Welcome to You Ask Andy

Crigler, 13, of St. Louis, Mo., for her question:

HOW OLD IS THE SPHINX?

Sand covers the base of the Great Sphinx at Giza in Egypt, so most of the time only the upper part of the statue is visible. Thutmose IV of Egypt cleared the sand away about 1400 B.C. as did one of the Ptolemies during Roman times. The sand was cleared away again in 1818, 1886 and in 1926.

The clearing is a major project.  When you hear the word sphinx you usually think of the  Great Sphinx which stands near the Great Pyramids at Giza in Egypt. It is one of the most famous monuments in the world.

Sphinx is an imaginary creature that is often found in ancient myths. The Greeks and Near East peoples as well as the Egyptians had wonderful stories to tell of him. In most stories he had a human head, the body of a lion, the tail of a serpent and the wings of a bird.

In Egypt the sphinx usually had a human head with the body, legs, feet and tail of a lion. The Nile version never had wings. He was supposed to represent the god Horus, and his job was to guard temples and tombs.

Egyptians made many sphinxes. Faces on them usually represented the Pharaoh who was in power at the time. Some, however, had heads resembling those of rams and hawks. Often both sides of an avenue leading to tombs or a temple would be lined with sphinx statues. A famous row appears outside the Great Temple of Amon Re at Karnak on the east bank of the Nile River near what is now Luxor, Egypt. King Amenhotep III built these sphinxes about 1400 B.C.

The Great Sphinx at Giza is 240 feet long and 66 feet high. The width of his face measures 13 feet 8 inches. Unfortunately the head had been thoughtlessly used as a gunnery target some years ago and it is now badly scarred. The shifting desert sands have also been responsible for some damage over the years.

No one is sure when the Great Sphinx was built, but historians believe its face was a portrait of the a Egyptian king who built it. Its head and body are carved from solid rock, and his paws and legs are built from stone blocks.

The Greek sphinx usually has the head of a woman. In Greek literature, the sphinx lived on a high rock outside of the city of Thebes and always asked the same riddle when anyone passed: "What has one voice and yet becomes four¬footed and two footed and three footed?'' If the traveler could not give the right answer, according to the legend, the sphinx would eat him.

The story goes that the sphinx asked Oedipus the riddle. ''Man,'' answered Oedipus. " He walks on his hands and feet when he is young, on two feet in the middle of his life and with a cane or staff in his old age."

The sphinx howled with rage and became furious because Oedipus had given the right answer. She was'so angry that she finally threw herself from the rock to her death.

 

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