docyabut2, on 24 June 2012 - 11:44 AM, said:
I guess one has to asked where did Djedefre get the idea for the frist made Sphinx of Egypt?
That's the question, isn't it? I myself don't have an answer for it. I don't think it's well understood. The merging of animal form with human form was already well established by Dynasty 4, particularly with deities, but perhaps it's nothing more than it looks to be on the surface: the lion is a regal animal and typically associated with royalty in many different cultures, so plopping the head of a royal atop a Sphinx might have been logical to the early Egyptians. That's speculation on my part but it's the best I have to offer.
It's entirely possible the archaeological record in this regard is incomplete. Who's to say other sphinxes weren't carved before Djedefre's time? We have the two from his pyramid complex at Abu Rawash that stand right now as the oldest-known sphinxes in Egypt, but perhaps future archaeological excavations will unearth even older sphinx statues.
Quote
Some believe that the sphinx of his wife, Hetepheres II, was the first sphinx created. It was part of Djedefre's pyramid complex at Abu Rawa. In 2004, evidence that Djedefre may have been responsible for the building of the
Sphinx at Giza
The uncertainty with the
Hetepheres sphinx lies in the fact that she was originally married to Kawab, a son of Khufu who stood above Djedefre in the hierarchy of succession. Kawab died before his time, leaving Djedefre as the next in line to the throne. So it remains possible that the Hetepheres sphinx may have been carved for her when she was married to Kawab. In this scenario the fragmented
sphinx of Djedefre was carved later.
The theory about Djedefre's carving of the Great Sphinx of Giza comes from a French Egyptologist named Vassil Dobrev. I remember seeing a TV special about his theory on the History Channel or Discovery Channel. While the theory has merit and introduced something else for scholarship to consider, in the end Dobrev was not able to win support. His argument was not complete or convincing enough to sway the body of scholarship on the Sphinx. As for the canted angle of the Khafre causeway noted by Egyptologists like Dobrev and Rainer Stadelmann, were I able to, I would ask them if the Khufu quarry has some involvement in this. To my thinking both the terrain and the geology of the space between Khufu's Eastern Cemetery and the present location of the Sphinx might have been too broken and irregular by the time Khafre was establishing his pyramid complex. He put the Sphinx there because it was simply the best spot to do it. Moreover, the limestone knob that became the Sphinx's head was probably the only feature of the massif that would become the Sphinx which was visible above the surface of the Plateau, so that alone determined where the Sphinx would be.
I would recommend reading the relevant pages of the
Giza Plateau Mapping Project. No archaeological team has studied and examined the Sphinx so closely as they. As far as I'm concerned the GPMP has settled the issue definitively and proven the Sphinx was part of Khafre's pyramid complex and was commissioned by that king.
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