THE SPINX SET FREE

Hokitika Guardian, 25 August 1926, Page 3

THE SPINX SET FREE

'Treasures still hidden. (Bv G. Ward Price in “Daily Mail.”) CAIRO, June 21. Travellers to Egypt were never so lucky as now, for though this was the earliest of all countries to which tourists came some of its chief marvels have become visible only in these last six months.

Guides have been hanging about tho Pyramids since before the days of Herodotus, extracting tips ju sesterces, drachmae, ducats, sequins, piastres, Australian florins, or whatever might be. the currency of the age, in return for inaccurate information. They had had nothing new to say for twenty centuries until this spring, the Sphinx, that mighty and mysterious neighbour of tho Pyramids, was suddenly transformed by the digging out of the sand that for the last two thousand years had been slowly creeping up his sides. According to the worn inscription on the tablet that leans against the Sphinx's breast, it was about the date 4000 n.c. that some Egyptian Court sculptor, hold in imagination even tor those days of mammoth monuments, suggested chiselling a mound of rock into the gigantic figure of a lion with tho face of tho ruling Pharaoh. But the first breeze that blew upon this most wonderful statue ever made began to drift the desert sand against its flanks. And only throe times in those 6,0€0 years has the Sphinx been set free again. The last people to see hint whole and unencumbered, as wo cult now, lived in the time of the Ptmleinys, before the Christian era began. LIKE A COLLIE IKK'!. Many Egyptian methods are prehistoric, and this last, digging, like those that had preceded it, was done by a circular procession of S(!() children scooping up till' loose sand and carrying it away on their heads in baskets. The result has been to reveal an entirely different sort of Sphinx. Instead of a featureless face, rising on linilfess shoulders from the sand, it is once moro a complete animal. It crouches on the paved floor of an artificial pit, in exactly the attitude of Landseer’s lions at the foot ol the Nelson Column.

The head used to ho a truncated relic, sticking up from the desert like the top of a Titanic doll. Now that the body and huge forelegs have emerged to keep it in proportion, it has gained in dignity and in significance. Those mighty paws, stretching straight out in front of (ho figure, are the most striking feature of the uncovered Sphinx. They are much larger thalu the hind legs tucked . under the quarters, where the shape el the tail, curving over the right haunch, is skilfully moulded in the heavy white masonry with which King Thothmos clothed llio body when he cleared it from the sand about 200 ft n.c.

The ancients regarded the Sphinx as the representation of something co'dly bloodthirsty, lint now that we have a full view of him again there is no sir of ferocity about him. Tlis attitude is the one a big collie dog will take between two scampers. Squatting there with hind legs bent ready to .spring to his feet, the Sphinx looks exaelly as if he wanted someone to pick up the big stone he guards lief ween liis forepaws and throw it away lor him to fetch. TOUCHING IT Ul’. J aim. gfad f first saw the Sphinx before tho restorers began their treatment, for they have not been able to resist the temptation to touch him up here and there in the name ol preservation. They have plastered his head with a neat new wig ol smooth red masonry, and they have filled up the space between this and his shoulders with more stone work. Eortunaely mi heed was paid to the proposal to restore the features of the flat, mutilated face, whose slow destruction under tho friction of desert sandstorms was completed n hundred years ago by the battering of Mohammed A'ii’s artillery at target, practice.

Many more wonderlul relics of past civilisations in the Valley of the Nile in list lie close around us, hidden b\ this insidious sand. It is impossiLe to believe that the earliest Pyramids came into existence, without any previous experimental build,ing. Beneath the soil of the Delta, whose love! is many feet higher than it was 10,000 years ago, may lie the buildings from which the architecture of the Pyramids was

developed. It. is surprising, though, that the more expert an Egyptologist becomes, the less inclined he is to regard the early Egyptians as a race of supermen. They were great contractors, hut not great mathematicians, so Iricnds ol mine assure me who have spent many years in studying their works. As organisers of slave labour they showed the skill of long experience, but they never discovered t lie use of pule,vs and- handled tho gigantic blocks of stone by which their monuments are made by means of the lever, the roller, and tho sledge.

EXQ UISITE CRAFTS* I A NS HI P. As one looks, at the magnificent Til t-aukh-Amen jewellery which lias just been put on view in the Cairo Museum, it seems strange that men with the do'icacy of mind to do work of a beauty that Bond-street and the lj[uo de la Rais could not surpass today should have left, as the story of their race, only religious and dynastic inscriptions .in a language that is both vbrbose and vague. The brilliant show of golden ornaments which were wrapped in fourteen layers round young Tut-aukh Ameu’s body makes one feel that the men who produced them must have had minds very like our own. Those golden daggers, sharp as steel, with glass-decorated hilts, and sheaths embossed ill low relief of most skilful artistry, might have been wrought by the hands that make the swords of honour presented to new members ot the French Academy to-day. And m that six-foot long mummy-case of solid gold, equal in weight to about 40.0,10 sovereigns the pressure from within of the dead Plmraoh’s knees is indicated with the grace of Greek sculpture at Us best.

New ami fascinating things like these are constantly increasing m Egypt now, and better trained am keener brains are employed on the discovery and interpretation of them. Even since I have been in Cairo new cases of household goods belonging to the Eleventh Dynasty, about 2500 years u.c.. were put on show in the museum. These is a coil of rojw which looks exactly like any piece we use to-day. anc flat scones that one get- in any tea-

And as one looks from the top of the Great Pyramid along the narrow strip of irrigated land where more history has been concentrated than anywhere else on earth, one realises how like > it is that far greater treasures still remain to he uiicni tlied.