File:The Great Sphinx, Giza, GG, EGY (47902649251).jpg
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| Description | This is the Great Sphinx of Giza, carved out of the solid limestone of the Giza Plateau, which sits between the Pyramids of Giza and the Nile River. Created during the reign of the Pharaoh Khafre between about 2558 and 2532 BC, the Sphinx is one of the world’s oldest and largest statues, but the purpose for its construction, as well as whom it depicts, remain a mystery. To the south of the Sphinx stands the ruins of Valley Temple and a ceremonial Causeway, both of which were used during the funeral of Pharaoh Khafre in 2532 BC. Though it dates to the Old Kingdom of Ancient Egypt, the Sphinx does not appear in written records from this time, and only appears later in New Kingdom records, where it is revered as an effigy of the solar deity Horus. The name of the Sphinx is also not Egyptian in origin, dating to about 2000 years after its construction when Greeks visited Egypt and remarked on the statue’s similarity to their mythical beast known as a Sphinx. The Giza Necropolis was abandoned around the time that the Old Kingdom fell, and the Sphinx and Pyramids were subsequently buried in sand that was deposited unchecked for several centuries. The Sphinx was then excavated during the Middle Kingdom and again during the New Kingdom. The Sphinx and necropolis then sat unmaintained and abandoned for several millennia, with stones from the pyramids being scavenged as building material. The Sphinx was vandalized sometime during the Medieval era, with most historians blaming the defacement on a Sultan who was a zealot and saw the Sphinx as an affront to his religious beliefs and had it defaced to stop it from being used in acts of iconoclasm. However, the Sphinx was not completely destroyed, but remained mostly buried until the 19th Century, when excavations uncovered the lower portion of the statue for the first time in thousands of years. |
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| Source | The Great Sphinx, Giza, GG, EGY |
| Author | Warren LeMay from Chicago, IL, United States |
| Camera location |  | View this and other nearby images on: OpenStreetMap |  |
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This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. |
| The person who associated a work with this deed has dedicated the work to the public domain by waiving all of their rights to the work worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law. You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.
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This image was originally posted to Flickr by w_lemay at https://flickr.com/photos/59081381@N03/47902649251. It was reviewed on 19 February 2024 by FlickreviewR 2 and was confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-zero. |
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| Date/Time | Thumbnail | Dimensions | User | Comment | |
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| current | 00:24, 19 February 2024 | | 4,032 × 3,024 (3.47 MB) | Tm (talk | contribs) | Transferred from Flickr via #flickr2commons |
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