Ancient Egypt

Currently Playing: RARE Sphinx Excavation Photographs REVEALED!

The Great Sphinx of Egypt has fascinated humanity for millennia and even today, this lion bodied monument with the head of a pharoah, still remains a monument shrouded in mystery and wonder. It sits in front of the three large Giza pyramids from the 4th Dynasty of the Old Kingdom, and throughout Ancient Egyptian times, it was been subject to a large amount of restoration, with much of the body covered by masonry. The Greek and the Romans also worked on the monument. Buried in the sands of time, it was finally excavated in the 19th century, first by Henry Salt and Giovanni Caviglia, and then by Howard Vyse and Giovanni Caviglia. In the late 19th century, Gaston Maspero worked on the Sphinx, and then, from 1925 to 1936, Emile Baraize and Selim Hassan did a huge amount of work. In this video, I’ve compiled photographs taken during the excavations in the 1920s and 30s, followed by pictures taken by Mark Lehner from later work in the 1970s and 1980s. I hope you enjoy the video, which I’m providing as a research tool, and please do comment any interesting observations below. All images are taken from Google Images and the ARCE website for educational purposes only. Please see sources below. Special thanks to Avry Wilson (@avry_wilson on X) for clarifying the details on the excavation seasons. Contents: 0:00 Introduction to The Sphinx 1:47 Sphinx Excavations 1920s-1930s 11:45 Sphinx Excavations 1979-1982 Sources: http://gizamedia.rc.fas.harvard.edu/documents/lehner_diss_1991.pdf https://www.arce.org/project/sphinx-mapping-digital-database Music: Ross Bugden - Olympus: https://youtu.be/BnmglWHoVrk Adrian von Ziegler - Darkness: https://youtu.be/zGTWb2E_L84 Adrian von Ziegler - Even in Death: https://youtu.be/PVAWqGj33T8 #AncientArchitects #TheSphinx #AncientEgypt