Entrance to the Sphinx
Entrance to the Sphinx The Sphinx was in all probability an object of worship. From that altar between his paws the smoke went up into the gigantic nostrils now vanished from the face. “The ancient Egyptians called him ‘Neb,’ ‘Lord,’ a name generally applied to the gods in their popular pantheon, but specially to the Sphinx alone.” Dean Stanley writes this fine passage concerning the Sphinx: “And for what purpose was this sphinx of sphinxes called into being, as much greater than all other sphinxes as the pyramids are greater than all other temples and tombs? If, as is likely, he lay couched at the entrance now deep in the sand of the vast approach to the second, that is the central pyramid, so as to form an essential part of this immense group; still more if, as seems possible, there was once intended to be a brother sphinx on the northern side as on the southern side of the approach its situation and significance were worthy of its grandeur, and if further the Sphinx wa...