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The Great Sphinx is an immense statue that
represents a creature that has a human head and a body of a
lion. The national symbol of ancient Egypt but also of the
modern Egypt, the Great Sphinx brings in Egypt thousands and
thousands of visitors who want to see this amazing sculpture. To
this statue have been dedicated numerous poems, it is the theme
for numerous paints and documentaries. The word sphinx was given
by Greeks to the half human half animal creatures and means
‘strangler’. There are no exactly information about who built
the Great Sphinx and when but the hypotheses is that the statue
was made by the king Khafra, about 4,500 years ago, and it
represents the king's figure. This amazing statue is a part of a
complex that also includes the statue's temple, other small
buildings and a temple of the new Kingdom. Situated in the
Khafra Valley Temple, the Great Sphinx was made from Muqqatam
Formation limestone bedrock, whose origins are of fifty millions
years old and came from the sediments that were deposited on the
sea waters` bottom. The nose of the statues doesn't exist any
more; there are some assumptions that the nose was destroyed by
Muhammad Sa'im al-Dahr or by the Napoleon’s armies, or by the
Mamluks or by the British troops. The Great Sphinx suffered some
restoration works, first in 1400 BC by Thutmose IV who dug out
the statue from the sand where it was buried almost a half of
it, after the abandon of the Giza necropolis. The second
restoration was made by Ramesses II. In 1817, Captain Caviglia
totally undiscovered the Sphinx chest from the sand. And, in
1925, another important restoration was applied to the statue. |
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