Beginning in the 12th century, Arab physicians began to prescribe their patients a most unorthodox remedy: the ground remains of mummies procured from Egyptian tombs.
Mummy powder proved so profitable that soon after its introduction, Egyptian tombs were ransacked not only for the riches they might contain, but also for bodies that might be processed into the expensive folk medicine. It wasn’t long before the practice of applying mummy powder was incorporated into medieval Europe’s catalog of dubious medical practices. By the 16th century, the product had become so commonplace in both Europe and the Middle East that the once seemingly endless supply of authentic, mummified Egyptian cadavers quite literally dried up.
Mummy powder, however, was not the only everyday use of the Egyptian dead that arose before the dawn of modern archaeological preservation. In the 16th and 17th centuries, pulverized mummy was the key ingredient in a popular shade of brown artist’s pigment, and preserved human and animal remains of Egyptian origin were used in the production of this “mummy brown” paint until the early 20th century.
Whether this statement was merely jest on the part of the American literary icon, well known for his sense of humor, has been the subject of debate ever since it was published. What is known, however, is that the supply of authentic Egyptian corpses by the beginning of the 1800s was so small only that upper crust Europeans could afford to purchase one whole. In the wake of Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt, it became vogue amongst the aristocracy to hold “unwrapping parties,” where carefully preserved corpses would be haphazardly stripped of their bandages, so that revelers could gaze upon the millennia-old face concealed beneath them. Small burial ornaments concealed in the linens would then be dispensed to partygoers as souvenirs, while exposure to air caused the delicate bodies to crumble into dust, never to be seen again.
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
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.
