Great Sphinx in Situ
The Sphinx temple is very ruined
now, with little of its granite facing left and little of its alabaster floor. Any
inscriptions it may once have carried, which might have told us much about its
purpose, are long gone. Only the eroded limestone core of the structure
remains, in part: enough to show that this temple once boasted a central court, about 46 m by 23 m, open to the
sky and affording a good view of the Sphinx, and there was an interior colonnade of rectangular pillars. Large
recesses in the inside eastern and western walls suggest the original
presence of cult statues, very possibly to do with the rising and setting sun, but
of decorative detail there is no trace.
There was no immediate access to the Sphinx from inside the temple,
whose west wall up to the height of 2.5 m was cut into the living rock, thereafter topped with limestone blocks. It was
necessary to go by passages to the north and south of the temple to reach the
Sphinx. There is evidence that this temple of the Sphinx was never finished;
perhaps it was never even used.
The interior of the other temple, to the south of the Sphinx temple, is quite
different in layout, though the same granite casing of the limestone core blocks,
the same rectangular style of pillar, the same presence of statue niches, the
same overall size and method of construction mark both buildings as contemporary Old Kingdom temples.
In the southerly temple, the remains of nine more or less complete statues of
a king named on them as Khafre were found. Further fragments show that twenty-three statues of Khafre once stood in this temple, which Egyptologists
identify as the valley temple of Khafre's pyramid complex: the temple on the
edge of the Giza escarpment to which his body was brought by a canal from the
river at the start of the process that would end with his being sealed within his
pyramid Up on the plateau above. Even in this century, the river in flood has
occasionally come very close to the terrace of the temples by the Sphinx - and
the water-table is not far below ground.
The valley temple of Khafre lies at the end of a limestone causeway that
leads up the slope to a further temple at the foot of his pyramid. The Greek
writer Herodotus, who never mentions the Sphinx as a feature of his visit to the
pyramids (perhaps it was all but obscured by sand in the fifth century BC), thought the causeway of the Great Pyramid was as wonderful in its way as the
pyramids themselves. To judge by the causeways of slightly later pyramids, these long ramps were covered over, with slits in the roof to let in light, and
possibly their walls even in the time of Khufu and Khafre carried sculpted and
painted scenes on them, in contrast to the lack of decoration in the Giza pyramids themselves.
The Great Sphinx in modern times.
The Khafre causeway was equipped with drainage channels which are
interesting to us now because they indicate that rainwater run-off was an essential provision of the pyramid complex. We are accustomed to think of
Egypt as a very dry place but even today, in times that are drier still than were
the days of the Old Kingdom, rains can sometimes come and cause considerable damage in a context where they are not routinely expected.
Evidently the monuments of the Giza necropolis needed precautions against rain. On the north side of the Khafre causeway, there is a ditch (2 m wide and
1.5 m deep) that forms a demarcation line between the pyramid complexes of Khufu and Khafre. This rock-cut ditch was large enough to channel a great deal
of rainwater when heavy rains occurred. It is cut into by the corner of the
Sphinx enclosure, and - were it not blocked at this point with pieces of granite -
would allow water to pour in quantity into the basin out of which the Sphinx body
was carved. These circumstances strongly suggest that the Sphinx enclosure and the Sphinx itself were created after the demarcation of the complexes of
Khufu and Khafre and after the construction of Khafre's causeway.
There are some tombs cut into the south-facing edge of the wider Sphinx
enclosure to the north that belong to the same Dyn. IV as Khufu and Khafre, showing that the enclosure was not made after their time. Between them, the
blocked ditch and the tombs indicate a narrow hand of time in which the Sphinx
enclosure, and by strong implication the Sphinx itself, could have been carved.
It means that the Sphinx most likely dates to a time no later than a couple of
reigns after Khafre and no earlier than his reign.
At the top of the Khafre causeway, 400 m in length, there was another
temple, larger than the one at the valley end and immediately in front of Khafre's pyramid. This was the feature of a pyramid complex that Egyptologists
call a mortuary temple. It is now a badly eroded ruin, but once measured over
110 m by nearly 50 m. It was again part-faced with granite from Aswan, but also
with fine limestone from across the Nile at Tura. It featured an entrance hall, an
open court, statue niches, storage magazines and a sanctuary close to the base
of the pyramid, with an altar for offerings. The pyramid itself was surrounded by
a high wall, and the area between the wall and the pyramid was paved.
Khafre's pyramid was accompanied by one smaller pyramid to the south, but
the slightly searlier pyramid of Khufu has three to the east, while the smaller
Giza pyramid of their successor Menkaure has three to the south. All three main pyramids were equipped with mortuary and valley temples and causeways
between these temples, though most of the causeway and the valley temple of Khufu is now invisible. The pyramids of Khufu and Khafre (and probably
Menkaure too) were additionally accompanied by several boat pits in which
wooden boats of some religious significance were buried.
Around the Great Pyramid of Khufu there are numerous contemporary tombs
of relatives, courtiers and officials, laid out in ordered lines. Subsequently,
there was infilling with tombs of later reigns, and more tombs were built to the
south-east of Khafre's pyramid.
To the south of Khafre's tomb field there is a priests' town, where the priests
who maintained the religious duties of the necropolis were housed, and nearby
there is another large tomb, of an Old Kingdom queen. Rock-cut tombs occur along the various natural and quarried edges of the escarpment including, as we
have seen, the northern side of the Sphinx enclosure. To the west of Khafre's
pyramid there is a line of ancient storehouses.
The whole Giza site was, you might say, a living necropolis for three
millennia: living because, with varying degrees of dedication from time to time,
the cults of the royal dead and their followers were kept up by the priestly
administration of the place. There were periods of neglect, extreme at times,
but also periods of renewal. We have described the complex of monuments that
belonged together in Old Kingdom times, but Giza went on being an important
place till practically the end of ancient Egyptian history.
New Kingdom pharaohs, ruling a thousand years after Khufu and
Khafre, built new temples close to the Sphinx, who had become in their time (whatever
his original significance may have been) a god in his own right. In the latter days
of ancient Egypt, two thousand years after Khufu and Khafre, an atavistic passion for an idealized and (not surprisingly) misremembered past led to more
rebuilding on the Giza site and fresh interpretations of the origin and meaning
of the Sphinx. The Giza complex lies at an elevation of about 100 m above
sea-level on a latitude 30° north of the equator, towards the northern end of a
vast cemetery of the ancient Egyptians associated with their Old Kingdom capital city of Memphis. Both city and cemetery lay on the west hank of the
Nile.
About 10 km north of Giza is the northernmost station of the cemetery,
where the very ruined pyramid of Khufu's successor Djedefre (sometimes rendered
Radjedef) lies at Abu Rawash. About 7 km south of Giza, another pyramid was left unfinished at Zawyet el-Aryan: to what king it belonged is now
unknown. There is also evidence of an unfinished Dyn. III structure.
About the same distance south again is Saqqara, with more than a dozen royal
monuments ranging from Dyn. III to Dyn. XIII, though none of them from Dyn. IV like the Giza pyramids. There are more Dyn. IV pyramids at Dahshur, about
10 km south of Saqqara, where the father of Khufu (his name was Snofru) built
two pyramids, one with a noticeably gentler slope than those of any of his successors and the other with a change of angle like a mansard roof that has
earned it the modern name of the Bent Pyramid.
Down in the river valley east of Saqqara lies all that remains of the great city
of ancient Egypt that the Greeks called Memphis. Picturesquely forlorn and shrunken today, Memphis was really the capital city of Egypt in Old Kingdom
times, reputedly founded by the first king and unifier of the ancient state,
Menes as he is named by the Greek writers. In a long history, until rivaled by
the southern city of Thebes in New Kingdom times (and totally superseded the
Arab foundation of Cairo, on the east hank of the Nile) Memphis probably
stretched at various times up and down the west hank of the river for many
kilometres. Its no doubt abundant archaeological remains are buried now under
successive inundations of silt and modern settlement.
It got its Greek name under curious circumstances, after the whole town had
come to be known by the name of one of the pyramids at Saqqara (that of Pepi I)
called Mennufer. In Old Kingdom times, the town was commonly called The White Wall, probably because the king's residence was fortified with such a
wall. Much later there was a temple there of the god Ptah, who was always closely associated with Memphis, called Hikuptah, and from this word it seems
the Greeks derived their name for the entire land of Egypt, Aiguptos. (Why the
Greeks called the southern city Thebes, after their own city of the same name,
is a mystery.)
At all events, Memphis was the greatest and most important city of Old
Kingdom Egypt, the seat of Menes and his successors. It is because of Memphis that the pyramids of Giza (et al.) are where they are - they and their
associated tomb fields are the cemeteries of the top people of the Old Kingdom.
City and cemeteries were on the west hank of the Nile. On the east hank at
the time, south of modern Cairo, were the quarries at Tura from which the hard
high-quality limestone used to case the pyramids at Giza was extracted, to be
rafted across the river on the annual flood to the foot of the plateau on which
the pyramids were built, with cores of softer stone quarried on site.
Ahout 20 km north of Memphis the river fans out in the branches that form
the Delta of the Nile as it runs to the Mediterranean Sea, which the Egyptians
called ‘The Great Green’. Formerly there were more streams than there are
today and the whole area of the Delta constituted quite a different world, with its
manifold creeks and brooks running among swamps and patches of dry ground, from the situation south of Memphis where the single stream in its fertile flood
plain was soon bounded on both sides by desert and rock.
These two different worlds, Lower Egypt in the north and Upper Egypt in the
south, were throughout Egyptian history culturally rather distinct, and more so
prehistoric times before the unification of the state. The eastern part of the
Delta was probably the readiest way by which influences from the other civilizations of the ancient world might come into Egypt from the peoples at the
eastern end of the Mediterranean and beyond. Egypt was unusual among the
early civilizations in the degree of its isolation from the outside world, as a
result of geography. The route to Palestine up the eastern Mediterranean coast
was not the only avenue to the wider world 'but it was probably always the likeliest.
It was also possible to go east from Memphis across the desert to the top of
the Gulf of Suez and on to Sinai, in search of turquoise and copper for example;
to go south down that arm of the Red Sea into the Sea itself and so reach the
coasts of modern-day Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia; and to cross the Red Sea to
the Arabian Peninsula. The Eastern Desert along the whole length of the Nile in
Egypt was never as barren as the desert to the west. Probably nomad pastoralists tending their flocks were often to be found there, and there was the
attraction of minerals and precious metals to draw the ancient Egyptians on
expeditions away from their river valley home. Granite and greywacke, tin, copper and gold were to 'be found there, and more routes to the Red Sea. In
the Western Desert, stretching away from Memphis to the Libyan Plateau, there was less to lure the ancient Egyptians away, even in the wetter days of old
before the far Sahara became completely desiccated, though there were substantial oases of considerable importance to the Egyptians in later times.
South of Memphis, into Upper Egypt, the valley of the Nile reached for about
a thousand kilometers towards the African interior out still within the land of
Egypt itself before, above Aswan, the border of the state was crossed into Nub
and tropical Africa. The first cataract of the Nile marked the frontier in Old
Kingdom times, the place where the river first becomes seriously difficult to
navigate as the waters tumble over rocks. The Old Kingdom Egyptians of Dyn. IV exercised some kind of influence over the region between the first and
second cataracts - and this was, of course, the place where imports from the
African interior made their way into Egypt: ivory, spices, ostrich feathers among them. There were probably many middlemen along the route these
goods traveled into Egypt and few if any Egyptians are likely to have traveled
far into the African interior.
But the sources of the great river which made the civilization of ancient
Egypt possible were deep inside the continent. Above the fifth cataract first the
Atbara, and then above the sixth the Blue Nile flow down from the Ethiopian Highlands into the waters of the White Nile, which rises in central Africa. It is
the seasonal flooding of the Nile in Egypt as a result of the mingling of the
rivers in the Sudan that supplies Egypt with the means to sustain life. Without
this happy state of affairs, there would have been no settlement of the Nile
Valley, no unification of the state, no great kings - and no Great Sphinx.
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