The Relative Sizes of the Sexes of Egypt Sculpture

The Relative Sizes of the Sexes

It is interesting to note the difference in proportions in the representations of men and women. Quite often they are of equal height or their difference in height merely reflects statistical reality. How- ever, the woman is sometimes presented very much smaller than the man. Among these examples there are statues of couples in which the man sits while the woman stands. In these cases the significant difference in proportions can be explained by considerations of composition.

Examples of pairs in which the woman sits and the man stands are
rare. In such cases the proportions of the seated and standing persons
are about equal. The slightly larger size of the male figure is presumably due to the fact that these are high-ranking officials, that is, important personages. A woman could only possess such a high social status if she came from an equally high-ranking family.

Where couples are represented, the woman usually shows her affection through her posture and gestures; she lays her arm around his shoulders and perhaps grasps the man’s arm nearest to her with her other hand. Other couples display a posture emphasizing equality by holding hands.
Types of Statues
In the course of the history of Egyptian sculpture a number of different postures developed that were often repeated and thus became part of the canon. Three basic forms were already present in the Old Kingdom. These are listed below.

The standing figure: Men show a distinct striding posture in which the weight largely rests on the back leg; it is therefore a static posture and only suggestive of striding. Women stand with legs together or display only a slight striding posture. The arms hang loose at the sides of the body and the hands are either open or clenched around a “stone core.” In rare instances, there are some examples where one arm is bent and the fist placed at the opposite breast. Only wooden statues show the long staff familiar from two- dimensional depictions, held in one hand.

The seated statue: The figures are seated on cuboid blocks. The bent arms rest on the thighs and often one hand is clenched around a “stone core.”

The squatting statue: the figures, mostly men, sit cross-legged on a mat or on the ground. If the squatting figure has an open papyrus role on his lap he is considered a “reader;” if he also has a reed in his hand for writing, he is thought of as a “scribe.” “Asymmetrical squatters,” where one knee is drawn up, are rarely found. Rarer still are “kneeling figures” or those squatting on their heels.

One should bear in mind that this terminology is of occidental origin and not Egyptian. Squatting was, in reality, the conventional seating position where-as sitting on a chair was something unusual. The hieroglyph of a seated figure means in Egyptian shepses, “noble,” whereas the hieroglyph of the “asymmetrical squatter” was simply the sign for “man.”

In the dynastic era seated statues were commonly made in stone whereas standing statues before the Third Dynasty were made only in wood. From this time on, the seated statue was the most common type of artifact, followed by standing figures and then squatting figures of all kinds. A special feature of the Old Kingdom are heads and busts that obviously have a different function from that of tomb statues. The same is true for the statues of servants shown preparing food or performing other kinds of duties; these developed only in the Old Kingdom. They are not individually marked (for example, inscribed with a name) but merely represent the task being performed. Standing statues are supported at the back by a pillar whereas groups of standing figures have a common back slab. Seated statues can also have a back slab that has the appearance of a high backrest. Besides freestanding statues there are also those carved from the rock face within the tomb.

The arms and legs of stone statues were connected to the body with pins. Statues made of limestone sometimes had freely worked arms. For technical reasons, this was not possible with figures made of hard stone. Wooden statues had no such technical restrictions with respect to the limbs; generally, these were carved separately and then attached to the body.

Reserve Heads

The rather sober-sounding term reserve heads (also called “replacement heads”) is used for sculptures of life-sized heads found primarily in tombs of the Fourth Dynasty. More than thirty such heads are known, most of them from Giza. They were specifically made as individual heads and were not merely fragments of statues. Their intended placement is known from isolated examples; it was not the serdab but the bottom of the deep shaft leading into the burial chamber. More precisely, they were placed in niches in the wall that sealed the burial chamber off from the shaft. Most of the heads date from the time of Cheops and Chephren.

There have been many attempts to interpret the meaning of these objects and the motives for making and positioning them: firstly, the fear of literally losing one’s head in the hereafter, be it through demons or natural decay; for this reason they have been called reserve or replacement heads. Secondly, they might have been substitutes for the tomb statue; and thirdly, they may have been intended to preserve the look of the dead even when the mummy decayed — mummification methods were not well developed at that time. This preservation was essential not only for life in the hereafter but also to enable the freely moving component of the self (the “soul”) to identify the body.

A more recent theory that these heads were part of a magical practice to prevent the dead from coming back and harming their descendants has not found much support. There are even theories that claim that these heads might have been used as models of the tomb
owner for statues or as decorations in his living quarters.

Living Images-The Private Statue

Living Images-The Private Statue

Egyptian museums and collections hold a great number of sculptures of standing, seated or squatting figures that differ from royal or divine images. In the Old Kingdom these so-called private statues were usually placed in tombs. Later on, statues were more often placed in temples — in the Late Period almost exclusively so. Those few statues made in prehistoric times — mostly of ivory or faience — come from sacred sites as well as tombs. However, it is not clear whether these were private, royal or divine statues. The same is true for the even rarer stone or wood sculptures of the Thinite Period. From this one can deduce that there may well have been temple statues in the Old Kingdom but evidence still remains to be found. The tradition of private tomb statues only really began in the Third Dynasty. They were first found in the tombs of princes and dignitaries in the necropolises of the ancient capital of Memphis, especially at Saqqara and Giza.

The statues were not openly displayed within the tombs. This is a particularly illuminating fact when it comes to assessing Egyptian art. It seems clear that being seen was not the primary function of the statue. Rather, its purpose lay in its mere existence in order to serve as a replacement body, a kind of “alter ego,” for the deceased.

During rituals for the mortuary cult, food and drink were placed in front of the false door in the tomb chapel and incense was burned. When the deceased, or really his spirit, magically or ritually entered the statue, it became possible for him to consume these offerings through the statue. The statue could only perform this function if it was directly identified with the deceased. This was made possible by inscribing the statue with his or her name and providing it with individualized features or characteristics. In addition, there was a reviving ritual, the so-called Opening of the Mouth Ritual, performed on the statue by a priest. All Egyptian art, not only the fine arts, was suspended between reality and the demands of sacred standards. It was clear, even to the Egyptians of the Old Kingdom, that the sacred standards set for the world, that is, the way the world should be, were not always compatible with the harsh facts of reality. Art had to conform to the sacred norms; it had to present an ideal picture. That reality intruded, however, could not be avoided. Each individual work of art was thus a compromise between these two competing tendencies.

Where Did the Statue Stand?

Some funerary statues were placed in the tomb chapels where they could only be seen by those who serviced the mortuary cult; they were not therefore readily accessible. Typical for the Old Kingdom, however, was that the tomb statue was concealed from everyone. In King Djoser’s pyramid a chamber for the tomb statue was built whose only connection to the offering place in the chapel was a slit. This type of tomb soon spread to private mastabas. To describe this room, archaeologists use the Arabic-Persian term serdab, meaning a cave or subterranean chamber. In other tombs, though, the statues were generally placed by the walls or in the niches of the cult chamber. The magnificent tomb of Hemiunu from the reign of King Cheops has two serdabs. In the tomb of his contemporary Kawab (as in the tomb of Prince Minkhaef), however, numerous statues were placed visibly in the outer chapel. Tombs with a serdab became more common only from the time of King Mycerinus on. In the late Fifth Dynasty the statue chambers became larger and more frequent. In Giza, Rawer, son of Itisen, had more than one hundred statues in twenty-five rooms for himself and his family. Toward the end of the Fifth Dynasty, statues of the deceased and later those of servants — were placed within the tomb chamber.

This custom, which signaled a change in attitude toward both tomb and statue, finally led to the end of the serdab tradition. Moreover, the serdab is found only in conjunction with the mastaba. It was not used in the rock-cut tomb, which was characteristic for the necropolises of Upper Egypt — and thus for the further development of Egyptian tomb architecture after the Old Kingdom.

Who is Portrayed?
The basic answer is: those who were buried in the mastabas. During the reign of Cheops, these were primarily princes and dignitaries. At the end of the Old Kingdom they also included craftsmen and lower ranking officials who squeezed their modest tombs in between the larger mastabas. Mastabas were erected only for a single generation, normally a couple and their children if these died while still young. Thus we commonly find in a serdab either single statues of the deceased and his wife or both together. Children are never represented independently but rather in the company of their parents and usually on a very small scale. The children so represented had not necessarily died at a young age; at the time the statues were made they may already have been adults. The presence of children might only have indicated the desire for life after death. Sometimes, the woman at the side of the deceased is not his wife but his mother. Other combinations of two (two men, two women) and three (two men and one woman, etc.) individuals were also possible. Single statues of husband and wife could be placed in separate serdabs. Just as the deceased might have any number of single statues so, too, there are groups of statues in which he might be represented two or three times (so-called “pseudo groups”).

Temporal and Spatial Structure of Tomb Images of Egypt

Temporal and Spatial Structure of Tomb Images

The images in the tombs of the Old Kingdom set out to portray the existence of the deceased in the hereafter and their content is ordered accordingly. Because the afterlife was conceived in more or less the same way for all non-royal persons, the range of images found in the tombs of viziers, high state officials, court singers, royal hairdressers, and tradesmen does not differ greatly. The most important difference lay in their execution, which took into account the size of the tomb and the availability of the wall surfaces; this depended ultimately on the financial means of the deceased.

The wall surfaces of an Old Kingdom chapel intended for a planned series of images were composed down to the last detail. The wall was organized into sections and these sections linked with one another. The most important element for ordering the entire structure of the wall was the horizontal register. A wall area had several registers, generally of the same height. The horizontal registers were framed at the side by a long rectangular field, the height of the entire wall. This contains the enormous image of the deceased that bracketed the registers oriented toward it. The registers show individual scenes that can be arranged into groups or series. Depending on the availability of space to be decorated the depiction could be either detailed or brief:
The scenes could be portrayed in abridged form or long narrative sequences.

While the image of the deceased does not occupy any definable time frame, the time sequence of registers is so arranged that the earlier event is at the top while the later one is in a lower register. Good examples of temporal ordering are to be found in images of agricultural labor. The scenes are linked in the same order as the seasons; plowing, sowing, stamping in of the seed, harvesting, threshing, filling of the storehouses, and calculating the yield of the harvest are all depicted one after the other. The sequence concludes with images showing the further processing of grain into bread and beer. A similar temporal order can be seen in images of cattle-rearing where one continuous chain of events is portrayed in a single register: a bull mounts a co a calf is born, the cow is milked and calves are raised. A somewhat shorter series can be seen for the production of wine where individual events extend from harvesting to the wine-pressing through to the filling of wine barrels.

Most image sequences express the spatial as well as the temporal dimension. In images of farming, depictions of labor in the fields are followed by those of work in barns or storehouses. Similar relationships can be found where fishing and fowling with a throwing net are depicted; rural scenes are combined with those occurring in other contexts.

Occasionally the temporal and spatial dimensions overlap. In depictions of hunting in the desert, the prey is sometimes desert animals and sometimes that of the steppes. These animals are shown copulating and then giving birth. Similar displacements of time and space occur in boat journeys. In images of a river boat journey, the deceased appears as the passenger of a sailing ship in the same frame and at the same time as he is shown as the passenger of a galley.

Funerary Repast Scene and False Door In Egypt Art

Funerary Repast Scene and False Door

The earliest examples of the adornment of a tomb chapel come from the end of the Third and the beginning of the Fourth Dynasties. Initially, interrelated scenes are still lacking, a few pictorial themes being indicated in key scenes. The oldest and most important example of this kind is the funerary repast scene that appears on the outside of the tomb, at first on a sacrificial plaque or slab and later in association with the false door of the tomb.

The early type of funerary repast scene depicts the deceased to the left of a table covered with bread. He or she reaches out with the right hand to the bread loaves spread out on the table and lays the left hand on his or her breast. The scene contains all the important information needed for its function. Inscriptions of names and titles make the necessary statements about the status of the deceased during his or her life. The funerary repast scene refers to the function of the tomb as the eternal dwelling place of the deceased. Its images and texts tell us about the quality of the offerings made since it lists by name the sacrifices placed on the table and distinguishes between these according to type and number. This depiction was standardized at an early date and established, in a legally binding way, just which offerings were to be brought to the deceased.

The funerary repast scene forms the departure point for the entire wall decoration of the tomb chapel. Out of concern that the items listed in the funerary repast scene, which were required daily, might arrive too late or, at some time in the future, cease altogether, their continued provision was guaranteed by means of magical images. These include pictures of defiles of offering bearers as well as other images showing the production of gifts intended as offerings.

Depictions of offerings and their presentation by mortuary priests were originally found on the false door itself and were therefore directly related to the funerary repast scene. From there, however, they spread on to the surrounding walls of the tomb chapel until, finally, they fill up the entire cult chamber. The range of images of the early chapels therefore consists mainly of defiles of offering bearers and images of the sacrifice of cattle. In hindsight, the depictions in the early chapels can be seen to be representations of the items contained in the lists of the funerary repast scene. The essential role of these images lay in ensuring the continued production of offerings intended for sacrifice.

The production of sacrificial offerings transformed into images and their presentation refers to actions carried out in this life on behalf of the deceased in the next life. Series of images portraying the existence and social role of the deceased in the next life appear with increasing frequency in the Fifth Dynasty and are placed on an equal footing beside images that ensure the provision of offerings to him. The new images then set the tone for the type of images in the cult chamber. Pictorial cycles of agriculture and livestock prove particularly useful for the extension of the pictorial program because their output in the shape of bread and beer or in the form of animals for slaughter can be sacrificed to the tomb owner. Images of craftsmanship fulfill a similar function. These show the production of objects that, in the end, will be used for the construction of tombs.

The Development of Funerary Architecture

The Development of Funerary Architecture

The cemeteries of the Old Kingdom (2700—2200 BC) in Giza, Abusir. Saqqara, and Dahshur are but parts of a single, great royal cemetery at Memphis where high officials of the Old Kingdom were interred next to their kings. They are home-to--tomb structures characteristic of the Old Kingdom. In the provinces tombs of a similar size only appear toward the end of the Old Kingdom, from around 2200 BC. While royal tombs developed into the pyramid, the tomb architecture of officialdom retained the form of the mastaba. But here, too, stone building techniques began to take on new dimensions at the beginning of the Fourth Dynasty (2640 BC); the first nonroyal tombs in stone replaced funerary complexes constructed from mudbrick. In spite of the new construction techniques, however, the basic conception of the tomb changed little from the old mudbrick methods. The tomb continued to have two main areas, one above ground and the other below The subterranean area was at first the more important one. It contained the burial chamber with an intricately fashioned sarcophagus of stone for the body of the deceased. In some tombs the exterior of these sarcophagi were formed like a palace (niche) facade. It seems likely that the person buried in it was to be identified as the inhabitant of a palace and this type of adornment indicated his personal rank.

At first, the sarcophagus below ground was surrounded by stored provisions. These were not intended for direct consumption by the dead but were to serve as reserves for eternity. Daily needs were met by the mortuary cult whose priests carried out their rites in the upper part of the tomb. Offerings were placed at a sacrificial site and taken up by the soul of the deceased. This cult site was marked by a “false door, which from the time of Cheops was protected by a tomb chapel that fronted the main structure. The walls of this tomb chapel were adorned with illustrations and texts whose primary representation was the deceased. He or she was shown either engaging in certain activities or as the focus of the actions of others. The individual nature of the scenes is evident from inscriptions containing the names and titles of the tomb owner.

Tomb decoration depicted themes suited to the deceased’s status. At the center of these were images of daily life. Because life in the hereafter was thought of in much the same way as mortal life, these images are uniquely able to depict the type of afterlife that the deceased imagined awaited him.

Further development of the range of images led to an increase in those depictions that applied themes from this life to the hereafter. The greater range of pictorial themes meant a greater need for rooms and wall space. This development temporarily came to an end with the tomb of the vizier Mereruka in Saqqara at the onset of the Sixth Dynasty around 2330 BC. The superstructure of his tomb consisted of a funerary palace of thirty-two decorated rooms, twenty-one of which, were intended for Mereruka, six for his wife and five for his son Meriteti.

From the second half of the Old Kingdom, decorated tombs had long since ceased to be the privilege of the upper class of the court. Monumental tomb structures arose in the provinces on the model of the capital’s necropolis. Because geography did not always allow for the building of a mastaba, tomb chapels were often designed as rock-cut tombs.

The Great Sphinx — A Puzzle is Solved

The Great Sphinx — A Puzzle is Solved

At 73.5 m long and over 20 m high the Great Sphinx is the most immense sculpture ever made by man. It shows a being that is part—lion and part—man, a creature metamorphosed into a divine being by the combined strength of a powerful wild animal and the intelligence of a human ruler. Earlier two—dimensional images of this creature as a griffin show it in action destroying the enemy. In the sculpture this power is tamed, controlled by human intelligence, and it has transformed into a divine, magisterial calm. Even if one agrees today that the Sphinx is a work of the Fourth Dynasty, the attribution to either Cheops, Djedefre or Chephren remains a matter of dispute. So far there is no inscriptional evidence that clearly names any of these three kings as the statue’s creator. The mention made of Chephren on the sphinx stela of Thutmosis IV (Eighteenth Dynasty) was, first of all, made a good thousand years later and, secondly, stands today out of context: in light of a similar text on the sphinx stela of Amenophis II it should probably be explained as “resting place/horizon of Cheops and of Chephren,” in other words the necropolis of Giza. A small, unique stela from the time of Ramesses of an “excellent scribe Monthu-her” bears the earliest image of the two pyramids, of Cheops and Chephren, with the Sphinx correctly shown in front of the Pyramid of Cheops. The area in which the Sphinx stands was undoubtedly ground quarried for stone to build the Cheops pyramid. Yet even this point is not unequivocal evidence that Cheops constructed the Sphinx.

Some reevaluations and an analysis of stylistic criteria can take us further. After Snefru in Dahshui it was Cheops in Giza whose designs and achievements are ultimately the finest. His pyramids, his temple, and even his statues, as surviving fragments show, are at once innovative and supreme achievements. He is the great originatoi the sun god; his sons follow him. He is therefore the most obvious candidate to be the inventor of the form of the Sphinx. The layout of the entire plateau argues for this interpretation. The causeway of Chephren takes account in its slanting course of something earlier, something important that already stood there; from the situation as it stands this can only have been the Sphinx. Stylistic considerations also point indisputedly toward Cheops. The overall form of the Sphinx’s face is broad, almost square. On the other hand the features of Chephren were long, noticeably narrower, the chin almost pointed. The Sphinx has the earlier, fully pleated type of nemes headcloth as does the head fragment of a statue of Cheops in The Metropolitan Museum, and still no band in the form of a raised hem over the brow. This is the norm from Djedefre onward. Under Chephren only the lappets of the nemes headcloth are pleated and never the hood. The side wings of the Sphinx’s nemes headcloth are deeply hollowed, but with Chephren hardly at all. With Chephren the headcloth corners curl up, but they do not do so with the Sphinx.

The Sphinx has a uraeus cobra placed on the lower edge of the headcloth and in contrast to those of Chephren and Mycerinus it shows high relief with naturalistic detailing of the serpent’s neck and the scales of its hood. The eyebrows of the Sphinx bulge powerfully forward, and they are pitched high and slope down toward the temples. The eyes are deep-set, but strongly modeled. They are large and wide open, to which perhaps the monumentality of the head owes something. These wide- open eyes are absolutely typical of sculpted heads from the time of Cheops. The ears are fundamentally different from those of the statue of Chephren. The ears of the Sphinx are very broad and folded forward, those of Chephren elongated and situated closer to the temples.

A decisive criterion is the absence of a beard. Since the Sphinx has no indications of hair on its chin, there certainly would not have been one in the Old Kingdom. The god’s beard is an innovation of the New Kingdom, and it also included a platform, which was adorned with a royal figure of the Eighteenth Dynasty. The small ivory statuette of Cheops does not have a beard, nor do the heads attributed to him (Brooklyn 46.167 and Berlin 14396), or the relief images. Whereas the kings of the Fourth Dynasty that follow — Djedefre, Chephren, and Mycerinus — all wear the ceremonial beard in relief and in modeled form. Therefore all evidence suggests that the Great Sphinx, like the great pyramids, is an original creation of Cheops.

Complexes of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties (Egypt Arts)

Complexes of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties

The transition from the Fourth to the Fifth Dynasties passed peacefully, as is indicated by the biographies of high officials, which provide valuable historical sources. The few inscriptions do not reveal whether Khentkaus, mother of the first three kings of the Fifth Dynasty, Userkaf, Sahure, and Neferirkare, was the wife or daughter of Shepseskaf last king of the Fourth Dynasty. Shepseskaf did not build a pyramid, but rather a huge stone mastaba at south Saqqara. It would be unwise to conclude from this that there were political or religious conflicts, for Shepseskaf had decreed the enactment of the mortuary cult, with offerings at the pyramids of his predecessors. The form of Shepseskaf’s name cannot be distinguished from that of Userkaf the first king of the Fifth Dynasty, who again chose the pyramid form for his tomb.

The shift of importance from pyramid to mortuary temple, which had established itself with Mycerinus, became the norm in the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties. The pyramids, which the kings of these dynasties constructed at Abusir and later at Saqqara, were considerably smaller, while the mortuary temples grew in size. The temples absorbed the entire east side of the pyramid. In this period there is hardly any further alteration in the architecture into an open temple for worship and an intimate temple for offerings, where the deceased king would receive the daily gifts in the company of the gods. The interior walls were richly painted with scenes on every surface. These showed the king’s entry in the world of the gods, his rebirth through the heavenly goddesses, his triumph over the chaotic world beyond Egypt’s borders and the daily gifts of offerings.

Administrative documents from the mortuary temples at Abusir tell us in detail about the bureaucracy that organized the supply and distribution of the considerable quantities of the offerings, from which the staff and priests ultimately lived, as in fact did the entire population of the pyramid town. The focal point of the pyramid town was the valley temple, whence the causeway ascended to the pyramid temple. In the valley temple the deceased king was also worshipped as a local divinity.

The offerings came first from the shrines of the sun god, temples that from the beginning of the Fifth Dynasty were built next to each of the royal mortuary complexes in the area of Abusir. These are “mortuary temples” for the daily setting of the sun god in the west. Architecturally they indeed resemble a royal mortuary temple, with a broad offering court, the main feature of which, however, was an obelisk, raised on a podium, in place of a pyramid. The offering was placed here first for the sun god, and then was taken to the royal mortuary temples in a kind of cult procession. We can conclude from the reliefs in the solar temples that the offerings made there to the sun god ensured the continuing cycle of rebirth of the world order.

The custom of building a new shrine to the sun god each time was abandoned at the end of the Fifth Dynasty, but this hardly represents a departure from the worship of the sun god Re that dominated Egyptian theology. The kings’ names provide evidence here: they are all supplemented with “Re” and “Son of Re.” But in the Sixth Dynasty there seems to have been a growing interest in the cult of Osiris and the concept of the afterlife in the underworld. This is not reflected in the architecture, but all the more in the pyramid texts that first appear at the end of the Fifth Dynasty, and in the prayers and wishes of private people. However, pyramid and temple architecture freezes into the pattern and scale found in the Fifth Dynasty.

Yet it would be wrong to speak of a decline. The pyramids and temples of Kings Teti, Pepi I and Pepi II are technically perfect constructions, maintaining in their scale and proportions the standards of the Fifth Dynasty.

The causes of the end of the Old Kingdom are certainly not to be found in the exhaustion of the state and its resources through excessive pyramid building. The decline of the Old Kingdom began with the disintegration of the central administration during the exceptionally long reign of Pepi II. After his mortuary complex was completed the country lay idle for decades. During these years the provincial governors discovered that they could maintain their administration and rule without royal command and they became more or less independent. Thus the central administration was cut off from the resources of the provinces.

The construction of the pyramids was a moment that united belief in the person of the king and in the role of kingship, as well as an opportunity for individuals to progress through their own ability and be assured of a safe life both in society and in the afterlife. One can best compare the building of the pyramids with the construction of the great cathedrals in European cities of the Middle Ages, which were the work of religious urban communities on a scale similar to the pyramids, the product of a state united by religion. The cathedrals are the gathering places for a community of believers for common prayer and a common cult, the hope and preparation for salvation in the afterlife. The pyramid complexes are comparable to the extent that they ensured an afterlife for the people through the person of the king and his mortuary cult.

One could go so far as to compare the cult of the deified king in his pyramid complex, and here especially in the valley temple, with the cult of the saints to whom a cathedral is consecrated. Just as the saints share through their devotion in God’s heavenly life after death, and the congregations strive to achieve the same through prayer good deeds, and offerings, so the king’s ascent into heaven and his union with the sun god ensures that his devout subjects will be able to share in the eternal afterlife. The intermediary role that the king had in the daily cult in this life, between the gods and the world order, is the same role he fulfills in the afterlife. The differences between the king’s heavenly afterlife and that of his subjects in the “beautiful west” may seem great to us; yet in reality they are just a projection into the future existence of the divisions that exist in this world.


The Great Sphinx — A Puzzle is Solved

At 73.5 m long and over 20 m high the Great Sphinx is the most immense sculpture ever made by man. It shows a being that is part-lion and part-man, a creature metamorphosed into a divine being by the combined strength of a powerful wild animal and the intelligence of a human ruler. Earlier two-dimensional images of this creature as a griffin show it in action destroying the enemy. In the sculpture this power is tamed, controlled by human intelligence, and it has transformed into a divine, magisterial calm. Even if one agrees today that the Sphinx is a work of the Fourth Dynasty, the attribution to either Cheops, Djedefre or Chephren remains a matter of dispute. So far there is no inscriptional evidence that clearly names any of these three kings as the statue’s creator. The mention made of Chephren on the sphinx stela of Thutmosis IV (Eighteenth Dynasty) was, first of all, made a good thousand years later and, secondly, stands today out of context: in light of a similar text on the sphinx stela of Amenophis II it should probably be explained as “resting place/horizon of Cheops and of Chephren,” in other words the necropolis of Giza. A small, unique stela from the time of Ramesses of an “excellent scribe Monthu-her” bears the earliest image of the two pyramids, of Cheops and Chephren, with the Sphinx correctly shown in front of the Pyramid of Cheops. The area in which the Sphinx stands was undoubtedly ground quarried for stone to build the Cheops pyramid. Yet even this point is not unequivocal evidence that Cheops constructed the Sphinx.

Some reevaluations and an analysis of stylistic criteria can take us further. After Snefru in Dahshur, it was Cheops in Giza whose designs and achievements are ultimately the finest. His pyramids, his temple, and even his statues, as surviving fragments shox are at once innovative and supreme achievements. He is the great originator, the sun god; his sons follow him. He is therefore the most obvious candidate to be the inventor of the form of the Sphinx. The layout of the entire plateau argues for this interpretation. The causeway of Chephren takes account in its slanting course of something earlier, something important that already stood there; from the situation as it stands this can only have been the Sphinx. Stylistic considerations also point indisputedly toward Cheops. The overall form of the Sphinx’s face is broad, almost square. On the other hand the features of Chephren were long, noticeably narrower the chin almost pointed. The Sphinx has the earliei fully pleated type of nemes headcloth as does the head fragment of a statue of Cheops in The Metropolitan Museum, and still no band in the form of a raised hem over the brow This is the norm from Djedefre onward. Under Chephren only the lappets of the nemes headcloth are pleated and never the hood. The side wings of the Sphinx’s nemes headcloth are deeply hollowed, but with Chephren hardly at all. With Chephren the headcloth corners curl up, but they do not do so with the Sphinx.

The Sphinx has a uraeus cobra placed on the lower edge of the headcloth and in contrast to those of Chephren and Mycerinus it shows high relief with naturalistic detailing of the serpent’s neck and the scales of its hood. The eyebrows of the Sphinx bulge powerfully forward, and they are pitched high and slope down toward the temples. The eyes are deep—set, but strongly modeled. They are large and wide open, to which perhaps the monumentality of the head owes something. These wide- open eyes are absolutely typical of sculpted heads from the time of Cheops. The ears are fundamentally different from those of the statue of Chephren. The ears of the Sphinx are very broad and folded forward, those of Chephren elongated and situated closer to the temples.

A decisive criterion is the absence of a beard. Since the Sphinx has no indications of hair on its chin, there certainly would not have been one in the Old Kingdom. The god’s beard is an innovation of the New Kingdom, and it also included a platform, which was adorned with a royal figure of the Eighteenth Dynasty. The small ivory statuette of Cheops does not have a beard, nor do the heads attributed to him (Brooklyn 46.167 and Berlin 14396), or the relief images. Whereas the kings of the Fourth Dynasty that follow — Djedefre, Chephren, and Mycerinus — all wear the ceremonial beard in relief and in modeled form. Therefore all evidence suggests that the Great Sphinx, like the great pyramids, is an original creation of Cheops.