M. RENAN ON THE GREAT SPHINX.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 7644, 22 May 1886, Page 1 (Supplement)

M. RENAN ON THE GREAT SPHINX.

M. Renan publishes an earnest appeal on behalf of the excavations undertaken in Egypt by M. Maspero. The special object for which funds are just now needed is to clear away the sand which half-buries the Great Sphinx of Ghizeh. M. Ro nan says : — " The clearing of the Great Sphinx was begun two months ago. Up to the present time the ordinary resources of the British Museum have sufficed for the work, whioh might be completed in sixty days if money did not fail. About £SOO only are wanted. The appeal of the Longson excavations which were addressed two years ago to the intellecj tual public was so fruitful that we are ' encouraged once more to ask the true connoisseurs in ancient things to contribute to one of the works, the most imperiously demanded by the present condition of Egyptology. The Great Sphinx of Ghizeh, at two steps from the Pyramids, is, in my opinion, the most astonishing work of the hand of man which past ages have bequeathed to us. It is an immense bed of carved rock, about seventy metres in length. The height of the monstrous edifice, if it were cleared, would exceed that of the highest houses. No fashioned monument, either in the rest of Egypt or in the rest of the world, can be compared to this strange idol, the vestige of a stage of humanity which baffles all our ideas. The impression which such a spectacle must have produced on imaginative races, and who were dominated by the senses, may be understood from that experienced by the Egyptians of the presentday when standing before that enormous head, emerging from tho sand, and casting across the desert its sad look. The Arab, at this sight, flics terrified, either throwing a stone, or firing a gun at the strange beinjt». The Temple opposite the Sphinx, if it is n semple, has also a character of its own. The fantastic construction resembles less the other Templea of Egypt than the Partheon resembles Notre Dame. But that all this ensemble, whioh is unique in the world, must be of the remotest antiquity, is indisputable, since the statues found there are those of King Chepren, thus taking us back to ages whica, everywhere but in Egypt, would be called fabulous." M, Renan, in concluding his appeal, points out that to lay bare the Sphinx will be to restore to the light of day the most ancient work , which bears the trace of human thought, and he anticipates that "the descent which it will afford into a world now more than six thousand years old will push still further back the limits of a historic past that seems to fly with each step taken to reach it.'' ~