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Long-lost sphinxes of Egyptian king Amenhotep III unearthed at Luxor
- pavlov 5y agoThe crack on Amenhotep's face gives him a fitting expression for an immortal king contemplating his legacy from the netherworld: "I spent 40 years building Egypt into a fortress against enemies internal and foreign, and then my hippie son just throws it all away by smoking some weed with the sun-worshipping Aten cultists, becoming a monotheist, and moving into the freaking desert to get a better tan."
- mojomark 5y agoI wonder if the noses on Mount Rushmore faces will fall off in the next millennium.
- ncmncm 5y agoWe can but hope. On my schedule for demolishing ill-conceived stonework, that cliff face in Atlanta is top of the list. I have read suggestions that the nasal obliteration we see in classical sculpture is deliberate sabotage by successors and, more comprehensively, by general orders under Islam's stricture against figurative representation. I don't know how much credence to put in it, vs. natural tendency for cantilevered bits to fall off. But it seems like noses fare strictly worse than other projections.
- thebrainkid 5y agoThe plural of "sphinx" is "sphinges".
- justahuman74 5y agoOnly if you care about someone's version of correctness above that of being understood
- saalweachter 5y agoSphinxen
- FPGAhacker 5y agoSphinxers
- gundmc 5y ago> plural sphinxes or sphinges Looks like either is correct, but I learned a new word!
- mikewarot 5y agoThere is a theory floated by some UnchartedX, that many of the monuments and artifacts in Egypt were built by a far older, unknown civilization, and the carving of names in them was essentially appropriation by the Pharos. Every time some new thing is found, I check to see if it fits or refutes this theory and adjust my probability of it being true. This particular story doesn't really shift the odds for me.
- ncmncm 5y agoThe tens of thousands of dishes carved from stone as hard as quartz and corundum give pause. The ones found in tombs could have been made any time earlier than the tombs they were found in. But anyway I think most are officially pre-dynastic. Certainly the suggested method of manufacture is implausible on its face. Suggestions that Egyptians melted and molded granite are obviously wrong, because the grain size seen in their products is achievable only with centuries- or millennia-long undisturbed cooling, possible only in nature.
- atdrummond 5y agoSo while I enjoy that theory, I feel like it's pretty much a more gentle form of the insane mud flooding theories that all buildings are older than we think. We have plenty of contemporary texts confirming construction of these buildings. Nobody else seriously challenges their legitimacy in history other than recent conspiracy theorists.
- Stevvo 5y agoProponents of this theory consider the Great Sphinx as one the best bits of evidence for it precisely because there is not a a single contemporary inscription attributing its construction to Egypt/Khafre.
- ncmncm 5y agoYes, you don't put up a stele claiming credit for repairs to something you built in the first place. Circumstantial evidence for tunnels found in and under the Sphinx is intriguing, and not prima facie implausible. (The Egyptians did love tunneling!) If true, one wonders why authorities continue keeping them secret. Perhaps there will be a big reveal someday in a way calculated to benefit someone's reputation, but it may be that any such reveal could only ever embarrass. The big, empty, precisely-machined boxes in Saqqara with painfully crude exterior surface decorations are another big mystery. Again, one wonders what more authorities know about them than is yet published. All we may be certain of is that the official line is bollocks.