Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T10:05:11.719Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Deterioration of the Great Sphinx: an assessment of the literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Charles Selwitz
Charles Selwitz*
Affiliation:
The Getty Conservation Institute, 4503-B Glencoe Avenue, Marina del Rey, CA 90202–6537, USA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The well-being of the Sphinx is a concern of all peoples of the world. While deterioration of this venerable monument has occurred over most of its history when it was not covered, 20thcentury environmental factors appear to be hastening these changes. FIGIRE 1 shoivs the Sphinx as it was in 1850. This is the first knoivn photograph and it was taken by Masinie Du Camp. FIGURE2 was taken in November 1989 and shows modern efforts to protect the Sphinx against deterioration by cladding the paws and sides with masonry. Alteration is most apparent along the sides of the body where the sloughingoff of surface chips is a common phenomenon. By one estimate, loss of stone is occurring at the rate of about 30 cm a century.

Type
Notes
Information
Antiquity , Volume 64 , Issue 245 , December 1990 , pp. 853 - 859
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The Sphinx, most celebrated of Egyptian statues, also has its special standing in the world of monument preservation, offering a technical challenge as intractable as any. A review of literature about the mechanisms of deterioration brings together our accumulated knowledge about how the creature is being lost. It is not a lot. What more is needed? And what might be done to save the structure?

References

Albrechtsen, E., Alkxandersen, V. & Brinch Petersen., E. 1976. De levede og døde . . . for 7000 år siden. En undersøgelse af gravpladsen på Bøgebakken i Vedbæk, Nationalmuseets Arbejdsmark 1976.Google Scholar
Alexandersen, V. 1988. Description of the human dentitions from the Late Mesolithic Grave-Fields at Skateholm, Southern Sweden, in Larsson (1988): 106–63.Google Scholar
Cope, D. 1978. Geographic variation of dental metrics in the Mesolithic and Neolithic of Europe. MA thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of Kansas.Google Scholar
Gurina, N. 1956. Olneostrovski mogilnik, Materialy i issledovaniya po arkheologgi SSSR 47.Google Scholar
Hakansson, S. 1982. University of Lund radiocarbon dates XV, Radiocarbon 24: 194–213.Google Scholar
Hakansson, S. 1982. University of Lund radiocarbon dates XVII, Radiocarbon 24: 392–411.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hakansson, S. 1983. University of Lund radiocarbon dates XVI, Radiocarbon 25: 875–91.Google Scholar
Hedges, R.E.M., Law, I.A., Bronk, C.R. & Housley, R.A.. 1989. The Oxford Accelerator Mass Spectrometry facility: technical developments in routine dating, Archaeometry 31(2): 99–113.Google Scholar
Jacobs, K. 1987. A Late Mesolithic Cemetery from the Russian Northwest: Oleneostrovski mogilnik. Abstract, 86th Annual Meeting, American Anthropological Association.Google Scholar
Jacobs, K. n.d. A third lineage in the European hunter-gatherer agricultural transition. In preparation.Google Scholar
Larsson, L. 1988. The Skateholm Project I, Acta Regia Societatis Humaniorum Litterarum Lundensis 79.Google Scholar
Newell, R.R., Constandse-Wksterman, T.S. & Meiklejohn., C. 1979. The skeletal remains of Mesolithic man in Western Europe: an evaluative catalogue, Journal of Human Evolution 8.Google Scholar
O’Shea, J. & Zvelebil., M. 1984. Olneostrovski mogilnik: reconstructing social and economic organization of prehistoric foragers in northern Russia, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 3: 1–40.Google Scholar
Pankrushev, G. 1978. Mesolit i neolit Karelii. Leningrad: Nauka.Google Scholar
Persson, O. & Persson., E. 1988. Anthropological report concerning the interred Mesolithic populations from Skateholm, Southern Sweden: excavation seasons 1983-84, in Larsson 1988: 89–105.Google Scholar
Ravdonikas, V. 1940. Neoliticheskii mogilnik na Onezhskom ozere, Sovetskaya Arkheologiya 6.Google Scholar
SiiriAnien, A. 1973. Studies relating to shoreline displacement and Stone Age chronology in Finland, Finskt Museum 80: 5–22.Google Scholar
Tauber H., 1981. δ13C evidence for dietary habits of prehistoric man in Denmark, Nature 292: 332–3.Google Scholar