The controversy over the Great Sphinx of Giza. Scholars supportive of the Black Egyptian hypothesis reviewed Egyptian sculpture from throughout the dynastic period and concluded that the sculptures were consistent with the phenotype of the black race.Numerous scholars, such as DuBois Diop, Asante, and Volney, have characterized the face of the Sphinx as Black, or Negroid. Around 1785 Volney stated, When I visited the sphinx...on seeing that head, typically Negro in all its features, I remembered...Herodotus says: ...the Egyptians...are black with woolly hair... Another early description of a Negroid Sphinx is recorded in the travel notes of a French scholar, who visited in Egypt between 1783 and 1785, Constantin-François Chassebœu along with French novelist Gustave Flaubert. The identity of the model for the Great Sphinx of Giza is unknown. Virtually all Egyptologists and scholars currently believe that the face of the Sphinx represents the likeness of the Pharaoh Khafra, although a few Egyptologists and interested amateurs have proposed several different hypotheses
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 15:17:54 +0000