PTB3001
question
Although popular legend blames Napoleon and his troops during the French campaign in Egypt (1798-1801) for having shot the nose off the Great Sphinx, in fact this story just isn't true. I have yet to locate an original source for this myth. The idea that Napoleon was to blame for the Sphinx's missing nose dates at least to the beginning of the twentieth century.
One traveler to Egypt around the time of World War One wrote the following: "To take our photos sitting in front of the Sphinx on a camel was the aim of another. ...And so, repulsing the hordes of robbers on all sides, we came to the wonderful, inscrutable, worth-millions-of-pounds-to-authors Sphinx. The great riddle of the mysterious East. How many reams of rubbish have been written about this misshapen block of stone. Napoleon, a practical man, fired a few cannon balls at its face. High explosive shells were not invented in those days." [From: Sommers, Cecil. Temporary Crusaders. (London: John Lane, 1919) Chapter VI. "19th April."] Another book from about the same time (In the Footsteps of Napoleon (1915) by James Morgan, p 85) states "There is a tradition among the Arabs of the Pyramids that all the scars of time and the wounds of a hundred wars, which the Sphinx carries, were inflicted by Napoleon's soldiers, who used its mystifying and majestic countenance as a target. That, however, is only a legend for the tourist. Long before the discovery of gunpowder, the Arabs had laid iconoclastic hands on the beard of this god of the desert..." Though the Arab guides may have spread this tale, this myth has been perpetuated over the years by countless teachers the world over who have passed this bit of "history" on to their students
question
Although popular legend blames Napoleon and his troops during the French campaign in Egypt (1798-1801) for having shot the nose off the Great Sphinx, in fact this story just isn't true. I have yet to locate an original source for this myth. The idea that Napoleon was to blame for the Sphinx's missing nose dates at least to the beginning of the twentieth century.
One traveler to Egypt around the time of World War One wrote the following: "To take our photos sitting in front of the Sphinx on a camel was the aim of another. ...And so, repulsing the hordes of robbers on all sides, we came to the wonderful, inscrutable, worth-millions-of-pounds-to-authors Sphinx. The great riddle of the mysterious East. How many reams of rubbish have been written about this misshapen block of stone. Napoleon, a practical man, fired a few cannon balls at its face. High explosive shells were not invented in those days." [From: Sommers, Cecil. Temporary Crusaders. (London: John Lane, 1919) Chapter VI. "19th April."] Another book from about the same time (In the Footsteps of Napoleon (1915) by James Morgan, p 85) states "There is a tradition among the Arabs of the Pyramids that all the scars of time and the wounds of a hundred wars, which the Sphinx carries, were inflicted by Napoleon's soldiers, who used its mystifying and majestic countenance as a target. That, however, is only a legend for the tourist. Long before the discovery of gunpowder, the Arabs had laid iconoclastic hands on the beard of this god of the desert..." Though the Arab guides may have spread this tale, this myth has been perpetuated over the years by countless teachers the world over who have passed this bit of "history" on to their students