THE SPHINX OF GIZA

"Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables: That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them." - St. Mark 4:11,12

The Sphinx at Giza with the
Great Pyramid looming on the background

The Mystery of the Sphinx

Among the world’s most revered symbols, the Sphinx at Giza, in Egypt, is one of the few that still challenge humanity with their dense mystery. The image of a huge reclining lion with a human head facing due east, this strangely beautiful monument, like the nearby pyramids of Kheops, Kafhre and Menkaura, has never ceased to exert a profound fascination over the thousands of people that come every year to pay it a visit or, for that matter, to anyone who happens to know about it. But unlike the massive pyramids, which remain deeply immersed in their dream of millennia, the great Sphinx appears to stare at us and the entire world in an eternal watch. Why?

That this highly enigmatic and exotic monument, in fact the world’s biggest and heaviest monolithic statue, IS a symbol, seems beyond doubt to almost everyone. But a symbol of what is not, paradoxically, at all clear, and a number of people have even wanted to see in it rather a representation of this or that Pharaoh. This aspect of the problem is in turn connected with the Sphinx's age, over which there is as well strong controversy, though I personally believe it goes far back than any of the oldest Egyptian dynasties - in fact to approximately 12,500 years ago, as the glaciers of the Ice Age were already melting, very probably by the time the biblical Flood occurred.

At least for a few moments, then, let us focus rather on its symbolic meaning, maybe not as mysterious as the Sphinx itself or its antiquity but all the same most intriguing, and let us leave the problem of its age for the final part of this collaboration. Several questions arise here: What kind of symbol or symbols are we talking about? If the Sphinx IS a symbol, what kind of symbol does it evoke? Is that symbol contained in it? And ultimately, what does that symbol stand for?

Before we examine these questions, however, we will assume, as a general observation based on the monumentality of the statue, that the importance of such symbol (or symbols) must have been huge - at least for its builders. And based on what first comes to mind on viewing it (apart of course from the Sphinx’s great, terrific beauty), and in order to make a first approach to its probable meaning as a symbol, we will incorporate into the equation, naturally associated to the impression of monumentality, the idea of permanence, as the Sphinx quite obviously, like the pyramids themselves, was built to remain forever.

In this way, we know the answer to the first question: if the Sphinx is a symbol, then it had to be not only one apt to be expressed visually - for example, by a big monument such as the sphinx actually is - but also one that is or was greatly important. This is not much, as most symbols are both things. But since most of these symbols can usually be expressed as well by other similar visual representations, we may go from it on to the subsequent questions and see first what other similar monuments, statues and the like exist that may be likely to evoke similar things (and more precisely if the symbol is actually contained in it) and, second, what those representations stand for.

The Sphinx and the Four Elements

Here immediately comes to mind that other famous sphinx, the Greek sphinx of Thebes, which appears to have inspired past travelers and visitors to the Sphinx of Giza to call it also a ‘Sphinx’, since the real original name of this latter has actually never been known; and along with it its famous question to Oedipus: “What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening?”, so famous in fact that even now is mentioned in our schools as an example of an ingenious riddle. However, neither the question, nor Oedipus’ answer: “Man, as he crawls on all fours in infancy, walks upright on two legs in adulthood, and uses a cane as a third leg in old age,” can actually satisfy our need for a really meaningful symbol, as they simply posit little more than a clever riddle within an imaginative legend - and we need far more than that.

The Theban Sphinx

The next obviously symbolic images that we may turn our eyes to for an answer are also well known. They are the Mesopotamian so-called Winged Bulls and Winged Lions that are represented on walls, slabs and stela, all of which are most analogous in their conception to the Sphinx of Giza -in fact, they are said to have originally inspired it. Moreover, they are supposed by a good number of scholars to be the origin of the two angelic beings that were part of the old Israelites’ Ark of the Covenant, from between which God reportedly used to speak to Moses whenever they made a stop in the midst of the desert during their flee from Egypt (see the Book of Numbers 7:89): they are the cherubs or cherubim, described by the prophet Ezekiel (and similarly by other prophets) as “a tetrad of living creatures, each having four faces:of a lion, an ox, an eagle, and a man.”

The Mesopotamian winged bulls, like their winged lions counterpart, incorporated
three of the four elements in them. When bulls and lions are combined into
one animal, it passes to be a symbol of all four elements

We can also note a correlation with the early Christian tradition, in part an inheritor of the old Hebrew tradition, which figured the four evangelists with the heads of a lion, an ox, an eagle, and a man - in turn symbolic of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

And with this we are seemingly closer to solving the puzzle, as each of this tetrad of creatures are the symbols of each of the four traditional elements - respectively Fire, Air, Earth, and Water (the order of the elements may vary according to the different traditions). Of enormous significance for all ancient societies and more specifically for such traditional sciences as astrology, alchemy and numerology, these elements are in fact only second to the so-called fifth element orquintessence, ether (or better space) from which they all derive, though this latter is not precisely material but rather spiritual and intrinsically divine. But however it may be, they have always been at the root of not only those disciplines but of the main traditional sciences such as medicine and physics. Still more, from most remote times they have been closely intermingled with the entire corpus of the ancients’ traditional lore both in the East and the West.

In the Americas, for example, the four elements were as well omnipresent, yet with the logical variations born of the particularities of the land and the animal life of the region. Thus, at least in the South of the continent, fire was symbolized by the jaguar instead of a lion, which did not exist here, and for the same reason earth was represented by a snake rather than a cow. To represent air, an eagle or a condor was resorted to. A special case was that of water, which was not represented by a man but by either a fish or an alligator.

Yet the problem in the Americas was not the symbols. Like elsewhere, the problem here is, and always has been, the scientists who study the traces left, in this case, by the American cultures. See the image of the famous Raimondi stela of the Chavin culture (North of Peru) below for an example of this.

The Raimondi Stela is a major piece of art of the Chavín culture in the central Andes. It is housed
in the courtyard of the Museo Nacional de Arqueología Antropología e Historia del Perú.
The stela is seven feet high, made of highly polished granite, with a lightly incised
design which is almost unnoticeable on the actual sculpture. For this reason,
the design is best viewed from a drawing. (see below)

“…In the case of the Raimondi Stela, when viewed one way, the image depicts a fearsome
deity holding two staffs. His eyes look upward toward his large, elaborate headdress
of snakes and volutes. This same image, when flipped upside-down, takes on a
completely new life. The headdress now turns into a stacked row of smiling,
fanged faces, while the deity's face has turned into the face of a smiling
reptile as well. Even the deity's staffs now appear to be rows of
stacked faces.” (Wikipedia)

Instead of seeing a harmonious symbolic representation of the four elements in the fabulous creature figured, archaeologists and anthropologists alike argued for years whether it represented a condor (air), an alligator (water), a snake (earth), or finally, a jaguar (fire); and for all I know, they are still arguing. But in truth, the amazing image represents all four animals in the abstract form that was typical of that and other cultures like the Sechin culture, also in Peru, and the Mayan in Mesoamerica.

If this occurs among scientists of similar specialties (mostly archaeologists and anthropologists) studying the same cultures in the same countries, we can just imagine how much worse can be the case with scientists arrived from different countries and specialties to study an alien culture. Only by exception will they ever arrive at valid conclusions about anything.

The Universe as a Symbol

But first and foremost, they will never understand the fact that everything was sacred for the ancients. All their science was sacred, and the four elements, which were at the root of and permeated all reality as an essential framework, were a divine manifestation of cosmic and spiritual forces - actually the most powerful of them all - supporting and articulating all that exists, even time. In order to teach this fundamental truth, they resorted to symbols that made it easier to remember it permanently. And the more visible and permanent they were, the easier it was to achieve that end.

In addition to their material meaning, the four material elements have always been associated with the seasons of the year and, by extension, with the course of the cyclic ages. In this way, air becomes the element of spring, fire is that of summer, earth is of fall, and water is of winter. And taking the correlations on to the next level, that of the cyclic ages, air becomes the element of the first age or Golden age (Satya yuga in the Hindu denomination), fire symbolizes the second age or Silver age (Treta yuga), Earth represents the third age or Bronze age (Dvapara yuga), and water is the element of the fourth and last age, the Iron age (or Kali yuga) in which we are at present.

There is one apparent flaw, however, in all of the above, as for one thing, the Mesopotamian winged bulls and lions evidently fall short by at least one of the four elements - in effect, if the bull and the lion are considered separately, then they each lack one element: the former the element fire, and the latter the element earth. However, the difficulty is not such, as a fair proportion of these images have been found to combine the two animals in one - a lion that has for its hind quarters those of an ox, so that actually it is the four elements, and all that they represent, which are symbolized by them.

And what about the Sphinx itself? It apparently only contains two of the four symbols, namely air (man’s head) and fire (the lion’s body), and I don’t think that even Edgar Cayce’s eventual efforts or the efforts of any other Egyptologists or visionaries (see http://crystalinks.com/sphinxtheories.html), apparently completely discredited by now, could possibly make sprout from the lion’s body either wings or an ox’s feet, let alone both. In my opinion, not even regarding the headdress as wings, as some have proposed for an alternative symbol for air, would do - and even if it did, there still would be missing the symbol for earth.

So it must be recognized, we seem to be at a loss here. For unlikely as it may look to even the average person, it might simply be that the Sphinx’s builders had no special symbol in mind as they initially set to the task of carving it, but only the intention to create the image of a beautiful, most impressive and enigmatic creature in order to represent the person and the feats of one particular Pharaoh - possibly Kaphre (c. 2550 BC), as most specialists claim. And all things considered, at this juncture we can make one of two things: we may dismiss the whole matter and admit the possibility that they did want to only figure a man (Pharaoh Kaphre) with the strength and the ferocity of a lion. Or we may try to find what other facts or clues, or both, are apt to account for the fact that the Sphinx builders decided to include only the earth and fire elements, and not all four elements, in their equation.

In effect, there are other possibilities that suggest something completely different which might, in fact, have been at the root of their conception.

Can it be, for example, that the two elements symbolized in the Sphinx, fire and water, were regarded as the only ones that could endanger the Earth and the entire humanity during its now millenary guardianship of probably 12,000 years or more?

What can we make of the fact that the old Olmecs, Teotihuacans and Aztecs differentiated four “Suns” or cycles that ended in an equal number of destructions of the World, of which the third was by a shower of fire (or by the “God of Fire”), and the fourth by a great deluge (although the order is not very clear and varies according to the different traditions and sources)?

The Aztecs' Sun Stone

What can be said, finally, of a certain disquieting passage in the Gospels (2 Peter 2:5, 3:6) that after talking about the world of the days of Noah and how it was destroyed by water, goes on to say (2 Peter 3:7) that “the skies and the earth existing now are in turn reserved to be destroyed by fire”?

Was Peter talking about a secret revealed to him by Jesus Christ himself?

Maybe a secret that for the last 12,000 years or more has been contained in the Sphinx?

Thank you,

Luis,

All I can say at this point is thank you.

There is much to read and digest.

Roger

Luis,

I returned for some more information.

I found time to read some things that I had missed before.

Always interesting and uplifting.

Roger