“…swear that I have always believed, do believe, and by God’s help will in the future believe, all that is held, preached, and taught by the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. But whereas — after an injunction had been judicially intimated to me by this Holy Office, to the effect that I must altogether abandon the false opinion that the sun is the center of the world and immovable, and that the earth is not the center of the world, and moves, and that I must not hold, defend, or teach in any way whatsoever, verbally or in writing, the said false doctrine…”
The book was based on his own observations. After discovering the moons of Jupiter by using a telescope and charting the activity of the planet Venus, Galileo became convinced of the rightness of Copernicus’ concept. He created charts, took calculations and earned his title as the father of physics.
Why the determined physicist wrote and signed the confession is a matter of the adverse effects of torture. Whether it was only the threat of torture or the physical act itself, the reputation of the diabolical Inquisition was ubiquitous. Galileo made his confession and was then put under house arrest. He went home to Sienna, Italy to live out his days.
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
