Sphinx Temple of Giza (Old Kingdom)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Sphinx Temple of Giza from the Old Kingdom is an ancient Egyptian temple on the Giza Plateau at the foot of the great Sphinx . It is considered an important testimony to the temple building activity in the Old Kingdom . The temple was probably built by the ancient Egyptian king Cheops or Chephren .

Floor plan of the valley temple, sphinx and sphinx temple

The stone temple is 52.5 m wide, 44.7 m deep and was discovered between 1925 and 1932 when the area east of the Great Sphinx was exposed. The temple is only eight meters away within the forecourt of the Sphinx and was probably related to this in a cultic context. Aspects of the sun and king cult are combined in the sphinx and the temple . Since the sphinx represented a manifestation of the god Harmachis ("Horus in the horizon") in the 18th dynasty , the building by Ricke and Schott was also referred to as the Harmachis temple , although there was no evidence of this worship in the temple at the time of its construction gives.

Remains of the Sphinx Temple

In the center of the strongly symmetrical structure is an inner courtyard that opens upwards, around which ten or twelve colossal statues of the God-King stood. The open courtyard probably served to incorporate sunlight into the royal cult. The architecture was probably aligned with the path of the sun , as there are inwardly stepped halls made of monolithic granite pillars in the east and west of the courtyard . As a unique feature, the temple has two sanctuaries . As in the neighboring valley temple of the Chephren pyramid , two entrances lead from the east through the facade. The wall core was partially chiseled out of the limestone cliffs and covered with granite blocks, most of which have now disappeared. The floor was made of polished alabaster panels .

Since the temple remained unfinished and did not leave any contemporary inscriptions, it cannot be determined with certainty who is considered to be the builder and which king was venerated in the temple. In the opinion of the researchers, only the kings Cheops and Chephren come into question, the exact assignment, however, remains disputed and is closely related to who is considered to be the builder of the great Sphinx. It is noticeable that the valley temple of Chephren and the temple of the Sphinx are very similar and evidently related to each other. While according to Dieter Arnold the valley temple was built before the Sphinx temple and therefore Chephren is considered to be the builder, according to other opinions the structural sequence is less clear. Rainer Stadelmann and Zahi Hawass propose that in the Sphinx Temple, based on the memorial temples of the New Kingdom , Chephren's father Cheops was venerated, with Stadelmann suspecting a cult during the lifetime of Cheops and Hawass a posthumous veneration.

See also

literature

  • Dieter Arnold : The temples of Egypt . Artemis & Winkler, Zurich 1992, ISBN 3-7608-1073-X , p. 201 .
  • Herbert Ricke, Siegfried Schott: The Harmachis temple of the chief in Giza . Wiesbaden 1970.
  • Richard H. Wilkinson : The world of temples in ancient Egypt . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2005, ISBN 3-534-18652-4 , pp. 118 .
  • Orell Witthuhn: Sphinx - father of horror . In: Gabriele Höber-Kamel (ed.): Gizeh - Kemet issue 2/2010 . Kemet-Verlag, 2010, ISSN  0943-5972 , p. 18-21 .

Web links

Commons : Temple of the Sphinx of Giza  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Kemet 2/2010, pp. 20-21.
  2. ↑ a b c Arnold: The temples of Egypt. P. 201.
  3. ↑ Wilkinson: The world of temples in ancient Egypt. P. 118.

Coordinates: 29 ° 58 ′ 30.8 ″  N , 31 ° 8 ′ 17.6 ″  E