Riddles of the Sphinx

This work tells the story of the Great Sphinx of Giza as egyptology has uncovered it. The author details the Sphinx's impact on the ancient world, on Arab writers, on Renaissance travellers, on the pioneers of Egyptology and on modern scholarship. He tells the story of the Sphinx's many bouts of excavation and restoration and above all, puts the Sphinx in the context of all that is known about ancient Egyptian history and religion. Some 20th-century writers have promoted ideas about the Sphinx's immense antiquity and its creation by a lost super-civilization to send messages of doom to our own times. This book is intended as an "antidote" to such theories, exposing the flaws in the arguments of these writings and offering an account of what Egyptologies have found out about the Sphinx for real. Illustrated throughout, the text examines every aspect of the Sphinx, including modern claims by a professional geologist regarding its age, and provides an accessible overview of the issues and debates surrounding it.