Sphinx (Egyptian)

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Sphinx of Hatshepsut ( Metropolitan Museum of Art )

An Egyptian sphinx ( plural : sphinxes or sphinxes ) is a statue of a lion usually with a human head. In addition, are Aries , - hawks - and Sperber heads in use. Best known is the Great Sphinx of Giza .

Similar hybrid creatures were represented in other peoples of antiquity , such as the Phoenicians , Hittites , Assyrians and especially the Greeks .

Word origin

The word sphinx (σφίγξ) possibly comes from the Greek sphíngo (σφίγγω; infinitive σφίγγειν sphíngein ) meaning “strangle, tie (by magic)” or from the Egyptian spanch, “that which receives life”. In Ancient Egyptian means schesep ankh "living image".

Grammatical gender

Alabaster sphinx in Memphis

Basically, grammatical gender ( gender ) must be distinguished from natural gender ( sex ), for example a masculine (“male”) word can also denote a female being. Sphinx was originally the name of the daughter of Typhon and Echidna among the Greeks . Sphinx was later used as an independent noun with a feminine ("feminine") gender. This feminine noun was then used for similar figures found in Egypt, even if they represented male pharaohs . The natural sex of such figures is usually male, as they represent an animal body with a man's head. Mostly it is the head of a pharaoh. However, there are also sphinxes made by princesses and queens.

In the archaeological and Egyptological terminology, the use of the masculine for Egyptian sphinxes has become common. Duden indicates the preferred use of the masculine in archaeological terminology: the sphinx . The masculine gender for Egyptian sphinxes also exists in French ( le Sphinx de Gizeh ).

history

Naming and representation in ancient Egypt

Aries Sphinxes ( Karnak Temple )
Great Sphinx of Giza

The Egyptians called the sphinxes "Hu". The current name is based on the legend of the Greek sphinx, who always strangled passing travelers if they could not solve the riddle she posed .

Most of the statues referred to as the Sphinx represent a king or pharaoh as the sun god, Horus or other Egyptian gods, while others acted in a lying form as guardian figures in front of temple entrances. Egyptian attributes are the sun disk , pectorals , uraeus serpent or double crown . In contrast to the ancient Egyptian archetype, some sphinxes also have wings, especially since the ancient Greeks took over this mythical creature .

The most famous sphinx is the 20 meter high and 73.5 meter long Sphinx of Giza , which was carved on the west bank of the Nile from a monolithic limestone structure that was already there on the spot. The exact date of its creation is still a mystery today. The most common belief is that the Sphinx was built in the 4th Dynasty , around 2700-2600 BC. BC, was commissioned either by Pharaoh Cheops or his son Chephren , whereby Cheops is favored by researchers. This thesis is based on the mention of their names on a stone slab that was found between the forelegs of the Sphinx. However, the inscription does not say that either of the two was actually the author of the Sphinx. The human face of the Sphinx is said to resemble Cheops, but only a single 10 cm stone figure, whose face is attributed to Cheops, serves as a comparison - ultimately too little and too small for a well-founded statement. Some scientists suspect a previously unknown third party as the true creator of the Sphinx. Alternative theses that trace the origin of the Sphinx to the year 10,500 BC, for example. BC are usually rejected by Egyptologists.

The increased traces of erosion from the ground to the base of the neck of the Sphinx are interpreted as water damage, which could have been caused by the then much rainier climate in Egypt and by a drainage channel on the way to the Chephren pyramid. This drainage channel flowed into the area of ​​the Sphinx and was closed by stone blocks at an unknown later date. In addition, the sphinx was covered for a long time by sand from which only the head peeped out, as the stele of Pharaoh Thutmose IV. (Approx. 1390 BC) between the forelegs of the sphinx attests. Therefore, the body of the Sphinx would have been exposed to moisture more permanently and longer than the head.

Pharaoh Thutmose IV reports on the stele of a dream experience in which the sun god Re told him that he should dig up and restore the Sphinx, after which he could become king. Much later, the emperors Marc Aurel and Septimius Severus had the figure freed from the sand. In 1926 it was exposed to the stone base by the French engineer Émile Baraize, and in 1936 it had to be freed from the sand again.

Sphinxes among other ancient peoples

In the 2nd millennium BC In BC, sphinxes appear among the Near Eastern Phoenicians , Hittites and Assyrians , for example on a wall painting in Mari , in the glyptic often also winged. Large sculptures can be found mainly among the Hittites, such as the Sphingentor in Alaca Höyük . The Hittites worshiped the divine Damnaššara sphinxes as gatekeepers. An orthostat relief from Karkemisch shows a variant with a lion and a human head. Sphinxes also carried pillars or statues in Zincirli (city-state Sam'al ) and Tell Halaf .

The Phoenicians depicted the sphinxes striding with human or falcon heads and wings on ivory , bronze bowls and seals. The apron or hairstyle are typically Phoenician .

The Greeks adopted the Sphinx as a usually winged image. Only, in contrast to the other peoples, with their animal body with a woman's head , they perceived this hybrid creature to be female. In Mycenae there is evidence of a sphinx with a small female stucco head. End of the 8th century BC In the Greek minor arts, the sphinx became purely decorative as a mythical animal on Corinthian vases and since the late 7th century BC. BC also represented in the monumental sculpture as the guardian of the tomb and temple. Apparently the Sphinx had the character of a death demon among the Greeks .

Figures of the Sphinx were common in both Hellenism and Roman culture.

There were also sphinx-like representations in the South American high cultures, for example in Tiahuanaco or the culture of Paracas .

The Sphinx in Islamic Egypt

In the Islamic period beginning in the 7th century , the understanding of the pharaonic world of thought disappeared, as stories about the Muslim prophets became the focus of tradition. However, during the Middle Ages in the Islamic folk beliefs found in addition also myths that the emergence of Islam mythological in a time before the deluge brought forward over the Pharaohs that should have reigned in that past. Amulets worked against ghosts and performed miracles, as they were charged with a magic from the time of the powerful pharaohs . The Sphinx and other pharaonic symbolic figures were called Abū l-Haul ("Father of Terror") in Arabic .

Since the body of the Great Sphinx of Giza was buried in the sand, stories could only be formed about his head. The Sabier , a religious community that perished around the 12th century, is said to have worshiped his head. In general, the Sphinx was seen as a protective force against the sandstorms from the Libyan desert .

In the 14th century a fundamentalist movement of Islam against these pagan customs reached the height of the destruction of some pharaonic monuments. At the same time, the worship of saints and the worship of ancient Egyptian idols among the people increased. According to the Arab historian Muhammad al Makrīzī (1364–1442), the devout sheikh of a Cairo Sufi monastery damaged Mohammed Saim el-Dar (Muhammad Şā'im ad-Dahr, German: “someone who fasts all the time”) as a fanatic Iconoclasts nose and ears of the great Sphinx, and then when a sandstorm over Giza caused a disaster, it was ascribed to the act of the wrongdoer. The miraculous powers reported about the Sphinx increased as a result. The Sphinx was said to be able to grant wishes and convict thieves. The sphinx exercised more magical power among the people than the Egyptian pyramids; in the Islamic popular belief of Egypt, it was the center of resistance against the purist reformers.

Reception in European art

Reconstructed sphinxes at the entrance to the funeral hall at the Nordfriedhof in Munich

Sphinxes appeared later in medieval art, for example in the form of Romanesque capital decorations. After that, there were sphinx representations, especially in the 18th century, primarily as garden sculptures and then in a different representation in the 19th century. In the epoch of classicism , sphinxes, more or less Egyptian, were a popular artistic motif.

In the 18th century, the sphinx was a symbol of eternity, immortality and the enigmatic, as in Johann Gottfried Herder's story The Sphinx , published in 1785. In the painting of symbolism he was understood by the artists consistently as female, also as androgynous , hence the mistake to call the Sphinx feminine.

The two sphinxes at the entrance to the funeral hall of Munich's north cemetery play a particularly important role in the history of the reception of the Sphinx . Thomas Mann brought them world fame as "apocalytic animals" in his novella Death in Venice . The originalsphingen have disappeared with an unknown storage location since the 1960s. On the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the Munich cemetery administration, the reconstruction and re-erection was decided by the Munich city council. Barbara Oppenrieder was commissioned to design the reconstruction model. The former Beuys student and stone restorer Wolfgang Gottschalk was in charge of the execution. It is not only the story of their return that makes these sphinxes special, but also the way they are presented. They are the only sphinxes known in art history with a rooster head, and also with a halo .

The tap fulfills several functions. The Romans revered him as a symbol of the house guard , here as the guardian of the entrance to the cemetery. In the Christian faith it is inextricably linked not only with the resurrection story and the prophecy of Jesus towards Peter: "Today, this night, before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times" ( Mk 14.30  EU ), but also with the dark prophecy of Jesus of the end of the temple and his apocalyptic scenario. ( Mk 13  EU ). The two tables of the sphinxes contain a quote from this passage: (left sphinx) watch , (right sphinx) pray and watch ( Mk 13:13  ELB ). Together with the following sentence "because you do not know when the master of the house is coming, whether in the evening or at midnight or around the cockcrow or in the morning" ( Mk 13,35  LUT ) the sphinxes become the apocalyptic animals described by Thomas Mann . But the resurrection, which is part of the Christian faith, also lies in the downfall. "And then they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory. And then he will send the angels and will gather his elect" . ( Mk 13,26  LUT ) Since the funeral hall, the stairs of which are flanked by the sphinxes on the left and right, is the transition from life to death and resurrection, the sphinxes are not only apocalytic animals as in Thomas Mann, but also the heralds of the rooster Day and the transition from dark to light.

literature

Web links

Commons : Egyptian Sphinx  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files
Wikisource: The Sphinx. An earth and human history  - sources and full texts
Wiktionary: Sphinx  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Remarks

  1. ↑ Duden online: Sphinx , section origin .
  2. ^ Farid Atiya, Abeer el-Shahawy: The Egyptian Museum of Cairo. A journey through ancient Egypt. P. 117, left column, 3rd line from the bottom.
  3. ^ Duden online: Sphinx , section grammar .
  4. ↑ For the writing convention of Wikipedia in the Egyptological area see portal: Egyptology / Conventions and templates .
  5. ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung: wing being. Retrieved October 25, 2019 .
  6. ↑ M. Stingl: The Inkas. Ancestors of the Sun Sons. Düsseldorf 1978, pp. 83 f., 106.
  7. ↑ Ulrich Haarmann: The Sphinx: syncretistic folk religiosity in late medieval Islamic Egypt (= Saeculum. Volume 24, 1978). University of Freiburg - Philosophical Faculty. Orientalisches Seminar, Freiburg 1978, pp. 367–384 ( PDF; 2.2 MB ).
  8. ↑ Angelika Leitzke: The image of the Orient in French painting from Napoleon's Egypt campaign to the Franco-German War . Tectum, Marburg 2001, ISBN 978-3-8288-8267-6 , pp. 97 f . ( in Google books ).
  9. ↑ Historical illustrations of the sphinxes in: Application for reconstruction of the sphinxes. On: muenchen-transparent.de ; Retrieved August 17, 2020.
  10. ↑ On the history of the sphinxes. in: evening newspaper from October 24, 2018; Retrieved August 17, 2020.
  11. ↑ The stonemason team with the model of the first sphinx and the roughly cut stone block On: sueddeutsche.de ; Retrieved August 17, 2020.
  12. ↑ The rooster as a Christian symbol. On: kathisch.de ; Retrieved August 17, 2020.