as if by some faint light from beneath a sea.

The ancient peoples described their courtly culture in stunning images throughout the old Nile Valley.

We may safely assume that the Giza Sphinx is part of that complex visual system whose images and architectures were already very ancient and so elaborately layered that we today have little ability to comprehend the complexity of such images. This golden Sphinx is a perfect metaphor for ancient Egypt because of its bullet-riddled eyes and half-eroded smile.

KAFREE AND THE GOLDEN HAWK

Unlike most birds, the hawk is steadfast. The bird watches for predators that might invade the nest, hour after hour, day after day, perched on posts and trees. As hawks guarded kings' names against the beginning of time, their chests puffed and claws clenched.  The same silhouetted image became a symbol of both the westward horizon and several pharaonic gods, most notably Horus; Horus makes his first known appearance in human form in this commanding image before the age of the massive pyramids; a hawk's head is set on a human body. Before the age of the colossal pyramids, Horus first appears in human form, where he is called 'Horus of the royal residence' and embraces an otherwise unrecorded king named Qahedjet, who is usually identified