What do you think happened to the Sphinx' nose? I mean, why would we Infidels bring it up?
The one-metre-wide nose on the face is missing. Examination of the Sphinx's face shows that long rods or chisels were hammered into the nose, one down from the bridge and one beneath the nostril, then used to pry the nose off towards the south.
The Egyptian Arab historian al-Maqrīzī, writing in the 15th century AD, attributes the loss of the nose to iconoclasm by Muhammad Sa'im al-Dahr, a Sufi Muslim from the khanqah of Sa'id al-Su'ada. In AD 1378, upon finding the Egyptian peasants making offerings to the Sphinx in the hope of increasing their harvest, Sa'im al-Dahr was so outraged that he destroyed the nose, and was hanged for vandalism. Al-Maqrīzī describes the Sphinx as the "talisman of the Nile" on which the locals believed the flood cycle depended.
A story claims that the nose was broken off by a cannonball fired by Napoleon's soldiers and that legend still lives on today. Other variants indict British troops, the Mamluks, and others. However, sketches of the Sphinx by the Dane Frederic Louis Norden, made in 1737 and published in 1755, illustrate the Sphinx already without a nose.Chances are 99.99 that muslims did it.
4 comments:
Pastorius,
I've heard about that story about Napoleon's troops shooting off the nose. If An Egyptian historian who lived before Napoleon says that the nose was loped off by Sufi Muslim because he was offended by locals praying to it, than that may well be the case, because it was probably gone long before Napoleon invaded the region.
Honestly, I don't know which story to believe.
Pastorius,
Maybe you're right, but its kind of hard to believe that someone in the 15th century would talk about the nose being missing if it was still there at the time. If it wasn't still there at that time, than it wasn't Napoleon's men who destroyed it. Even so, Napoleon's men could have used what was left of the nose for target practice.
Off course, from what I know, none of these stories could be accurate and maybe it was something else entire that destroyed the sphinx's nose. Archaeologist believe that the sphinx once had a beard, but most people don't talk that much about it. Maybe its because whatever happened to the nose, it being missing is more obvious than the beard being missing. Many men shaved their beards for one thing.
Wake up, the Sphinx nose, after being stolen by Maimonedes, has been hidden in Israel, and was smuggled out to Temple Beth Abraham in Beverly Hills, where rich jews from all over the USA go and visit it once a year and do the hora.
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