What happened to the nose from the Great Sphinx of Gizain Egyptis a curiosity that has fascinated for centuries. Over time, there have been many theories to explain the absence of the nose of the large sculpture, and one of the most famous wants it to have been knocked down by a cannon shot of the French soldiers following Napoleon (1769-1821), during the Egyptian campaign (1798-1801). In reality this version of the story is false. Let’s understand why.
The Great Sphinx of Giza is one of the most ancient And majestic from the monumental sculpture of Ancient Egypt. It would represent a mythical creature with the body of a lion and an anthropomorphic head. It dates back to the 26th century BCis made of limestone, it is 73 meters long and 20 meters high. It would appear to have been built at the same time as the pyramid of Chephrenthe second largest in the Giza complex. Chephren reigned from 2558 to 2532 BC. The term “sphinx”, which indicates the mythological creature, derives from Greekwhich in turn derives from theancient egyptian “shp n“, which meant “living statue“.
For a long time it was said that the nose of the majestic sculpture was knocked off by a cannon shot French in 1798. This is completely falseand we know this for sure, because we have a dated illustration 1737made by the Danish explorer Frederic Louis Norden (1708-1742), in which the sphinx is depicted already missing her nose. To understand what happened, we must therefore go further further back in time.
The most plausible theories to explain the absence of the Sphinx’s nose are twoThe first sees it as lost over the course of millennia of weatherIt is not unusual that the sculptures suffer more damage precisely in those points where the weight to be supported without support is greater: just think of the many statues of classical antiquity that over time have lost their arms or other parts that were particularly protruding compared to the rest of the sculpture. The evidence of this theory supports this theory. some Arab historians of the 10th centurywho describe the Sphinx as having no nose even then.
The second theory, which enjoys even more documentary support, sees the nose as having been removed during the 14th centuryat the time of the domination of the Mamelukes. According to the historian Al Maqrizi (1364-1442), to to knock down with a pickaxe the nose of the Sphinx was Muhammad Sai’im al-Dahr In the 1378. Al Dahr was a Sufior a scholar of the Islamic mysticismcalled precisely “Sufism“. Exactly the religious zeal of this mystic pushed him to deface the statue: some peasants, in the Muslim era, apparently still carried some offers to the Sphinx to propitiate the outcome of the harvest. In Islam, theiconoduly (the veneration of religious images and statues) is one of the taboo stronger, and probably for this reason Al Dahr had the nose of the majestic sculpture mutilated.
