Sphinx: History of a Monument

Zivie-Coche, Christiane. Translated by David Lorton

ISBN 10: 0801439620 / ISBN 13: 9780801439629

Edité par Cornell University Press, 2002

A propos de cet article

First published 2002 by Cornell University Press. Index. 122pp. Maps. +12 photographs. Grey linen cloth boards with bright gilt title on spine. Pictorial dust jacket with title and title on spine panel.

N° de réf. du vendeur 2172

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: Sphinx: History of a Monument
• Éditeur: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 2002
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN à 10 chiffres: 0801439620
• ISBN à 13 chiffres: 9780801439629
• Reliure: Hardcover
• Édition: 1st Edition
• État de l'article: New

A propos de ce titre

Synopsis

"Sphinxes are legion in Egypt--what is so special about this one?... We shall take a stroll around the monument itself, scrutinizing its special features and analyzing the changes it experienced throughout its history. The evidence linked to the statue will enable us to trace its evolution... down to the worship it received in the first centuries of our own era, when Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans mingled together in devotion to this colossus, illustrious witness to a past that was already more than two millennia old."--from the IntroductionThe Great Sphinx of Giza is one of the few monuments from ancient Egypt familiar to nearly everyone. In a land where the colossal is part of the landscape, it still stands out, the largest known statue in Egypt. Originally constructed as the image of King Chephren, builder of the second of the Great Pyramids, the Sphinx later acquired new fame in the guise of the sun god Harmakhis. Major construction efforts in the New Kingdom and Roman Period transformed the monument and its environs into an impressive place of pilgrimage, visited until the end of pagan antiquity.Christiane Zivie-Coche, a distinguished Egyptologist, surveys the long history of the Great Sphinx and discusses its original appearance, its functions and religious significance, its relation to the many other Egyptian sphinxes, and the various discoveries connected with it. From votive objects deposited by the faithful and inscriptions that testify to details of worship, she reconstructs the cult of Harmakhis (in Egyptian, Har-em-akhet, or "Horus-in-the-horizon"), which arose around the monument in the second millennium. "We are faced," she writes, "with a religious phenomenon that is entirely original, though not unique: a theological reinterpretation turned an existing statue into the image of the god who had been invented on its basis."The coming of Christianity ended the Great Sphinx's religious role. The ever-present sand buried it, thus sparing it the fate that overtook the nearby pyramids, which were stripped of their stone by medieval builders. The monument remained untouched, covered by its desert blanket, until the first excavations. Zivie-Coche details the archaeological activity aimed at clearing the Sphinx and, later, at preserving it from the corrosive effects of a rising water table.

À propos de l?auteur

Françoise Dunand is Professor of the History of Religion, Marc Bloch University, Strasbourg. Christiane Zivie-Coche is Director of Studies, L'Ecole pratique des Hautes Etudes, Section des Sciences religieuses, Paris. She is the author of Sphinx: History of a Monument, also from Cornell. David Lorton, an Egyptologist, lives in Baltimore, Maryland.