THE DOOMED SPHINX

Gisborne Times, Volume VIII, Issue 537, 3 October 1902, Page 3

THE DOOMED SPHINX

Paris, Aug. 21. The Echo de Paris quotes the old saw “ Misfortunes never come single,” and says that after tho fall of tho Campanile of Saint Mark in Venice another specimen of sculptural-architoctural art of the ancient times is menaced with ruin—the famous Sphinx of tho Pyramids. A note of alarm has been sounded by D. C. Longworth, editor of a newspaper in Cairo. It appears that tho trouble arises from a change of temperature produced by the works of irrigation of these last years. Now there are fifteen to eighteen days of rain in Egypt annually, where formerly a modest inundation of an hour’s length appeared like an extraordinary event. But the celestial cataracts have so damagod the colossus of stone that its crumbling away is considered only a question of years—after centuries of resistance and immobility. Tho most prominent French artists are signing a petition asking tho Italian Government to forbid the rebuilding in Venico of the Campanile, arguing that tho monument never was symmetrically proportioned, never had any architectural merit and was valuable only because of its age, while as for tho projected tower, its newness would howl against the San Marco palaces.