Chauvet Cave was first discovered by Jean-Marie Chauvet in 1995. It is located in southeast France and has been dated between 30,000 and 33,000 years B.P. (Before the Present). These dates place the drawings in the Auriganacian, or the early Upper Paleolithic period. This era is defined by the functionally flexible stone tool industry, their manufacture of body ornaments and sophisticated cave art. 
Art of the Aurignacian era can be separated into two groups. The first is portable art which began appearing about 35,000 B.P. and is made up of carvings such as the Venus figurine. The second group is stationary art, or parietal art, mainly made up of cave drawings and paintings. Over Europe, the majority of cave art depicts animals with an overwhelming representations of animals of significant economic value like horse, reindeer, bison, aurochs, ibex, and mammoth along with carnivores such as lions, bears and wolves. Chauvet Cave particularly seems to contain a surprisingly large number of carnivores, with at least thirty-three figures making up almost fourteen percent of the animal figures. The carnivores represented include mainly bears and large cats including at least one spotted panther. These animals, especially the felines, are consistently among the most inaccurately proportioned with their canine teeth substantially larger than in real life. This may be because the large cats are harder to observe than other common animals such as the horse and bison, however, their teeth do seem to attract a lot more attention in general. Not only were the carnivores the only animals drawn with teeth but also their teeth were used as jewelry.
It is hard today to interpret the art of the Upper Paleolithic because so much has changed over the 30,000 years since its creation. When studying Paleolithic art we are only observing a small proportion what was made, only the surviving art is accessible to us. While art historians often view this early cave art as the ‘awakening’ of a human instinct to study the world around them, the majority of pre-historians believe instead that it is part of a wider cultural behavior. One suggestion is that the art represented a type of communication related to the movement and behavior of animals, perhaps in response to planned hunting activities. This hypothesis shows a marked shift from the idea of symbolism towards one focused on the communication of information about the surrounding environment. At any rate, the majority of experts agree that the people creating the drawings are copying images and scenes from real life. It is, however important to note, that while many of the drawings found probably do represent some greater thought or idea, there may be a certain percentage of meaningless scrawl made by amateurs or practicing children.
Today standing guard on the Giza pyramid complex’s eastern face, the Great Sphinx in fact predates Ancient Egypt’s most famed architectural achievements by at least 500 years. Modern archaeology tells us that the Sphinx was built during Old Kingdom Egypt’s fourth dynasty, sometime between 2723 and 2563 BC - making it the world’s oldest known monumental edifice.
Though the lion with the head of a man was a common trope of both the Egyptian and Greek mythologies of the era, time and the elements have significantly worn Giza’s and ancient depictions of the Great Sphinx are few. Written accounts of its physical appearance are plentiful, but the West got its very first visual depiction of the two hundred foot long monument in 1556, via Andre Thevet’s Cosmographie de Levant. Thevet, who had visited Giza some seven years prior, presented a curly-headed, European-featured face of indiscriminate sex, perched atop a grassy mound. He described it as “the head of a colossus, caused to be made by Isis, daughter of Inachus, then so beloved of Jupiter.”
German traveler Johannes Helferich’s take was altogether different when he published a drawing in an account of his Oriental travels in 1579; here the Sphinx was definitively female, with its distinctive headdress portrayed as shoulder-length, harshly cropped hair. (Helferich’s travelogue also recounts, interestingly enough, that Egyptian priests showed him a secret tunnel within the statue in which they could hide and make it appear that the Sphinx was talking.)
For two centuries, equally embellished pen and ink drawings, etchings and sketches continued to circulate throughout Europe - with most providing conflicting depictions of the face’s broken/unbroken nose. The artists’ objectivity wasn’t helped along by the Sphinx’s mysterious nature; its body remained concealed beneath tons of sand, leaving only the head visible and obscuring its true scale.
The first true approximation the monument’s actual appearance comes from Richard Pococke’s Travels, published in 1743 – though he did take the liberty of penciling in the face’s nonexistent proboscis (believed to have, in fact, been destroyed at least a century before the publication of Thevet’s account). By the time Napoleon paid a visit to Giza in 1798, most of educated Europe knew the Sphinx’s true face – though its body would remain buried in the desert’s dunes, until one of many excavation attempts finally succeeded in 1936.
As for the famous face its self, it is commonly believed to be a likeness of the pharaoh Khefre, the fourth dynasty ruler most often associated with its construction. That assertion, however, is hotly contested in some circles with some scholars claiming that the Great Sphinx’s features bear little resemblance to those found upon other sculptural representations of Khefre.
| Nonetheless, the fact remains the monument’s true identity was unknown to even the Egyptians themselves. By the time of the New Kingdom, it was commonly spoken of as an image of the sun god Ra, following its incorporation into the myth of the pharaoh Thutmose IV. As a once prince ineligible for the throne, Thutmose had a dream during an afternoon nap beneath the great monument. He told of being visited by the deity, who offered him the kingdom of Egypt in exchange for his veneration of Ra above all over gods and repairs to his earthly |
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| embodiment. The would-be pharaoh soon began an expansion and restoration of the Great Sphinx. The rest, as they say, is history. | ||||||||||||
Tags: 1556, 1579, 1798, 1936, 2563 BC, 2723 BC, ancient egypt, Andre Thevet, Archaeology, Cosmographie de Levant, egyptian mythology, Egyptian New Kingdom, Egyptian Priests, Egyptian Sphinx Miniature Statue, Egyptian Sphinx Statue, Giza pyramid, great sphinx of giza, Greek Mythology, Guardian of the Ages: The Great Sphinx DVD, head of colossus, Inachus, Isis, Johannes Helferich, Jupiter, lion with head of man, Napoleon in Egypt, old kingdom of Egypt, pharaoh Khefre, Richard Pococke, Richard Pococke's Travels 1743, The Great Sphinx of Giza Statue, Thutmoses IV
Covering four square miles of the northern Yucatan Peninsula, the Mayan city of Chichen Itza’s origins remain shrouded in mystery, despite the wealth of archaeological curiosities discovered in and around its numerous temples, pyramids and sacred spaces over the past two hundred years.
The Itza continued to multiply in number for the next century, eventually founding the neighboring city of Mayapan. However, the rise of rival tribe called the Xiu in the late 15th century led to the destruction of Mayapan and forced the Itza to flee their reclaimed city - the second wholesale abandonment of Chichen Itza in as many centuries.
From the top of vaunted pyramid, temple priests could view processions to the Sacred Cenote, the dreaded Well of Sacrifice. Spanning roughly an acre across, men, women and children were flung into the massive hole as sacrifices to the long forgotten Mayan gods. Despite the site’s grim connotations, it has proven to be treasure trove for would-be explorers; the cave’s depth and isolation has protected hundreds of skeletons and telltale artifacts from the ravages of time.
For over two thousand years, the secrets of the ancient Egyptians were lost to history. All the tombs, trinkets, statues and cenotaphs were pretty but indecipherable, covered as they were in a pictographic script that had no meaning. It wasn’t decades of research, the intricate technologies of archaeology or the explanation of some ancient king risen from the dead that unlocked the lost language of the ancient Egyptians. In fact, it was the accidental discovery of some half buried rock that came to be known as the Rosetta stone, by a French soldier that would change the face of Egyptology and provide a much needed window into the language and belief systems of the most celebrated ancient culture.
