Who does the face of the Sphinx of Giza represent?

Published in

· 7 Dec 2023

According to official Egyptology, the Sphinx was created together with its temples, by Egyptian "string tensioners", to complete the sacred area of the Second Pyramid, attributed to His Majesty Khafra, fourth king of the 4^th dynasty.

For Marc Lehner, who speaks on behalf of modern academic Egyptology, there is no doubt, the head of the Sphinx represents His Majesty Khafra and to prove it, he had a computerized reconstruction of Khafra's face prepared to compare it with that of the Sphinx concluding that the two faces reproduced the same person. But, as we know well, a computer does what you put into it and nothing more.

The problem becomes more complicated if we give credit to the Egyptologists of the 19^th century and to contemporary independent researchers.

Around 1860, Auguste Mariette, director of the Office of Egyptian Antiquities, while carrying out excavation work to free the Valley Temple of the Second Pyramid from sand, found a splendid statue in black diorite, which can today be admired in the Museum. On the base of the statue there is the cartouche of Khafra, just like on the Stele of the Sphinx. In the same period, near the Great Pyramid, in a small temple in which Isis is remembered as "the Lady of the pyramid", the Inventory Stele was found.

On the stele it is written, among other things, that the Sphinx and a pyramid were already ancient at the time of Cheops.

Gaston Masperò reports the belief of Auguste Mariette who wrote:

"... the presence of the King's name on the stele of the Sphinx only recalls a restoration work... the Sphinx was covered in sand at the time of King Khufu and of his predecessors".(3)

For Robert Temple (1) the Sphinx does not represent a lion, the shape of its body resembles a canid and it could be the God Anubis, "he who opens the way", "the keeper of secrets".

Those who, like Temple, question the age of the Sphinx, point out the disproportion between the body and the head of the large lion statue.

The Egyptians knew well the proportions of a lion and the comparison between the Sphinx of Giza and one of the numerous sphinxes found near the monuments highlights that disproportion.

For R.Temple, the Giza area would have been dedicated to Isis, as is also stated on the Inventory stele, and Anpu (Anubis) would be its worthy guardian.

J, Antony West, convinced that the Sphinx was long before the era of King Khafra, involved Loris Domingo (2), chief draftsman of the NYPD, an expert in identikits. For Domingo, the face of the Sphinx is different from the face of the Khafra statue, as is evident in his studies published in West's book. In fact, as is highlighted by the comparison of the profile of the beautiful statue of His Majesty Khfra (Chefren) with the profile of the head of the Sphinx, the profile of the King is that of a European-type individual, while the evident prognathism of the head of the Sphinx is characteristic of a Negroid type.

Therefore, either we accept the official version, or we give credence to the idea that, millennia after its construction, the great statue was so eroded as to require restoration of the body and the reconstruction of the head with the scaling that we still see today.

The head of the Sphinx was complete with symbols of royalty such as the uraeus, the erect head of the cobra and the false ritual beard, while on the head there is a hole which was probably used to anchor a crown.

To give Dany a credible answer, it can be said that that head represents a "symbolic" face, the face of every King son of Ra Atum, who, just like every king, was a Horus predestined to rule in life, just like every deceased king was an Osiris, destined to become a star in the celestial Duat.

Finally, it is worth remembering that one of the names of the Sphinx was "HR-M-HT", (Horus of the horizon) (4), while in no Egyptian writing is the name of His Majesty Kafra attributed to it.