Ancient Egypt Letters 141

This article is from Ancient Egypt issue 141

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Dear Editor,

I recently came across news reports of research at New York University https://bit.ly/Yardang (reported in ‘News’, AE 140). The work was looking into possible natural influences on the shape of the Great Sphinx.

The team used fluid dynamics to simulate the effects of wind and sand erosion, concluding that the monument may have started life as a natural landscape feature – called a yardang – which the ancient Egyptians reworked to produce the Sphinx. Sadly, I don’t think there’s much new in this research. The idea that the Sphinx may have been cut from a yardang was proposed by Farouk el-Baz at a 1992 conference – though there might have been earlier researchers who came to similar conclusions.

There are also some fundamental flaws in the modelling that NYU have undertaken: their experiment doesn’t accurately reflect the conditions that exist or, indeed, existed at Giza in the Old Kingdom. The image of their experimental proto-sphinx, emerging from the clay matrix that was used for the experiment, shows the flow direction from the front – from the east. In Egypt, the dominant wind is from the north. Equally problematic is that most of the body of the Sphinx sits in a low-lying area and, as shown in the photo below, the monument is shielded by rising topography to the north – coincidently the direction of dominant wind. The airflow affecting the Sphinx at Giza will be very different from the airflow that the NYU team modelled in their experiment.

So, yes, if you model a clay matrix, with lumps of harder material where you want the head to be formed, and then ignore the surrounding topography, it is possible to produce something that looks like a Sphinx. But to suggest this demonstrates that the origins of the Sphinx lie in the natural topography of the Giza Plateau is too much of a stretch. It took a lot of quarrying to extract the Great Sphinx from the Giza Plateau!

Plus, unlike the real Sphinx, the model that NYU produced looks strangely hump-backed.

Colin Reader

Dear Editor,

Dr Reader questions how our research on eroding structures relates to the Great Sphinx and similar-looking landforms called yardangs. The critique is misinformed, since it is based on a press release and coverage in the popular media rather than our published scientific article: https://bit.ly/PhysRevFluids.

Dr Reader missed the first sentence in which we rightly credit the geologist el-Baz for the idea that the Sphinx may be a modified yardang. Reader also raises some differences between our experiments and the Great Sphinx, namely the flow direction, surrounding topography, and shape of the back of the structure. Other such distinctions are discussed and interpreted in our paper.

But playing ‘spot the difference’ distracts from the main points of our study. The goal was not to mimic the structure that would become the Sphinx, whose prior development and state when encountered by the ancient Egyptians are unknown. Rather, our work shows that lab experiments can usefully contribute by determining what shapes are possible from natural forces. These results help explain how yardangs form, why they take on curious animal-like shapes, and why they are so common around the world. This supports yardang-based explanations for the Sphinx, whether directly as part of its base structure, indirectly as inspiration for its sculptors, or some combination.

Dr Reader’s points can be constructively rephrased into questions about how the shape depends on flow direction and local topography. These are interesting follow-up directions. The answers will come from further lab experimentation, which is a promising tool for investigating mysteries at the border of archaeology and geomorphology.

Leif Ristroph

Dear Editor,

The interesting stone head depicted on the cover of Ancient Egypt (AE 139) that you indicate is a lion head, with the title on the cover being ‘Hunting Lions’, is in fact a tiger. If you look closely, you can see faded tiger stripes obviously painted on the face and side. Also, in the Dead Sea Scrolls, there is a mention of the Queen of Sheba arriving in David’s capital, long before the establishment of the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel, being pulled in a cart by harnessed lions and tigers.

Regina H Soule

Dear Regina,

This is a fascinating suggestion but, if a tiger had been imported from Asia in the past as a tribute/offering or for a menagerie, it is highly likely that it would have been given greater prominence, and perhaps also have been featured on other statues/depictions. Unfortunately there do not appear to be any such examples, and tigers definitely never occurred in the wild. Identifications cannot be made on just a face-on head picture alone, and that of the whole ‘animal’ sideways-on clearly lacks stripes and shows more leonine features. Lions are known to have been resident in the wild in the past, and to have been featured extensively in art and religion, making that species by far the most likely.

John Wyatt, Wildlife expert specialising in ancient Egyptian species

Email the Editor: peter@ancientegyptmagazine.com with your comments.