View allAll Photos Tagged MYTHOLOGICAL
The Kelpies name reflected the mythological transforming beasts possessing the strength and endurance of 100 horses; a quality that is analogous with the transformational change of our landscapes, endurance of our inland waterways and the strength of our communities.
Andy Scott's vision for The Kelpies follows the lineage of the heavy horse of industry and economy, pulling the wagons and ploughs, barges and coalships that shaped the structural layout of the area. Retaining The Kelpies as the title for these equine monuments, Andy sought to represent the transformational and sustainably enduring qualities The Helix stands for through the majesty of The Kelpies.
“Babele” (“Old women”) megalith in Bucegi Mountains, Romania
Around the “Sphinx “of Bucegi and “Babele” (Old women)- giant megaliths at 2350 m altitude in the Bucegi mountains- were weaving legends and have turned tens of mythological theories
You can found bellow a sequence from the picture DACII-Daces (1966) with a RITUAL HUMAN SACRIFACE made by ancient populations of Daces at the Sphinx, 2000 years ago:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmmkns7Ty7E&feature=player_em...
See also the video
About the religion of the ancient Dacia
www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8DtIecKeSA&feature=watch_res...
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© Ioan C. Bacivarov
All the photos on this gallery are protected by the international laws of copyright and they are not for being used on any site, blog or forum, transmitted or manipulated without the explicit written permission of the author. Thank you in advance
Please view my most interesting photos on flickriver stream: www.flickriver.com/photos/ioan_bacivarov/
Many thanks for your visits and comments.
- A river-hag
English Folklore
This monster gets her name from her green skin and razor-sharp teeth. She lives in bogs, ponds or rivers, covered in slime and algae with her long hair swirling around her. If anyone gets too close, she pulls them into the water and holds them down until they drown. Her favorite victims are young children or the very elderly, and in some legends, she doesn’t just drown her victims – she eats them. She is associated with duckweed, which can gather into a thick mat on the surface of a pond so that it looks like solid ground, leading children to try to walk on it and sink down into the water.
~
ai/pixlr/gimp
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"Western Civilization"
sculptor: C. Paul Jennewein (1933)
Left to right
Eos, Nous, Adonis, Hippomenes, Eros, lion, Aphrodite, Zeus, Demeter, Triptolemus, Ariadne, Theseus, Minotaur, Python
The western pediment features fourteen Greek deities and mythological figures. Jennewein's polychrome sculptures of painted terra-cotta figures are the only sculptural group to adorn any of the museum's eight pediments.
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The Philadelphia Museum of Art
also known as: the "Great Greek Garage" & "Parthenon on the Parkway"
architects: firms of Horace Trumbauer & Zantzinger, Borie & Medary
building's plan & massing: Howell Lewis Shay (Trumbauer)
detail & perspective drawing: Julian Abele (Trumbauer)
Masonic cornerstone ceremony: Mayor Thomas B. Smith (1919)
A collection of bronze griffins adorn the top of the building. In the 1970s, the museum adopted the griffin as it's symbol. In antiquity the griffin was known for guarding knowledge, treasure and priceless possessions as well as symbols of divine power and a guardians of the divine.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art - Main Building
2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway (West end)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The mythological couple, Cupid and Psyche, reached a new level of popularity among French audiences during the neoclassical period.
According to Apuleius, Psyche was the beautiful daughter of a rich king. Her beauty was so great that Venus’s worshippers abandon her temples in order to view the mortal. Venus was enraged and commanded the god of love, her son Cupid "My dear son, punish that contumacious beauty; give your mother a revenge as sweet as her injuries are great; infuse into the bosom of that haughty girl a passion for some low, mean, unworthy being, so that she may reap a mortification as great as her present exultation and triumph."
As the story progresses, Psyche finds herself content to be married to an unseen husband who visits her at night and leaves by morning. Her two sisters become jealous of her happiness and press Psyche to discover the true identity of her husband while he sleeps. The heroine’s curiosity then becomes her demise; for as she wields an oil lamp to view her husband, and observes that he is none other than Cupid himself, a drop of oil awakens him and he flees.
During this period in France, the end of the eighteenth century and in the opening years of the nineteenth, artist did not feel confined to representing the single history of the lovers presented by Apuleius. As the story grew, because the Greek name for both butterfly and soul is Psyche, the character often became a butterfly.
Here, in this sculpture by Antoine-Denis Chaudet that was completed posthumously by Pierre Cartellier in 1817, Cupid, as a winged adolescent, offers a rose to a butterfly he is holding by the wings. The butterfly allowing itself to be seduced by his rose soon experiences love's torments rather than its pleasures.
But, after many struggles, this story meant to symbolize the complete union of spiritual and physical love would finally come to a happy ending. Psyche would fall prey to the wrath of Venus during her search for her lover. Venus would force her to undergo a number of trials until Cupid finally comes to her rescue. The story wraps up with the god Jupiter granting Psyche immortality. Psyche became the goddess of the soul and the wife of the god of love.
This sculpture can be views at the Louvre and kudos to this website for a crash course in Greek mythology.
Roman mosaic of a griffin, a mythological creature half-lion, half-eagle. Its fore paw rests on a wheel, symbolizing Nemesis, the goddess of Vengeance. It is from Syria, ca. A.D. 400-600.
The Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, California
The Postcard
A postally unused carte postale that was published by L.L. The card has a divided back.
The Great Sphinx of Giza
The Great Sphinx of Giza is a limestone statue of a reclining sphinx, a mythical creature with the head of a human, and the body of a lion.
Facing directly from west to east, it stands on the Giza Plateau on the west bank of the Nile. The face of the Sphinx appears to represent the pharaoh Khafre.
The original shape of the Sphinx was cut from the bedrock, and has since been restored with layers of limestone blocks.
It measures 73 m (240 ft) long from paw to tail, 20 m (66 ft) high from the base to the top of the head, and 19 m (62 ft) wide at its rear haunches.
Its nose was broken off for unknown reasons between the 3rd. and 10th. centuries AD.
The Sphinx is the oldest known monumental sculpture in Egypt, and one of the most recognisable statues in the world.
The archaeological evidence suggests that it was created by ancient Egyptians of the Old Kingdom during the reign of Khafre (c. 2558 - 2532 BC).
The Great Sphinx's Name
The commonly used name "Sphinx" was given to the monument in classical antiquity, about 2,000 years after the commonly accepted date of its construction by reference to a Greek mythological beast with the head of a woman, a falcon, a cat, or a sheep and the body of a lion with the wings of an eagle. (Although, like most Egyptian sphinxes, the Great Sphinx has a man's head and no wings).
The English word sphinx comes from the ancient Greek Σφίγξ from the verb σφίγγω (meaning to squeeze in English), after the Greek sphinx who strangled anyone who failed to answer her riddle.
History of the Great Sphinx
The Sphinx is a monolith carved from the bedrock of the plateau, which also served as the quarry for the pyramids and other monuments in the area.
Egyptian geologist Farouk El-Baz has suggested that the head of the Sphinx may have been carved first, out of a natural yardang, i.e. a ridge of bedrock that had been sculpted by the wind. These can sometimes achieve shapes which resemble animals.
El-Baz suggests that the "moat" or "ditch" around the Sphinx may have been quarried out later to allow for the creation of the full body of the sculpture.
The archaeological evidence suggests that the Great Sphinx was created around 2500 BC for the pharaoh Khafre, the builder of the Second Pyramid at Giza. The stones cut from around the Sphinx's body were used to construct a temple in front of it.
However, neither the enclosure nor the temple were ever completed, and the relative scarcity of Old Kingdom cultural material suggests that a Sphinx cult was not established at the time.
Selim Hassan, writing in 1949 on recent excavations of the Sphinx enclosure, made note of this circumstance:
"Taking all things into consideration, it seems that
we must give the credit of erecting this, the world's
most wonderful statue, to Khafre, but always with
this reservation: that there is not one single
contemporary inscription which connects the Sphinx
with Khafre, so sound as it may appear, we must treat
the evidence as circumstantial, until such time as a
lucky turn of the spade of the excavator will reveal to
the world a definite reference to the erection of the
Sphinx."
In order to construct the temple, the northern perimeter-wall of the Khafre Valley Temple had to be deconstructed, hence it follows that the Khafre funerary complex preceded the creation of the Sphinx and its temple.
Furthermore, the angle and location of the south wall of the enclosure suggests the causeway connecting Khafre's Pyramid and Valley Temple already existed before the Sphinx was planned. The lower base level of the Sphinx temple also indicates that it doesn't pre-date the Valley Temple.
The Great Sphinx in the New Kingdom
Some time around the First Intermediate Period, the Giza Necropolis was abandoned, and drifting sand eventually buried the Sphinx up to its shoulders.
The first documented attempt at an excavation dates to c. 1400 BC, when the young Thutmose IV gathered a team and, after much effort, managed to dig out the front paws. Between them he erected a shrine that housed the Dream Stele, an inscribed granite slab (possibly a re-purposed door lintel from one of Khafre's temples).
When the stele was discovered, its lines of text were already damaged and incomplete. An excerpt reads:
"... the royal son, Thothmos, being arrived, while
walking at midday and seating himself under the
shadow of this mighty god, was overcome by
slumber and slept at the very moment when Ra is
at the summit of heaven.
He found that the Majesty of this august god spoke
to him with his own mouth, as a father speaks to his
son, saying:
'Look upon me, contemplate me, O my son Thothmos;
I am thy father, Harmakhis-Khopri-Ra-Tum; I bestow
upon thee the sovereignty over my domain, the
supremacy over the living ... Behold my actual condition
that thou mayest protect all my perfect limbs. The sand
of the desert whereon I am laid has covered me. Save
me, causing all that is in my heart to be executed.'"
The Dream Stele associates the Sphinx with Khafre, however this part of the text is not entirely intact:
"... which we bring for him: oxen ... and all the young
vegetables; and we shall give praise to Wenofer ...
Khaf ... the statue made for Atum-Hor-em-Akhet."
Egyptologist Thomas Young, finding the Khaf hieroglyphs in a damaged cartouche used to surround a royal name, inserted the glyph ra to complete Khafre's name. However when the Stele was re-excavated in 1925, the lines of text referring to Khaf flaked off and were destroyed.
In the New Kingdom, the Sphinx became more specifically associated with the sun god Hor-em-akhet. Pharaoh Amenhotep II built a temple to the northeast of the Sphinx nearly 1000 years after its construction, and dedicated it to the cult of Hor-em-akhet.
The Great Sphinx in the Graeco-Roman Period
By Graeco-Roman times, Giza had become a tourist destination - the monuments were regarded as antiquities. Some Roman Emperors visited the Sphinx out of curiosity, and for political reasons.
The Sphinx was cleared of sand again in the first century AD in honour of Emperor Nero and the Governor of Egypt, Tiberius Claudius Balbilus.
A monumental stairway more than 12 metres (39 ft) wide was erected, leading to a pavement in front of the paws of the Sphinx. At the top of the stairs, a podium was positioned that allowed view into the Sphinx sanctuary.
Further back, another podium neighboured several more steps. The stairway was dismantled during the 1931–32 excavations by Émile Baraize.
Pliny the Elder described the face of the Sphinx being coloured red and gave measurements for the statue:
"In front of these pyramids is the Sphinx, a still more
wondrous object of art, but one upon which silence
has been observed, as it is looked upon as a divinity
by the people of the neighbourhood.
It is their belief that King Harmaïs was buried in it, and
they will have it that it was brought there from a distance.
The truth is, however, that it was hewn from the solid
rock; and, from a feeling of veneration, the face of the
monster is coloured red.
The circumference of the head, measured round the
forehead, is one hundred and two feet, the length of the
feet being one hundred and forty-three, and the height,
from the belly to the summit of the asp on the head,
sixty-two."
A stela dated to 166 AD commemorates the restoration of the retaining walls surrounding the Sphinx.
The last Emperor connected with the monument was Septimius Severus, around 200 AD. With the downfall of Roman power, the Sphinx was once more engulfed by the sands.
The Great Sphinx in the Middle Ages
Some ancient non-Egyptians saw the Sphinx as a likeness of the god Horon. The cult of the Sphinx continued into medieval times. The Sabians of Harran saw it as the burial place of Hermes Trismegistus.
Arab authors described the Sphinx as a talisman which guarded the area from the desert. Al-Maqrizi describes it as "The Talisman of the Nile" on which the locals believed the flood cycle depended.
Muhammad al-Idrisi stated that those wishing to obtain bureaucratic positions in the Egyptian government should give an incense offering to the monument.
Over the centuries, writers and scholars have recorded their impressions and reactions upon seeing the Sphinx. The vast majority were concerned with a general description, often including a mixture of science, romance and mystique. A typical description of the Sphinx by tourists and leisure travelers throughout the 19th. and 20th. century was made by John Lawson Stoddard:
"It is the antiquity of the Sphinx which thrills us as
we look upon it, for in itself it has no charms. The
desert's waves have risen to its breast, as if to
wrap the monster in a winding-sheet of gold. The
face and head have been mutilated by Moslem
fanatics. The mouth, the beauty of whose lips was
once admired, is now expressionless. Yet grand in
its loneliness, - veiled in the mystery of unnamed
ages, - the relic of Egyptian antiquity stands solemn
and silent in the presence of the awful desert -
symbol of eternity. Here it disputes with Time the
empire of the past; forever gazing on and on into
a future which will still be distant when we, like all
who have preceded us and looked upon its face,
have lived our little lives and disappeared."
From the 16th. century, European observers described the Sphinx having the face, neck and breast of a woman.
Most early Western images were book illustrations in print form, elaborated by a professional engraver from either previous images available, or some original drawing or sketch supplied by an author, and usually now lost.
Seven years after visiting Giza, André Thévet (Cosmographie de Levant, 1556) described the Sphinx as:
"The head of a colossus, caused to be
made by Isis, daughter of Inachus, then
so beloved of Jupiter".
He, or his artist and engraver, pictured it as a curly-haired monster with a grassy dog collar.
Athanasius Kircher (who never visited Egypt) depicted the Sphinx as a Roman statue (Turris Babel, 1679).
Johannes Helferich's (1579) Sphinx is a pinched-face, round-breasted woman with a straight-haired wig.
George Sandys stated in 1615 that the Sphinx was a harlot; Balthasar de Monconys interpreted the headdress as a kind of hairnet, while François de La Boullaye-Le Gouz's Sphinx had a rounded hairdo with bulky collar.
Richard Pococke's Sphinx was an adoption of Cornelis de Bruijn's drawing of 1698, featuring only minor changes, but is closer to the actual appearance of the Sphinx than anything previously drawn.
The print versions of Norden's drawings for his Voyage d'Egypte et de Nubie (1755) clearly show that the nose was missing.
Later Excavations
In 1817, the first modern archaeological dig, supervised by the Italian Giovanni Battista Caviglia, uncovered the Sphinx's chest completely.
In 1887, the chest, paws, the altar, and the plateau were all made visible. Flights of steps were unearthed, and finally accurate measurements were taken of the great figures.
The height from the lowest of the steps was found to be one hundred feet, and the space between the paws was found to be thirty-five feet long and ten feet wide. Here there was formerly an altar; and a stele of Thûtmosis IV was discovered, recording a dream in which he was ordered to clear away the sand that even then was gathering round the site of the Sphinx.
One of the people working on clearing the sands from around the Great Sphinx was Eugène Grébaut, a French Director of the Antiquities Service.
Opinions of Early Egyptologists
Early Egyptologists and excavators were divided regarding the age of the Sphinx and its associated temples.
In 1857, Auguste Mariette, founder of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, unearthed the much later Inventory Stela (estimated to be from the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, c. 664 - 525 BC), which tells how Khufu came upon the Sphinx, already buried in sand.
Although certain tracts on the Stela are likely accurate, this passage is contradicted by archaeological evidence, thus considered to be Late Period historical revisionism, a purposeful fake, created by the local priests as an attempt to imbue the contemporary Isis temple with an ancient history it never had.
Such acts became common when religious institutions such as temples, shrines and priests' domains were fighting for political attention and for financial and economic donations.
Flinders Petrie wrote in 1883 regarding the state of opinion of the age of the Khafre Valley Temple, and by extension the Sphinx:
"The date of the Granite Temple has been so
positively asserted to be earlier than the fourth
dynasty, that it may seem rash to dispute the
point.
Recent discoveries, however, strongly show that
it was really not built before the reign of Khafre,
in the fourth dynasty."
Gaston Maspero, the French Egyptologist and second director of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, conducted a survey of the Sphinx in 1886. He concluded that because the Dream Stela showed the cartouche of Khafre in line 13, it was he who was responsible for the excavation, and therefore the Sphinx must predate Khafre and his predecessors - possibly Fourth Dynasty, c. 2575 - 2467 BC. Maspero believed the Sphinx to be "the most ancient monument in Egypt".
Ludwig Borchardt attributed the Sphinx to the Middle Kingdom, arguing that the particular features seen on the Sphinx are unique to the 12th. dynasty, and that the Sphinx resembles Amenemhat III.
E. A. Wallis Budge agreed that the Sphinx predated Khafre's reign, writing in The Gods of the Egyptians (1904):
"This marvellous object was in existence in the
days of Khafre, or Khephren, and it is probable
that it is a very great deal older than his reign,
and that it dates from the end of the archaic
period [c. 2686 BC]."
Modern Dissenting Hypotheses
Rainer Stadelmann, former director of the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo, examined the distinct iconography of the nemes (headdress) and the now-detached beard of the Sphinx, and concluded that the style is more indicative of the pharaoh Khufu (2589–2566 BC).
He was known to the Greeks as Cheops, builder of the Great Pyramid of Giza and Khafre's father. Rainer supports this by suggesting Khafre's Causeway was built to conform to a pre-existing structure, which, he concludes, given its location, could only have been the Sphinx.
In 2004, Vassil Dobrev of the Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale in Cairo announced that he had uncovered new evidence that the Great Sphinx may have been the work of the little-known pharaoh Djedefre (2528–2520 BC).
Djedefre was Khafra's half brother, and a son of Khufu. Dobrev suggests Djedefre built the Sphinx in the image of his father Khufu, identifying him with the sun god Ra in order to restore respect for their dynasty.
Dobrev also says that the causeway connecting Khafre's pyramid to the temples was built around the Sphinx, suggesting that it was already in existence at the time.
Egyptologist Nigel Strudwick responded to Dobrev by saying that:
"It is not implausible. But I would need more explanation,
such as why he thinks the pyramid at Abu Roash is a sun temple, something I'm sceptical about.
I have never heard anyone suggest that the name in the graffiti at Zawiyet el-Aryan mentions Djedefre.
I remain more convinced by the traditional argument of it being Khafre or the more recent theory of it being Khufu."
Recent Restorations of the Great Sphinx
In 1931, engineers of the Egyptian government repaired the head of the Sphinx. Part of its headdress had fallen off in 1926 due to erosion, which had also cut deeply into its neck. This questionable repair was by the addition of a concrete collar between the headdress and the neck, creating an altered profile.
Many renovations to the stone base and raw rock body were done in the 1980's, and then redone in the 1990's.
Natural and Deliberate Damage to the Great Sphinx
The limestone of the area consists of layers which offer differing resistance to erosion (mostly caused by wind and windblown sand), leading to the uneven degradation apparent in the Sphinx's body.
The lowest part of the body, including the legs, is solid rock. The body of the animal up to its neck is fashioned from softer layers that have suffered considerable disintegration. The layer from which the head was sculpted is much harder.
A number of "dead-end" shafts are known to exist within and below the body of the Great Sphinx, most likely dug by treasure hunters and tomb robbers.
The Great Sphinx's Missing Nose
Examination of the Sphinx's face shows that long rods or chisels were hammered into the nose area, one down from the bridge and another beneath the nostril, then used to pry the nose off towards the south, resulting in the one-metre wide nose still being lost to date.
Drawings of the Sphinx by Frederic Louis Norden in 1737 show the nose missing. Many folk tales exist regarding the destruction of its nose, aiming to provide an answer as to where it went or what happened to it.
One tale erroneously attributes it to cannonballs fired by the army of Napoleon Bonaparte. Other tales ascribe it to being the work of Mamluks. Since the 10th. century, some Arab authors have claimed it to be a result of iconoclastic attacks.
The Arab historian al-Maqrīzī, writing in the 15th. century, attributes the loss of the nose to Muhammad Sa'im al-Dahr, a Sufi Muslim who in 1378 found the local peasants making offerings to the Sphinx in the hope of increasing their harvest; he therefore defaced the Sphinx in an act of iconoclasm.
According to al-Maqrīzī, many people living in the area believed that the increased sand covering the Giza Plateau was retribution for al-Dahr's act of defacement.
Al-Minufi stated that the Alexandrian Crusade in 1365 was divine punishment for a Sufi sheikh breaking off the nose.
The Great Sphinx's Beard
In addition to the lost nose, a ceremonial pharaonic beard is thought to have been attached, although this may have been added in later periods after the original construction.
Egyptologist Vassil Dobrev has suggested that had the beard been an original part of the Sphinx, it would have damaged the chin of the statue upon falling. However the lack of visible damage supports his theory that the beard was a later addition.
The British Museum has limestone fragments which are thought to be from the Sphinx's beard.
Residues of red pigment are visible on areas of the Sphinx's face, and traces of yellow and blue pigment have also been found elsewhere on the Sphinx, leading Mark Lehner to suggest that:
"The monument was once decked
out in gaudy comic book colours".
However, as with the case of many ancient monuments, the pigments and colours have virtually disappeared, resulting in the yellow/beige appearance that the Sphinx has today.
Holes and Tunnels in the Great Sphinx
-- The Hole in the Sphinx's Head
Johann Helffrich visited the Sphinx during his travels in 1565 - 1566. He reports that a priest went into the head of the Sphinx, and when he spoke it was as if the Sphinx itself was speaking.
Many New Kingdom stelae depict the Sphinx wearing a crown. If it in fact existed, the hole could have been the anchoring point for it.
Émile Baraize closed the hole with a metal hatch in 1926.
-- Perring's Hole
Howard Vyse directed Perring in 1837 to drill a tunnel into the back of the Sphinx, just behind the head. The boring rods became stuck at a depth of 27 feet (8.2 m).
Attempts to blast the rods free caused further damage. The hole was cleared in 1978, and among the rubble was a fragment of the Sphinx's nemes headdress.
-- The Major Fissure
A major natural fissure in the bedrock cuts through the waist of the Sphinx. This was first excavated by Auguste Mariette in 1853.
The fissure measures up to 2 metres (6.6 ft) in width. In 1926 Baraize sealed the sides and roofed it with iron bars, limestone and cement. He then installed an iron trap door at the top. The sides of the fissure might have been artificially squared; however, the bottom is irregular bedrock, about 1 metre (3.3 ft) above the outside floor. A very narrow crack continues deeper.
-- The Rump Passage
When the Sphinx was cleared of sand in 1926 under direction of Baraize, it revealed an opening to a tunnel at floor-level on the north side of the rump. It was subsequently closed by masonry and nearly forgotten.
More than fifty years later, the existence of the passage was recalled by three elderly men who had worked during the sand clearing as basket carriers. This led to the rediscovery and excavation of the rump passage in 1980.
The passage consists of an upper and a lower section, which are angled roughly 90 degrees to each other. The upper part ascends to a height of 4 metres (13 ft) above the ground-floor at a northwest direction. It runs between masonry veneer and the core body of the Sphinx, and ends in a niche 1 metre (3.3 ft) wide and 1.8 metres (5.9 ft) high.
The ceiling of the niche consists of modern cement, which likely spilled down from the filling of the gap between masonry and core bedrock, some 3 metres (9.8 ft) above.
The lower part descends steeply into the bedrock towards the northeast, for a distance of approximately 4 metres (13 ft) and a depth of 5 metres (16 ft). It terminates in a pit at groundwater level.
At the entrance it is 1.3 metres (4.3 ft) wide, narrowing to about 1.07 metres (3.5 ft) towards the end. Among the sand and stone fragments, a piece of tin foil and the base of a modern ceramic water jar was found.
The clogged bottom of the pit contained modern fill. Among it, more tin foil, modern cement and a pair of shoes.
It is possible that the entire passage was cut top down, beginning high up on the rump, and that the current access point at floor-level was made at a later date.
Vyse noted in his diary in 1837 that he was "boring" near the tail, which indicates him as the creator of the passage, as no other tunnel has been identified at this location. Another interpretation is that the shaft is of ancient origin, perhaps an exploratory tunnel or an unfinished tomb shaft.
-- The Niche in the Northern Flank
There is a niche in the Sphinx's core body. It was closed during the 1925-6 restorations.
-- The Space Behind the Dream Stele
The space behind the Dream Stele, between the paws of the Sphinx, was covered by an iron beam and cement roof and then fitted with an iron trap door.
-- The Keyhole Shaft
At the ledge of the Sphinx enclosure there is a square shaft opposite the northern hind paw. It was cleared during excavation in 1978 and measures 1.42 by 1.06 metres (4.7 by 3.5 ft) and about 2 metres (6.6 ft) deep.
Lehner interpreted the shaft to be an unfinished tomb, and named it the "Keyhole Shaft", because a cutting in the ledge above the shaft is shaped like the lower part of a keyhole, upside down.
The Great Pyramid of Giza
The Great Pyramid of Giza is the largest Egyptian pyramid, and the tomb of the Fourth Dynasty pharaoh Khufu. Built in the 26th. century BC during a period of around 27 years, it is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and the only one to remain largely intact.
Initially standing at 146.6 metres (481 feet), the Great Pyramid was the tallest man-made structure in the world for more than 3,800 years. Over time, most of the smooth white limestone casing was removed, which lowered the pyramid's height to the present 138.5 metres (454.4 ft).
What is seen today is the underlying core structure. The base was measured to be 230.3 metres (755.6 ft) square, giving a volume of roughly 2.6 million cubic metres (92 million cubic feet).
The Great Pyramid was built by quarrying an estimated 2.3 million large blocks weighing 6 million tonnes in total. The majority of stones are not uniform in size or shape, and are only roughly dressed.
The outside layers were bound together by mortar. Primarily local limestone from the Giza Plateau was used. Other blocks were imported by boat down the Nile: white limestone from Tura for the casing, and granite blocks from Aswan, weighing up to 80 tonnes, for the King's Chamber.
There are three known chambers inside the Great Pyramid. The lowest was cut into the bedrock, but it remained unfinished. The Queen's Chamber and the King's Chamber, that contains a granite sarcophagus, are higher up, within the pyramid structure.
Khufu's vizier, Hemiunu, is believed to be the architect of the Great Pyramid. Many varying scientific and alternative hypotheses attempt to explain the exact construction techniques.
Attribution to Khufu
Historically the Great Pyramid has been attributed to Khufu based on the words of authors of classical antiquity, first and foremost Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus.
However, during the middle ages a number of other people were credited with the construction of the pyramid, for example Joseph, Nimrod or King Saurid.
In 1837 four additional Relieving Chambers were found above the King's Chamber after tunneling to them. The chambers, previously inaccessible, were covered in hieroglyphs of red paint.
The workers who were building the pyramid had marked the blocks with the names of their gangs, which included the pharaoh's name (e.g.: “The gang, The white crown of Khnum-Khufu is powerful”).
The names of Khufu were spelled out on the walls over a dozen times. Another of these graffiti was found by Goyon on an exterior block of the 4th layer of the pyramid.
Throughout the 20th. century the cemeteries next to the pyramid were excavated. Family members and high officials of Khufu were buried there. Most notably the wives, children and grandchildren of Khufu, along with the funerary cache of Hetepheres I, mother of Khufu.
As Hassan puts it:
"From the early dynastic times, it was always the
custom for the relatives, friends and courtiers to
be buried in the vicinity of the king they had served
during life. This was quite in accordance with the
Egyptian idea of the Hereafter."
The cemeteries were actively expanded until the 6th. dynasty, but used less frequently afterwards. The earliest pharaonic name of seal impressions is that of Khufu, the latest of Pepi II.
Worker graffiti was written on some of the stones of the tombs as well; for instance, "Mddw" (Horus name of Khufu) on the mastaba of Chufunacht, probably a grandson of Khufu.
In 1954 two boat pits, one containing the Khufu ship, were discovered buried at the south foot of the pyramid. The cartouche of Djedefre was found on many of the blocks that covered the boat pits. As the successor and eldest son he would have presumably been responsible for the burial of Khufu.
The second boat pit was examined in 1987; excavation work started in 2010. Graffiti on the stones included 4 instances of the name "Khufu", 11 instances of "Djedefre", a year (in reign, season, month and day), measurements of the stone, various signs and marks, and a reference line used in construction, all done in red or black ink.
During excavations in 2013 the Diary of Merer in the form of rolls of papyrus was found at Wadi al-Jarf. It documents the transportation of white limestone blocks from Tura to the Great Pyramid, which is mentioned by its original name Akhet Khufu dozens of times.
The diary records that the stones were accepted at She Akhet-Khufu ("The pool of the pyramid Horizon of Khufu") and Ro-She Khufu (“The entrance to the pool of Khufu”) which were under supervision of Ankhhaf, half brother and vizier of Khufu, as well as owner of the largest mastaba of the Giza East Field.
The Age of the Great Pyramid
The age of the Great Pyramid has been determined by two principal approaches:
-- Indirectly, through its attribution to Khufu and his chronological age, based on archaeological and textual evidence.
-- Directly, via radiocarbon dating of organic material found in the pyramid and included in its mortar. Mortar was used generously in the Great Pyramid's construction. In the mixing process, ashes from fires were added to the mortar, organic material that could be extracted and radiocarbon dated.
A total of 46 samples of the mortar were taken in 1984 and 1995, making sure they were clearly inherent to the original structure and could not have been incorporated at a later date.
The results were calibrated to 2871–2604 BC. A reanalysis of the data gave a completion date for the pyramid between 2620 and 2484 BC.
In 1872 Waynman Dixon opened the lower pair of air-shafts that were previously closed at both ends by chiseling holes into the walls of the Queen's Chamber.
One of the objects found within was a cedar plank, which came into possession of James Grant, a friend of Dixon. After inheritance it was donated to the Museum of Aberdeen in 1946. However it had broken into pieces, and was filed incorrectly.
Lost in the vast museum collection, it was only rediscovered in 2020, when it was radiocarbon dated to 3341–3094 BC. Being over 500 years older than Khufu's chronological age, Abeer Eladany suggests that the wood originated from the center of a long-lived tree, or had been recycled for many years prior to being deposited in the pyramid.
Construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza
-- Preparation of the Site
A hillock forms the base on which the pyramid stands. It was cut back into steps, and only a strip around the perimeter was leveled. Using modern equipment, this has been measured to be horizontal and flat to within 21 millimetres (0.8 in).
The bedrock reaches a height of almost 6 metres (20 ft) above the pyramid base at the location of the Grotto.
Along the sides of the base platform a series of holes are cut in the bedrock. Lehner hypothesizes that they held wooden posts used for alignment.
Edwards, among others, has suggested that water was used in order to level the base, although it is unclear how workable such a system would be.
-- Materials
The Great Pyramid consists of an estimated 2.3 million blocks. Approximately 5.5 million tonnes of limestone, 8,000 tonnes of granite, and 500,000 tonnes of mortar were used in the construction.
Most of the blocks were quarried at Giza just south of the pyramid, an area now known as the Central Field.
The white limestone used for the casing originated from Tura 10 km (6.2 mi) south of Giza), and was transported by boat down the Nile.
The granite stones in the pyramid were transported from Aswan, more than 900 km (560 mi) away. The largest, weighing up to 80 tonnes, forms the roofs of the King's Chamber.
Ancient Egyptians cut stone into rough blocks by hammering grooves into natural stone faces, inserting wooden wedges, then soaking these with water. As the water was absorbed, the wedges expanded, breaking off workable chunks. Once the blocks were cut, they were carried by boat either up or down the Nile River to the pyramid.
-- The Workforce
The Greeks believed that slave labour was used, but modern discoveries made at nearby workers' camps associated with construction at Giza suggest that it was built instead by thousands of conscript laborers.
Worker graffiti found at Giza suggest haulers were divided into groups of 40 men, consisting of four sub-units that each had an "Overseer of Ten".
As to the question of how over two million blocks could have been cut within Khufu's lifetime, stonemason Franck Burgos conducted an archaeological experiment based on an abandoned quarry of Khufu discovered in 2017.
Within it, an almost completed block and the tools used for cutting it had been uncovered: hardened arsenic copper chisels, wooden mallets, ropes and stone tools. In the experiment, replicas of these were used to cut a block weighing about 2.5 tonnes (the average block size used for the Great Pyramid).
It took 4 workers 4 days (with each working 6 hours a day) to excavate it. The initially slow progress sped up six times when the stone was wetted with water.
Based on the data, Burgos extrapolates that about 3,500 quarry-men could have produced the 250 blocks per day needed to complete the Great Pyramid within 27 years.
A construction management study conducted in 1999, in association with Mark Lehner and other Egyptologists, has estimated that the total project required an average workforce of about 13,200 individuals, with a peak workforce of roughly 40,000.
Surveys and Design of the Great Pyramid
The first precise measurements of the pyramid were made by Egyptologist Flinders Petrie in 1880–1882, published as The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh.
Many of the casing-stones and inner chamber blocks of the Great Pyramid fit together with high precision, with joints, on average, only 0.5 millimetres (0.020 in) wide. On the contrary, core blocks were only roughly shaped, with rubble inserted between larger gaps. Mortar was used to bind the outer layers together and to fill gaps and joints.
The block height and weight tends to get progressively smaller towards the top. Petrie measured the lowest layer to be 148 centimetres (4.86 ft) high, whereas the layers towards the summit barely exceed 50 centimetres (1.6 ft).
The accuracy of the pyramid's perimeter is such that the four sides of the base have an average error of only 58 millimetres (2.3 inches) in length, and the finished base was squared to a mean corner error of only 12 seconds of arc.
Ancient Egyptians used seked - how much length for one cubit of rise - to describe slopes. For the Great Pyramid a seked of 5+ palms was chosen, a ratio of 14 up to 11 in.
Some Egyptologists suggest this slope was chosen because the ratio of perimeter to height (1760/280 cubits) equals 2π to an accuracy of better than 0.05 percent (corresponding to the well-known approximation of π as 22/7).
Verner wrote:
"We can conclude that although the ancient
Egyptians could not precisely define the value
of π, in practice they used it.
"These relations of areas and of circular ratio
are so systematic that we should grant that
they were in the builder's design".
Alignment to the Cardinal Directions
The sides of the Great Pyramid's base are closely aligned to the four geographic (not magnetic) cardinal directions, deviating on average 3 minutes and 38 seconds of arc. Several methods have been proposed for how the ancient Egyptians achieved this level of accuracy:
-- The Solar Gnomon Method: the shadow of a vertical rod is tracked throughout a day. The shadow line is intersected by a circle drawn around the base of the rod. Connecting the intersecting points produces an east-west line.
An experiment using this method resulted in lines being, on average, 2 minutes, 9 seconds off due east–west. Employing a pinhole produced much more accurate results (19 arc seconds off), whereas using an angled block as a shadow definer was less accurate (3′ 47″ off).
-- The Pole Star Method: the polar star is tracked using a movable sight and fixed plumb line. Halfway between the maximum eastern and western elongations is true north.
Thuban, the polar star during the Old Kingdom, was about two degrees removed from the celestial pole at the time.
-- The Simultaneous Transit Method: the stars Mizar and Kochab appear on a vertical line on the horizon, close to true north around 2500 BC. They slowly and simultaneously shift east over time, which is used to explain the relative misalignment of the pyramids.
Construction Theories
Many alternative, often contradictory, theories have been proposed regarding the pyramid's construction. One mystery of the pyramid's construction is its planning. John Romer suggests that they used the same method that had been used for earlier and later constructions, i.e. laying out parts of the plan on the ground at a 1-to-1 scale.
He writes that:
"Such a working diagram would also serve to
generate the architecture of the pyramid with
precision unmatched by any other means".
The basalt blocks of the pyramid temple show clear evidence of having been cut with some kind of saw with an estimated cutting blade of 15 feet (4.6 m) in length. Romer suggests that this "super saw" may have had copper teeth and weighed up to 140 kilograms (310 lb).
He theorizes that such a saw could have been attached to a wooden trestle support, and possibly used in conjunction with vegetable oil, cutting sand, emery or pounded quartz to cut the blocks, which would have required the labour of at least a dozen men to operate it.
The Exterior Casing
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At completion, the Great Pyramid was cased entirely in white limestone. There is a casing stone from the Great Pyramid in the British Museum.
Precisely worked blocks were placed in horizontal layers and carefully fitted together with mortar, their outward faces cut at a slope and smoothed to a high degree. Together they created four uniform surfaces, angled at 51°50'40.
Unfinished casing blocks of the pyramids of Menkaure and Henutsen at Giza suggest that the front faces were smoothed only after the stones were laid, with chiseled seams marking correct positioning, and where the superfluous rock would have to be trimmed off.
An irregular pattern is noticeable when looking at the pyramid's layers in sequence, where layer height declines steadily only to rise sharply again.
"Backing stones" supported the casing which were (unlike the core blocks) precisely dressed, and bound to the casing with mortar. These stones give the structure its visible appearance, following the dismantling of the pyramid in the middle ages.
In 1303 AD, a massive earthquake loosened many of the outer casing stones, which were said to have been carted away by Bahri Sultan An-Nasir Nasir-ad-Din al-Hasan in 1356 for use in nearby Cairo.
Many more casing stones were removed from the site by Muhammad Ali Pasha in the early 19th. century to build the upper portion of his Alabaster Mosque in Cairo.
Later explorers reported massive piles of rubble at the base of the pyramid left over from the continuing collapse of the casing stones, which were subsequently cleared away during continuing excavations of the site.
Today a few of the casing stones from the lowest course can be seen in situ on each side, with the best preserved on the north below the entrances, excavated by Vyse in 1837.
The mortar was chemically analyzed and contains organic inclusions (mostly charcoal), samples of which were radiocarbon dated to 2871–2604 BC. It has been theorized that the mortar enabled the masons to set the stones exactly by providing a level bed.
The Missing Pyramidion
The pyramid was once topped by a capstone known as a pyramidion. The material it was made from is subject to much speculation; limestone, granite or basalt are commonly proposed, while in popular culture it is often said to be solid gold or gilded.
All known 4th. dynasty pyramidia (of the Red Pyramid, the Satellite Pyramid of Khufu and the Queen's Pyramid of Menkaure are of white limestone, and were not gilded.
Only from the 5th. dynasty onward is there evidence of gilded capstones.
The Great Pyramid's pyramidion was already lost in antiquity, as Pliny the Elder and later authors report of a platform on its summit. Nowadays the pyramid is about 8 metres (26 ft) shorter than it was when intact, with about 1,000 tonnes of material missing from the top.
In 1874 a mast was installed on the top of the pyramid by the Scottish astronomer Sir David Gill who, whilst returning from work involving observing a rare Venus transit, was invited to survey Egypt. He began by surveying the Great Pyramid.
His measurements of the pyramid were accurate to within 1mm, and the survey mast is still in place to this day.
Interior of the Great Pyramid
The internal structure consists of three main chambers (the King's-, Queen's- and Subterranean Chamber), the Grand Gallery and various corridors and shafts.
There are two entrances into the pyramid; the original and a forced passage, which meet at a junction. From there, one passage descends into the Subterranean Chamber, while the other ascends to the Grand Gallery. From the beginning of the gallery three paths can be taken:
(a) A vertical shaft that leads down, past a grotto, to meet the descending passage.
(b) A horizontal corridor leading to the Queen's Chamber.
(c) A path up the gallery itself to the King's Chamber that contains the sarcophagus.
Both the King's and Queen's Chamber have a pair of small "air-shafts". Above the King's Chamber are a series of five Relieving Chambers.
-- The Original Entrance
The original entrance is located on the north side, 15 royal cubits (7.9 m; 25.8 ft) east of the center-line of the pyramid. Before the removal of the casing in the middle ages, the pyramid was entered through a hole in the 19th. layer of masonry, approximately 17 metres (56 ft) above the pyramid's base level.
The height of that layer – 96 centimetres (3.15 ft) – corresponds to the size of the entrance tunnel which is commonly called the Descending Passage. According to Strabo (64–24 BC) a movable stone could be raised to enter this sloping corridor, however it is not known if it was a later addition or original.
A row of double chevrons diverts weight away from the entrance. Several of these chevron blocks are now missing, as the slanted faces they used to rest on indicate.
Numerous, mostly modern, graffiti is cut into the stones around the entrance. Most notable is a large, square text of hieroglyphs carved in honor of Frederick William IV, by Karl Richard Lepsius's Prussian expedition to Egypt in 1842.
-- The North Face Corridor
In 2016 the ScanPyramids team detected a cavity behind the entrance chevrons using muography, which was confirmed in 2019 to be a corridor at least 5 metres (16 ft) long, running horizontal or sloping upwards. Whether or not it connects to the Big Void above the Grand Gallery remains to be seen.
-- The Robbers' Tunnel
Today tourists enter the Great Pyramid via the Robbers' Tunnel, which was long ago cut straight through the masonry of the pyramid. The entrance was forced into the 6th. and 7th. layer of the casing, about 7 metres (23 ft) above the base.
After running more-or-less straight and horizontal for 27 metres (89 ft) it turns sharply left to encounter the blocking stones in the Ascending Passage. It is possible to enter the Descending Passage from this point, but access is usually forbidden.
The origin of this Robbers' Tunnel is the subject of much discussion. According to tradition, the tunnel was excavated around 820 AD by Caliph al-Ma'mun's workmen with a battering ram.
The digging dislodged the stone in the ceiling of the Descending Passage which hid the entrance to the Ascending Passage, and the noise of that stone falling then sliding down the Descending Passage alerted them to the need to turn left.
Unable to remove these stones, the workmen tunneled up beside them through the softer limestone of the Pyramid until they reached the Ascending Passage.
Due to a number of historical and archaeological discrepancies, many scholars contend that this story is apocryphal. They argue that it is much more likely that the tunnel had been carved shortly after the pyramid was initially sealed.
This tunnel, the scholars argue, was then resealed (likely during the Ramesside Restoration), and it was this plug that al-Ma'mun's ninth-century expedition cleared away. This theory is furthered by the report of patriarch Dionysius I Telmaharoyo, who claimed that before al-Ma'mun's expedition, there already existed a breach in the pyramid's north face that extended into the structure 33 metres (108 ft) before hitting a dead end.
This suggests that some sort of robber's tunnel predated al-Ma'mun, and that the caliph simply enlarged it and cleared it of debris.
-- The Descending Passage
From the original entrance, a passage descends through the masonry of the pyramid and then into the bedrock beneath it, ultimately leading to the Subterranean Chamber.
It has a slanted height of 4 Egyptian feet (1.20 m; 3.9 ft) and a width of 2 cubits (1.0 m; 3.4 ft). Its angle of 26°26'46" corresponds to a ratio of 1 to 2 (rise over run).
After 28 metres (92 ft), the lower end of the Ascending Passage is reached; a square hole in the ceiling, which is blocked by granite stones and might have originally been concealed.
To circumvent these hard stones, a short tunnel was excavated that meets the end of the Robbers' Tunnel. This was expanded over time and fitted with stairs.
The passage continues to descend for another 72 metres (236 ft), now through bedrock instead of the pyramid superstructure.
Lazy guides used to block off this part with rubble in order to avoid having to lead people down and back up the long shaft, until around 1902 when Covington installed a padlocked iron grill-door to stop this practice.
Near the end of this section, on the west wall, is the connection to the vertical shaft that leads up to the Grand Gallery.
A horizontal shaft connects the end of the Descending Passage to the Subterranean Chamber, It has a length of 8.84 m (29.0 ft), width of 85 cm (2.79 ft) and height of 91–95 cm (2.99–3.12 ft).
-- The Subterranean Chamber
The Subterranean Chamber, or "Pit", is the lowest of the three main chambers, and the only one dug into the bedrock beneath the pyramid.
Located about 27 m (89 ft) below base level, it measures roughly 16 cubits (8.4 m; 27.5 ft) north-south by 27 cubits (14.1 m; 46.4 ft) east-west, with an approximate height of 4 m (13 ft).
The western half of the room, apart from the ceiling, is unfinished, with trenches left behind by the quarry-men running east to west. The only access, through the Descending Passage, lies on the eastern end of the north wall.
Although seemingly known in antiquity, according to Herodotus and later authors, its existence had been forgotten in the middle ages until rediscovery in 1817, when Giovanni Caviglia cleared the rubble blocking the Descending Passage.
Opposite the entrance, a blind corridor runs straight south for 11 m (36 ft) and continues at a slight angle for another 5.4 m (18 ft), measuring about 0.75 m (2.5 ft) squared. A Greek or Roman character was found on its ceiling, suggesting that the chamber had indeed been accessible during Classical antiquity.
In the middle of the eastern half, there is a large hole called Pit Shaft or Perring's Shaft. The upmost part may have ancient origins, about 2 m (6.6 ft) squared in width, and 1.5 m (4.9 ft) in depth. Caviglia and Salt enlarged it to the depth of about 3 m (9.8 ft).
In 1837 Vyse directed the shaft to be sunk to a depth of 50 ft (15 m), in hopes of discovering the chamber encompassed by water that Herodotus alludes to. However no chamber was discovered after Perring and his workers had spent one and a half years penetrating the bedrock to the then water level of the Nile, some 12 m (39 ft) further down.
The rubble produced during this operation was deposited throughout the chamber. Petrie, visiting in 1880, found the shaft to be partially filled with rainwater that had rushed down the Descending Passage. In 1909, when the Edgar brothers' surveying activities were encumbered by the material, they moved the sand and smaller stones back into the shaft. The deep, modern shaft is sometimes mistaken to be part of the original design.
-- The Ascending Passage
The Ascending Passage connects the Descending Passage to the Grand Gallery. It is 75 cubits (39.3 m; 128.9 ft) long, and of the same width and height as the shaft it originates from, although its angle is slightly lower at 26°6'.
The lower end of the shaft is plugged by three granite stones, which were slid down from the Grand Gallery to seal the tunnel. The uppermost stone is heavily damaged.
The end of the Robbers' Tunnel concludes slightly below the stones, so a short tunnel was dug around them to gain access to the Descending Passage.
-- The Well Shaft and Grotto
The Well Shaft (also known as the Service Shaft or Vertical Shaft) links the lower end of the Grand Gallery to the bottom of the Descending Passage, about 50 metres (160 ft) further down.
It takes a winding and indirect course. The upper half goes through the nucleus masonry of the pyramid. It runs vertical at first for 8 metres (26 ft), then slightly angled southwards for about the same distance, until it hits bedrock approximately 5.7 metres (19 ft) above the pyramid's base level.
Another vertical section descends further, which is partially lined with masonry that has been broken through to a cavity known as the Grotto. The lower half of the Well Shaft goes through the bedrock at an angle of about 45° for 26.5 metres (87 ft) before a steeper section, 9.5 metres (31 ft) long, leads to its lowest point. The final section of 2.6 metres (8.5 ft) connects it to the Descending Passage, running almost horizontal. The builders evidently had trouble aligning the lower exit.
The purpose of the shaft is commonly explained as a ventilation shaft for the Subterranean Chamber, and as an escape shaft for the workers who slid the blocking stones of the Ascending Passage into place.
The Grotto is a natural limestone cave that was likely filled with sand and gravel before construction, before being hollowed out by looters. A granite block rests in it that probably originated from the portcullis that once sealed the King's Chamber.
-- The Queen's Chamber
The Horizontal Passage links the Grand Gallery to the Queen's Chamber. Five pairs of holes at the start suggest the tunnel was once concealed with slabs that laid flush with the gallery floor. The passage is 2 cubits (1.0 m; 3.4 ft) wide and 1.17 m (3.8 ft) high for most of its length, but near the chamber there is a step in the floor, after which the passage increases to 1.68 m (5.5 ft) high.
The Queen's Chamber is exactly halfway between the north and south faces of the pyramid. It measures 10 cubits (5.2 m; 17.2 ft) north-south, 11 cubits (5.8 m; 18.9 ft) east-west,[146] and has a pointed roof that apexes at 12 cubits (6.3 m; 20.6 ft) tall.
At the eastern end of the chamber there is a niche 9 cubits (4.7 m; 15.5 ft) high. The original depth of the niche was 2 cubits (1.0 m; 3.4 ft), but it has since been deepened by treasure hunters.
Shafts were discovered in the north and south walls of the Queen's Chamber in 1872 by British engineer Waynman Dixon, who believed shafts similar to those in the King's Chamber must also exist. The shafts were not connected to the outer faces of the pyramid, and their purpose is unknown.
In one shaft Dixon discovered a ball of diorite, a bronze hook of unknown purpose and a piece of cedar wood. The first two objects are currently in the British Museum. The latter was lost until recently when it was found at the University of Aberdeen.
The northern shaft's angle of ascent fluctuates, and at one point turns 45 degrees to avoid the Great Gallery. The southern shaft is perpendicular to the pyramid's slope.
The shafts in the Queen's Chamber were explored in 1993 by the German engineer Rudolf Gantenbrink using a crawler robot he designed, called Upuaut 2.
After a climb of 65 m (213 ft), he discovered that one of the shafts was blocked by a limestone "door" with two eroded copper "handles".
The National Geographic Society created a similar robot which, in September 2002, drilled a small hole in the southern door, only to find another stone slab behind it. The northern passage, which was difficult to navigate because of its twists and turns, was also found to be blocked by a slab.
Research continued in 2011 with the Djedi Project which used a fibre-optic "micro snake camera" that could see around corners. With this, they were able to penetrate the first door of the southern shaft through the hole drilled in 2002, and view all the sides of the small chamber behind it.
They discovered hieroglyphics written in red paint. Egyptian mathematics researcher Luca Miatello stated that the markings read "121" – the length of the shaft in cubits.
The Djedi team were also able to scrutinize the inside of the two copper "handles" embedded in the door, which they now believe to be for decorative purposes. They additionally found the reverse side of the "door" to be finished and polished, which suggests that it was not put there just to block the shaft from debris, but rather for a more specific reason.
-- The Grand Gallery
The Grand Gallery continues the slope of the Ascending Passage towards the King's Chamber, extending from the 23rd. to the 48th. course, a rise of 21 metres (69 ft). It has been praised as a truly spectacular example of stonemasonry.
It is 8.6 metres (28 ft) high and 46.68 metres (153.1 ft) long. The base is 4 cubits (2.1 m; 6.9 ft) wide, but after two courses - at a height of 2.29 metres (7.5 ft) - the blocks of stone in the walls are corbelled inwards by 6–10 centimetres (2.4–3.9 in) on each side.
There are seven of these steps, so, at the top, the Grand Gallery is only 2 cubits (1.0 m; 3.4 ft) wide. It is roofed by slabs of stone laid at a slightly steeper angle than the floor so that each stone fits into a slot cut into the top of the gallery, like the teeth of a ratchet.
The purpose was to have each block supported by the wall of the Gallery, rather than resting on the block beneath it, in order to prevent cumulative pressure.
At the upper end of the Gallery, on the eastern wall, there is a hole near the roof that opens into a short tunnel by which access can be gained to the lowest of the Relieving Chambers.
At the top of the gallery, there is a step onto a small horizontal platform where a tunnel leads through the Antechamber, once blocked by portcullis stones, into the King's Chamber.
-- The Big Void
In 2017, scientists from the ScanPyramids project discovered a large cavity above the Grand Gallery using muon radiography, which they called the "ScanPyramids Big Void". Its length is at least 30 metres (98 ft) and its cross-section is similar to that of the Grand Gallery.
The purpose of the cavity is unknown, and it is not accessible. Zahi Hawass speculates that it may have been a gap used in the construction of the Grand Gallery, but the research team state that the void is completely different to previously identified construction spaces.
-- The Antechamber
The last line of defense against intrusion was a small chamber specially designed to house portcullis blocking stones, called the Antechamber. It is cased almost entirely in granite, and is situated between the upper end of the Grand Gallery and the King's Chamber.
Three slots for portcullis stones line the east and west wall of the chamber. Each of them is topped with a semi-circular groove for a log, around which ropes could be spanned.
The granite portcullis stones were approximately 1 cubit (52.4 cm; 20.6 in) thick and were lowered into position by the aforementioned ropes which were tied through a series of four holes at the top of the blocks. A corresponding set of four vertical grooves are on the south wall of the chamber, recesses that make space for the ropes.
The Antechamber has a design flaw: the space above them can be accessed, thus all but the last block can be circumvented. This was exploited by looters who punched a hole through the ceiling of the tunnel behind, gaining access to the King's Chamber.
Later on, all three portcullis stones were broken and removed. Fragments of these blocks can be found in various locations in the pyramid.
-- The King's Chamber
The King's Chamber is the uppermost of the three main chambers of the pyramid. It is faced entirely with granite, and measures 20 cubits (10.5 m; 34.4 ft) east-west by 10 cubits (5.2 m; 17.2 ft) north-south.
Its flat ceiling is about 11 cubits and 5 digits (5.8 m;19.0 ft) above the floor, formed by nine slabs of stone weighing in total about 400 tons. All the roof beams show cracks due to the chamber having settled 2.5–5 cm (0.98–1.97 in).
The walls consist of five courses of blocks that are uninscribed, as was the norm for burial chambers of the 4th dynasty. The stones are precisely fitted together. The facing surfaces are dressed to varying degrees, with some displaying remains of bosses not entirely cut away.
The back sides of the blocks were only roughly hewn to shape, as was usual with Egyptian hard-stone facade blocks, presumably to save work.
-- The Sarcophagus
The only object in the King's Chamber is a sarcophagus made out of a single, hollowed-out granite block. When it was rediscovered in the early middle ages, it was found broken open and any contents had already been removed.
It is of the form common for early Egyptian sarcophagi; rectangular in shape with grooves to slide the now missing lid into place with three small holes for pegs to fixate it. The coffer was not perfectly smoothed, displaying various tool marks matching those of copper saws and tubular hand-drills.
The internal dimensions are roughly 198 cm (6.50 ft) by 68 cm (2.23 feet), the external 228 cm (7.48 ft) by 98 cm (3.22 ft), with a height of 105 cm (3.44 ft). The walls have a thickness of about 15 cm (0.49 ft). The sarcophagus is too large to fit around the corner between the Ascending and Descending Passages, which indicates that it must have been placed in the chamber before the roof was put in place.
-- Air Shafts
In the north and south walls of the King's Chamber are two narrow shafts, commonly known as "air shafts". They face each other, and are located approximately 0.91 m (3.0 ft) above the floor, with a width of 18 and 21 cm (7.1 and 8.3 in) and a height of 14 cm (5.5 in).
Both start out horizontally for the length of the granite blocks they go through before changing to an upwards direction. The southern shaft ascends at an angle of 45° with a slight curve westwards. One ceiling stone was found to be distinctly unfinished which Gantenbrink called a "Monday morning block".
The northern shaft changes angle several times, shifting the path to the west, perhaps to avoid the Big Void. The builders had trouble calculating the right angles, resulting in parts of the shaft being narrower. Nowadays they both lead to the exterior. If they originally penetrated the outer casing is unknown.
The purpose of these shafts is not clear: They were long believed by Egyptologists to be shafts for ventilation, but this idea has now been widely abandoned in favour of the shafts serving a ritualistic purpose associated with the ascension of the king's spirit to the heavens. Ironically, both shafts were fitted with ventilators in 1992 to reduce the humidity in the pyramid.
The idea that the shafts point towards stars has been largely dismissed as the northern shaft follows a dog-leg course through the masonry and the southern shaft has a bend of approximately 20 centimetres (7.9 in), indicating no intention to have them point to any celestial objects.
-- The Relieving Chambers
Above the roof of the King's Chamber are five compartments, named (from lowest upwards) "Davison's Chamber", "Wellington's Chamber", "Nelson's Chamber", "Lady Arbuthnot's Chamber", and "Campbell's Chamber".
They were presumably intended to safeguard the King's Chamber from the possibility of the roof collapsing under the weight of stone above, hence they are referred to as "Relieving Chambers".
The granite blocks that divide the chambers have flat bottom sides but roughly shaped top sides, giving all five chambers an irregular floor, but a flat ceiling, with the exception of the uppermost chamber which has a pointed limestone roof.
Nathaniel Davison is credited with the discovery of the lowest of these chambers in 1763, although a French merchant named Maynard informed him of its existence. It can be reached through an ancient passage that originates from the top of the south wall of the Grand Gallery.
The upper four chambers were discovered in 1837 by Howard Vyse after discovering a crack in the ceiling of the first chamber. This allowed the insertion of a long reed, which, with the employment of gunpowder and boring rods, forced a tunnel upwards through the masonry. As no access shafts existed for the upper four chambers they were completely inaccessible until this point.
Numerous graffiti of red ochre paint were found to cover the limestone walls of all four newly discovered chambers. Apart from leveling lines and indication marks for masons, multiple hieroglyphic inscriptions spell out the names of work-gangs.
Those names, which were also found in other Egyptian pyramids like that of Menkaure and Sahure, usually included the name of the pharaoh they were working for. The blocks must have received the inscriptions before the chambers became inaccessible during construction.
Their orientation, often side-ways or upside down, and their sometimes being partially covered by blocks, indicates that the stones were inscribed before being laid.
Acording the old Northern European mythology the Stork is the fortune bringer, i saw this beautiful animal close to the Larserweg near Lelystad, and instead of flying away, you see he turned around and told me that Holland will win the worldcup on sunday evening, so don't worry the mythological fortune bringer told us
The octopus in Germany and the parakeet in Singapore. wich should have been right with the prediction so far, the parakeet, wich i also think is smarter predicted a Dutch win, the octopus a Spanish,
The hind quarters of a giant mythological lion sit near the boat landing at Mingun opposite Mandalay, Myanmar (Burma).
Hand sculpted from polymer clay without the use of molds. Painted with acrylic paint. The mane is fox fur and the tail is tibetan lambs wool.
She is 4 5/8 in long and 2 5/8 in tall at the highest point.
Hinglaj (Sindhi: هنگلاج, Urdu: ﮨنگلاج, Sanskrit: हिङ्ग्लाज, Hindi: हिंगलाज) is an important Hindu pilgrimage place in Balochistan, Pakistan and Kuldevi of Kshatriya Bhavsar Community. It is situated in Balochistan province about 250 km north of Karachi.[1]
Mythological Origin
When Lord Vishnu cut up the body of Sati into 51 pieces so that Lord Shiva would calm down and stop his Tandava, the pieces were scattered over various places of the Indian subcontinent. It is said that the head of Sati fell at Hingula or Hinglaj and is thus considered the most important of the 51 Shakti Peeths. At each of the Peeths, Bhairava (a manifestation of Shiva) accompanies the relics. The Bhairava at Hinglaj is called Bhimalochana, located in Koteshwar, Kutch. The Sanskrit texts mention the part as 'Brahmadreya' or vital essence. For details, see this.
In the Ramayana, after slaying Ravana, Lord Ram came to Hinglaj to atone for his sin of 'Brahmhatya' (killing a Brahmin). Ravana was a Brahmin and a great devotee of Lord Shiva and Durga. Lord Ram meditated at Hinglaj as it was a very important shrine.
The mantra or incantation for Devi Hinglaj is attributed to Saint Dadhichi, an important saint in Hindu mythology. The mantra is :
ॐ हिंगुले परमहिंगुले अमृतरूपिणि तनुशक्ति
मनः शिवे श्री हिंगुलाय नमः स्वाहा
OM HINGULE PARAM HINGULE AMRUTRUPINI TANU SHAKTI
MANAH SHIVE SHREE HINGULAI NAMAH SWAHA
Translation : "Oh Hingula Devi, she who holds nectar in her self and is power incarnate. She who is one with Lord Shiva, to her we pay our respects and make this offering (swaha)."
Yet another incarnation:
ब्रह्मरंध्रम् हिंगुलायाम् भैरवो भीमलोचन: |
कोट्टरी सा महामाया त्रिगुणा या दिगम्बरी ||
BRAHMARANDHRAM HINGULAAYAAM BHAIRAVO VIMALOCHANAH
KOTTARI SAA MAHAAMAAYAA TRIGUNAA YAA DIGAMVARI
Translation : "Mahaamaayaa (Queen of Illusions) who represents the supreme virtue by reigning over all three virtues, has Bhimalochana as her Bhairava, and derides the worldly trappings by dancing naked, resides in this cave of Hingula that enshrines her sacred head."
Geographical Location
Hinglaj is situated in the Balochistan province of Pakistan. It is near the peak of one of the mountains of the Makran range. It is approximately 120 km from the Indus River Delta and 20 km from the Arabian Sea. The area is extremely arid and the pilgrimage also called 'Nani ki Haj' by local Muslims takes place before summer. The pilgrimage starts at a place near the Hao river which is 10 km from Karachi.
The name of Hinglaj lends itself to the Hingol river, the largest in Balochistan and the Hingol National Park which at 6,200 square kilometers is the largest in Pakistan.
Since it is located in a desert which is called Maru in Sanskrit, the shrine is referred to in holy texts as "Marutirtha Hinglaj" which means Hinglaj, the Shrine of the desert. "Marutirtha Hinglaj" is also the name of a Bengali novel by Kalikananda Abadhut who made a pilgrimage to Hinglaj and Koteshwar. The novel is based on real-life experience and has later been adapted into a very successful Bengali movie of the same name.
The Makran Coastal Highway linking Quetta and Gwadar passes through Balochistan. It was built by FWO and follows the same path which Alexander took when he ended his campaign. The highway has made the pilgrimage and visiting the shrine very convenient.
Social Significance
Despite the partition and the increasing Islamic stance of the Pakistani Government and society, Hinglaj has survived and is in fact revered by local Muslims who call it 'Nani ki Mandir'. Muslims offer red or saffron clothes, incense, candles and a sweet preparation called 'Sirini' to the deity[citation needed]. The Muslims protected sites like Hinglaj which are the last vestiges of the Hindu society which once straddled the area.
Hingula means cinnabar (HgS Mercuric Sulphide). It was used in ancient India to cure snakebite and other poisonings and is still employed in traditional medicine. The Goddess Hingula is thus believed to possess powers which can cure poisoning and other diseases. The Muslim name 'Nani' is an abbreviation of the name of the ancient Goddess "Nanaia", whose Persian name is "Anahita".
The Pilgrimage
Although the road linking the port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea with the interior has shortened the pilgrimage a lot, the ancient path followed for millennia through the Baluch desert is endowed with a unique importance. The very journey on foot is considered a penance to purify oneself before approaching the deity. An account of such a journey is given below.
The pilgrims are led by priests or caretakers of the shrine through the desert. They hold a wooden trident in their hands. The trident or Trishul is the weapon of Lord Shiva and hence is associated with the Sati too. Since they hold the trident during the trip, they are called 'Charidaars' (Those who hold the stick or Chadi). The Chadi is draped with saffron, red or pink coloured fabrics.
The priests give a saffron cloth to every pilgrim and an oath is taken that each would help the other. However they are warned not to share their personal stores of water. This act is deemed to be a sort of fast and penance necessary for the journey.
On the path to the shrine are situated wells which are guarded by the local tribesmen. Feuds over water, a scarce commodity, is common in the area. The tribesmen are offered food consisting primarily of Roti (circular flat disks of baked flour) in lieu of water.
Baba Chandrakup
An important stop during the pilgrimage is the mud volcano called 'Chandrakup' (literally 'Moon Well'). It is considered holy and is addressed as 'Baba Chandrakup' The volcano is filled with mud, instead of magma, hence the term "mud volcano". It is considered to be the abode of Babhaknath. It is one of the few sites of active volcanic activity in the Asian mainland. The mud is semi fluid and sometimes it spills over and aggregates and cools into hillocks which surround the site. There are altogether 18 mud volcanoes in the region.
Pilgrims stay up all night at the base of the volcano making Rotis which are offered to the volcano. The activity is considered to be very holy. The ingredients, flour, ghee (clarified butter), jaggery, sugar are mixed on a cloth which is held at all times at four corners by pilgrims. This is done to ensure that it never touches the ground. The prepared Rotis are covered with wood.
At daybreak, the Rotis are carried by the pilgrims and priests to the mouth of the crater. A Chadi or Wooden Trident is planted near the edge of the crater and offerings of incense and cannabis are made along with recitation of 'mantras'. The rotis are then tore up and cast into the crater.
After this ritual every pilgrim is asked to confess his sins and ask for forgiveness. Anyone who refuses or hesitates to confess to his or her sins is ostracised and abandoned by the party. After the confession, the party proceeds with the permission of 'Baba Chandrakup'.
Reaching the Shrine
The pilgrimage continues for another four to five days after leaving Chandrakup. The final stop is a small village with wooden houses. It is home to the caretakers of the shrine and Baluch tribesmen who revere the deity even though they are Muslims. Before entering the shrine, the pilgrims bathe in the Hingol River (also called the Aghore River). The shrine is situated on the mountain on the other bank of the river. The pilgrims bathe and visit the shrine in their wet clothes.
The Shrine's Mark
The shrine is recognised by a mark which resembles the sun and the moon. This mark is upon a giant boulder at the top of the hill containing the cave. It is believed that Lord Ram created this mark with the strike of his arrow after his penance ended.
The Shrine
The shrine is called 'Mahal', a word of Arabic origin which means palace. The natural beauty of the shrine has spawned folklore that it was constructed by demigods called 'Yakshas'. The walls and roof of the cave are encrusted with colourful stones and semi-precious veins. The floor is also multi hued.
The entrance to the cave is around 50 feet in height. At the end of the cave is the sanctum sanctorum , which houses the holy relic. It is covered by red clothes and vermilion. There are two entrances to the sanctum. One has to crawl into the sanctum, take the 'darshan' and leave through the other opening. Prasad is distributed to the pilgrims and they return after seeing the Milky Way at night.
Hingula Pithas
Although the Hingula shrine in Balochistan is considered to be a true Shakti Peeth, other shrines dedicated to the goddess exist in India and Sri Lanka. One important shrine is located 14 km from Talcher in the state of Orissa in India. King Nala of the Vidarbha region of Western India was an ardent devotee of Devi Hingula. He was approached by the King of Puri for help. In order to start cooking 'Mahaprasada' for Lord Jagannath he had to procure Devi Hingula as fire for the temple kitchen. The Goddess agreed and moved to Puri as fire. The Hingula shrine in Balochistan with its location west of the River Indus (and in Balochistan) is the only Shakti Peeth outside the subcontinent.
Edited National Diet Library chart of the twelve types of kappa (河童) (mythological water sprite/beast/monster/fairy/yokai) in Japan. The thing to remember if you ever get waylaid by a kappa is their fondness for cucumbers. Simply offer the accosting kappa a cucumber and you'll be on your way without further difficulty.
Wikipedia article: Kappa (folklore)
Image source: dl.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid/2543033
Publication History
Frankenstein's monster, now commonly referred to as Frankenstein, is a fictional character that first appeared in Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus as its main antagonist. Shelley's title compares the monster's creator, Victor Frankenstein, to the mythological character Prometheus, who fashioned humans out of clay and gave them fire.
In Shelley's Gothic story, Victor Frankenstein builds the creature in his laboratory through an ambiguous method based on a scientific principle he discovered. Shelley describes the monster as 8 feet (240 cm) tall and emotional.
The monster attempts to fit into human society but is shunned, which leads him to seek revenge against Frankenstein. According to the scholar Joseph Carroll, the monster occupies "a border territory between the characteristics that typically define protagonists and antagonists".
Frankenstein's monster became iconic in popular culture, and has been featured in various forms of media, including films, television series, merchandise and video games.
The most popularly recognized version is Boris Karloff's portrayal in the 1930s films Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, and Son of Frankenstein.
Character Fictional History
Victor Frankenstein builds the creature over a two-year period in the attic of his boarding house in Ingolstadt after discovering a scientific principle which allows him to create life from non-living matter.
Frankenstein is disgusted by his creation, however, and flees from it in horror. Frightened, and unaware of his own identity, the monster wanders through the wilderness.
He finds solace beside a remote cottage inhabited by an older, blind man and his two children. Eavesdropping, the creature familiarizes himself with their lives and learns to speak, whereby he becomes an eloquent, educated, and well-mannered individual.
During this time, he also finds Frankenstein's journal in the pocket of the jacket he found in the laboratory and learns how he was created. The creature eventually introduces himself to the family's blind father, De Lacey, who treats him with kindness. When the rest of the family returns, however, they are frightened of him and drive him away.
Enraged, the creature feels that humankind is his enemy and begins to hate his creator for abandoning him. Although he despises Frankenstein, he sets out to find him, believing that he is the only person who will help him. On his journey, the creature rescues a young girl from a river but is shot in the shoulder by the child's father, believing the creature intended to harm his child.
Enraged by another act of cruelty, the creature swears revenge on humankind for the suffering they have caused him. He seeks revenge against his creator in particular for leaving him alone in a world where he is hated. Using the information in Frankenstein's notes, the creature resolves to find him.
The monster kills Victor's younger brother William upon learning of the boy's relation to his creator and frames Justine Moritz, a young woman who lives with the Frankensteins, as the culprit (causing her execution afterwards). When Frankenstein retreats to the Alps, the monster approaches him at the summit, recounts his experiences, and asks his creator to build him a female mate.
He promises, in return, to disappear with his mate and never trouble humankind again, but threatens to destroy everything Frankenstein holds dear should he fail or refuse. Frankenstein agrees, and eventually constructs a female creature on a remote island in Orkney, but aghast at the possibility of creating a race of monsters, destroys the female creature before it is complete.
Horrified and enraged, the creature immediately appears, and gives Frankenstein a final threat: "I will be with you on your wedding night."
After leaving his creator, the creature goes on to kill Victor's best friend, Henry Clerval, and later kills Frankenstein's bride, Elizabeth Lavenza, on their wedding night, whereupon Frankenstein's father dies of grief. With nothing left to live for but revenge, Frankenstein dedicates himself to destroying his creation, and the creature goads him into pursuing him north, through Scandinavia and into Russia, staying ahead of him the entire way.
As they reach the Arctic Circle and travel over the pack ice of the Arctic Ocean, Frankenstein, suffering from severe exhaustion and hypothermia, comes within a mile of the creature, but is separated from him when the ice he is traveling over splits.
A ship exploring the region encounters the dying Frankenstein, who relates his story to the ship's captain, Robert Walton. Later, the monster boards the ship, but upon finding Frankenstein dead, is overcome by grief and pledges to incinerate himself at "the Northernmost extremity of the globe". He then departs, never to be seen again.
Appearance
Shelley described Frankenstein's monster as an 8-foot-tall (2.4 m) creature of hideous contrasts:
"His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips."
A picture of the creature appeared in the 1831 edition. Early stage portrayals dressed him in a toga, shaded, along with the monster's skin, a pale blue. Throughout the 19th century, the monster's image remained variable according to the artist.
Universal Pictures films
Boris Karloff in Bride of Frankenstein (1935) in a variation of the classic 1931 film version with an assist from make-up artist Jack Pierce.
Karloff had gained weight since the original iteration and much of the monster's hair has been burned off to indicate having been caught in a fire. Some of the hair was gradually replaced during the course of the film to simulate it beginning to grow back.
The best-known image of Frankenstein's monster in popular culture derives from Boris Karloff's portrayal in the 1931 movie Frankenstein, in which he wore makeup applied and designed by Jack P. Pierce, who based the monster's face and iconic flat head shape on a drawing Pierce's daughter (whom Pierce feared to be psychic) had drawn from a dream.
Universal Studios, which released the film, was quick to secure ownership of the copyright for the makeup format. Karloff played the monster in two more Universal films, Bride of Frankenstein and Son of Frankenstein; Lon Chaney Jr. took over the part from Karloff in The Ghost of Frankenstein; Bela Lugosi portrayed the role in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man; and Glenn Strange played the monster in the last three Universal Studios films to feature the character – House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.
However, the makeup worn by subsequent actors replicated the iconic look first worn by Karloff. The image of Karloff's face is currently owned by his daughter's company, Karloff Enterprises, secured for her in a lawsuit for which she was represented by attorney Bela G. Lugosi (Bela Lugosi's son), after which Universal replaced Karloff's features with those of Glenn Strange in most of their marketing. In 1969, the New York Times mistakenly ran a photograph of Strange for Karloff's obituary.
Since Karloff's portrayal, the creature almost always appears as a towering, undead-like figure, often with a flat-topped angular head and bolts on his neck to serve as electrical connectors or grotesque electrodes.
Hammer Films Productions version
In the 1957 film The Curse of Frankenstein, Christopher Lee was cast as the creature. The producers Hammer Film Productions refrained from duplicating aspects of Universal's 1931 film, and so Phil Leakey designed a new look for the creature bearing no resemblance to the Boris Karloff design created by Jack Pierce.
For his performance as the creature Lee played him as a loose-limbed and childlike, fearful and lonely, with a suggestion of being in pain. Author Paul Leggett describes the creature as being like an abused child; afraid but also violently angry. Christopher Lee was annoyed on getting the script and discovering that the monster had no dialogue, for this creature was totally mute.
According to Marcus K. Harmes in contrasting Lee's creature with the one played by Karloff, "Lee's actions as the monster seem more directly evil, to judge from the expression on his face when he bears down on the helpless old blind man but these are explained in the film as psychopathic impulses caused by brain damage, not the cunning of the literary monster. Lee also evokes considerable pathos in his performance."
In this film the aggressive and childish demeanour of the monster are in contrast with that of the murdered Professor Bernstein, once the "finest brain in Europe", from whom the creature's now damaged brain was taken.
The sequels to The Curse of Frankenstein would feature Victor Frankenstein creating various different Frankenstein monsters, none of which would be played by Christopher Lee:
The film The Revenge of Frankenstein has Victor Frankenstein placing the brain of a hunchback named Karl (portrayed by Oscar Quitak) into a makeshift body (portrayed by Michael Gwynn). Though the procedure works, Karl starts to redevelop his deformities and later dies in front of Victor.
The film The Evil of Frankenstein reveals that Victor Frankenstein had made a prototype version of his monster which was kept in a frozen cave. After being thawed out and reanimated, the Monster (portrayed by Kiwi Kingston) has his brain awakened by a hypnotist named Zoltan (portrayed by Peter Woodthorpe). When Frankenstein's lab went off the cliff, it apparently killed Victor and the Monster.
The film Frankenstein Created Woman has Victor Frankenstein surviving the lab's destruction and making a female monster from the remains of a cowardly innkeeper's half-disfigured daughter Christina Kleve (portrayed by Susan Denberg) after she threw herself in the river following the death of Victor's ally Hans. He and Dr. Hertz transferred Hans' soul into Christina's body causing her to become possessed by him. After coming to her senses, Christina commits suicide by drowning herself in the river.
The film Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed has Victor Frankenstein making a monster out of the remains of the asylum's administrator Professor Richter (portrayed by Freddie Jones) that involves placing the brain of Victor's former assistant Dr. Frederick Brant (portrayed by George Pravda) into Professor Richter's body. The Monster later drags Victor into the burning house.
The film Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell has Victor surviving the fire and making a monster from the hulking ape-like asylum inmate Herr Schneider (portrayed by David Prowse) while also giving him a new brain and new eyes. During its plans for revenge, the Monster is killed by a mob of asylum inmates.
Toho versions
In the 1965 Toho film Frankenstein vs. Baragon, the heart of Frankenstein's monster was transported from Germany to Hiroshima as World War II neared its end, only to be irradiated during the atomic bombing of the city, granting it miraculous regenerative capabilities.
Over the ensuing 20 years, it grows into a complete human child, who then rapidly matures into a giant, 20-metre-tall man after he is rediscovered. Frankenstein escapes a laboratory in the city after being agitated by news reporters using flash photography on him, and goes to fend for himself in the countryside, only to be accused of attacking villages and killing people, actually the victims of the underground monster Baragon. The two monsters face off in a showdown that ends with Frankenstein's monster victorious, though he falls into the depths of the Earth after the ground collapses beneath his feet.
The film's sequel The War of the Gargantuas would see cell samples of the monster regenerate into the titular Gargantuas, two hairy giants consisting of the malicious green sea monster Gaira and the friendly brown mountain monster Sanda. Gaira and Sanda later appeared in the series Ike! Godman and the IDW Publishing comic Godzilla: Rulers of Earth.
Other film versions
In the 1973 TV miniseries Frankenstein: The True Story, in which the creature is played by Michael Sarrazin, he appears as a strikingly handsome man who later degenerates into a grotesque monster due to a flaw in the creation process.
In the 1977 film Terror of Frankenstein (also released under the title Victor Frankenstein), "the Monster" is played by Per Oscarsson. This adaptation closely resembles the creature as described in the novel, both intelligent and articulate, but with dark blond hair and black lips.
In the 1994 film Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the creature is played by Robert De Niro and has an appearance closer to that described in the original novel, though this version of the creature possesses balding grey hair and a body covered in bloody stitches. He is, as in the novel, motivated by pain and loneliness. In this version, Frankenstein gives the monster the brain of his mentor, Doctor Waldman, while his body is made from a man who killed Waldman while resisting a vaccination. The monster retains Waldman's "trace memories" that apparently help him quickly learn to speak and read.
In the 2004 film Van Helsing, the monster is shown in a modernized version of the Karloff design. He is 8 to 9 feet (240–270 cm) tall, has a square bald head, gruesome scars, and pale green skin. The electrical origin of the creature is emphasized with one electrified dome in the back of his head and another over his heart, and he also has hydraulic pistons in his legs, with the design being similar to that of a steam-punk cyborg. Although not as eloquent as in the novel, this version of the creature is intelligent and relatively nonviolent.
In 2004, a TV miniseries adaptation of Frankenstein was made by Hallmark. Luke Goss plays the creature. This adaptation more closely resembles the monster as described in the novel: intelligent and articulate, with flowing, dark hair and watery eyes.
The 2005 film Frankenstein Reborn portrays the creature as a paraplegic man who tries to regain the ability to walk by having a nanobots surging through his body but has side effects. Instead, the surgeon kills him and resurrects his corpse as a reanimated zombie-like creature. This version of the creature has stitches on his face where he was shot, strains of brown hair, black pants, a dark hoodie, and a black jacket with a brown fur collar.
The 2014 TV series Penny Dreadful also rejects the Karloff design in favour of Shelley's description. This version of the creature has the flowing dark hair described by Shelley, although he departs from her description by having pale grey skin and obvious scars along the right side of his face. Additionally, he is of average height, being even shorter than other characters in the series. In this series, the monster names himself "Caliban", after the character in William Shakespeare's The Tempest. In the series, Victor Frankenstein makes a second and third creature, each more indistinguishable from normal human beings.
Frankenstein's monster appears in the Reiwa era film The Great Yokai War: Guardians.
The 2024 film Monster Mash by The Asylum features a Frankenstein's monster variant called Boris (portrayed by Erik Celso Mann).
Personality
As depicted by Shelley, the creature is a sensitive, emotional person whose only aim is to share his life with another sentient being like himself. The novel portrayed him as versed in Paradise Lost, Plutarch's Lives, and The Sorrows of Young Werther, books he finds after having learnt language.
From the beginning, the creature is rejected by everyone he meets. He realizes from the moment of his "birth" that even his own creator cannot stand the sight of him; this is obvious when Frankenstein says "…one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped…". Upon seeing his own reflection, he realizes that he too is repulsed by his appearance. His greatest desire is to find love and acceptance; but when that desire is denied, he swears revenge on his creator.
Contrary to many film versions, the creature in the novel is very articulate and eloquent in his speech. Almost immediately after his creation, he dresses himself; and within 11 months, he can speak and read German and French. By the end of the novel, the creature is able to speak English fluently as well.
The Van Helsing and Penny Dreadful interpretations of the character have similar personalities to the literary original, although the latter version is the only one to retain the character's violent reactions to rejection. In the 1931 film adaptation, the creature is depicted as mute and bestial; it is implied that this is because he is accidentally implanted with a criminal's "abnormal" brain.
In the subsequent sequel, Bride of Frankenstein, the creature learns to speak, albeit in short, stunted sentences. However, his intelligence is implied to be fairly developed, since what little dialogue he speaks suggests he has a world-weary attitude to life, and a deep understanding of his unnatural state. When rejected by his bride, he briefly goes through a suicidal state and attempts suicide, blowing up the laboratory he is in. In the second sequel, Son of Frankenstein, the creature is again rendered inarticulate.
Following a brain transplant in the third sequel, The Ghost of Frankenstein, the creature speaks with the voice and personality of the brain donor. This was continued after a fashion in the scripting for the fourth sequel, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, but the dialogue was excised before release.
The creature was effectively mute in later sequels, although he refers to Count Dracula as his "master" in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. The creature is often portrayed as being afraid of fire, although he is not afraid of it in the novel, even using fire to destroy himself.
⚡ Happy 🎯 Heroclix 💫 Friday! 👽
_____________________________
A year of the shows and performers of the Bijou Planks Theater.
Secret Identity: N/A
Publisher: Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & Jones. Finsbury Square, London
First appearance: 1818, Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus
Created by: Mary Shelley (Author)
Heracles second labor: the Hydra of Lerna.
On the side A) of this Attic black figure amphora attributed to the Michigan Painter there's the representation of one of the twelve labors inflicted on Hercules by Eurystheus: the killing of the Hydra of Lerna, one of the most ancient mythological subjects in the Greek art. The Hydra, an aquatic monster with multiple heads (from five to a hundred, according to ancient sources), son of Echidna and Tifone, was raised by Hera in the marsh of Lerna, in Argolis, under a plane tree, near the Amymone springs, just to be used as a trial for Hercules. The heads of the monster cut oft with the sword were able to regrow, nevertheless the hero managed to defeat it thanks to a trick inspired by Athena and calling for help his nephew lolaus: while the hero held the monster, lolaus cauterized every wound with embers taken from the fire set in the nearby forest, and this is the exact moment of the challenge reproduced in the amphora. It was well known that the head in the middle was immortal: Hercules cut it off, buried it and placed on it an enormous rock, then dipped his arrows in the blood of the Hydra, thus making them poisonous to the slightest scratch.
On side B) Hermes between two women.
Source: exhibition catalogue
Attic black figure amphora
H. 28.6; L. max. 18 cm.
Attributed to “The Michigan Painter”
530500 BC.
From Cerveteri (Caere)
Rome, Villa Giulia, Museo Nazionale Etrusco, Inv. No.106465
Exhibition “Colors of the Eruscans” - Cat N. 41
Rome, Centrale Montemartini
A mythological hybrid, the mušḫuššu is a scaly dragon with hind legs resembling the talons of an eagle, feline forelegs, a long neck and tail, a horned head, a snake-like tongue, and a crest.
Photographed at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, Germany.
An obayifo is a vampire/witch-like mythological creature from West Africa coming from the folklore of the Ashanti. In Ashanti folklore, obayifo are very common and may inhabit the bodies of any man or woman. They are described as having shifty eyes and being obsessed with food.
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In Ashanti Twi, the word used to describe witchcraft is bayi. Despite this, the etymology of bayi is still uncertain. Another possible variation is oba meaning "child" and yi meaning to remove. "To remove a child" in this case highlights a close association of infant mortality and fertility to the likes of witchcraft. Alternatively, bayi also may have a history in representing blood or family lineage. People, typically women, who practiced bayi turned into the obayifo. Although obayifo is used to describe both the men and women who practiced bayi and turned into the monster, a distinction can be drawn between the men and women who practiced bayi, as obansam, meaning wizard, was a term used for the males exclusively as obayifo was sometimes only used for women exclusively.
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multi layer ai/pixlr/gimp
The libretto of Tannhäuser combines mythological elements characteristic of German Romantische Oper (Romantic opera) and the medieval setting typical of many French Grand Operas. Wagner brings these two together by constructing a plot involving the 14th-century Minnesingers and the myth of Venus and her subterranean realm of Venusberg. Both the historical and the mythological are united in Tannhäuser's personality; although he is a historical poet composer, little is known about him other than myths that surround him.
Wagner wove a variety of sources into the opera narrative. According to his autobiography, he was inspired by finding the story in "a Volksbuch (popular book) about the Venusberg", which he claimed "fell into his hands", although he admits knowing of the story from the Phantasus of Ludwig Tieck and E. T. A. Hoffmann's story, Der Kampf der Sänger (The Singers' Contest). Tieck's tale, which names the hero "Tannenhäuser", tells of the minnesinger-knight's amorous adventures in the Venusberg, his travels to Rome as a Pilgrim, and his repudiation by the pope. To this Wagner added material from Hoffmann's story, from Serapions-Brüder (1819), describing a song contest at the Wartburg castle,[1] a castle which featured prominently in Thuringian history. Heinrich Heine had provided Wagner with the inspiration for Der fliegende Holländer and Wagner again drew on Heine for Tannhäuser. In Heine's sardonic essay Elementargeister (Elemental spirits), there appears a poem about Tannhäuser and the lure of the grotto of Venus, published in 1837 in the third volume of Der Salon.[1] Other possible sources include Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué's play Der Sängerkrieg auf der Wartburg and Eichendorff's Das Marmorbild (The Marble Statue, 1819).[1][2]
The legend of Tannhäuser, the amorous crusading Franconian knight, and that of the song contest on the Wartburg (which did not involve Tannhäuser, but the semi-mythical minnesinger Heinrich von Ofterdingen), came from quite separate traditions. Ludwig Bechstein wove together the two legends in the first volume of his collection of Thuringian legends, Der Sagenschatz und die Sagenkreise des Thüringerlandes (A treasury of the tales of Thuringian legends and legend cycles, 1835), which was probably the Volksbuch to which Wagner refers to in his autobiography.[3][1] Wagner also knew of the work of another contemporary, Christian Theodor Ludwig Lucas, whose Über den Krieg von Wartburg of 1838 also conflated the two legends.[4][5] This confusion (which explains why Tannhäuser is referred to as 'Heinrich' in the opera) does not fit with the historical timeline of the events in the opera, since the Singers' Contest involving von Ofterdingen is said to have taken place around 1207, while Tannhäuser's poetry appeared much later (1245–1265). The sources used by Wagner therefore reflected a nineteenth century romantic view of the medieval period, with concerns about artistic freedom and the constraints of organised religion typical of the period of Romanticism.[6]
During Wagner's first stay in Paris (1839–1842) he read a paper by Ludwig Lucas on the Sängerkrieg which sparked his imagination, and encouraged him to return to Germany, which he reached on 7 April 1842.[7] Having crossed the Rhine, the Wagners drove towards Thuringia, and saw the early rays of sun striking the Wartburg; Wagner immediately began to sketch the scenery that would become the stage sets.[8] Wagner wrote the prose draft of Tannhäuser between June and July 1842 and the libretto in April 1843.[9]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tannhäuser_(opera)
Neuschwanstein Castle (German: Schloss Neuschwanstein, pronounced [ˈʃlɔs nɔʏˈʃvaːnʃtaɪn], Southern Bavarian: Schloss Neischwanstoa) is a 19th-century Romanesque Revival palace on a rugged hill above the village of Hohenschwangau near Füssen in southwest Bavaria, Germany. The palace was commissioned by King Ludwig II of Bavaria as a retreat and in honour of Richard Wagner. Ludwig paid for the palace out of his personal fortune and by means of extensive borrowing, rather than Bavarian public funds.
The castle was intended as a home for the King, until he died in 1886. It was open to the public shortly after his death.[1] Since then more than 61 million people have visited Neuschwanstein Castle.[2] More than 1.3 million people visit annually, with as many as 6,000 per day in the summer.[3]
Contents
1Location
2History
2.1Inspiration and design
2.2Construction
2.3Funding
2.4Simplified completion
2.5World War II
3Architecture
3.1Exterior
3.2Interior
4Tourism
5In culture, art, and science
5.1World Heritage candidature
6Panoramas
7Notes
8Citations
9General sources
10External links
Location[edit]
A northward view of Neuschwanstein Castle from Mount Säuling (2,047 m or 6,716 ft) on the border between Bavaria and Tyrol: Schwangau between large Forggensee reservoir (1952) and Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein palaces
The municipality of Schwangau lies at an elevation of 800 m (2,620 ft) at the southwest border of the German state of Bavaria. Its surroundings are characterised by the transition between the Alpine foothills in the south (toward the nearby Austrian border) and a hilly landscape in the north that appears flat by comparison.
In the Middle Ages, three castles overlooked the villages. One was called Schwanstein Castle.[nb 1] In 1832, Ludwig's father King Maximilian II of Bavaria bought its ruins to replace them with the comfortable neo-Gothic palace known as Hohenschwangau Castle. Finished in 1837, the palace became his family's summer residence, and his elder son Ludwig (born 1845) spent a large part of his childhood here.[4]
Vorderhohenschwangau Castle and Hinterhohenschwangau Castle[nb 2] sat on a rugged hill overlooking Schwanstein Castle, two nearby lakes (Alpsee and Schwansee), and the village. Separated by only a moat, they jointly consisted of a hall, a keep, and a fortified tower house.[5] In the nineteenth century only ruins remained of the twin medieval castles, but those of Hinterhohenschwangau served as a lookout place known as Sylphenturm.[6]
The ruins above the family palace were known to the crown prince from his excursions. He first sketched one of them in his diary in 1859.[7] When the young king came to power in 1864, the construction of a new palace in place of the two ruined castles became the first in his series of palace building projects.[8] Ludwig called the new palace New Hohenschwangau Castle; only after his death was it renamed Neuschwanstein.[9] The confusing result is that Hohenschwangau and Schwanstein have effectively swapped names: Hohenschwangau Castle replaced the ruins of Schwanstein Castle, and Neuschwanstein Castle replaced the ruins of the two Hohenschwangau Castles.
History[edit]
Inspiration and design[edit]
Neuschwanstein embodies both the contemporaneous architectural fashion known as castle romanticism (German: Burgenromantik), and King Ludwig II's enthusiasm for the operas of Richard Wagner.
In the 19th century, many castles were constructed or reconstructed, often with significant changes to make them more picturesque. Palace-building projects similar to Neuschwanstein had been undertaken earlier in several of the German states and included Hohenschwangau Castle, Lichtenstein Castle, Hohenzollern Castle, and numerous buildings on the River Rhine such as Stolzenfels Castle.[10] The inspiration for the construction of Neuschwanstein came from two journeys in 1867—one in May to the reconstructed Wartburg near Eisenach,[11] another in July to the Château de Pierrefonds, which Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was transforming from a ruined castle into a historistic palace.[12][nb 3]
Neuschwanstein project drawing (Christian Jank 1869)
The King saw both buildings as representatives of a romantic interpretation of the Middle Ages, as well as the musical mythology of his friend Wagner, whose operas Tannhäuser and Lohengrin had made a lasting impression on him.[13]
In February 1868, Ludwig's grandfather King Ludwig I died, freeing the considerable sums that were previously spent on the abdicated King's appanage.[8][nb 4] This allowed Ludwig II to start the architectural project of building a private refuge in the familiar landscape far from the capital Munich, so that he could live out his idea of the Middle Ages.
It is my intention to rebuild the old castle ruin of Hohenschwangau near the Pöllat Gorge in the authentic style of the old German knights' castles, and I must confess to you that I am looking forward very much to living there one day [...]; you know the revered guest I would like to accommodate there; the location is one of the most beautiful to be found, holy and unapproachable, a worthy temple for the divine friend who has brought salvation and true blessing to the world. It will also remind you of "Tannhäuser" (Singers' Hall with a view of the castle in the background), "Lohengrin'" (castle courtyard, open corridor, path to the chapel) ...
— Ludwig II, Letter to Richard Wagner, May 1868[14]
The building design was drafted by the stage designer Christian Jank and realised by the architect Eduard Riedel.[15] For technical reasons, the ruined castles could not be integrated into the plan. Initial ideas for the palace drew stylistically on Nuremberg Castle and envisaged a simple building in place of the old Vorderhohenschwangau Castle, but they were rejected and replaced by increasingly extensive drafts, culminating in a bigger palace modelled on the Wartburg.[16] The king insisted on a detailed plan and on personal approval of each and every draft.[17] Ludwig's control went so far that the palace has been regarded as his own creation, rather than that of the architects involved.[18]
Whereas contemporary architecture critics derided Neuschwanstein, one of the last big palace building projects of the nineteenth century, as kitsch, Neuschwanstein and Ludwig II's other buildings are now counted among the major works of European historicism.[19][20] For financial reasons, a project similar to Neuschwanstein – Falkenstein Castle – never left the planning stages.[21]
The palace can be regarded as typical for nineteenth-century architecture. The shapes of Romanesque (simple geometric figures such as cuboids and semicircular arches), Gothic (upward-pointing lines, slim towers, delicate embellishments) and Byzantine architecture and art (the Throne Hall décor) were mingled in an eclectic fashion and supplemented with 19th-century technical achievements. The Patrona Bavariae and Saint George on the court face of the Palas (main building) are depicted in the local Lüftlmalerei style, a fresco technique typical for Allgäu farmers' houses, while the unimplemented drafts for the Knights' House gallery foreshadow elements of Art Nouveau.[22] Characteristic of Neuschwanstein's design are theatre themes: Christian Jank drew on coulisse drafts from his time as a scenic painter.[23]
The basic style was originally planned to be neo-Gothic but the palace was primarily built in Romanesque style in the end. The operatic themes moved gradually from Tannhäuser and Lohengrin to Parsifal.[24]
Construction[edit]
Neuschwanstein under construction: Bower still missing, Rectangular Tower under construction (photograph c. 1882–85)
Neuschwanstein under construction: upper courtyard (photograph c. 1886)
In 1868, the ruins of the medieval twin castles were completely demolished; the remains of the old keep were blown up.[25] The foundation stone for the palace was laid on 5 September 1869; in 1872 its cellar was completed and in 1876, everything up to the first floor, the gatehouse being finished first. At the end of 1882 it was completed and fully furnished, allowing Ludwig to take provisional lodgings there and observe the ongoing construction work.[24] In 1874, management of the civil works passed from Eduard Riedel to Georg von Dollmann.[26] The topping out ceremony for the Palas was in 1880, and in 1884, the King was able to move in to the new building. In the same year, the direction of the project passed to Julius Hofmann, after Dollmann had fallen from the King's favour.
The palace was erected as a conventional brick construction and later encased in various types of rock. The white limestone used for the fronts came from a nearby quarry.[27]
The sandstone bricks for the portals and bay windows came from Schlaitdorf in Württemberg. Marble from Untersberg near Salzburg was used for the windows, the arch ribs, the columns and the capitals. The Throne Hall was a later addition to the plans and required a steel framework.
The transport of building materials was facilitated by scaffolding and a steam crane that lifted the material to the construction site. Another crane was used at the construction site. The recently founded Dampfkessel-Revisionsverein (Steam Boiler Inspection Association) regularly inspected both boilers.
For about two decades the construction site was the principal employer in the region.[28] In 1880, about 200 craftsmen were occupied at the site,[29] not counting suppliers and other persons indirectly involved in the construction. At times when the King insisted on particularly close deadlines and urgent changes, reportedly up to 300 workers per day were active, sometimes working at night by the light of oil lamps. Statistics from the years 1879/1880 support an immense amount of building materials: 465 tonnes (513 short tons) of Salzburg marble, 1,550 t (1,710 short tons) of sandstone, 400,000 bricks and 2,050 cubic metres (2,680 cu yd) of wood for the scaffolding.
In 1870, a society was founded for insuring the workers, for a low monthly fee, augmented by the King. The heirs of construction casualties (30 cases are mentioned in the statistics) received a small pension.
In 1884, the King was able to move into the (still unfinished) Palas,[30] and in 1885, he invited his mother Marie to Neuschwanstein on the occasion of her 60th birthday.[nb 5] By 1886, the external structure of the Palas (hall) was mostly finished.[30] In the same year, Ludwig had the first, wooden Marienbrücke over the Pöllat Gorge replaced by a steel construction.
Despite its size, Neuschwanstein did not have space for the royal court, but contained only the King's private lodging and servants' rooms. The court buildings served decorative, rather than residential purposes:[9] The palace was intended to serve King Ludwig II as a kind of inhabitable theatrical setting.[30] As a temple of friendship it was also dedicated to the life and work of Richard Wagner, who died in 1883 before he had set foot in the building.[31] In the end, Ludwig II lived in the palace for a total of only 172 days.[32]
Funding[edit]
Neuschwanstein in 1886
The King's wishes and demands expanded during the construction of Neuschwanstein, and so did the expenses. Drafts and estimated costs were revised repeatedly.[33] Initially a modest study was planned instead of the great throne hall, and projected guest rooms were struck from the drafts to make place for a Moorish Hall, which could not be realised due to lack of resources. Completion was originally projected for 1872, but deferred repeatedly.[33]
Neuschwanstein, the symbolic medieval knight's castle, was not King Ludwig II's only huge construction project. It was followed by the rococo style Lustschloss of Linderhof Palace and the baroque palace of Herrenchiemsee, a monument to the era of absolutism.[8] Linderhof, the smallest of the projects, was finished in 1886, and the other two remain incomplete. All three projects together drained his resources. The King paid for his construction projects by private means and from his civil list income. Contrary to frequent claims, the Bavarian treasury was not directly burdened by his buildings.[30][34] From 1871, Ludwig had an additional secret income in return for a political favour given to Otto von Bismarck.[nb 6]
The construction costs of Neuschwanstein in the King's lifetime amounted to 6.2 million marks (equivalent to 40 million 2009 €),[35] almost twice the initial cost estimate of 3.2 million marks.[34] As his private means were insufficient for his increasingly escalating construction projects, the King continuously opened new lines of credit.[36] In 1876, a court counselor was replaced after pointing out the danger of insolvency.[37] By 1883 he already owed 7 million marks,[38] and in spring 1884 and August 1885 debt conversions of 7.5 million marks and 6.5 million marks, respectively, became necessary.[36]
Even after his debts had reached 14 million marks, King Ludwig II insisted on continuation of his architectural projects; he threatened suicide if his creditors seized his palaces.[37] In early 1886, Ludwig asked his cabinet for a credit of 6 million marks, which was denied. In April, he followed Bismarck's advice to apply for the money to his parliament. In June the Bavarian government decided to depose the King, who was living at Neuschwanstein at the time. On 9 June he was incapacitated, and on 10 June he had the deposition commission arrested in the gatehouse.[39] In expectation of the commission, he alerted the gendarmerie and fire brigades of surrounding places for his protection.[36] A second commission headed by Bernhard von Gudden arrived on the next day, and the King was forced to leave the palace that night. Ludwig was put under the supervision of von Gudden. On 13 June, both died under mysterious circumstances in the shallow shore water of Lake Starnberg near Berg Castle.
Simplified completion[edit]
Neuschwanstein front façade and surroundings (photochrom print, c. 1900)
A 1901 postcard of Berg Castle
At the time of King Ludwig's death the palace was far from complete. He slept only 11 nights in the castle. The external structures of the Gatehouse and the Palas were mostly finished but the Rectangular Tower was still scaffolded. Work on the Bower had not started, but was completed in a simplified form by 1892 without the planned figures of the female saints. The Knights' House was also simplified. In King Ludwig's plans the columns in the Knights' House gallery were held as tree trunks and the capitals as the corresponding crowns. Only the foundations existed for the core piece of the palace complex: a keep of 90 metres (300 ft) height planned in the upper courtyard, resting on a three-nave chapel. This was not realised,[17] and a connection wing between the Gatehouse and the Bower saw the same fate.[40] Plans for a castle garden with terraces and a fountain west of the Palas were also abandoned after the King's death.
The interior of the royal living space in the palace was mostly completed in 1886; the lobbies and corridors were painted in a simpler style by 1888.[41] The Moorish Hall desired by the King (and planned below the Throne Hall) was not realised any more than the so-called Knights' Bath, which, modelled after the Knights' Bath in the Wartburg, was intended to render homage to the knights' cult as a medieval baptism bath. A Bride Chamber in the Bower (after a location in Lohengrin),[23] guest rooms in the first and second floor of the Palas and a great banquet hall were further abandoned projects.[33] In fact, a complete development of Neuschwanstein had never even been planned, and at the time of the King's death there was not a utilisation concept for numerous rooms.[29]
Neuschwanstein was still incomplete when Ludwig II died in 1886. The King never intended to make the palace accessible to the public.[30] No more than six weeks after the King's death, however, the Prince-Regent Luitpold ordered the palace opened to paying visitors. The administrators of King Ludwig's estate managed to balance the construction debts by 1899.[42] From then until World War I, Neuschwanstein was a stable and lucrative source of revenue for the House of Wittelsbach, indeed King Ludwig's castles were probably the single largest income source earned by the Bavarian royal family in the last years prior to 1914. To guarantee a smooth course of visits, some rooms and the court buildings were finished first. Initially the visitors were allowed to move freely in the palace, causing the furniture to wear quickly.
When Bavaria became a republic in 1918, the government socialised the civil list. The resulting dispute with the House of Wittelsbach led to a split in 1923: King Ludwig's palaces including Neuschwanstein fell to the state and are now managed by the Bavarian Palace Department, a division of the Bavarian finance ministry. Nearby Hohenschwangau Castle fell to the Wittelsbacher Ausgleichsfonds, whose revenues go to the House of Wittelsbach.[43] The visitor numbers continued to rise, reaching 200,000 in 1939.[43]
World War II[edit]
Due to its secluded location, the palace survived the destruction of two World Wars. Until 1944, it served as a depot for Nazi plunder that was taken from France by the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Institute for the Occupied Territories (Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg für die besetzten Gebiete), a suborganisation of the Nazi Party.[44] The castle was used to catalogue the works of arts. (After World War II 39 photo albums were found in the palace documenting the scale of the art seizures. The albums are now stored in the United States National Archives.[45])
In April 1945, the SS considered blowing up the palace to prevent the building itself and the artwork it contained from falling to the enemy.[46] The plan was not realised by the SS-Gruppenführer who had been assigned the task, however, and at the end of the war the palace was surrendered undamaged to representatives of the Allied forces.[46] Thereafter the Bavarian archives used some of the rooms as a provisional store for salvaged archivalia, as the premises in Munich had been bombed.[47]
Architecture[edit]
The effect of the Neuschwanstein ensemble is highly stylistic, both externally and internally. The king's influence is apparent throughout, and he took a keen personal interest in the design and decoration. An example can be seen in his comments, or commands, regarding a mural depicting Lohengrin in the Palas; "His Majesty wishes that ... the ship be placed further from the shore, that Lohengrin's neck be less tilted, that the chain from the ship to the swan be of gold and not of roses, and finally that the style of the castle shall be kept medieval."[48]
The suite of rooms within the Palas contains the Throne Room, King Ludwig's suite, the Singers' Hall, and the Grotto. The interior and especially the throne room Byzantine-Arab construction resumes to the chapels and churches of the royal Sicilian Norman-Swabian period in Palermo related to the Kings of Germany House of Hohenstaufen. Throughout, the design pays homage to the German legends of Lohengrin, the Swan Knight. Hohenschwangau, where King Ludwig spent much of his youth, had decorations of these sagas. These themes were taken up in the operas of Richard Wagner. Many rooms bear a border depicting the various operas written by Wagner, including a theatre permanently featuring the set of one such play. Many of the interior rooms remain undecorated, with only 14 rooms finished before Ludwig's death. With the palace under construction at the King's death, one of the major features of the palace remained unbuilt. A massive keep, which would have formed the highest point and central focus of the ensemble, was planned for the middle of the upper courtyard but was never built, at the decision of the King's family. The foundation for the keep is visible in the upper courtyard.[49]
Neuschwanstein Castle consists of several individual structures which were erected over a length of 150 metres on the top of a cliff ridge. The elongate building is furnished with numerous towers, ornamental turrets, gables, balconies, pinnacles and sculptures. Following Romanesque style, most window openings are fashioned as bi- and triforia. Before the backdrop of the Tegelberg and the Pöllat Gorge in the south and the Alpine foothills with their lakes in the north, the ensemble of individual buildings provides varying picturesque views of the palace from all directions. It was designed as the romantic ideal of a knight's castle. Unlike "real" castles, whose building stock is in most cases the result of centuries of building activity, Neuschwanstein was planned from the inception as an intentionally asymmetric building, and erected in consecutive stages.[33] Typical attributes of a castle were included, but real fortifications – the most important feature of a medieval aristocratic estate – were dispensed with.
Exterior[edit]
Palace roof
Overview of palace complex; position of the planned chapel marked in yellow
View from location of unrealised chapel along upper courtyard level: Bower (left), palace front, and Knights' House (right)
The palace complex is entered through the symmetrical Gatehouse flanked by two stair towers. The eastward-pointing gate building is the only structure of the palace whose wall area is fashioned in high-contrast colours; the exterior walls are cased with red bricks, the court fronts with yellow limestone. The roof cornice is surrounded by pinnacles. The upper floor of the Gatehouse is surmounted by a crow-stepped gable and held King Ludwig II's first lodging at Neuschwanstein, from which he occasionally observed the building work before the hall was completed. The ground floors of the Gatehouse were intended to accommodate the stables.
The passage through the Gatehouse, crowned with the royal Bavarian coat of arms, leads directly into the courtyard. The courtyard has two levels, the lower one being defined to the east by the Gatehouse and to the north by the foundations of the so-called Rectangular Tower and by the gallery building. The southern end of the courtyard is open, imparting a view of the surrounding mountain scenery. At its western end, the courtyard is delimited by a bricked embankment, whose polygonally protracting bulge marks the choir of the originally projected chapel; this three-nave church, never built, was intended to form the base of a 90-metre (295-ft) keep, the planned centrepiece of the architectural ensemble. A flight of steps at the side gives access to the upper level.
Saint George
Gatehouse
Today, the foundation plan of the chapel-keep is marked out in the upper-courtyard pavement. The most striking structure of the upper court level is the so-called Rectangular Tower (45 metres or 148 feet). Like most of the court buildings, it mostly serves a decorative purpose as part of the ensemble. Its viewing platform provides a vast view over the Alpine foothills to the north. The northern end of the upper courtyard is defined by the so-called Knights' House. The three-storey building is connected to the Rectangular Tower and the Gatehouse by means of a continuous gallery fashioned with a blind arcade. From the point of view of castle romanticism the Knights' House was the abode of a stronghold's menfolk; at Neuschwanstein, estate and service rooms were envisioned here. The Bower, which complements the Knights' House as the "ladies' house" but was never used as such, defines the south side of the courtyard. Both structures together form the motif of the Antwerp Castle featuring in the first act of Lohengrin. Embedded in the pavement is the floor plan of the planned palace chapel.
The western end of the courtyard is delimited by the Palas (hall). It constitutes the real main and residential building of the castle and contains the King's stateroom and the servants' rooms. The Palas is a colossal five-story structure in the shape of two huge cuboids that are connected in a flat angle and covered by two adjacent high gable roofs. The building's shape follows the course of the ridge. In its angles there are two stair towers, the northern one surmounting the palace roof by several storeys with its height of 65 metres (213 ft). With their polymorphic roofs, both towers are reminiscent of the Château de Pierrefonds. The western Palas front supports a two-storey balcony with view on the Alpsee, while northwards a low chair tower and the conservatory protract from the main structure. The entire Palas is spangled with numerous decorative chimneys and ornamental turrets, the court front with colourful frescos. The court-side gable is crowned with a copper lion, the western (outward) gable with the likeness of a knight.
Interior[edit]
Floor plan of third floor, position of fourth-floor Hall of the Singers marked in red
Corridor
Throne Hall detail
Had it been completed, the palace would have had more than 200 interior rooms, including premises for guests and servants, as well as for service and logistics. Ultimately, no more than about 15 rooms and halls were finished.[50] In its lower stories the Palas accommodates administrative and servants' rooms and the rooms of today's palace administration. The King's staterooms are situated in the upper stories: The anterior structure accommodates the lodgings in the third floor, above them the Hall of the Singers. The upper floors of the west-facing posterior structure are filled almost completely by the Throne Hall. The total floor space of all floors amounts to nearly 6,000 square metres (65,000 sq ft).[50]
Neuschwanstein houses numerous significant interior rooms of German historicism. The palace was fitted with several of the latest technical innovations of the late 19th century.[22][51] Among other things it had a battery-powered bell system for the servants and telephone lines. The kitchen equipment included a Rumford oven that turned the skewer with its heat and so automatically adjusted the turning speed. The hot air was used for a calorifère central heating system.[52] Further novelties for the era were running warm water and toilets with automatic flushing.
The largest room of the palace by area is the Hall of the Singers, followed by the Throne Hall. The 27-by-10-metre (89 by 33 ft)[53] Hall of the Singers is located in the eastern, court-side wing of the Palas, in the fourth floor above the King's lodgings. It is designed as an amalgamation of two rooms of the Wartburg: The Hall of the Singers and the Ballroom. It was one of the King's favourite projects for his palace.[54] The rectangular room was decorated with themes from Lohengrin and Parzival. Its longer side is terminated by a gallery that is crowned by a tribune, modelled after the Wartburg. The eastern narrow side is terminated by a stage that is structured by arcades and known as the Sängerlaube. The Hall of the Singers was never designed for court festivities of the reclusive King.[citation needed] Rather, like the Throne Hall it served as a walkable monument in which the culture of knights and courtly love of the Middle Ages was represented. The first performance in this hall took place in 1933: A concert commemorating the 50th anniversary of Richard Wagner's death.[34]
The Throne Hall, 20 by 12 metres (66 by 39 ft),[55] is situated in the west wing of the Palas. With its height of 13 metres (43 ft)[55] it occupies the third and fourth floors. Julius Hofmann modelled it after the Allerheiligen-Hofkirche in the Munich Residenz. On three sides it is surrounded by colorful arcades, ending in an apse that was intended to hold King Ludwig's throne – which was never completed. The throne dais is surrounded by paintings of Jesus, the Twelve Apostles and six canonised kings. The mural paintings were created by Wilhelm Hauschild. The floor mosaic was completed after the king's death. The chandelier is fashioned after a Byzantine crown. The Throne Hall makes a sacral impression. Following the king's wish, it amalgamated the Grail Hall from Parzival with a symbol of the divine right of kings,[19] an incorporation of unrestricted sovereign power, which King Ludwig as the head of a constitutional monarchy no longer held. The union of the sacral and regal is emphasised by the portraits in the apse of six canonised Kings: Saint Louis of France, Saint Stephen of Hungary, Saint Edward the Confessor of England, Saint Wenceslaus of Bohemia, Saint Olaf of Norway and Saint Henry, Holy Roman Emperor.
Palace rooms (late 19th century Photochrom prints)
Hall of the Singers
Throne Hall
Drawing room
Study room
Dining room
Bedroom
Apart from the large ceremonial rooms several smaller rooms were created for use by King Ludwig II.[41] The royal lodging is on the third floor of the palace in the east wing of the Palas. It consists of eight rooms with living space and several smaller rooms. In spite of the gaudy décor, the living space with its moderate room size and its sofas and suites makes a relatively modern impression on today's visitors. King Ludwig II did not attach importance to representative requirements of former times, in which the life of a monarch was mostly public. The interior decoration with mural paintings, tapestry, furniture and other handicraft generally refers to the King's favourite themes: the grail legend, the works of Wolfram von Eschenbach, and their interpretation by Richard Wagner.
Grotto
The eastward drawing room is adorned with themes from the Lohengrin legend. The furniture – sofa, table, armchairs and seats in a northward alcove – is comfortable and homelike. Next to the drawing room is a little artificial grotto that forms the passage to the study. The unusual room, originally equipped with an artificial waterfall and a so-called rainbow machine, is connected to a little conservatory. Depicting the Hörselberg grotto, it relates to Wagner's Tannhäuser, as does the décor of the adjacent study. In the park of Linderhof Palace the King had installed a similar grotto of greater dimensions. Opposite the study follows the dining room, adorned with themes of courtly love. Since the kitchen in Neuschwanstein is situated three stories below the dining room, it was impossible to install a wishing table (dining table disappearing by means of a mechanism) as at Linderhof Palace and Herrenchiemsee. Instead, the dining room was connected with the kitchen by means of a service lift.
Kitchen
The bedroom adjacent to the dining room and the subsequent house chapel are the only rooms of the palace that remain in neo-Gothic style. The King's bedroom is dominated by a huge bed adorned with carvings. Fourteen carvers worked more than four years on the bed canopy with its numerous pinnacles and on the oaken panellings.[56] It was in this room that Ludwig was arrested in the night from 11 to 12 June 1886. The adjacent little house chapel is consecrated to Saint Louis, after whom the owner was named.
The servants' rooms in the basement of the Palas are quite scantily equipped with massive oak furniture. Besides one table and one cabinet there are two beds of 1.80 metres (5 ft 11 in) length each. Opaque glass windows separated the rooms from the corridor that connects the exterior stairs with the main stairs, so that the King could enter and leave unseen. The servants were not allowed to use the main stairs, but were restricted to the much narrower and steeper servants' stairs.
Tourism[edit]
Neuschwanstein welcomes almost 1.5 million visitors per year making it one of the most popular tourist destinations in Europe.[3][57] For security reasons the palace can only be visited during a 35-minute guided tour, and no photography is allowed inside the castle. There are also special guided tours that focus on specific topics. In the peak season from June until August, Neuschwanstein has as many as 6,000 visitors per day, and guests without advance reservation may have to wait several hours. Those without tickets may still walk the long driveway from the base to the top of the mountain and visit the grounds and courtyard without a ticket, but will not be admitted to the interior of the castle. Ticket sales are processed exclusively via the ticket centre in Hohenschwangau.[58] As of 2008, the total number of visitors was more than 60 million.[2] In 2004, the revenues were booked as €6.5 million.[1]
In culture, art, and science[edit]
Neuschwanstein is a global symbol of the era of Romanticism. The palace has appeared prominently in several movies such as Helmut Käutner's Ludwig II (1955) and Luchino Visconti's Ludwig (1972), both biopics about the King; the musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) and the war drama The Great Escape (1963). It served as the inspiration for Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty Castle, Cameran Palace in Lucario and The Mystery of Mew, and later similar structures.[59][60] It is also visited by the character Grace Nakimura alongside Herrenchiemsee in the game The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery (1996).
In 1977, Neuschwanstein Castle became the motif of a West German definitive stamp, and it appeared on a €2 commemorative coin for the German Bundesländer series in 2012. In 2007, it was a finalist in the widely publicised on-line selection of the New Seven Wonders of the World.[61]
A meteorite that reached Earth spectacularly on 6 April 2002, at the Austrian border near Hohenschwangau was named Neuschwanstein after the palace. Three fragments were found: Neuschwanstein I (1.75 kg (3.9 lb), found July 2002) and Neuschwanstein II (1.63 kg (3.6 lb), found May 2003) on the German side, and Neuschwanstein III (2.84 kg (6.3 lb), found June 2003) on the Austrian side near Reutte.[62] The meteorite is classified as an enstatite chondrite with unusually large proportions of pure iron (29%), enstatite and the extremely rare mineral sinoite (Si2N2O).[63]
World Heritage candidature[edit]
Since 2015, Neuschwanstein and Ludwig's Linderhof and Herrenchiemsee palaces are on the German tentative list for a future designation as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. A joint candidature with other representative palaces of the romantic historicism is discussed (including Schwerin Palace, for example).[64]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuschwanstein_Castle
Synopsis[edit]
Background[edit]
In Eisenach, Germany, in the early 13th century, the landgraves of the Thuringian Valley ruled the area of Germany around the Wartburg. They were great patrons of the arts, particularly music and poetry, holding contests between the minnesingers at the Wartburg. Across the valley towered the Venusberg, in whose interior, according to legend, dwelt Holda, the Goddess of Spring. In time, Holda became identified with Venus, the pagan Goddess of Love, whose grotto was the home of sirens and nymphs. It was said that the Goddess would lure the Wartburg minnesinger-knights to her lair where her beauty would captivate them. The minnesinger-knight Heinrich von Ofterdingen, known as Tannhäuser, left the court of the Landgrave of Thuringia a year ago after a disagreement with his fellow knights. Since then he has been held as a willing captive through his love for Venus, in her grotto in the Venusberg.[27][incomplete short citation][17]
Overture[edit]
The substantial overture commences with the theme of the 'Pilgrim's Chorus' from Act 3, Scene 1, and also includes elements of the 'Venusberg' music from Act 1, Scene 1. The overture is frequently performed as a separate item in orchestral concerts, the first such performance having been given by Felix Mendelssohn conducting the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in February 1846.[28] Wagner later gave the opinion that perhaps it would be better to cut the overture at opera performances to the Pilgrim's Chorus alone – "the remainder – in the fortunate event of its being understood – is, as a prelude to the drama, too much; in the opposite event, too little."[29] In the original, "Dresden" version, the overture comes to a traditional concert close (the version heard in concert performances). For the "Paris" version the music leads directly into the first scene, without pausing.
Act 1[edit]
The Venusberg, (the Hörselberg of "Frau Holda" in Thuringia, in the vicinity of Eisenach), and a valley between the Venusberg and Wartburg
Scene 1. Wagner's stage directions state: "The stage represents the interior of the Venusberg...In the distant background is a bluish lake; in it one sees the bathing figures of naiads; on its elevated banks are sirens. In the extreme left foreground lies Venus bearing the head of the half kneeling Tannhäuser in her lap. The whole cave is illuminated by rosy light. – A group of dancing nymphs appears, joined gradually by members of loving couples from the cave. – A train of Bacchantes comes from the background in wild dance... – The ever-wilder dance answers as in echo the Chorus of Sirens": "Naht euch dem Strande" (Come to the shore).[30] In the "Paris" version this orgiastic ballet is greatly extended.
Scene 2. Following the orgy of the ballet, Tannhäuser's desires are finally satiated, and he longs for freedom, spring and the sound of church bells. He takes up his harp and pays homage to the goddess in a passionate love song, "Dir töne Lob!" (Let your praises be heard), which he ends with an earnest plea to be allowed to depart, "Aus deinem Reiche, muss ich fliehn! O Königin! Göttin! Lass mich ziehn!" (From your kingdom must I flee! O Queen! O Goddess, set me free). Surprised, Venus offers him further charms, but eventually his repeated pleas arouse her fury and she curses his desire for salvation. (In the "Paris" version Venus's inveighing against Tannhäuser is significantly expanded).[31] Eventually Tannhäuser declares: "Mein Heil ruht in Maria" (My salvation rests in Mary). These words break the unholy spell. Venus and the Venusberg disappear.
Scene 3. According to Wagner's stage directions, "Tannhäuser...finds himself a beautiful valley… To the left one sees the Hörselberg. To the right...a mountain path from the direction of the Wartburg ...; in the foreground, led to by a low promontory, an image of the Virgin Mary – From above left one hears the ringing of herder’s bells; on a high projection sits a young shepherd with pipes facing the valley".[32] It is May. The shepherd sings an ode to the pagan goddess Holda, "Frau Holda kam aus dem Berg hervor" (Lady Holda, come forth from the hill). A hymn "Zu dir wall ich, mein Jesus Christ" (To thee I turn, my Jesus Christ) can be heard, as Pilgrims are seen approaching from the Wartburg, and the shepherd stops playing. The pilgrims pass Tannhäuser as he stands motionless, and then, praising God, ("Allmächt'ger, dir sei Preis!" (Almighty God, to you be praise!)) he sinks to his knees, overcome with gratitude. At that moment the sound of hunting-horns can be heard, drawing ever nearer.
Scene 4. The Landgrave's hunting party appears. The minnesingers (Wolfram, Walther, Biterolf, Reinmar, and Heinrich) recognise Tannhäuser, still deep in prayer, and greet him ("Heinrich! Heinrich! Seh ich recht?" (Heinrich! Heinrich! Do I see right?)) cautiously, recalling past feuds. They question him about his recent whereabouts, to which he gives vague answers. The minnesingers urge Tannhäuser to rejoin them, which he declines until Wolfram mentions Elisabeth, the Landgrave's niece, "Bleib bei Elisabeth!" (Stay, for Elisabeth!). Tannhäuser is visibly moved, "Elisabeth! O Macht des Himmels, rufst du den süssen Namen mir?" (Elisabeth! O might of heaven, do you cry out the sweet name to me?). The minnesingers explain to Tannhäuser how he had enchanted Elisabeth, but when he had left she withdrew from their company and lost interest in music, expressing the hope that his return will also bring her back, "Auf's Neue leuchte uns ihr Stern!" (Let her star once more shine upon us). Tannhäuser begs them to lead him to her, "Zu ihr! Zu ihr!" (To her! To her!). The rest of the hunting party gathers, blowing horns.
Act 2[edit]
The Wartburg in Eisenach
The minnesingers' hall in the Wartburg castle
Introduction – Scene 1. Elisabeth enters, joyfully. She sings, to the hall, of how she has been beset by sadness since Tannhäuser's departure but now lives in hope that his songs will revive both of them, "Dich, teure Halle, grüss ich wieder" (Dear hall, I greet thee once again). Wolfram leads Tannhäuser into the hall.
Scene 2. Tannhäuser flings himself at Elisabeth's feet. He exclaims "O Fürstin!" (O Princess!). At first, seemingly confused, she questions him about where he has been, which he avoids answering. She then greets him joyfully ("Ich preise dieses Wunder aus meines Herzens Tiefe!" (I praise this miracle from my heart's depths!)), and they join in a duet, "Gepriesen sei die Stunde" (Praise be to this hour). Tannhäuser then leaves with Wolfram.
Scene 3. The Landgrave enters, and he and Elisabeth embrace. The Landgrave sings of his joy, "Dich treff ich hier in dieser Halle" (Do I find you in this hall) at her recovery and announces the upcoming song contest, at which she will preside, "dass du des Festes Fürstin seist" (that you will be the Princess of the Festival).
Scene 4 and Sängerkrieg (Song Contest). Elisabeth and the Landgrave watch the guests arrive. The guests assemble greeting the Landgrave and singing "Freudig begrüssen wir edle Halle" (With joy we greet the noble hall), take their places in a semicircle, with Elisabeth and the Landgrave in the seats of honour in the foreground. The Landgrave announces the contest and the theme, which shall be "Könnt ihr der Liebe Wesen mir ergründen?" (Can you explain the nature of Love?), and that the prize will be whatever the winner asks of Elisabeth. The knights place their names in a cup from which Elisabeth draws the first singer, Wolfram. Wolfram sings a trite song of courtly love and is applauded, but Tannhäuser chides him for his lack of passion. There is consternation, and once again Elisabeth appears confused, torn between rapture and anxiety. Biterolf accuses him of blasphemy and speaks of "Frauenehr und hohe Tugend" (women's virtue and honour). The knights draw their swords as Tannhäuser mocks Biterolf, but the Landgrave intervenes to restore order. However, Tannhäuser, as if in a trance, rises to his feet and sings a song of ecstatic love to Venus, "Dir Göttin der Liebe, soll mein Lied ertönen" (To thee, Goddess of Love, should my song resound). There is general horror as it is realised he has been in the Venusberg; the women, apart from Elisabeth, flee. She appears pale and shocked, while the knights and the Landgrave gather together and condemn Tannhäuser to death. Only Elisabeth, shielding him with her body, saves him, "Haltet ein!" (Stop!). She states that God's will is that a sinner shall achieve salvation through atonement. Tannhäuser collapses as all hail Elisabeth as an angel, "Ein Engel stieg aus lichtem Äther" (An angel rose out of the bright ether). He promises to seek atonement, the Landgrave exiles him and orders him to join another younger band of pilgrims then assembling. All depart, crying Nach Rom! (To Rome!).
In the "Paris" version, the song contest is somewhat shortened, possibly because of the lack of suitable soloists for the Paris production.[citation needed]
Act 3[edit]
The valley of the Wartburg, in autumn. Elisabeth is kneeling, praying before the Virgin as Wolfram comes down the path and notices her
Scene 1. Orchestral music describes the pilgrimage of Tannhäuser. It is evening. Wolfram muses on Elisabeth's sorrow during Tannhäuser's second absence, "Wohl wusst' ich hier sie im Gebet zu finden" (I knew well I might find her here in prayer) and her longing for the return of the pilgrims, and expresses concerns that he may not have been absolved. As he does so he hears a pilgrims' prayer in the distance, "Beglückt darf nun dich, O Heimat, ich schauen" (Joyfully may I now you, O homeland, behold). Elisabeth rises and she and Wolfram listen to the hymn, watching the pilgrims approach and pass by. She anxiously searches the procession, but in vain, realising sorrowfully he is not amongst them, "Er kehret nicht züruck!" (He has not returned). She again kneels with a prayer to the Virgin that appears to foretell her death, "Allmächt'ge Jungfrau! Hör mein Flehen" (Almighty Virgin, hear my plea!). On rising she sees Wolfram but motions him not to speak. He offers to escort her back to the Wartburg, but she again motions him to be still, and gestures that she is grateful for his devotion but her path leads to heaven. She slowly makes her way up the path alone.
Scene 2. Wolfram, left alone as darkness draws on and the stars appear, begins to play and sings a hymn to the evening star that also hints at Elisabeth's approaching death, "Wie Todesahnung Dämmrung deckt die Lande...O du mein holder Abendstern" (Like a premonition of death the twilight shrouds the earth... O thou my fair evening star).
Scene 3. It is now night. Tannhäuser appears, ragged, pale and haggard, walking feebly leaning on his staff. Wolfram suddenly recognises Tannhäuser, and startled challenges him, since he is exiled. To Wolfram's horror, Tannhäuser explains he is once again seeking the company of Venus. Wolfram tries to restrain him, at the same time expressing compassion and begging him to tell the story of his pilgrimage. Tannhäuser urges Wolfram to listen to his story, "Nun denn, hör an! Du, Wolfram, du sollst es erfahren" (Now then, listen! You, Wolfram, shall learn all that has passed). Tannhäuser sings of his penitence and suffering, all the time thinking of Elisabeth's gesture and pain, "Inbrunst im Herzen, wie kein Büsser noch" (With a flame in my heart, such as no penitent has known). He explains how he reached Rome, and the "Heiligtumes Schwelle" (Holy shrine), and witnessed thousands of pilgrims being absolved. Finally he approaches "ihn, durch den sich Gott verkündigt'" (he, through whom God speaks)[a] and tells his story. However, rather than finding absolution, he is cursed, "bist nun ewig du verdammt!" (you are forever damned!), and is told by the pope that "Wie dieser Stab in meiner Hand, nie mehr sich schmückt mit frischem Grün, kann aus der Hölle heissem Brand, Erlösung nimmer dir erblühn!" (As this staff in my hand, no more shall bear fresh leaves, from the hot fires of hell, salvation never shall bloom for thee). Whereupon, absolutely crushed, he fled, seeking his former source of bliss.
Having completed his tale, Tannhäuser calls out to Venus to take him back, "Zu dir, Frau Venus, kehr ich wieder" (To you, Lady Venus, I return). The two men struggle as a faint image of dancing becomes apparent. As Tannhäuser repeatedly calls on Venus, she suddenly appears and welcomes him back, "Willkommen, ungetreuer Mann!" (Welcome, faithless man!). As Venus continues to beckon, "Zu mir! Zu mir!" (To me!, To me!), in desperation, Wolfram suddenly remembers there is one word that can change Tannhäuser's heart, and exclaims "Elisabeth!" Tannhäuser, as if frozen in time, repeats the name. As he does so, torches are seen, and a funeral hymn is heard approaching, "Der Seele Heil, die nun entflohn" (Hail, the soul that now is flown). Wolfram realises it must be Elisabeth's body that is being borne, and that in her death lies Tannhäuser's redemption, "Heinrich, du bist erlöst!" (Heinrich, you are saved). Venus cries out, "Weh! Mir verloren" (Alas! Lost to me!) and vanishes with her kingdom. As dawn breaks the procession appears bearing Elisabeth's body on a bier. Wolfram beckons to them to set it down, and as Tannhäuser bends over the body uttering, "Heilige Elisabeth, bitte für mich!" (Holy Elisabeth!, pray for me!) he dies. As the growing light bathes the scene the younger pilgrims arrive bearing the pope's staff sprouting new leaves, and proclaiming a miracle, "Heil! Heil! Der Gnade Wunder Heil!" (Hail!, Hail! To this miracle of grace, Hail!). All then sing "Der Gnade Heil ist dem Büsser beschieden, er geht nun ein in der Seligen Frieden!" (The Holy Grace of God is to the penitent given, who now enters into the joy of Heaven!).[27][incomplete short citation][25][30]
After Wagner[edit]
Productions[edit]
Wagner died in 1883. The first production of the opera at Wagner's Bayreuth Festspielhaus (originally constructed for the performance of his Ring Cycle), was undertaken under the supervision of Cosima in 1891, and adhered closely to the 'Vienna' version. Later performances at Bayreuth included one conducted by Richard Strauss (1894), and one where the Bacchanal was choreographed by Isadora Duncan (1904).[33] Duncan envisaged the Bacchanal as a fantasy of Tannhäuser's fevered brain, as Wagner had written to Mathilde Wesendonck in 1860.[34] Arturo Toscanini conducted the opera at Bayreuth in the 1930/31 season.[35][incomplete short citation]
In the words of the Wagner scholar Thomas S. Grey, "The Bacchanal remained a defining focus of many ...productions, as a proving ground for changing conceptions of the psychosexual symbolism of the Venusberg." Productions including those of Götz Friedrich at Bayreuth (1972) and Otto Schenk at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, (1977) "routinely offer quantities of simulated copulation and post-coital langour, for which the Paris score offers ample encouragement".[33] A Munich production (1994) included as part of Tannhäuser's fantasies "creatures out of Hieronymus Bosch crawl[ing] around the oblivious protagonist".[36]
The Operabase website indicates that in the two calendar years 2014/2015, there were 163 performances of 41 productions of Tannhäuser in 30 cities throughout the world.[37]
Literature[edit]
Many scholars and writers on opera have advanced theories to explain the motives and behaviour of the characters,[9] including Jungian psychoanalysis,[1] in particular as regards Tannhäuser's apparently self-destructive behaviour. In 2014 an analysis suggested that his apparently inconsistent behaviour, when analysed by game theory, is actually consistent with a redemption strategy. Only by public disclosure can Tannhäuser force a resolution of his inner conflict.[38]
The hippocampus is a mythological creature found in Phoenician, Etruscan, Pictish, Roman, and Greek mythology. It is usually depicted as a composite creature with the head and foreparts of a horse and the serpentine tail of a fish.
The ancients believed these mythological creatures were the adult form of the humble "sea-horse." Hippokampoi were the mounts of Nereid nymphs and sea gods. Poseidon drove a chariot drawn by two or four of these creatures.
This is a dark nebula in the southern skies. When I first looked at the raw data, all I could see were these creatures gathered together, and they looked like sea-horse. They looked very cool indeed. Chilling out in front of their very own Hippocampus Nebula. :)
The image was composed using 5 filters, Red, Green, Blue, Lum, and Ha filtered light.
Instruments:
Telescope: 10" Ritchey-Chrétien RCOS
Camera: SBIG STL-11000 Mono
Mount: Astro-Physics AP-900
Focal Length: 2310.00 mm
Pixel size: 9.00 um
Resolution: 0.82 arcsec/pix
Exposure Details:
R 21 X 450 sec Bin 2
G 18 X 450 sec Bin 2
B 17 X 450 sec Bin 2
L 46 X 900 sec Bin 1
H 21 X 1800 sec Bin 1
Total Time 29 Hours
Thanks for looking...
Hinglaj (Sindhi: هنگلاج, Urdu: ﮨنگلاج, Sanskrit: हिङ्ग्लाज, Hindi: हिंगलाज) is an important Hindu pilgrimage place in Balochistan, Pakistan and Kuldevi of Kshatriya Bhavsar Community. It is situated in Balochistan province about 250 km north of Karachi.[1]
Mythological Origin
When Lord Vishnu cut up the body of Sati into 51 pieces so that Lord Shiva would calm down and stop his Tandava, the pieces were scattered over various places of the Indian subcontinent. It is said that the head of Sati fell at Hingula or Hinglaj and is thus considered the most important of the 51 Shakti Peeths. At each of the Peeths, Bhairava (a manifestation of Shiva) accompanies the relics. The Bhairava at Hinglaj is called Bhimalochana, located in Koteshwar, Kutch. The Sanskrit texts mention the part as 'Brahmadreya' or vital essence. For details, see this.
In the Ramayana, after slaying Ravana, Lord Ram came to Hinglaj to atone for his sin of 'Brahmhatya' (killing a Brahmin). Ravana was a Brahmin and a great devotee of Lord Shiva and Durga. Lord Ram meditated at Hinglaj as it was a very important shrine.
The mantra or incantation for Devi Hinglaj is attributed to Saint Dadhichi, an important saint in Hindu mythology. The mantra is :
ॐ हिंगुले परमहिंगुले अमृतरूपिणि तनुशक्ति
मनः शिवे श्री हिंगुलाय नमः स्वाहा
OM HINGULE PARAM HINGULE AMRUTRUPINI TANU SHAKTI
MANAH SHIVE SHREE HINGULAI NAMAH SWAHA
Translation : "Oh Hingula Devi, she who holds nectar in her self and is power incarnate. She who is one with Lord Shiva, to her we pay our respects and make this offering (swaha)."
Yet another incarnation:
ब्रह्मरंध्रम् हिंगुलायाम् भैरवो भीमलोचन: |
कोट्टरी सा महामाया त्रिगुणा या दिगम्बरी ||
BRAHMARANDHRAM HINGULAAYAAM BHAIRAVO VIMALOCHANAH
KOTTARI SAA MAHAAMAAYAA TRIGUNAA YAA DIGAMVARI
Translation : "Mahaamaayaa (Queen of Illusions) who represents the supreme virtue by reigning over all three virtues, has Bhimalochana as her Bhairava, and derides the worldly trappings by dancing naked, resides in this cave of Hingula that enshrines her sacred head."
Geographical Location
Hinglaj is situated in the Balochistan province of Pakistan. It is near the peak of one of the mountains of the Makran range. It is approximately 120 km from the Indus River Delta and 20 km from the Arabian Sea. The area is extremely arid and the pilgrimage also called 'Nani ki Haj' by local Muslims takes place before summer. The pilgrimage starts at a place near the Hao river which is 10 km from Karachi.
The name of Hinglaj lends itself to the Hingol river, the largest in Balochistan and the Hingol National Park which at 6,200 square kilometers is the largest in Pakistan.
Since it is located in a desert which is called Maru in Sanskrit, the shrine is referred to in holy texts as "Marutirtha Hinglaj" which means Hinglaj, the Shrine of the desert. "Marutirtha Hinglaj" is also the name of a Bengali novel by Kalikananda Abadhut who made a pilgrimage to Hinglaj and Koteshwar. The novel is based on real-life experience and has later been adapted into a very successful Bengali movie of the same name.
The Makran Coastal Highway linking Quetta and Gwadar passes through Balochistan. It was built by FWO and follows the same path which Alexander took when he ended his campaign. The highway has made the pilgrimage and visiting the shrine very convenient.
Social Significance
Despite the partition and the increasing Islamic stance of the Pakistani Government and society, Hinglaj has survived and is in fact revered by local Muslims who call it 'Nani ki Mandir'. Muslims offer red or saffron clothes, incense, candles and a sweet preparation called 'Sirini' to the deity[citation needed]. The Muslims protected sites like Hinglaj which are the last vestiges of the Hindu society which once straddled the area.
Hingula means cinnabar (HgS Mercuric Sulphide). It was used in ancient India to cure snakebite and other poisonings and is still employed in traditional medicine. The Goddess Hingula is thus believed to possess powers which can cure poisoning and other diseases. The Muslim name 'Nani' is an abbreviation of the name of the ancient Goddess "Nanaia", whose Persian name is "Anahita".
The Pilgrimage
Although the road linking the port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea with the interior has shortened the pilgrimage a lot, the ancient path followed for millennia through the Baluch desert is endowed with a unique importance. The very journey on foot is considered a penance to purify oneself before approaching the deity. An account of such a journey is given below.
The pilgrims are led by priests or caretakers of the shrine through the desert. They hold a wooden trident in their hands. The trident or Trishul is the weapon of Lord Shiva and hence is associated with the Sati too. Since they hold the trident during the trip, they are called 'Charidaars' (Those who hold the stick or Chadi). The Chadi is draped with saffron, red or pink coloured fabrics.
The priests give a saffron cloth to every pilgrim and an oath is taken that each would help the other. However they are warned not to share their personal stores of water. This act is deemed to be a sort of fast and penance necessary for the journey.
On the path to the shrine are situated wells which are guarded by the local tribesmen. Feuds over water, a scarce commodity, is common in the area. The tribesmen are offered food consisting primarily of Roti (circular flat disks of baked flour) in lieu of water.
Baba Chandrakup
An important stop during the pilgrimage is the mud volcano called 'Chandrakup' (literally 'Moon Well'). It is considered holy and is addressed as 'Baba Chandrakup' The volcano is filled with mud, instead of magma, hence the term "mud volcano". It is considered to be the abode of Babhaknath. It is one of the few sites of active volcanic activity in the Asian mainland. The mud is semi fluid and sometimes it spills over and aggregates and cools into hillocks which surround the site. There are altogether 18 mud volcanoes in the region.
Pilgrims stay up all night at the base of the volcano making Rotis which are offered to the volcano. The activity is considered to be very holy. The ingredients, flour, ghee (clarified butter), jaggery, sugar are mixed on a cloth which is held at all times at four corners by pilgrims. This is done to ensure that it never touches the ground. The prepared Rotis are covered with wood.
At daybreak, the Rotis are carried by the pilgrims and priests to the mouth of the crater. A Chadi or Wooden Trident is planted near the edge of the crater and offerings of incense and cannabis are made along with recitation of 'mantras'. The rotis are then tore up and cast into the crater.
After this ritual every pilgrim is asked to confess his sins and ask for forgiveness. Anyone who refuses or hesitates to confess to his or her sins is ostracised and abandoned by the party. After the confession, the party proceeds with the permission of 'Baba Chandrakup'.
Reaching the Shrine
The pilgrimage continues for another four to five days after leaving Chandrakup. The final stop is a small village with wooden houses. It is home to the caretakers of the shrine and Baluch tribesmen who revere the deity even though they are Muslims. Before entering the shrine, the pilgrims bathe in the Hingol River (also called the Aghore River). The shrine is situated on the mountain on the other bank of the river. The pilgrims bathe and visit the shrine in their wet clothes.
The Shrine's Mark
The shrine is recognised by a mark which resembles the sun and the moon. This mark is upon a giant boulder at the top of the hill containing the cave. It is believed that Lord Ram created this mark with the strike of his arrow after his penance ended.
The Shrine
The shrine is called 'Mahal', a word of Arabic origin which means palace. The natural beauty of the shrine has spawned folklore that it was constructed by demigods called 'Yakshas'. The walls and roof of the cave are encrusted with colourful stones and semi-precious veins. The floor is also multi hued.
The entrance to the cave is around 50 feet in height. At the end of the cave is the sanctum sanctorum , which houses the holy relic. It is covered by red clothes and vermilion. There are two entrances to the sanctum. One has to crawl into the sanctum, take the 'darshan' and leave through the other opening. Prasad is distributed to the pilgrims and they return after seeing the Milky Way at night.
Hingula Pithas
Although the Hingula shrine in Balochistan is considered to be a true Shakti Peeth, other shrines dedicated to the goddess exist in India and Sri Lanka. One important shrine is located 14 km from Talcher in the state of Orissa in India. King Nala of the Vidarbha region of Western India was an ardent devotee of Devi Hingula. He was approached by the King of Puri for help. In order to start cooking 'Mahaprasada' for Lord Jagannath he had to procure Devi Hingula as fire for the temple kitchen. The Goddess agreed and moved to Puri as fire. The Hingula shrine in Balochistan with its location west of the River Indus (and in Balochistan) is the only Shakti Peeth outside the subcontinent.
I bought a couple of little dragons and today had some fun creating this image for 115 pictures.
115 pictures in 2015 (9) mythological creature
The Cotton Exchange was long a symbol of the importance of the cotton industry to the city of Savannah Georgia. The building on Bay Street was originally called King Cotton’s Palace because its Romanesque architectural style made it stand out amongst the other buildings nearby. Today the historic building is a Solomon’s Masonic Lodge and is open to the public on special occasions.
Visitors can enjoy the splendid view of the terra cotta griffin, a winged lion of mythology that stands in front surrounded by a fence with medallions of poets and presidents. The fountain was constructed in 1889.
The Seashell was fabricated by Chris Brammall Limited of Cumbria.
Public Art as part of Cleveleys Mythological Coastline
© 2015 Tony Worrall
Mythological wrestling match between Heracles and Antagoras. Kos Town, Kos Island, Dodecanese, Greece
This panel depicts a slender candelabrum, decorated with winged sirens, and is typical of the so-called Third Pompeian style of Roman wall painting. It comes from one of four bedrooms excavated in the luxurious imperial villa overlooking the Bay of Naples near the modern town of Boscotrecase between 1903 and 1905. The frescoes have been preserved because the villa was buried by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE, which also destroyed the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
Roman, from the imperial villa owned by Agrippa, around 12 BCE, the year after Agrippa's death, when the villa was extensively and lavishly refurbished. From the so-called 'Mythological Room' at the villa.
Met Museum, New York (20.192.13)
“Every act of perception is to some degree an act of creation, and every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination.”
Oliver Sacks, “Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain” 2007
Hinglaj (Sindhi: هنگلاج, Urdu: ﮨنگلاج, Sanskrit: हिङ्ग्लाज, Hindi: हिंगलाज) is an important Hindu pilgrimage place in Balochistan, Pakistan and Kuldevi of Kshatriya Bhavsar Community. It is situated in Balochistan province about 250 km north of Karachi.[1]
Mythological Origin
When Lord Vishnu cut up the body of Sati into 51 pieces so that Lord Shiva would calm down and stop his Tandava, the pieces were scattered over various places of the Indian subcontinent. It is said that the head of Sati fell at Hingula or Hinglaj and is thus considered the most important of the 51 Shakti Peeths. At each of the Peeths, Bhairava (a manifestation of Shiva) accompanies the relics. The Bhairava at Hinglaj is called Bhimalochana, located in Koteshwar, Kutch. The Sanskrit texts mention the part as 'Brahmadreya' or vital essence. For details, see this.
In the Ramayana, after slaying Ravana, Lord Ram came to Hinglaj to atone for his sin of 'Brahmhatya' (killing a Brahmin). Ravana was a Brahmin and a great devotee of Lord Shiva and Durga. Lord Ram meditated at Hinglaj as it was a very important shrine.
The mantra or incantation for Devi Hinglaj is attributed to Saint Dadhichi, an important saint in Hindu mythology. The mantra is :
ॐ हिंगुले परमहिंगुले अमृतरूपिणि तनुशक्ति
मनः शिवे श्री हिंगुलाय नमः स्वाहा
OM HINGULE PARAM HINGULE AMRUTRUPINI TANU SHAKTI
MANAH SHIVE SHREE HINGULAI NAMAH SWAHA
Translation : "Oh Hingula Devi, she who holds nectar in her self and is power incarnate. She who is one with Lord Shiva, to her we pay our respects and make this offering (swaha)."
Yet another incarnation:
ब्रह्मरंध्रम् हिंगुलायाम् भैरवो भीमलोचन: |
कोट्टरी सा महामाया त्रिगुणा या दिगम्बरी ||
BRAHMARANDHRAM HINGULAAYAAM BHAIRAVO VIMALOCHANAH
KOTTARI SAA MAHAAMAAYAA TRIGUNAA YAA DIGAMVARI
Translation : "Mahaamaayaa (Queen of Illusions) who represents the supreme virtue by reigning over all three virtues, has Bhimalochana as her Bhairava, and derides the worldly trappings by dancing naked, resides in this cave of Hingula that enshrines her sacred head."
Geographical Location
Hinglaj is situated in the Balochistan province of Pakistan. It is near the peak of one of the mountains of the Makran range. It is approximately 120 km from the Indus River Delta and 20 km from the Arabian Sea. The area is extremely arid and the pilgrimage also called 'Nani ki Haj' by local Muslims takes place before summer. The pilgrimage starts at a place near the Hao river which is 10 km from Karachi.
The name of Hinglaj lends itself to the Hingol river, the largest in Balochistan and the Hingol National Park which at 6,200 square kilometers is the largest in Pakistan.
Since it is located in a desert which is called Maru in Sanskrit, the shrine is referred to in holy texts as "Marutirtha Hinglaj" which means Hinglaj, the Shrine of the desert. "Marutirtha Hinglaj" is also the name of a Bengali novel by Kalikananda Abadhut who made a pilgrimage to Hinglaj and Koteshwar. The novel is based on real-life experience and has later been adapted into a very successful Bengali movie of the same name.
The Makran Coastal Highway linking Quetta and Gwadar passes through Balochistan. It was built by FWO and follows the same path which Alexander took when he ended his campaign. The highway has made the pilgrimage and visiting the shrine very convenient.
Social Significance
Despite the partition and the increasing Islamic stance of the Pakistani Government and society, Hinglaj has survived and is in fact revered by local Muslims who call it 'Nani ki Mandir'. Muslims offer red or saffron clothes, incense, candles and a sweet preparation called 'Sirini' to the deity[citation needed]. The Muslims protected sites like Hinglaj which are the last vestiges of the Hindu society which once straddled the area.
Hingula means cinnabar (HgS Mercuric Sulphide). It was used in ancient India to cure snakebite and other poisonings and is still employed in traditional medicine. The Goddess Hingula is thus believed to possess powers which can cure poisoning and other diseases. The Muslim name 'Nani' is an abbreviation of the name of the ancient Goddess "Nanaia", whose Persian name is "Anahita".
The Pilgrimage
Although the road linking the port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea with the interior has shortened the pilgrimage a lot, the ancient path followed for millennia through the Baluch desert is endowed with a unique importance. The very journey on foot is considered a penance to purify oneself before approaching the deity. An account of such a journey is given below.
The pilgrims are led by priests or caretakers of the shrine through the desert. They hold a wooden trident in their hands. The trident or Trishul is the weapon of Lord Shiva and hence is associated with the Sati too. Since they hold the trident during the trip, they are called 'Charidaars' (Those who hold the stick or Chadi). The Chadi is draped with saffron, red or pink coloured fabrics.
The priests give a saffron cloth to every pilgrim and an oath is taken that each would help the other. However they are warned not to share their personal stores of water. This act is deemed to be a sort of fast and penance necessary for the journey.
On the path to the shrine are situated wells which are guarded by the local tribesmen. Feuds over water, a scarce commodity, is common in the area. The tribesmen are offered food consisting primarily of Roti (circular flat disks of baked flour) in lieu of water.
Baba Chandrakup
An important stop during the pilgrimage is the mud volcano called 'Chandrakup' (literally 'Moon Well'). It is considered holy and is addressed as 'Baba Chandrakup' The volcano is filled with mud, instead of magma, hence the term "mud volcano". It is considered to be the abode of Babhaknath. It is one of the few sites of active volcanic activity in the Asian mainland. The mud is semi fluid and sometimes it spills over and aggregates and cools into hillocks which surround the site. There are altogether 18 mud volcanoes in the region.
Pilgrims stay up all night at the base of the volcano making Rotis which are offered to the volcano. The activity is considered to be very holy. The ingredients, flour, ghee (clarified butter), jaggery, sugar are mixed on a cloth which is held at all times at four corners by pilgrims. This is done to ensure that it never touches the ground. The prepared Rotis are covered with wood.
At daybreak, the Rotis are carried by the pilgrims and priests to the mouth of the crater. A Chadi or Wooden Trident is planted near the edge of the crater and offerings of incense and cannabis are made along with recitation of 'mantras'. The rotis are then tore up and cast into the crater.
After this ritual every pilgrim is asked to confess his sins and ask for forgiveness. Anyone who refuses or hesitates to confess to his or her sins is ostracised and abandoned by the party. After the confession, the party proceeds with the permission of 'Baba Chandrakup'.
Reaching the Shrine
The pilgrimage continues for another four to five days after leaving Chandrakup. The final stop is a small village with wooden houses. It is home to the caretakers of the shrine and Baluch tribesmen who revere the deity even though they are Muslims. Before entering the shrine, the pilgrims bathe in the Hingol River (also called the Aghore River). The shrine is situated on the mountain on the other bank of the river. The pilgrims bathe and visit the shrine in their wet clothes.
The Shrine's Mark
The shrine is recognised by a mark which resembles the sun and the moon. This mark is upon a giant boulder at the top of the hill containing the cave. It is believed that Lord Ram created this mark with the strike of his arrow after his penance ended.
The Shrine
The shrine is called 'Mahal', a word of Arabic origin which means palace. The natural beauty of the shrine has spawned folklore that it was constructed by demigods called 'Yakshas'. The walls and roof of the cave are encrusted with colourful stones and semi-precious veins. The floor is also multi hued.
The entrance to the cave is around 50 feet in height. At the end of the cave is the sanctum sanctorum , which houses the holy relic. It is covered by red clothes and vermilion. There are two entrances to the sanctum. One has to crawl into the sanctum, take the 'darshan' and leave through the other opening. Prasad is distributed to the pilgrims and they return after seeing the Milky Way at night.
Hingula Pithas
Although the Hingula shrine in Balochistan is considered to be a true Shakti Peeth, other shrines dedicated to the goddess exist in India and Sri Lanka. One important shrine is located 14 km from Talcher in the state of Orissa in India. King Nala of the Vidarbha region of Western India was an ardent devotee of Devi Hingula. He was approached by the King of Puri for help. In order to start cooking 'Mahaprasada' for Lord Jagannath he had to procure Devi Hingula as fire for the temple kitchen. The Goddess agreed and moved to Puri as fire. The Hingula shrine in Balochistan with its location west of the River Indus (and in Balochistan) is the only Shakti Peeth outside the subcontinent.
The depiction of a mythological triton, symbolizing the allegory of creation of the world at Pena Palace, Sintra, Portugal.
The Pena Palace, or Palacio da Pena in Portuguese, is a Romanticist castle in Sao Pedro de Penaferrim, in the municipality of Sintra, Portugal. The castle stands on the top of a hill in the Sintra Mountains above the town of Sintra, and on a clear day it can be easily seen from Lisbon and much of its metropolitan area. It is a national monument and constitutes one of the major expressions of 19th-century Romanticism in the world. The palace is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the Seven Wonders of Portugal. It is also used for state occasions by the President of the Portuguese Republic and other government officials.
The castle's history started in the Middle Ages when a chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Pena was built on the top of the hill above Sintra. According to tradition, construction occurred after an apparition of the Virgin Mary.
The Postcard
A carte postale that was published by L.L. The stamp has been removed along with the date of posting, but we do know that the card was posted in Cairo to:
Miss Cross,
'The Croft',
Headington Hill,
Oxford,
England.
The message on the divided back was as follows:
"Dear Winnie,
Thank you for your note.
I was so very pleased to
hear from it that Mrs.
Gittins & you all were
well.
We had been hoping so
much that Mrs. Gittins had
not been suffering from
the very cold weather you
have had."
The Great Sphinx of Giza
The Great Sphinx of Giza is a limestone statue of a reclining sphinx, a mythical creature with the head of a human, and the body of a lion.
Facing directly from west to east, it stands on the Giza Plateau on the west bank of the Nile. The face of the Sphinx appears to represent the pharaoh Khafre.
The original shape of the Sphinx was cut from the bedrock, and has since been restored with layers of limestone blocks.
It measures 73 m (240 ft) long from paw to tail, 20 m (66 ft) high from the base to the top of the head, and 19 m (62 ft) wide at its rear haunches.
Its nose was broken off for unknown reasons between the 3rd. and 10th. centuries AD.
The Sphinx is the oldest known monumental sculpture in Egypt, and one of the most recognisable statues in the world.
The archaeological evidence suggests that it was created by ancient Egyptians of the Old Kingdom during the reign of Khafre (c. 2558 - 2532 BC).
The Great Sphinx's Name
The commonly used name "Sphinx" was given to the monument in classical antiquity, about 2,000 years after the commonly accepted date of its construction by reference to a Greek mythological beast with the head of a woman, a falcon, a cat, or a sheep and the body of a lion with the wings of an eagle. (Although, like most Egyptian sphinxes, the Great Sphinx has a man's head and no wings).
The English word sphinx comes from the ancient Greek Σφίγξ from the verb σφίγγω (meaning to squeeze in English), after the Greek sphinx who strangled anyone who failed to answer her riddle.
History of the Great Sphinx
The Sphinx is a monolith carved from the bedrock of the plateau, which also served as the quarry for the pyramids and other monuments in the area.
Egyptian geologist Farouk El-Baz has suggested that the head of the Sphinx may have been carved first, out of a natural yardang, i.e. a ridge of bedrock that had been sculpted by the wind. These can sometimes achieve shapes which resemble animals.
El-Baz suggests that the "moat" or "ditch" around the Sphinx may have been quarried out later to allow for the creation of the full body of the sculpture.
The archaeological evidence suggests that the Great Sphinx was created around 2500 BC for the pharaoh Khafre, the builder of the Second Pyramid at Giza. The stones cut from around the Sphinx's body were used to construct a temple in front of it.
However, neither the enclosure nor the temple were ever completed, and the relative scarcity of Old Kingdom cultural material suggests that a Sphinx cult was not established at the time.
Selim Hassan, writing in 1949 on recent excavations of the Sphinx enclosure, made note of this circumstance:
"Taking all things into consideration, it seems that
we must give the credit of erecting this, the world's
most wonderful statue, to Khafre, but always with
this reservation: that there is not one single
contemporary inscription which connects the Sphinx
with Khafre, so sound as it may appear, we must treat
the evidence as circumstantial, until such time as a
lucky turn of the spade of the excavator will reveal to
the world a definite reference to the erection of the
Sphinx."
In order to construct the temple, the northern perimeter-wall of the Khafre Valley Temple had to be deconstructed, hence it follows that the Khafre funerary complex preceded the creation of the Sphinx and its temple.
Furthermore, the angle and location of the south wall of the enclosure suggests the causeway connecting Khafre's Pyramid and Valley Temple already existed before the Sphinx was planned. The lower base level of the Sphinx temple also indicates that it doesn't pre-date the Valley Temple.
The Great Sphinx in the New Kingdom
Some time around the First Intermediate Period, the Giza Necropolis was abandoned, and drifting sand eventually buried the Sphinx up to its shoulders.
The first documented attempt at an excavation dates to c. 1400 BC, when the young Thutmose IV gathered a team and, after much effort, managed to dig out the front paws. Between them he erected a shrine that housed the Dream Stele, an inscribed granite slab (possibly a re-purposed door lintel from one of Khafre's temples).
When the stele was discovered, its lines of text were already damaged and incomplete. An excerpt reads:
"... the royal son, Thothmos, being arrived, while
walking at midday and seating himself under the
shadow of this mighty god, was overcome by
slumber and slept at the very moment when Ra is
at the summit of heaven.
He found that the Majesty of this august god spoke
to him with his own mouth, as a father speaks to his
son, saying:
'Look upon me, contemplate me, O my son Thothmos;
I am thy father, Harmakhis-Khopri-Ra-Tum; I bestow
upon thee the sovereignty over my domain, the
supremacy over the living ... Behold my actual condition
that thou mayest protect all my perfect limbs. The sand
of the desert whereon I am laid has covered me. Save
me, causing all that is in my heart to be executed.'"
The Dream Stele associates the Sphinx with Khafre, however this part of the text is not entirely intact:
"... which we bring for him: oxen ... and all the young
vegetables; and we shall give praise to Wenofer ...
Khaf ... the statue made for Atum-Hor-em-Akhet."
Egyptologist Thomas Young, finding the Khaf hieroglyphs in a damaged cartouche used to surround a royal name, inserted the glyph ra to complete Khafre's name. However when the Stele was re-excavated in 1925, the lines of text referring to Khaf flaked off and were destroyed.
In the New Kingdom, the Sphinx became more specifically associated with the sun god Hor-em-akhet. Pharaoh Amenhotep II built a temple to the northeast of the Sphinx nearly 1000 years after its construction, and dedicated it to the cult of Hor-em-akhet.
The Great Sphinx in the Graeco-Roman Period
By Graeco-Roman times, Giza had become a tourist destination - the monuments were regarded as antiquities. Some Roman Emperors visited the Sphinx out of curiosity, and for political reasons.
The Sphinx was cleared of sand again in the first century AD in honour of Emperor Nero and the Governor of Egypt, Tiberius Claudius Balbilus.
A monumental stairway more than 12 metres (39 ft) wide was erected, leading to a pavement in front of the paws of the Sphinx. At the top of the stairs, a podium was positioned that allowed view into the Sphinx sanctuary.
Further back, another podium neighboured several more steps. The stairway was dismantled during the 1931–32 excavations by Émile Baraize.
Pliny the Elder described the face of the Sphinx being coloured red and gave measurements for the statue:
"In front of these pyramids is the Sphinx, a still more
wondrous object of art, but one upon which silence
has been observed, as it is looked upon as a divinity
by the people of the neighbourhood.
It is their belief that King Harmaïs was buried in it, and
they will have it that it was brought there from a distance.
The truth is, however, that it was hewn from the solid
rock; and, from a feeling of veneration, the face of the
monster is coloured red.
The circumference of the head, measured round the
forehead, is one hundred and two feet, the length of the
feet being one hundred and forty-three, and the height,
from the belly to the summit of the asp on the head,
sixty-two."
A stela dated to 166 AD commemorates the restoration of the retaining walls surrounding the Sphinx.
The last Emperor connected with the monument was Septimius Severus, around 200 AD. With the downfall of Roman power, the Sphinx was once more engulfed by the sands.
The Great Sphinx in the Middle Ages
Some ancient non-Egyptians saw the Sphinx as a likeness of the god Horon. The cult of the Sphinx continued into medieval times. The Sabians of Harran saw it as the burial place of Hermes Trismegistus.
Arab authors described the Sphinx as a talisman which guarded the area from the desert. Al-Maqrizi describes it as "The Talisman of the Nile" on which the locals believed the flood cycle depended.
Muhammad al-Idrisi stated that those wishing to obtain bureaucratic positions in the Egyptian government should give an incense offering to the monument.
Over the centuries, writers and scholars have recorded their impressions and reactions upon seeing the Sphinx. The vast majority were concerned with a general description, often including a mixture of science, romance and mystique. A typical description of the Sphinx by tourists and leisure travelers throughout the 19th. and 20th. century was made by John Lawson Stoddard:
"It is the antiquity of the Sphinx which thrills us as
we look upon it, for in itself it has no charms. The
desert's waves have risen to its breast, as if to
wrap the monster in a winding-sheet of gold. The
face and head have been mutilated by Moslem
fanatics. The mouth, the beauty of whose lips was
once admired, is now expressionless. Yet grand in
its loneliness, - veiled in the mystery of unnamed
ages, - the relic of Egyptian antiquity stands solemn
and silent in the presence of the awful desert -
symbol of eternity. Here it disputes with Time the
empire of the past; forever gazing on and on into
a future which will still be distant when we, like all
who have preceded us and looked upon its face,
have lived our little lives and disappeared."
From the 16th. century, European observers described the Sphinx having the face, neck and breast of a woman.
Most early Western images were book illustrations in print form, elaborated by a professional engraver from either previous images available, or some original drawing or sketch supplied by an author, and usually now lost.
Seven years after visiting Giza, André Thévet (Cosmographie de Levant, 1556) described the Sphinx as:
"The head of a colossus, caused to be
made by Isis, daughter of Inachus, then
so beloved of Jupiter".
He, or his artist and engraver, pictured it as a curly-haired monster with a grassy dog collar.
Athanasius Kircher (who never visited Egypt) depicted the Sphinx as a Roman statue (Turris Babel, 1679).
Johannes Helferich's (1579) Sphinx is a pinched-face, round-breasted woman with a straight-haired wig.
George Sandys stated in 1615 that the Sphinx was a harlot; Balthasar de Monconys interpreted the headdress as a kind of hairnet, while François de La Boullaye-Le Gouz's Sphinx had a rounded hairdo with bulky collar.
Richard Pococke's Sphinx was an adoption of Cornelis de Bruijn's drawing of 1698, featuring only minor changes, but is closer to the actual appearance of the Sphinx than anything previously drawn.
The print versions of Norden's drawings for his Voyage d'Egypte et de Nubie (1755) clearly show that the nose was missing.
Later Excavations
In 1817, the first modern archaeological dig, supervised by the Italian Giovanni Battista Caviglia, uncovered the Sphinx's chest completely.
In 1887, the chest, paws, the altar, and the plateau were all made visible. Flights of steps were unearthed, and finally accurate measurements were taken of the great figures.
The height from the lowest of the steps was found to be one hundred feet, and the space between the paws was found to be thirty-five feet long and ten feet wide. Here there was formerly an altar; and a stele of Thûtmosis IV was discovered, recording a dream in which he was ordered to clear away the sand that even then was gathering round the site of the Sphinx.
One of the people working on clearing the sands from around the Great Sphinx was Eugène Grébaut, a French Director of the Antiquities Service.
Opinions of Early Egyptologists
Early Egyptologists and excavators were divided regarding the age of the Sphinx and its associated temples.
In 1857, Auguste Mariette, founder of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, unearthed the much later Inventory Stela (estimated to be from the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, c. 664 - 525 BC), which tells how Khufu came upon the Sphinx, already buried in sand.
Although certain tracts on the Stela are likely accurate, this passage is contradicted by archaeological evidence, thus considered to be Late Period historical revisionism, a purposeful fake, created by the local priests as an attempt to imbue the contemporary Isis temple with an ancient history it never had.
Such acts became common when religious institutions such as temples, shrines and priests' domains were fighting for political attention and for financial and economic donations.
Flinders Petrie wrote in 1883 regarding the state of opinion of the age of the Khafre Valley Temple, and by extension the Sphinx:
"The date of the Granite Temple has been so
positively asserted to be earlier than the fourth
dynasty, that it may seem rash to dispute the
point.
Recent discoveries, however, strongly show that
it was really not built before the reign of Khafre,
in the fourth dynasty."
Gaston Maspero, the French Egyptologist and second director of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, conducted a survey of the Sphinx in 1886. He concluded that because the Dream Stela showed the cartouche of Khafre in line 13, it was he who was responsible for the excavation, and therefore the Sphinx must predate Khafre and his predecessors - possibly Fourth Dynasty, c. 2575 - 2467 BC. Maspero believed the Sphinx to be "the most ancient monument in Egypt".
Ludwig Borchardt attributed the Sphinx to the Middle Kingdom, arguing that the particular features seen on the Sphinx are unique to the 12th. dynasty, and that the Sphinx resembles Amenemhat III.
E. A. Wallis Budge agreed that the Sphinx predated Khafre's reign, writing in The Gods of the Egyptians (1904):
"This marvellous object was in existence in the
days of Khafre, or Khephren, and it is probable
that it is a very great deal older than his reign,
and that it dates from the end of the archaic
period [c. 2686 BC]."
Modern Dissenting Hypotheses
Rainer Stadelmann, former director of the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo, examined the distinct iconography of the nemes (headdress) and the now-detached beard of the Sphinx, and concluded that the style is more indicative of the pharaoh Khufu (2589–2566 BC).
He was known to the Greeks as Cheops, builder of the Great Pyramid of Giza and Khafre's father. Rainer supports this by suggesting Khafre's Causeway was built to conform to a pre-existing structure, which, he concludes, given its location, could only have been the Sphinx.
In 2004, Vassil Dobrev of the Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale in Cairo announced that he had uncovered new evidence that the Great Sphinx may have been the work of the little-known pharaoh Djedefre (2528–2520 BC).
Djedefre was Khafra's half brother, and a son of Khufu. Dobrev suggests Djedefre built the Sphinx in the image of his father Khufu, identifying him with the sun god Ra in order to restore respect for their dynasty.
Dobrev also says that the causeway connecting Khafre's pyramid to the temples was built around the Sphinx, suggesting that it was already in existence at the time.
Egyptologist Nigel Strudwick responded to Dobrev by saying that:
"It is not implausible. But I would need more explanation,
such as why he thinks the pyramid at Abu Roash is a sun
temple, something I'm sceptical about.
I have never heard anyone suggest that the name in the
graffiti at Zawiyet el-Aryan mentions Djedefre.
I remain more convinced by the traditional argument of it
being Khafre or the more recent theory of it being Khufu."
Recent Restorations of the Great Sphinx
In 1931, engineers of the Egyptian government repaired the head of the Sphinx. Part of its headdress had fallen off in 1926 due to erosion, which had also cut deeply into its neck. This questionable repair was by the addition of a concrete collar between the headdress and the neck, creating an altered profile.
Many renovations to the stone base and raw rock body were done in the 1980's, and then redone in the 1990's.
Natural and Deliberate Damage to the Great Sphinx
The limestone of the area consists of layers which offer differing resistance to erosion (mostly caused by wind and windblown sand), leading to the uneven degradation apparent in the Sphinx's body.
The lowest part of the body, including the legs, is solid rock. The body of the animal up to its neck is fashioned from softer layers that have suffered considerable disintegration. The layer from which the head was sculpted is much harder.
A number of "dead-end" shafts are known to exist within and below the body of the Great Sphinx, most likely dug by treasure hunters and tomb robbers.
The Great Sphinx's Missing Nose
Examination of the Sphinx's face shows that long rods or chisels were hammered into the nose area, one down from the bridge and another beneath the nostril, then used to pry the nose off towards the south, resulting in the one-metre wide nose still being lost to date.
Drawings of the Sphinx by Frederic Louis Norden in 1737 show the nose missing. Many folk tales exist regarding the destruction of its nose, aiming to provide an answer as to where it went or what happened to it.
One tale erroneously attributes it to cannonballs fired by the army of Napoleon Bonaparte. Other tales ascribe it to being the work of Mamluks. Since the 10th. century, some Arab authors have claimed it to be a result of iconoclastic attacks.
The Arab historian al-Maqrīzī, writing in the 15th. century, attributes the loss of the nose to Muhammad Sa'im al-Dahr, a Sufi Muslim who in 1378 found the local peasants making offerings to the Sphinx in the hope of increasing their harvest; he therefore defaced the Sphinx in an act of iconoclasm.
According to al-Maqrīzī, many people living in the area believed that the increased sand covering the Giza Plateau was retribution for al-Dahr's act of defacement.
Al-Minufi stated that the Alexandrian Crusade in 1365 was divine punishment for a Sufi sheikh breaking off the nose.
The Great Sphinx's Beard
In addition to the lost nose, a ceremonial pharaonic beard is thought to have been attached, although this may have been added in later periods after the original construction.
Egyptologist Vassil Dobrev has suggested that had the beard been an original part of the Sphinx, it would have damaged the chin of the statue upon falling. However the lack of visible damage supports his theory that the beard was a later addition.
The British Museum has limestone fragments which are thought to be from the Sphinx's beard.
Residues of red pigment are visible on areas of the Sphinx's face, and traces of yellow and blue pigment have also been found elsewhere on the Sphinx, leading Mark Lehner to suggest that:
"The monument was once decked
out in gaudy comic book colours".
However, as with the case of many ancient monuments, the pigments and colours have virtually disappeared, resulting in the yellow/beige appearance that the Sphinx has today.
Holes and Tunnels in the Great Sphinx
-- The Hole in the Sphinx's Head
Johann Helffrich visited the Sphinx during his travels in 1565 - 1566. He reports that a priest went into the head of the Sphinx, and when he spoke it was as if the Sphinx itself was speaking.
Many New Kingdom stelae depict the Sphinx wearing a crown. If it in fact existed, the hole could have been the anchoring point for it.
Émile Baraize closed the hole with a metal hatch in 1926.
-- Perring's Hole
Howard Vyse directed Perring in 1837 to drill a tunnel into the back of the Sphinx, just behind the head. The boring rods became stuck at a depth of 27 feet (8.2 m).
Attempts to blast the rods free caused further damage. The hole was cleared in 1978, and among the rubble was a fragment of the Sphinx's nemes headdress.
-- The Major Fissure
A major natural fissure in the bedrock cuts through the waist of the Sphinx. This was first excavated by Auguste Mariette in 1853.
The fissure measures up to 2 metres (6.6 ft) in width. In 1926 Baraize sealed the sides and roofed it with iron bars, limestone and cement. He then installed an iron trap door at the top. The sides of the fissure might have been artificially squared; however, the bottom is irregular bedrock, about 1 metre (3.3 ft) above the outside floor. A very narrow crack continues deeper.
-- The Rump Passage
When the Sphinx was cleared of sand in 1926 under direction of Baraize, it revealed an opening to a tunnel at floor-level on the north side of the rump. It was subsequently closed by masonry and nearly forgotten.
More than fifty years later, the existence of the passage was recalled by three elderly men who had worked during the sand clearing as basket carriers. This led to the rediscovery and excavation of the rump passage in 1980.
The passage consists of an upper and a lower section, which are angled roughly 90 degrees to each other. The upper part ascends to a height of 4 metres (13 ft) above the ground-floor at a northwest direction. It runs between masonry veneer and the core body of the Sphinx, and ends in a niche 1 metre (3.3 ft) wide and 1.8 metres (5.9 ft) high.
The ceiling of the niche consists of modern cement, which likely spilled down from the filling of the gap between masonry and core bedrock, some 3 metres (9.8 ft) above.
The lower part descends steeply into the bedrock towards the northeast, for a distance of approximately 4 metres (13 ft) and a depth of 5 metres (16 ft). It terminates in a pit at groundwater level.
At the entrance it is 1.3 metres (4.3 ft) wide, narrowing to about 1.07 metres (3.5 ft) towards the end. Among the sand and stone fragments, a piece of tin foil and the base of a modern ceramic water jar was found.
The clogged bottom of the pit contained modern fill. Among it, more tin foil, modern cement and a pair of shoes.
It is possible that the entire passage was cut top down, beginning high up on the rump, and that the current access point at floor-level was made at a later date.
Vyse noted in his diary in 1837 that he was "boring" near the tail, which indicates him as the creator of the passage, as no other tunnel has been identified at this location. Another interpretation is that the shaft is of ancient origin, perhaps an exploratory tunnel or an unfinished tomb shaft.
-- The Niche in the Northern Flank
There is a niche in the Sphinx's core body. It was closed during the 1925-6 restorations.
-- The Space Behind the Dream Stele
The space behind the Dream Stele, between the paws of the Sphinx, was covered by an iron beam and cement roof and then fitted with an iron trap door.
-- The Keyhole Shaft
At the ledge of the Sphinx enclosure there is a square shaft opposite the northern hind paw. It was cleared during excavation in 1978 and measures 1.42 by 1.06 metres (4.7 by 3.5 ft) and about 2 metres (6.6 ft) deep.
Lehner interpreted the shaft to be an unfinished tomb, and named it the "Keyhole Shaft", because a cutting in the ledge above the shaft is shaped like the lower part of a keyhole, upside down.
The Great Pyramid of Giza
The Great Pyramid of Giza is the largest Egyptian pyramid, and the tomb of the Fourth Dynasty pharaoh Khufu. Built in the 26th. century BC during a period of around 27 years, it is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and the only one to remain largely intact.
Initially standing at 146.6 metres (481 feet), the Great Pyramid was the tallest man-made structure in the world for more than 3,800 years. Over time, most of the smooth white limestone casing was removed, which lowered the pyramid's height to the present 138.5 metres (454.4 ft).
What is seen today is the underlying core structure. The base was measured to be 230.3 metres (755.6 ft) square, giving a volume of roughly 2.6 million cubic metres (92 million cubic feet).
The Great Pyramid was built by quarrying an estimated 2.3 million large blocks weighing 6 million tonnes in total. The majority of stones are not uniform in size or shape, and are only roughly dressed.
The outside layers were bound together by mortar. Primarily local limestone from the Giza Plateau was used. Other blocks were imported by boat down the Nile: white limestone from Tura for the casing, and granite blocks from Aswan, weighing up to 80 tonnes, for the King's Chamber.
There are three known chambers inside the Great Pyramid. The lowest was cut into the bedrock, but it remained unfinished. The Queen's Chamber and the King's Chamber, that contains a granite sarcophagus, are higher up, within the pyramid structure.
Khufu's vizier, Hemiunu, is believed to be the architect of the Great Pyramid. Many varying scientific and alternative hypotheses attempt to explain the exact construction techniques.
Attribution to Khufu
Historically the Great Pyramid has been attributed to Khufu based on the words of authors of classical antiquity, first and foremost Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus.
However, during the middle ages a number of other people were credited with the construction of the pyramid, for example Joseph, Nimrod or King Saurid.
In 1837 four additional Relieving Chambers were found above the King's Chamber after tunneling to them. The chambers, previously inaccessible, were covered in hieroglyphs of red paint.
The workers who were building the pyramid had marked the blocks with the names of their gangs, which included the pharaoh's name (e.g.: “The gang, The white crown of Khnum-Khufu is powerful”).
The names of Khufu were spelled out on the walls over a dozen times. Another of these graffiti was found by Goyon on an exterior block of the 4th layer of the pyramid.
Throughout the 20th. century the cemeteries next to the pyramid were excavated. Family members and high officials of Khufu were buried there. Most notably the wives, children and grandchildren of Khufu, along with the funerary cache of Hetepheres I, mother of Khufu.
As Hassan puts it:
"From the early dynastic times, it was always the
custom for the relatives, friends and courtiers to
be buried in the vicinity of the king they had served
during life. This was quite in accordance with the
Egyptian idea of the Hereafter."
The cemeteries were actively expanded until the 6th. dynasty, but used less frequently afterwards. The earliest pharaonic name of seal impressions is that of Khufu, the latest of Pepi II.
Worker graffiti was written on some of the stones of the tombs as well; for instance, "Mddw" (Horus name of Khufu) on the mastaba of Chufunacht, probably a grandson of Khufu.
In 1954 two boat pits, one containing the Khufu ship, were discovered buried at the south foot of the pyramid. The cartouche of Djedefre was found on many of the blocks that covered the boat pits. As the successor and eldest son he would have presumably been responsible for the burial of Khufu.
The second boat pit was examined in 1987; excavation work started in 2010. Graffiti on the stones included 4 instances of the name "Khufu", 11 instances of "Djedefre", a year (in reign, season, month and day), measurements of the stone, various signs and marks, and a reference line used in construction, all done in red or black ink.
During excavations in 2013 the Diary of Merer in the form of rolls of papyrus was found at Wadi al-Jarf. It documents the transportation of white limestone blocks from Tura to the Great Pyramid, which is mentioned by its original name Akhet Khufu dozens of times.
The diary records that the stones were accepted at She Akhet-Khufu ("The pool of the pyramid Horizon of Khufu") and Ro-She Khufu (“The entrance to the pool of Khufu”) which were under supervision of Ankhhaf, half brother and vizier of Khufu, as well as owner of the largest mastaba of the Giza East Field.
The Age of the Great Pyramid
The age of the Great Pyramid has been determined by two principal approaches:
-- Indirectly, through its attribution to Khufu and his chronological age, based on archaeological and textual evidence.
-- Directly, via radiocarbon dating of organic material found in the pyramid and included in its mortar. Mortar was used generously in the Great Pyramid's construction. In the mixing process, ashes from fires were added to the mortar, organic material that could be extracted and radiocarbon dated.
A total of 46 samples of the mortar were taken in 1984 and 1995, making sure they were clearly inherent to the original structure and could not have been incorporated at a later date.
The results were calibrated to 2871–2604 BC. A reanalysis of the data gave a completion date for the pyramid between 2620 and 2484 BC.
In 1872 Waynman Dixon opened the lower pair of air-shafts that were previously closed at both ends by chiseling holes into the walls of the Queen's Chamber.
One of the objects found within was a cedar plank, which came into possession of James Grant, a friend of Dixon. After inheritance it was donated to the Museum of Aberdeen in 1946. However it had broken into pieces, and was filed incorrectly.
Lost in the vast museum collection, it was only rediscovered in 2020, when it was radiocarbon dated to 3341–3094 BC. Being over 500 years older than Khufu's chronological age, Abeer Eladany suggests that the wood originated from the center of a long-lived tree, or had been recycled for many years prior to being deposited in the pyramid.
Construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza
-- Preparation of the Site
A hillock forms the base on which the pyramid stands. It was cut back into steps, and only a strip around the perimeter was leveled. Using modern equipment, this has been measured to be horizontal and flat to within 21 millimetres (0.8 in).
The bedrock reaches a height of almost 6 metres (20 ft) above the pyramid base at the location of the Grotto.
Along the sides of the base platform a series of holes are cut in the bedrock. Lehner hypothesizes that they held wooden posts used for alignment.
Edwards, among others, has suggested that water was used in order to level the base, although it is unclear how workable such a system would be.
-- Materials
The Great Pyramid consists of an estimated 2.3 million blocks. Approximately 5.5 million tonnes of limestone, 8,000 tonnes of granite, and 500,000 tonnes of mortar were used in the construction.
Most of the blocks were quarried at Giza just south of the pyramid, an area now known as the Central Field.
The white limestone used for the casing originated from Tura 10 km (6.2 mi) south of Giza), and was transported by boat down the Nile.
The granite stones in the pyramid were transported from Aswan, more than 900 km (560 mi) away. The largest, weighing up to 80 tonnes, forms the roofs of the King's Chamber.
Ancient Egyptians cut stone into rough blocks by hammering grooves into natural stone faces, inserting wooden wedges, then soaking these with water. As the water was absorbed, the wedges expanded, breaking off workable chunks. Once the blocks were cut, they were carried by boat either up or down the Nile River to the pyramid.
-- The Workforce
The Greeks believed that slave labour was used, but modern discoveries made at nearby workers' camps associated with construction at Giza suggest that it was built instead by thousands of conscript laborers.
Worker graffiti found at Giza suggest haulers were divided into groups of 40 men, consisting of four sub-units that each had an "Overseer of Ten".
As to the question of how over two million blocks could have been cut within Khufu's lifetime, stonemason Franck Burgos conducted an archaeological experiment based on an abandoned quarry of Khufu discovered in 2017.
Within it, an almost completed block and the tools used for cutting it had been uncovered: hardened arsenic copper chisels, wooden mallets, ropes and stone tools. In the experiment, replicas of these were used to cut a block weighing about 2.5 tonnes (the average block size used for the Great Pyramid).
It took 4 workers 4 days (with each working 6 hours a day) to excavate it. The initially slow progress sped up six times when the stone was wetted with water.
Based on the data, Burgos extrapolates that about 3,500 quarry-men could have produced the 250 blocks per day needed to complete the Great Pyramid within 27 years.
A construction management study conducted in 1999, in association with Mark Lehner and other Egyptologists, has estimated that the total project required an average workforce of about 13,200 individuals, with a peak workforce of roughly 40,000.
Surveys and Design of the Great Pyramid
The first precise measurements of the pyramid were made by Egyptologist Flinders Petrie in 1880–1882, published as The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh.
Many of the casing-stones and inner chamber blocks of the Great Pyramid fit together with high precision, with joints, on average, only 0.5 millimetres (0.020 in) wide. On the contrary, core blocks were only roughly shaped, with rubble inserted between larger gaps. Mortar was used to bind the outer layers together and to fill gaps and joints.
The block height and weight tends to get progressively smaller towards the top. Petrie measured the lowest layer to be 148 centimetres (4.86 ft) high, whereas the layers towards the summit barely exceed 50 centimetres (1.6 ft).
The accuracy of the pyramid's perimeter is such that the four sides of the base have an average error of only 58 millimetres (2.3 inches) in length, and the finished base was squared to a mean corner error of only 12 seconds of arc.
Ancient Egyptians used seked - how much length for one cubit of rise - to describe slopes. For the Great Pyramid a seked of 5+ palms was chosen, a ratio of 14 up to 11 in.
Some Egyptologists suggest this slope was chosen because the ratio of perimeter to height (1760/280 cubits) equals 2π to an accuracy of better than 0.05 percent (corresponding to the well-known approximation of π as 22/7).
Verner wrote:
"We can conclude that although the ancient
Egyptians could not precisely define the value
of π, in practice they used it.
"These relations of areas and of circular ratio
are so systematic that we should grant that
they were in the builder's design".
Alignment to the Cardinal Directions
The sides of the Great Pyramid's base are closely aligned to the four geographic (not magnetic) cardinal directions, deviating on average 3 minutes and 38 seconds of arc. Several methods have been proposed for how the ancient Egyptians achieved this level of accuracy:
-- The Solar Gnomon Method: the shadow of a vertical rod is tracked throughout a day. The shadow line is intersected by a circle drawn around the base of the rod. Connecting the intersecting points produces an east-west line.
An experiment using this method resulted in lines being, on average, 2 minutes, 9 seconds off due east–west. Employing a pinhole produced much more accurate results (19 arc seconds off), whereas using an angled block as a shadow definer was less accurate (3′ 47″ off).
-- The Pole Star Method: the polar star is tracked using a movable sight and fixed plumb line. Halfway between the maximum eastern and western elongations is true north.
Thuban, the polar star during the Old Kingdom, was about two degrees removed from the celestial pole at the time.
-- The Simultaneous Transit Method: the stars Mizar and Kochab appear on a vertical line on the horizon, close to true north around 2500 BC. They slowly and simultaneously shift east over time, which is used to explain the relative misalignment of the pyramids.
Construction Theories
Many alternative, often contradictory, theories have been proposed regarding the pyramid's construction. One mystery of the pyramid's construction is its planning. John Romer suggests that they used the same method that had been used for earlier and later constructions, i.e. laying out parts of the plan on the ground at a 1-to-1 scale.
He writes that:
"Such a working diagram would also serve to
generate the architecture of the pyramid with
precision unmatched by any other means".
The basalt blocks of the pyramid temple show clear evidence of having been cut with some kind of saw with an estimated cutting blade of 15 feet (4.6 m) in length. Romer suggests that this "super saw" may have had copper teeth and weighed up to 140 kilograms (310 lb).
He theorizes that such a saw could have been attached to a wooden trestle support, and possibly used in conjunction with vegetable oil, cutting sand, emery or pounded quartz to cut the blocks, which would have required the labour of at least a dozen men to operate it.
The Exterior Casing
At completion, the Great Pyramid was cased entirely in white limestone. There is a casing stone from the Great Pyramid in the British Museum.
Precisely worked blocks were placed in horizontal layers and carefully fitted together with mortar, their outward faces cut at a slope and smoothed to a high degree. Together they created four uniform surfaces, angled at 51°50'40.
Unfinished casing blocks of the pyramids of Menkaure and Henutsen at Giza suggest that the front faces were smoothed only after the stones were laid, with chiseled seams marking correct positioning, and where the superfluous rock would have to be trimmed off.
An irregular pattern is noticeable when looking at the pyramid's layers in sequence, where layer height declines steadily only to rise sharply again.
"Backing stones" supported the casing which were (unlike the core blocks) precisely dressed, and bound to the casing with mortar. These stones give the structure its visible appearance, following the dismantling of the pyramid in the middle ages.
In 1303 AD, a massive earthquake loosened many of the outer casing stones, which were said to have been carted away by Bahri Sultan An-Nasir Nasir-ad-Din al-Hasan in 1356 for use in nearby Cairo.
Many more casing stones were removed from the site by Muhammad Ali Pasha in the early 19th. century to build the upper portion of his Alabaster Mosque in Cairo.
Later explorers reported massive piles of rubble at the base of the pyramid left over from the continuing collapse of the casing stones, which were subsequently cleared away during continuing excavations of the site.
Today a few of the casing stones from the lowest course can be seen in situ on each side, with the best preserved on the north below the entrances, excavated by Vyse in 1837.
The mortar was chemically analyzed and contains organic inclusions (mostly charcoal), samples of which were radiocarbon dated to 2871–2604 BC. It has been theorized that the mortar enabled the masons to set the stones exactly by providing a level bed.
The Missing Pyramidion
The pyramid was once topped by a capstone known as a pyramidion. The material it was made from is subject to much speculation; limestone, granite or basalt are commonly proposed, while in popular culture it is often said to be solid gold or gilded.
All known 4th. dynasty pyramidia (of the Red Pyramid, the Satellite Pyramid of Khufu and the Queen's Pyramid of Menkaure are of white limestone, and were not gilded.
Only from the 5th. dynasty onward is there evidence of gilded capstones.
The Great Pyramid's pyramidion was already lost in antiquity, as Pliny the Elder and later authors report of a platform on its summit. Nowadays the pyramid is about 8 metres (26 ft) shorter than it was when intact, with about 1,000 tonnes of material missing from the top.
In 1874 a mast was installed on the top of the pyramid by the Scottish astronomer Sir David Gill who, whilst returning from work involving observing a rare Venus transit, was invited to survey Egypt. He began by surveying the Great Pyramid.
His measurements of the pyramid were accurate to within 1mm, and the survey mast is still in place to this day.
Interior of the Great Pyramid
The internal structure consists of three main chambers (the King's-, Queen's- and Subterranean Chamber), the Grand Gallery and various corridors and shafts.
There are two entrances into the pyramid; the original and a forced passage, which meet at a junction. From there, one passage descends into the Subterranean Chamber, while the other ascends to the Grand Gallery. From the beginning of the gallery three paths can be taken:
(a) A vertical shaft that leads down, past a grotto, to meet the descending passage.
(b) A horizontal corridor leading to the Queen's Chamber.
(c) A path up the gallery itself to the King's Chamber that contains the sarcophagus.
Both the King's and Queen's Chamber have a pair of small "air-shafts". Above the King's Chamber are a series of five Relieving Chambers.
--The Original Entrance
The original entrance is located on the north side, 15 royal cubits (7.9 m; 25.8 ft) east of the center-line of the pyramid. Before the removal of the casing in the middle ages, the pyramid was entered through a hole in the 19th. layer of masonry, approximately 17 metres (56 ft) above the pyramid's base level.
The height of that layer – 96 centimetres (3.15 ft) – corresponds to the size of the entrance tunnel which is commonly called the Descending Passage. According to Strabo (64–24 BC) a movable stone could be raised to enter this sloping corridor, however it is not known if it was a later addition or original.
A row of double chevrons diverts weight away from the entrance. Several of these chevron blocks are now missing, as the slanted faces they used to rest on indicate.
Numerous, mostly modern, graffiti is cut into the stones around the entrance. Most notable is a large, square text of hieroglyphs carved in honor of Frederick William IV, by Karl Richard Lepsius's Prussian expedition to Egypt in 1842.
-- The North Face Corridor
In 2016 the ScanPyramids team detected a cavity behind the entrance chevrons using muography, which was confirmed in 2019 to be a corridor at least 5 metres (16 ft) long, running horizontal or sloping upwards. Whether or not it connects to the Big Void above the Grand Gallery remains to be seen.
-- The Robbers' Tunnel
Today tourists enter the Great Pyramid via the Robbers' Tunnel, which was long ago cut straight through the masonry of the pyramid. The entrance was forced into the 6th. and 7th. layer of the casing, about 7 metres (23 ft) above the base.
After running more-or-less straight and horizontal for 27 metres (89 ft) it turns sharply left to encounter the blocking stones in the Ascending Passage. It is possible to enter the Descending Passage from this point, but access is usually forbidden.
The origin of this Robbers' Tunnel is the subject of much discussion. According to tradition, the tunnel was excavated around 820 AD by Caliph al-Ma'mun's workmen with a battering ram.
The digging dislodged the stone in the ceiling of the Descending Passage which hid the entrance to the Ascending Passage, and the noise of that stone falling then sliding down the Descending Passage alerted them to the need to turn left.
Unable to remove these stones, the workmen tunneled up beside them through the softer limestone of the Pyramid until they reached the Ascending Passage.
Due to a number of historical and archaeological discrepancies, many scholars contend that this story is apocryphal. They argue that it is much more likely that the tunnel had been carved shortly after the pyramid was initially sealed.
This tunnel, the scholars argue, was then resealed (likely during the Ramesside Restoration), and it was this plug that al-Ma'mun's ninth-century expedition cleared away. This theory is furthered by the report of patriarch Dionysius I Telmaharoyo, who claimed that before al-Ma'mun's expedition, there already existed a breach in the pyramid's north face that extended into the structure 33 metres (108 ft) before hitting a dead end.
This suggests that some sort of robber's tunnel predated al-Ma'mun, and that the caliph simply enlarged it and cleared it of debris.
-- The Descending Passage
From the original entrance, a passage descends through the masonry of the pyramid and then into the bedrock beneath it, ultimately leading to the Subterranean Chamber.
It has a slanted height of 4 Egyptian feet (1.20 m; 3.9 ft) and a width of 2 cubits (1.0 m; 3.4 ft). Its angle of 26°26'46" corresponds to a ratio of 1 to 2 (rise over run).
After 28 metres (92 ft), the lower end of the Ascending Passage is reached; a square hole in the ceiling, which is blocked by granite stones and might have originally been concealed.
To circumvent these hard stones, a short tunnel was excavated that meets the end of the Robbers' Tunnel. This was expanded over time and fitted with stairs.
The passage continues to descend for another 72 metres (236 ft), now through bedrock instead of the pyramid superstructure.
Lazy guides used to block off this part with rubble in order to avoid having to lead people down and back up the long shaft, until around 1902 when Covington installed a padlocked iron grill-door to stop this practice.
Near the end of this section, on the west wall, is the connection to the vertical shaft that leads up to the Grand Gallery.
A horizontal shaft connects the end of the Descending Passage to the Subterranean Chamber, It has a length of 8.84 m (29.0 ft), width of 85 cm (2.79 ft) and height of 91–95 cm (2.99–3.12 ft).
-- The Subterranean Chamber
The Subterranean Chamber, or "Pit", is the lowest of the three main chambers, and the only one dug into the bedrock beneath the pyramid.
Located about 27 m (89 ft) below base level, it measures roughly 16 cubits (8.4 m; 27.5 ft) north-south by 27 cubits (14.1 m; 46.4 ft) east-west, with an approximate height of 4 m (13 ft).
The western half of the room, apart from the ceiling, is unfinished, with trenches left behind by the quarry-men running east to west. The only access, through the Descending Passage, lies on the eastern end of the north wall.
Although seemingly known in antiquity, according to Herodotus and later authors, its existence had been forgotten in the middle ages until rediscovery in 1817, when Giovanni Caviglia cleared the rubble blocking the Descending Passage.
Opposite the entrance, a blind corridor runs straight south for 11 m (36 ft) and continues at a slight angle for another 5.4 m (18 ft), measuring about 0.75 m (2.5 ft) squared. A Greek or Roman character was found on its ceiling, suggesting that the chamber had indeed been accessible during Classical antiquity.
In the middle of the eastern half, there is a large hole called Pit Shaft or Perring's Shaft. The upmost part may have ancient origins, about 2 m (6.6 ft) squared in width, and 1.5 m (4.9 ft) in depth. Caviglia and Salt enlarged it to the depth of about 3 m (9.8 ft).
In 1837 Vyse directed the shaft to be sunk to a depth of 50 ft (15 m), in hopes of discovering the chamber encompassed by water that Herodotus alludes to. However no chamber was discovered after Perring and his workers had spent one and a half years penetrating the bedrock to the then water level of the Nile, some 12 m (39 ft) further down.
The rubble produced during this operation was deposited throughout the chamber. Petrie, visiting in 1880, found the shaft to be partially filled with rainwater that had rushed down the Descending Passage. In 1909, when the Edgar brothers' surveying activities were encumbered by the material, they moved the sand and smaller stones back into the shaft. The deep, modern shaft is sometimes mistaken to be part of the original design.
-- The Ascending Passage
The Ascending Passage connects the Descending Passage to the Grand Gallery. It is 75 cubits (39.3 m; 128.9 ft) long, and of the same width and height as the shaft it originates from, although its angle is slightly lower at 26°6'.
The lower end of the shaft is plugged by three granite stones, which were slid down from the Grand Gallery to seal the tunnel. The uppermost stone is heavily damaged.
The end of the Robbers' Tunnel concludes slightly below the stones, so a short tunnel was dug around them to gain access to the Descending Passage.
-- The Well Shaft and Grotto
The Well Shaft (also known as the Service Shaft or Vertical Shaft) links the lower end of the Grand Gallery to the bottom of the Descending Passage, about 50 metres (160 ft) further down.
It takes a winding and indirect course. The upper half goes through the nucleus masonry of the pyramid. It runs vertical at first for 8 metres (26 ft), then slightly angled southwards for about the same distance, until it hits bedrock approximately 5.7 metres (19 ft) above the pyramid's base level.
Another vertical section descends further, which is partially lined with masonry that has been broken through to a cavity known as the Grotto. The lower half of the Well Shaft goes through the bedrock at an angle of about 45° for 26.5 metres (87 ft) before a steeper section, 9.5 metres (31 ft) long, leads to its lowest point. The final section of 2.6 metres (8.5 ft) connects it to the Descending Passage, running almost horizontal. The builders evidently had trouble aligning the lower exit.
The purpose of the shaft is commonly explained as a ventilation shaft for the Subterranean Chamber, and as an escape shaft for the workers who slid the blocking stones of the Ascending Passage into place.
The Grotto is a natural limestone cave that was likely filled with sand and gravel before construction, before being hollowed out by looters. A granite block rests in it that probably originated from the portcullis that once sealed the King's Chamber.
-- The Queen's Chamber
The Horizontal Passage links the Grand Gallery to the Queen's Chamber. Five pairs of holes at the start suggest the tunnel was once concealed with slabs that laid flush with the gallery floor. The passage is 2 cubits (1.0 m; 3.4 ft) wide and 1.17 m (3.8 ft) high for most of its length, but near the chamber there is a step in the floor, after which the passage increases to 1.68 m (5.5 ft) high.
The Queen's Chamber is exactly halfway between the north and south faces of the pyramid. It measures 10 cubits (5.2 m; 17.2 ft) north-south, 11 cubits (5.8 m; 18.9 ft) east-west,[146] and has a pointed roof that apexes at 12 cubits (6.3 m; 20.6 ft) tall.
At the eastern end of the chamber there is a niche 9 cubits (4.7 m; 15.5 ft) high. The original depth of the niche was 2 cubits (1.0 m; 3.4 ft), but it has since been deepened by treasure hunters.
Shafts were discovered in the north and south walls of the Queen's Chamber in 1872 by British engineer Waynman Dixon, who believed shafts similar to those in the King's Chamber must also exist. The shafts were not connected to the outer faces of the pyramid, and their purpose is unknown.
In one shaft Dixon discovered a ball of diorite, a bronze hook of unknown purpose and a piece of cedar wood. The first two objects are currently in the British Museum. The latter was lost until recently when it was found at the University of Aberdeen.
The northern shaft's angle of ascent fluctuates, and at one point turns 45 degrees to avoid the Great Gallery. The southern shaft is perpendicular to the pyramid's slope.
The shafts in the Queen's Chamber were explored in 1993 by the German engineer Rudolf Gantenbrink using a crawler robot he designed, called Upuaut 2.
After a climb of 65 m (213 ft), he discovered that one of the shafts was blocked by a limestone "door" with two eroded copper "handles".
The National Geographic Society created a similar robot which, in September 2002, drilled a small hole in the southern door, only to find another stone slab behind it. The northern passage, which was difficult to navigate because of its twists and turns, was also found to be blocked by a slab.
Research continued in 2011 with the Djedi Project which used a fibre-optic "micro snake camera" that could see around corners. With this, they were able to penetrate the first door of the southern shaft through the hole drilled in 2002, and view all the sides of the small chamber behind it.
They discovered hieroglyphics written in red paint. Egyptian mathematics researcher Luca Miatello stated that the markings read "121" – the length of the shaft in cubits.
The Djedi team were also able to scrutinize the inside of the two copper "handles" embedded in the door, which they now believe to be for decorative purposes. They additionally found the reverse side of the "door" to be finished and polished, which suggests that it was not put there just to block the shaft from debris, but rather for a more specific reason.
-- The Grand Gallery
The Grand Gallery continues the slope of the Ascending Passage towards the King's Chamber, extending from the 23rd. to the 48th. course, a rise of 21 metres (69 ft). It has been praised as a truly spectacular example of stonemasonry.
It is 8.6 metres (28 ft) high and 46.68 metres (153.1 ft) long. The base is 4 cubits (2.1 m; 6.9 ft) wide, but after two courses - at a height of 2.29 metres (7.5 ft) - the blocks of stone in the walls are corbelled inwards by 6–10 centimetres (2.4–3.9 in) on each side.
There are seven of these steps, so, at the top, the Grand Gallery is only 2 cubits (1.0 m; 3.4 ft) wide. It is roofed by slabs of stone laid at a slightly steeper angle than the floor so that each stone fits into a slot cut into the top of the gallery, like the teeth of a ratchet.
The purpose was to have each block supported by the wall of the Gallery, rather than resting on the block beneath it, in order to prevent cumulative pressure.
At the upper end of the Gallery, on the eastern wall, there is a hole near the roof that opens into a short tunnel by which access can be gained to the lowest of the Relieving Chambers.
At the top of the gallery, there is a step onto a small horizontal platform where a tunnel leads through the Antechamber, once blocked by portcullis stones, into the King's Chamber.
The Big Void
In 2017, scientists from the ScanPyramids project discovered a large cavity above the Grand Gallery using muon radiography, which they called the "ScanPyramids Big Void". Its length is at least 30 metres (98 ft) and its cross-section is similar to that of the Grand Gallery.
The purpose of the cavity is unknown, and it is not accessible. Zahi Hawass speculates that it may have been a gap used in the construction of the Grand Gallery, but the research team state that the void is completely different to previously identified construction spaces.
The Antechamber
The last line of defense against intrusion was a small chamber specially designed to house portcullis blocking stones, called the Antechamber. It is cased almost entirely in granite, and is situated between the upper end of the Grand Gallery and the King's Chamber.
Three slots for portcullis stones line the east and west wall of the chamber. Each of them is topped with a semi-circular groove for a log, around which ropes could be spanned.
The granite portcullis stones were approximately 1 cubit (52.4 cm; 20.6 in) thick and were lowered into position by the aforementioned ropes which were tied through a series of four holes at the top of the blocks. A corresponding set of four vertical grooves are on the south wall of the chamber, recesses that make space for the ropes.
The Antechamber has a design flaw: the space above them can be accessed, thus all but the last block can be circumvented. This was exploited by looters who punched a hole through the ceiling of the tunnel behind, gaining access to the King's Chamber.
Later on, all three portcullis stones were broken and removed. Fragments of these blocks can be found in various locations in the pyramid.
The King's Chamber
The King's Chamber is the uppermost of the three main chambers of the pyramid. It is faced entirely with granite, and measures 20 cubits (10.5 m; 34.4 ft) east-west by 10 cubits (5.2 m; 17.2 ft) north-south.
Its flat ceiling is about 11 cubits and 5 digits (5.8 m;19.0 ft) above the floor, formed by nine slabs of stone weighing in total about 400 tons. All the roof beams show cracks due to the chamber having settled 2.5–5 cm (0.98–1.97 in).
The walls consist of five courses of blocks that are uninscribed, as was the norm for burial chambers of the 4th dynasty. The stones are precisely fitted together. The facing surfaces are dressed to varying degrees, with some displaying remains of bosses not entirely cut away.
The back sides of the blocks were only roughly hewn to shape, as was usual with Egyptian hard-stone facade blocks, presumably to save work.
The Sarcophagus
The only object in the King's Chamber is a sarcophagus made out of a single, hollowed-out granite block. When it was rediscovered in the early middle ages, it was found broken open and any contents had already been removed.
It is of the form common for early Egyptian sarcophagi; rectangular in shape with grooves to slide the now missing lid into place with three small holes for pegs to fixate it. The coffer was not perfectly smoothed, displaying various tool marks matching those of copper saws and tubular hand-drills.
The internal dimensions are roughly 198 cm (6.50 ft) by 68 cm (2.23 feet), the external 228 cm (7.48 ft) by 98 cm (3.22 ft), with a height of 105 cm (3.44 ft). The walls have a thickness of about 15 cm (0.49 ft). The sarcophagus is too large to fit around the corner between the Ascending and Descending Passages, which indicates that it must have been placed in the chamber before the roof was put in place.
Air Shafts
In the north and south walls of the King's Chamber are two narrow shafts, commonly known as "air shafts". They face each other, and are located approximately 0.91 m (3.0 ft) above the floor, with a width of 18 and 21 cm (7.1 and 8.3 in) and a height of 14 cm (5.5 in).
Both start out horizontally for the length of the granite blocks they go through before changing to an upwards direction. The southern shaft ascends at an angle of 45° with a slight curve westwards. One ceiling stone was found to be distinctly unfinished which Gantenbrink called a "Monday morning block".
The northern shaft changes angle several times, shifting the path to the west, perhaps to avoid the Big Void. The builders had trouble calculating the right angles, resulting in parts of the shaft being narrower. Nowadays they both lead to the exterior. If they originally penetrated the outer casing is unknown.
The purpose of these shafts is not clear: They were long believed by Egyptologists to be shafts for ventilation, but this idea has now been widely abandoned in favour of the shafts serving a ritualistic purpose associated with the ascension of the king's spirit to the heavens. Ironically, both shafts were fitted with ventilators in 1992 to reduce the humidity in the pyramid.
The idea that the shafts point towards stars has been largely dismissed as the northern shaft follows a dog-leg course through the masonry and the southern shaft has a bend of approximately 20 centimetres (7.9 in), indicating no intention to have them point to any celestial objects.
The Relieving Chambers
Above the roof of the King's Chamber are five compartments, named (from lowest upwards) "Davison's Chamber", "Wellington's Chamber", "Nelson's Chamber", "Lady Arbuthnot's Chamber", and "Campbell's Chamber".
They were presumably intended to safeguard the King's Chamber from the possibility of the roof collapsing under the weight of stone above, hence they are referred to as "Relieving Chambers".
The granite blocks that divide the chambers have flat bottom sides but roughly shaped top sides, giving all five chambers an irregular floor, but a flat ceiling, with the exception of the uppermost chamber which has a pointed limestone roof.
Nathaniel Davison is credited with the discovery of the lowest of these chambers in 1763, although a French merchant named Maynard informed him of its existence. It can be reached through an ancient passage that originates from the top of the south wall of the Grand Gallery.
The upper four chambers were discovered in 1837 by Howard Vyse after discovering a crack in the ceiling of the first chamber. This allowed the insertion of a long reed, which, with the employment of gunpowder and boring rods, forced a tunnel upwards through the masonry. As no access shafts existed for the upper four chambers they were completely inaccessible until this point.
Numerous graffiti of red ochre paint were found to cover the limestone walls of all four newly discovered chambers. Apart from leveling lines and indication marks for masons, multiple hieroglyphic inscriptions spell out the names of work-gangs.
Those names, which were also found in other Egyptian pyramids like that of Menkaure and Sahure, usually included the name of the pharaoh they were working for. The blocks must have received the inscriptions before the chambers became inaccessible during construction.
Their orientation, often side-ways or upside down, and their sometimes being partially covered by blocks, indicates that the stones were inscribed before being laid.
Hinglaj (Sindhi: هنگلاج, Urdu: ﮨنگلاج, Sanskrit: हिङ्ग्लाज, Hindi: हिंगलाज) is an important Hindu pilgrimage place in Balochistan, Pakistan and Kuldevi of Kshatriya Bhavsar Community. It is situated in Balochistan province about 250 km north of Karachi.[1]
Mythological Origin
When Lord Vishnu cut up the body of Sati into 51 pieces so that Lord Shiva would calm down and stop his Tandava, the pieces were scattered over various places of the Indian subcontinent. It is said that the head of Sati fell at Hingula or Hinglaj and is thus considered the most important of the 51 Shakti Peeths. At each of the Peeths, Bhairava (a manifestation of Shiva) accompanies the relics. The Bhairava at Hinglaj is called Bhimalochana, located in Koteshwar, Kutch. The Sanskrit texts mention the part as 'Brahmadreya' or vital essence. For details, see this.
In the Ramayana, after slaying Ravana, Lord Ram came to Hinglaj to atone for his sin of 'Brahmhatya' (killing a Brahmin). Ravana was a Brahmin and a great devotee of Lord Shiva and Durga. Lord Ram meditated at Hinglaj as it was a very important shrine.
The mantra or incantation for Devi Hinglaj is attributed to Saint Dadhichi, an important saint in Hindu mythology. The mantra is :
ॐ हिंगुले परमहिंगुले अमृतरूपिणि तनुशक्ति
मनः शिवे श्री हिंगुलाय नमः स्वाहा
OM HINGULE PARAM HINGULE AMRUTRUPINI TANU SHAKTI
MANAH SHIVE SHREE HINGULAI NAMAH SWAHA
Translation : "Oh Hingula Devi, she who holds nectar in her self and is power incarnate. She who is one with Lord Shiva, to her we pay our respects and make this offering (swaha)."
Yet another incarnation:
ब्रह्मरंध्रम् हिंगुलायाम् भैरवो भीमलोचन: |
कोट्टरी सा महामाया त्रिगुणा या दिगम्बरी ||
BRAHMARANDHRAM HINGULAAYAAM BHAIRAVO VIMALOCHANAH
KOTTARI SAA MAHAAMAAYAA TRIGUNAA YAA DIGAMVARI
Translation : "Mahaamaayaa (Queen of Illusions) who represents the supreme virtue by reigning over all three virtues, has Bhimalochana as her Bhairava, and derides the worldly trappings by dancing naked, resides in this cave of Hingula that enshrines her sacred head."
Geographical Location
Hinglaj is situated in the Balochistan province of Pakistan. It is near the peak of one of the mountains of the Makran range. It is approximately 120 km from the Indus River Delta and 20 km from the Arabian Sea. The area is extremely arid and the pilgrimage also called 'Nani ki Haj' by local Muslims takes place before summer. The pilgrimage starts at a place near the Hao river which is 10 km from Karachi.
The name of Hinglaj lends itself to the Hingol river, the largest in Balochistan and the Hingol National Park which at 6,200 square kilometers is the largest in Pakistan.
Since it is located in a desert which is called Maru in Sanskrit, the shrine is referred to in holy texts as "Marutirtha Hinglaj" which means Hinglaj, the Shrine of the desert. "Marutirtha Hinglaj" is also the name of a Bengali novel by Kalikananda Abadhut who made a pilgrimage to Hinglaj and Koteshwar. The novel is based on real-life experience and has later been adapted into a very successful Bengali movie of the same name.
The Makran Coastal Highway linking Quetta and Gwadar passes through Balochistan. It was built by FWO and follows the same path which Alexander took when he ended his campaign. The highway has made the pilgrimage and visiting the shrine very convenient.
Social Significance
Despite the partition and the increasing Islamic stance of the Pakistani Government and society, Hinglaj has survived and is in fact revered by local Muslims who call it 'Nani ki Mandir'. Muslims offer red or saffron clothes, incense, candles and a sweet preparation called 'Sirini' to the deity[citation needed]. The Muslims protected sites like Hinglaj which are the last vestiges of the Hindu society which once straddled the area.
Hingula means cinnabar (HgS Mercuric Sulphide). It was used in ancient India to cure snakebite and other poisonings and is still employed in traditional medicine. The Goddess Hingula is thus believed to possess powers which can cure poisoning and other diseases. The Muslim name 'Nani' is an abbreviation of the name of the ancient Goddess "Nanaia", whose Persian name is "Anahita".
The Pilgrimage
Although the road linking the port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea with the interior has shortened the pilgrimage a lot, the ancient path followed for millennia through the Baluch desert is endowed with a unique importance. The very journey on foot is considered a penance to purify oneself before approaching the deity. An account of such a journey is given below.
The pilgrims are led by priests or caretakers of the shrine through the desert. They hold a wooden trident in their hands. The trident or Trishul is the weapon of Lord Shiva and hence is associated with the Sati too. Since they hold the trident during the trip, they are called 'Charidaars' (Those who hold the stick or Chadi). The Chadi is draped with saffron, red or pink coloured fabrics.
The priests give a saffron cloth to every pilgrim and an oath is taken that each would help the other. However they are warned not to share their personal stores of water. This act is deemed to be a sort of fast and penance necessary for the journey.
On the path to the shrine are situated wells which are guarded by the local tribesmen. Feuds over water, a scarce commodity, is common in the area. The tribesmen are offered food consisting primarily of Roti (circular flat disks of baked flour) in lieu of water.
Baba Chandrakup
An important stop during the pilgrimage is the mud volcano called 'Chandrakup' (literally 'Moon Well'). It is considered holy and is addressed as 'Baba Chandrakup' The volcano is filled with mud, instead of magma, hence the term "mud volcano". It is considered to be the abode of Babhaknath. It is one of the few sites of active volcanic activity in the Asian mainland. The mud is semi fluid and sometimes it spills over and aggregates and cools into hillocks which surround the site. There are altogether 18 mud volcanoes in the region.
Pilgrims stay up all night at the base of the volcano making Rotis which are offered to the volcano. The activity is considered to be very holy. The ingredients, flour, ghee (clarified butter), jaggery, sugar are mixed on a cloth which is held at all times at four corners by pilgrims. This is done to ensure that it never touches the ground. The prepared Rotis are covered with wood.
At daybreak, the Rotis are carried by the pilgrims and priests to the mouth of the crater. A Chadi or Wooden Trident is planted near the edge of the crater and offerings of incense and cannabis are made along with recitation of 'mantras'. The rotis are then tore up and cast into the crater.
After this ritual every pilgrim is asked to confess his sins and ask for forgiveness. Anyone who refuses or hesitates to confess to his or her sins is ostracised and abandoned by the party. After the confession, the party proceeds with the permission of 'Baba Chandrakup'.
Reaching the Shrine
The pilgrimage continues for another four to five days after leaving Chandrakup. The final stop is a small village with wooden houses. It is home to the caretakers of the shrine and Baluch tribesmen who revere the deity even though they are Muslims. Before entering the shrine, the pilgrims bathe in the Hingol River (also called the Aghore River). The shrine is situated on the mountain on the other bank of the river. The pilgrims bathe and visit the shrine in their wet clothes.
The Shrine's Mark
The shrine is recognised by a mark which resembles the sun and the moon. This mark is upon a giant boulder at the top of the hill containing the cave. It is believed that Lord Ram created this mark with the strike of his arrow after his penance ended.
The Shrine
The shrine is called 'Mahal', a word of Arabic origin which means palace. The natural beauty of the shrine has spawned folklore that it was constructed by demigods called 'Yakshas'. The walls and roof of the cave are encrusted with colourful stones and semi-precious veins. The floor is also multi hued.
The entrance to the cave is around 50 feet in height. At the end of the cave is the sanctum sanctorum , which houses the holy relic. It is covered by red clothes and vermilion. There are two entrances to the sanctum. One has to crawl into the sanctum, take the 'darshan' and leave through the other opening. Prasad is distributed to the pilgrims and they return after seeing the Milky Way at night.
Hingula Pithas
Although the Hingula shrine in Balochistan is considered to be a true Shakti Peeth, other shrines dedicated to the goddess exist in India and Sri Lanka. One important shrine is located 14 km from Talcher in the state of Orissa in India. King Nala of the Vidarbha region of Western India was an ardent devotee of Devi Hingula. He was approached by the King of Puri for help. In order to start cooking 'Mahaprasada' for Lord Jagannath he had to procure Devi Hingula as fire for the temple kitchen. The Goddess agreed and moved to Puri as fire. The Hingula shrine in Balochistan with its location west of the River Indus (and in Balochistan) is the only Shakti Peeth outside the subcontinent.
"The Reader"
You don't require being alone to concentrate.
Kumbh Mela, the largest spiritual gathering of mankind on the Earth, is held every 12 years on the banks of the 'Sangam'- the confluence of the holy rivers Ganga, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati. Millions of devotees take a holy dip in the sacred water during the mela. Maha Kumbha Mela held only at Prayag, once in every 144 years.
It is believed that at the historic moment of the Maha Kumbh Mela, the river turns itself into sanctity spots filled with ‘Amrita’ (Panacia or elixir of immortality). The pilgrims get once in a lifetime chance to bathe in the spirit of holiness, auspiciousness and salvation.
As mythology tells us, when Gods (Devtas) and Demons (Asura) used to reside on Earth, Gods were under the influence of a curse that gave birth of fear in them eventually making them weak. Brahma (the Creator) advised them to churn the milky ocean to obtain the elixir of immortality (Amrita). And Kumbh was the spot chosen to store the nectar of immortality recovered from Samudramanthan.
For 12 heavenly days and 12 heavenly nights, equivalent to 12 Earthly years, Gods were chased by Demons for the possession of Amrita. During the chase for the Amrita, few drops of this elixir out of its ‘Kumbha’ (Pot) fell on four places now known as Allahabad, Haridwar, Ujjain and Nasik. The whole Kumbha mela (carnival) and its cycle is a remembrance of that Mythological story. The mela takes place in all these four places. Out of these the one celebrated at the Holy Sangam in Allahabad is the largest and believed to be the holiest one. Thus the Kumbh Mela became one of the main festivals of Hindus as well as the largest spiritual gathering of mankind on Earth.
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Dr. Elliot McGucken Fine Art Landscape & Nature Photography
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Epic Landscape Photography: The Mythological Principles of Fine Art Nature Photography
Golden Number Ratio Divine Proportion Compositions Fine Art Photography Dr. Elliot McGucken : Using the Nature's Golden Cut to Exalt Nature Photography!
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Dr. Elliot McGucken Fine Art Landscape & Nature Photography
New book page!
www.facebook.com/epiclandscapephotography/
Epic Landscape Photography: The Mythological Principles of Fine Art Nature Photography
Ansel Adams used the golden ratio in his photography too:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFlzAaBgsDI
www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrOUX3ZCl7I
The Fibonacci Numbers are closely related to the golden ratio, and thus they also play a prominent role in exalted natural and artistic compositions!
I'm working on a far deeper book titled The Golden Ratio Number for Photographers. :)
The famous mathematician Jacob Bernoulli wrote:
The (golden spiral) may be used as a symbol, either of fortitude and constancy in adversity, or of the human body, which after all its changes, even after death, will be restored to its exact and perfect self.
Engraved upon Jacob’s tombstone is a spiral alongside the words, "Eadem Mutata Resurgo," meaning "Though changed, I shall rise again." And so it is that within the Golden Ratio Principle, the golden harmonies rise yet again.
The golden ratio is oft known as the divine cut, the golden cut, the divine proportion, the golden number, and PHI for the name of the architect of the Parthenon Phidias. It has exalted classical art on down through the millennia and it can exalt your art too!
Ask me anything about the golden ratio! :) I will do my best to answer!!
Enjoy my Fine Art Ballet instagram too!
Dr. Elliot McGucken's Golden Ratio Principle: The Golden Number Ratio Principle: Dr. E’s Golden Ratio Principle: The golden ratio exalts beauty because the number is a characteristic of the mathematically and physically most efficient manners of growth and distribution, on both evolutionary and purely physical levels. The golden ratio ensures that the proportions and structure of that which came before provide the proportions and structure of that which comes after. Robust, ordered growth is naturally associated with health and beauty, and thus we evolved to perceive the golden ratio harmonies as inherently beautiful, as we saw and felt their presence in all vital growth and life—in the salient features and proportions of humans and nature alike, from the distribution of our facial features and bones to the arrangements of petals, leaves, and sunflowers seeds. As ratios between Fibonacci Numbers offer the closest whole-number approximations to the golden ratio, and as seeds, cells, leaves, bones, and other physical entities appear in whole numbers, the Fibonacci Numbers oft appear in nature’s elements as “growth’s numbers.” From the dawn of time, humanity sought to salute their gods in art and temples exalting the same proportion by which all their vital sustenance and they themselves had been created—the golden ratio. the golden number, rectangle, and spiral!
The sculptures in the Schönbrunn Garden at Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, Austria were created between 1773 and 1780 under the direction of Johann Wilhelm Beyer, a German artist and garden designer. The Great Parterre of Schönbrunn Garden is lined on both sides with 32 over life-size sculptures that represent mythological deities and virtues. The Neptune Fountain at the foot of the Gloriette hill is the crowning monument of the Great Parterre. Other sculptures are distributed throughout the garden and palace forecourt, including fountains and pools. Several sculptors were employed during the execution of these works, among them Johann Baptist Hagenauer.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sculptures_in_the_Schönbrunn_Garden
El Palacio de Schönbrunn, también conocido como el Versalles vienés, es uno de los principales edificios históricos y culturales de Austria, desde el siglo XIX ha sido una de las principales atracciones turísticas de la ciudad de Viena y ha aparecido en postales, documentales y diversos filmes cinematográficos. Dentro de la iglesia hay importantes pinturas del pintor Giambattista Pittoni que muestran la educación de María y San Juan Nepomuceno, durante su época fue el pintor más solicitado por todos los tribunales reales europeos.
El palacio, junto con sus jardines, fue nombrado Patrimonio de la Humanidad de la Unesco en 1996.
En 1559 el emperador Maximiliano II hizo construir un pequeño palacio de caza que sería destruido completamente en el segundo sitio de Viena (1683). A raíz de ello, el emperador Leopoldo I encarga a Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach la construcción de un palacio para su hijo José (futuro José I). El arquitecto presenta un plan cuya realización, de una manera muy reducida a sus pretensiones iniciales, comenzaría en el año 1696 y finalizaría entre los años 1699 y 1701, aunque no existe consenso en este punto. De esta primera construcción sólo queda la Capilla de Palacio (Schlosskapelle) y la Escalera Azul (Blaue Stiege) con un fresco de Sebastiano Ricci.
Carlos VI no mostró especial interés en Schönbrunn, pero será su hija, María Teresa quien convertiría el palacio en residencia veraniega de los Habsburgo; estatus que conservaría hasta el final de la monarquía en 1918. Durante el gobierno de María Teresa se procede además a una ampliación importante del palacio bajo la batuta de Nikolaus von Pacassi, quien ya había trabajado también para la familia imperial en Hofburg. La mayor parte de la decoración interior tiene su origen en esta época y es una de las pocas muestras existentes del llamado rococó austríaco
Hacia 1765 Johann Ferdinand Hetzendorf von Hohenberg, asume la dirección de los trabajos de construcción del palacio. Su obra más significativa es la Glorieta que completa ópticamente el gran parque palaciego.
Entre 1817 y 1819 Johann Aman lleva a cabo una unificación y simplificación de la fachada siguiendo ya claramente los dictados del clasicismo. De esa época es también el color amarillo tan característico de la fachada, que hasta el siglo XX constituiría una de las "marcas" de la monarquía habsburga, pues todos los edificios oficiales estaban pintados con el mismo color.
Se puede llegar hasta el Palacio de Schönbrunn con la línea U4 del Metro de Viena. La parada del Palacio es Schönbrunn y la de su zoo Tiergarten (el más antiguo del mundo) es Hietzing. En Hietzing está también la estación de tranvías.
es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palacio_de_Schönbrunn
Schönbrunn Palace (German: Schloss Schönbrunn; Central Bavarian: Schloss Scheenbrunn) was the main summer residence of the Habsburg rulers, located in Hietzing, Vienna. The 1,441-room Rococo palace is one of the most important architectural, cultural, and historic monuments in the country. Since the mid-1950s it has been a major tourist attraction. The history of the palace and its vast gardens spans over 300 years, reflecting the changing tastes, interests, and aspirations of successive Habsburg monarchs.
In 1569, Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II purchased a large floodplain of the Wien river beneath a hill, situated between Meidling and Hietzing, where a former owner, in 1548, had erected a mansion called Katterburg. The emperor ordered the area to be fenced and put game there such as pheasants, ducks, deer and boar, in order for it to serve as the court's recreational hunting ground. In a small separate part of the area, "exotic" birds such as turkeys and peafowl were kept. Fishponds were also built.
The name Schönbrunn (meaning "beautiful spring") has its roots in an artesian well from which water was consumed by the court.
During the next century, the area was used as a hunting and recreation ground. Eleonora Gonzaga, who loved hunting, spent much time there and was bequeathed the area as her widow's residence after the death of her husband, Ferdinand II. From 1638 to 1643, she added a palace to the Katterburg mansion, while in 1642 came the first mention of the name "Schönbrunn" on an invoice. The origins of the Schönbrunn orangery seem to go back to Eleonora Gonzaga as well. The Schönbrunn Palace in its present form was built and remodelled during the 1740–50s during the reign of empress Maria Theresa who received the estate as a wedding gift. Franz I commissioned the redecoration of the palace exterior in the neoclassical style as it appears today.
Franz Joseph, the longest-reigning emperor of Austria, was born at Schönbrunn and spent a great deal of his life there. He died there, at the age of 86, on 21 November 1916. Following the downfall of the Habsburg monarchy in November 1918, the palace became the property of the newly founded Austrian Republic and was preserved as a museum.
After World War II and during the Allied Occupation of Austria (1945—55), Schönbrunn Palace was requisitioned to provide offices for both the British Delegation to the Allied Commission for Austria, and for the headquarters for the small British Military Garrison present in Vienna. With the reestablishment of the Austrian republic in 1955, the palace once again became a museum. It is still sometimes used for important events such as the meeting between U.S. president John F. Kennedy and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1961.
Since 1992 the palace and gardens have been owned and administered by the Schloss Schönbrunn Kultur-und Betriebsges.m.b.H., a limited-liability company wholly owned by the Republic of Austria. The company conducts preservation and restoration of all palace properties without state subsidies. UNESCO catalogued Schönbrunn Palace on the World Heritage List in 1996, together with its gardens, as a remarkable Baroque ensemble and example of synthesis of the arts (Gesamtkunstwerk).
The sculpted garden space between the palace and the Neptune Fountain is called the Great Parterre. The French garden, a big part of the area, was planned by Jean Trehet, a disciple of André Le Nôtre, in 1695. It contains, among other things, a maze.
The complex however includes many more attractions: Besides the Tiergarten, an orangerie erected around 1755, staple luxuries of European palaces of its type, a palm house (replacing, by 1882, around ten earlier and smaller glass houses in the western part of the park) is noteworthy. Western parts were turned into English garden style in 1828–1852.
The area called Meidlinger Vertiefung (engl.: depression of Meidling) to the west of the castle was turned into a play area and drill ground for the children of the Habsburgs in the 19th century. At this time it was common to use parks for the military education of young princes. Whereas the miniature bastion, which was built for this purpose, does not exist anymore, the garden pavilion that was used as shelter still does. It was turned into a café in 1927 and is known as Landtmann’s Jausen Station since 2013.
At the outmost western edge, a botanical garden going back to an earlier arboretum was re-arranged in 1828, when the Old Palm House was built. A modern enclosure for Orangutans, was restored besides a restaurant and office rooms in 2009.
The Great Parterre of Schönbrunn is lined with 32 sculptures, which represent deities and virtues.
The garden axis points towards a 60-metre-high (200 ft) hill, which since 1775 has been crowned by the Gloriette structure (Fischer von Erlach had initially planned to erect the main palace on the top of this hill).
Maria Theresa decided the Gloriette should be designed to glorify Habsburg power and the Just War (a war that would be carried out of "necessity" and lead to peace), and thereby ordered the builders to recycle "otherwise useless stone" which was left from the near-demolition of Schloss Neugebäude. The same material was also to be used for the Roman ruin.
The Gloriette was destroyed in the Second World War, but had already been restored by 1947, and was restored again in 1995.
The Gloriette today houses a café and an observation deck which provides panoramic views of the city.
The Postcard
A postally unused carte postale that was published by the Cairo Postcard Trust. The card has a divided back.
The Great Sphinx of Giza
The Great Sphinx of Giza is a limestone statue of a reclining sphinx, a mythical creature with the head of a human, and the body of a lion.
Facing directly from west to east, it stands on the Giza Plateau on the west bank of the Nile. The face of the Sphinx appears to represent the pharaoh Khafre.
The original shape of the Sphinx was cut from the bedrock, and has since been restored with layers of limestone blocks.
It measures 73 m (240 ft) long from paw to tail, 20 m (66 ft) high from the base to the top of the head, and 19 m (62 ft) wide at its rear haunches.
Its nose was broken off for unknown reasons between the 3rd. and 10th. centuries AD.
The Sphinx is the oldest known monumental sculpture in Egypt, and one of the most recognisable statues in the world.
The archaeological evidence suggests that it was created by ancient Egyptians of the Old Kingdom during the reign of Khafre (c. 2558 - 2532 BC).
The Great Sphinx's Name
The commonly used name "Sphinx" was given to the monument in classical antiquity, about 2,000 years after the commonly accepted date of its construction by reference to a Greek mythological beast with the head of a woman, a falcon, a cat, or a sheep and the body of a lion with the wings of an eagle. (Although, like most Egyptian sphinxes, the Great Sphinx has a man's head and no wings).
The English word sphinx comes from the ancient Greek Σφίγξ from the verb σφίγγω (meaning to squeeze in English), after the Greek sphinx who strangled anyone who failed to answer her riddle.
History of the Great Sphinx
The Sphinx is a monolith carved from the bedrock of the plateau, which also served as the quarry for the pyramids and other monuments in the area.
Egyptian geologist Farouk El-Baz has suggested that the head of the Sphinx may have been carved first, out of a natural yardang, i.e. a ridge of bedrock that had been sculpted by the wind. These can sometimes achieve shapes which resemble animals.
El-Baz suggests that the "moat" or "ditch" around the Sphinx may have been quarried out later to allow for the creation of the full body of the sculpture.
The archaeological evidence suggests that the Great Sphinx was created around 2500 BC for the pharaoh Khafre, the builder of the Second Pyramid at Giza. The stones cut from around the Sphinx's body were used to construct a temple in front of it.
However, neither the enclosure nor the temple were ever completed, and the relative scarcity of Old Kingdom cultural material suggests that a Sphinx cult was not established at the time.
Selim Hassan, writing in 1949 on recent excavations of the Sphinx enclosure, made note of this circumstance:
"Taking all things into consideration, it seems that
we must give the credit of erecting this, the world's
most wonderful statue, to Khafre, but always with
this reservation: that there is not one single
contemporary inscription which connects the Sphinx
with Khafre, so sound as it may appear, we must treat
the evidence as circumstantial, until such time as a
lucky turn of the spade of the excavator will reveal to
the world a definite reference to the erection of the
Sphinx."
In order to construct the temple, the northern perimeter-wall of the Khafre Valley Temple had to be deconstructed, hence it follows that the Khafre funerary complex preceded the creation of the Sphinx and its temple.
Furthermore, the angle and location of the south wall of the enclosure suggests the causeway connecting Khafre's Pyramid and Valley Temple already existed before the Sphinx was planned. The lower base level of the Sphinx temple also indicates that it doesn't pre-date the Valley Temple.
The Great Sphinx in the New Kingdom
Some time around the First Intermediate Period, the Giza Necropolis was abandoned, and drifting sand eventually buried the Sphinx up to its shoulders.
The first documented attempt at an excavation dates to c. 1400 BC, when the young Thutmose IV gathered a team and, after much effort, managed to dig out the front paws. Between them he erected a shrine that housed the Dream Stele, an inscribed granite slab (possibly a re-purposed door lintel from one of Khafre's temples).
When the stele was discovered, its lines of text were already damaged and incomplete. An excerpt reads:
"... the royal son, Thothmos, being arrived, while
walking at midday and seating himself under the
shadow of this mighty god, was overcome by
slumber and slept at the very moment when Ra is
at the summit of heaven.
He found that the Majesty of this august god spoke
to him with his own mouth, as a father speaks to his
son, saying:
'Look upon me, contemplate me, O my son Thothmos;
I am thy father, Harmakhis-Khopri-Ra-Tum; I bestow
upon thee the sovereignty over my domain, the
supremacy over the living ... Behold my actual condition
that thou mayest protect all my perfect limbs. The sand
of the desert whereon I am laid has covered me. Save
me, causing all that is in my heart to be executed.'"
The Dream Stele associates the Sphinx with Khafre, however this part of the text is not entirely intact:
"... which we bring for him: oxen ... and all the young
vegetables; and we shall give praise to Wenofer ...
Khaf ... the statue made for Atum-Hor-em-Akhet."
Egyptologist Thomas Young, finding the Khaf hieroglyphs in a damaged cartouche used to surround a royal name, inserted the glyph ra to complete Khafre's name. However when the Stele was re-excavated in 1925, the lines of text referring to Khaf flaked off and were destroyed.
In the New Kingdom, the Sphinx became more specifically associated with the sun god Hor-em-akhet. Pharaoh Amenhotep II built a temple to the northeast of the Sphinx nearly 1000 years after its construction, and dedicated it to the cult of Hor-em-akhet.
The Great Sphinx in the Graeco-Roman Period
By Graeco-Roman times, Giza had become a tourist destination - the monuments were regarded as antiquities. Some Roman Emperors visited the Sphinx out of curiosity, and for political reasons.
The Sphinx was cleared of sand again in the first century AD in honour of Emperor Nero and the Governor of Egypt, Tiberius Claudius Balbilus.
A monumental stairway more than 12 metres (39 ft) wide was erected, leading to a pavement in front of the paws of the Sphinx. At the top of the stairs, a podium was positioned that allowed view into the Sphinx sanctuary.
Further back, another podium neighboured several more steps. The stairway was dismantled during the 1931–32 excavations by Émile Baraize.
Pliny the Elder described the face of the Sphinx being coloured red and gave measurements for the statue:
"In front of these pyramids is the Sphinx, a still more
wondrous object of art, but one upon which silence
has been observed, as it is looked upon as a divinity
by the people of the neighbourhood.
It is their belief that King Harmaïs was buried in it, and
they will have it that it was brought there from a distance.
The truth is, however, that it was hewn from the solid
rock; and, from a feeling of veneration, the face of the
monster is coloured red.
The circumference of the head, measured round the
forehead, is one hundred and two feet, the length of the
feet being one hundred and forty-three, and the height,
from the belly to the summit of the asp on the head,
sixty-two."
A stela dated to 166 AD commemorates the restoration of the retaining walls surrounding the Sphinx.
The last Emperor connected with the monument was Septimius Severus, around 200 AD. With the downfall of Roman power, the Sphinx was once more engulfed by the sands.
The Great Sphinx in the Middle Ages
Some ancient non-Egyptians saw the Sphinx as a likeness of the god Horon. The cult of the Sphinx continued into medieval times. The Sabians of Harran saw it as the burial place of Hermes Trismegistus.
Arab authors described the Sphinx as a talisman which guarded the area from the desert. Al-Maqrizi describes it as "The Talisman of the Nile" on which the locals believed the flood cycle depended.
Muhammad al-Idrisi stated that those wishing to obtain bureaucratic positions in the Egyptian government should give an incense offering to the monument.
Over the centuries, writers and scholars have recorded their impressions and reactions upon seeing the Sphinx. The vast majority were concerned with a general description, often including a mixture of science, romance and mystique. A typical description of the Sphinx by tourists and leisure travelers throughout the 19th. and 20th. century was made by John Lawson Stoddard:
"It is the antiquity of the Sphinx which thrills us as
we look upon it, for in itself it has no charms. The
desert's waves have risen to its breast, as if to
wrap the monster in a winding-sheet of gold. The
face and head have been mutilated by Moslem
fanatics. The mouth, the beauty of whose lips was
once admired, is now expressionless. Yet grand in
its loneliness, - veiled in the mystery of unnamed
ages, - the relic of Egyptian antiquity stands solemn
and silent in the presence of the awful desert -
symbol of eternity. Here it disputes with Time the
empire of the past; forever gazing on and on into
a future which will still be distant when we, like all
who have preceded us and looked upon its face,
have lived our little lives and disappeared."
From the 16th. century, European observers described the Sphinx having the face, neck and breast of a woman.
Most early Western images were book illustrations in print form, elaborated by a professional engraver from either previous images available, or some original drawing or sketch supplied by an author, and usually now lost.
Seven years after visiting Giza, André Thévet (Cosmographie de Levant, 1556) described the Sphinx as:
"The head of a colossus, caused to be
made by Isis, daughter of Inachus, then
so beloved of Jupiter".
He, or his artist and engraver, pictured it as a curly-haired monster with a grassy dog collar.
Athanasius Kircher (who never visited Egypt) depicted the Sphinx as a Roman statue (Turris Babel, 1679).
Johannes Helferich's (1579) Sphinx is a pinched-face, round-breasted woman with a straight-haired wig.
George Sandys stated in 1615 that the Sphinx was a harlot; Balthasar de Monconys interpreted the headdress as a kind of hairnet, while François de La Boullaye-Le Gouz's Sphinx had a rounded hairdo with bulky collar.
Richard Pococke's Sphinx was an adoption of Cornelis de Bruijn's drawing of 1698, featuring only minor changes, but is closer to the actual appearance of the Sphinx than anything previously drawn.
The print versions of Norden's drawings for his Voyage d'Egypte et de Nubie (1755) clearly show that the nose was missing.
Later Excavations
In 1817, the first modern archaeological dig, supervised by the Italian Giovanni Battista Caviglia, uncovered the Sphinx's chest completely.
In 1887, the chest, paws, the altar, and the plateau were all made visible. Flights of steps were unearthed, and finally accurate measurements were taken of the great figures.
The height from the lowest of the steps was found to be one hundred feet, and the space between the paws was found to be thirty-five feet long and ten feet wide. Here there was formerly an altar; and a stele of Thûtmosis IV was discovered, recording a dream in which he was ordered to clear away the sand that even then was gathering round the site of the Sphinx.
One of the people working on clearing the sands from around the Great Sphinx was Eugène Grébaut, a French Director of the Antiquities Service.
Opinions of Early Egyptologists
Early Egyptologists and excavators were divided regarding the age of the Sphinx and its associated temples.
In 1857, Auguste Mariette, founder of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, unearthed the much later Inventory Stela (estimated to be from the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, c. 664 - 525 BC), which tells how Khufu came upon the Sphinx, already buried in sand.
Although certain tracts on the Stela are likely accurate, this passage is contradicted by archaeological evidence, thus considered to be Late Period historical revisionism, a purposeful fake, created by the local priests as an attempt to imbue the contemporary Isis temple with an ancient history it never had.
Such acts became common when religious institutions such as temples, shrines and priests' domains were fighting for political attention and for financial and economic donations.
Flinders Petrie wrote in 1883 regarding the state of opinion of the age of the Khafre Valley Temple, and by extension the Sphinx:
"The date of the Granite Temple has been so
positively asserted to be earlier than the fourth
dynasty, that it may seem rash to dispute the
point.
Recent discoveries, however, strongly show that
it was really not built before the reign of Khafre,
in the fourth dynasty."
Gaston Maspero, the French Egyptologist and second director of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, conducted a survey of the Sphinx in 1886. He concluded that because the Dream Stela showed the cartouche of Khafre in line 13, it was he who was responsible for the excavation, and therefore the Sphinx must predate Khafre and his predecessors - possibly Fourth Dynasty, c. 2575 - 2467 BC. Maspero believed the Sphinx to be "the most ancient monument in Egypt".
Ludwig Borchardt attributed the Sphinx to the Middle Kingdom, arguing that the particular features seen on the Sphinx are unique to the 12th. dynasty, and that the Sphinx resembles Amenemhat III.
E. A. Wallis Budge agreed that the Sphinx predated Khafre's reign, writing in The Gods of the Egyptians (1904):
"This marvellous object was in existence in the
days of Khafre, or Khephren, and it is probable
that it is a very great deal older than his reign,
and that it dates from the end of the archaic
period [c. 2686 BC]."
Modern Dissenting Hypotheses
Rainer Stadelmann, former director of the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo, examined the distinct iconography of the nemes (headdress) and the now-detached beard of the Sphinx, and concluded that the style is more indicative of the pharaoh Khufu (2589–2566 BC).
He was known to the Greeks as Cheops, builder of the Great Pyramid of Giza and Khafre's father. Rainer supports this by suggesting Khafre's Causeway was built to conform to a pre-existing structure, which, he concludes, given its location, could only have been the Sphinx.
In 2004, Vassil Dobrev of the Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale in Cairo announced that he had uncovered new evidence that the Great Sphinx may have been the work of the little-known pharaoh Djedefre (2528–2520 BC).
Djedefre was Khafra's half brother, and a son of Khufu. Dobrev suggests Djedefre built the Sphinx in the image of his father Khufu, identifying him with the sun god Ra in order to restore respect for their dynasty.
Dobrev also says that the causeway connecting Khafre's pyramid to the temples was built around the Sphinx, suggesting that it was already in existence at the time.
Egyptologist Nigel Strudwick responded to Dobrev by saying that:
"It is not implausible. But I would need more explanation,
such as why he thinks the pyramid at Abu Roash is a sun temple, something I'm sceptical about.
I have never heard anyone suggest that the name in the graffiti at Zawiyet el-Aryan mentions Djedefre.
I remain more convinced by the traditional argument of it being Khafre or the more recent theory of it being Khufu."
Recent Restorations of the Great Sphinx
In 1931, engineers of the Egyptian government repaired the head of the Sphinx. Part of its headdress had fallen off in 1926 due to erosion, which had also cut deeply into its neck. This questionable repair was by the addition of a concrete collar between the headdress and the neck, creating an altered profile.
Many renovations to the stone base and raw rock body were done in the 1980's, and then redone in the 1990's.
Natural and Deliberate Damage to the Great Sphinx
The limestone of the area consists of layers which offer differing resistance to erosion (mostly caused by wind and windblown sand), leading to the uneven degradation apparent in the Sphinx's body.
The lowest part of the body, including the legs, is solid rock. The body of the animal up to its neck is fashioned from softer layers that have suffered considerable disintegration. The layer from which the head was sculpted is much harder.
A number of "dead-end" shafts are known to exist within and below the body of the Great Sphinx, most likely dug by treasure hunters and tomb robbers.
The Great Sphinx's Missing Nose
Examination of the Sphinx's face shows that long rods or chisels were hammered into the nose area, one down from the bridge and another beneath the nostril, then used to pry the nose off towards the south, resulting in the one-metre wide nose still being lost to date.
Drawings of the Sphinx by Frederic Louis Norden in 1737 show the nose missing. Many folk tales exist regarding the destruction of its nose, aiming to provide an answer as to where it went or what happened to it.
One tale erroneously attributes it to cannonballs fired by the army of Napoleon Bonaparte. Other tales ascribe it to being the work of Mamluks. Since the 10th. century, some Arab authors have claimed it to be a result of iconoclastic attacks.
The Arab historian al-Maqrīzī, writing in the 15th. century, attributes the loss of the nose to Muhammad Sa'im al-Dahr, a Sufi Muslim who in 1378 found the local peasants making offerings to the Sphinx in the hope of increasing their harvest; he therefore defaced the Sphinx in an act of iconoclasm.
According to al-Maqrīzī, many people living in the area believed that the increased sand covering the Giza Plateau was retribution for al-Dahr's act of defacement.
Al-Minufi stated that the Alexandrian Crusade in 1365 was divine punishment for a Sufi sheikh breaking off the nose.
The Great Sphinx's Beard
In addition to the lost nose, a ceremonial pharaonic beard is thought to have been attached, although this may have been added in later periods after the original construction.
Egyptologist Vassil Dobrev has suggested that had the beard been an original part of the Sphinx, it would have damaged the chin of the statue upon falling. However the lack of visible damage supports his theory that the beard was a later addition.
The British Museum has limestone fragments which are thought to be from the Sphinx's beard.
Residues of red pigment are visible on areas of the Sphinx's face, and traces of yellow and blue pigment have also been found elsewhere on the Sphinx, leading Mark Lehner to suggest that:
"The monument was once decked
out in gaudy comic book colours".
However, as with the case of many ancient monuments, the pigments and colours have virtually disappeared, resulting in the yellow/beige appearance that the Sphinx has today.
Holes and Tunnels in the Great Sphinx
-- The Hole in the Sphinx's Head
Johann Helffrich visited the Sphinx during his travels in 1565 - 1566. He reports that a priest went into the head of the Sphinx, and when he spoke it was as if the Sphinx itself was speaking.
Many New Kingdom stelae depict the Sphinx wearing a crown. If it in fact existed, the hole could have been the anchoring point for it.
Émile Baraize closed the hole with a metal hatch in 1926.
-- Perring's Hole
Howard Vyse directed Perring in 1837 to drill a tunnel into the back of the Sphinx, just behind the head. The boring rods became stuck at a depth of 27 feet (8.2 m).
Attempts to blast the rods free caused further damage. The hole was cleared in 1978, and among the rubble was a fragment of the Sphinx's nemes headdress.
-- The Major Fissure
A major natural fissure in the bedrock cuts through the waist of the Sphinx. This was first excavated by Auguste Mariette in 1853.
The fissure measures up to 2 metres (6.6 ft) in width. In 1926 Baraize sealed the sides and roofed it with iron bars, limestone and cement. He then installed an iron trap door at the top. The sides of the fissure might have been artificially squared; however, the bottom is irregular bedrock, about 1 metre (3.3 ft) above the outside floor. A very narrow crack continues deeper.
-- The Rump Passage
When the Sphinx was cleared of sand in 1926 under direction of Baraize, it revealed an opening to a tunnel at floor-level on the north side of the rump. It was subsequently closed by masonry and nearly forgotten.
More than fifty years later, the existence of the passage was recalled by three elderly men who had worked during the sand clearing as basket carriers. This led to the rediscovery and excavation of the rump passage in 1980.
The passage consists of an upper and a lower section, which are angled roughly 90 degrees to each other. The upper part ascends to a height of 4 metres (13 ft) above the ground-floor at a northwest direction. It runs between masonry veneer and the core body of the Sphinx, and ends in a niche 1 metre (3.3 ft) wide and 1.8 metres (5.9 ft) high.
The ceiling of the niche consists of modern cement, which likely spilled down from the filling of the gap between masonry and core bedrock, some 3 metres (9.8 ft) above.
The lower part descends steeply into the bedrock towards the northeast, for a distance of approximately 4 metres (13 ft) and a depth of 5 metres (16 ft). It terminates in a pit at groundwater level.
At the entrance it is 1.3 metres (4.3 ft) wide, narrowing to about 1.07 metres (3.5 ft) towards the end. Among the sand and stone fragments, a piece of tin foil and the base of a modern ceramic water jar was found.
The clogged bottom of the pit contained modern fill. Among it, more tin foil, modern cement and a pair of shoes.
It is possible that the entire passage was cut top down, beginning high up on the rump, and that the current access point at floor-level was made at a later date.
Vyse noted in his diary in 1837 that he was "boring" near the tail, which indicates him as the creator of the passage, as no other tunnel has been identified at this location. Another interpretation is that the shaft is of ancient origin, perhaps an exploratory tunnel or an unfinished tomb shaft.
-- The Niche in the Northern Flank
There is a niche in the Sphinx's core body. It was closed during the 1925-6 restorations.
-- The Space Behind the Dream Stele
The space behind the Dream Stele, between the paws of the Sphinx, was covered by an iron beam and cement roof and then fitted with an iron trap door.
-- The Keyhole Shaft
At the ledge of the Sphinx enclosure there is a square shaft opposite the northern hind paw. It was cleared during excavation in 1978 and measures 1.42 by 1.06 metres (4.7 by 3.5 ft) and about 2 metres (6.6 ft) deep.
Lehner interpreted the shaft to be an unfinished tomb, and named it the "Keyhole Shaft", because a cutting in the ledge above the shaft is shaped like the lower part of a keyhole, upside down.
The Great Pyramid of Giza
The Great Pyramid of Giza is the largest Egyptian pyramid, and the tomb of the Fourth Dynasty pharaoh Khufu. Built in the 26th. century BC during a period of around 27 years, it is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and the only one to remain largely intact.
Initially standing at 146.6 metres (481 feet), the Great Pyramid was the tallest man-made structure in the world for more than 3,800 years. Over time, most of the smooth white limestone casing was removed, which lowered the pyramid's height to the present 138.5 metres (454.4 ft).
What is seen today is the underlying core structure. The base was measured to be 230.3 metres (755.6 ft) square, giving a volume of roughly 2.6 million cubic metres (92 million cubic feet).
The Great Pyramid was built by quarrying an estimated 2.3 million large blocks weighing 6 million tonnes in total. The majority of stones are not uniform in size or shape, and are only roughly dressed.
The outside layers were bound together by mortar. Primarily local limestone from the Giza Plateau was used. Other blocks were imported by boat down the Nile: white limestone from Tura for the casing, and granite blocks from Aswan, weighing up to 80 tonnes, for the King's Chamber.
There are three known chambers inside the Great Pyramid. The lowest was cut into the bedrock, but it remained unfinished. The Queen's Chamber and the King's Chamber, that contains a granite sarcophagus, are higher up, within the pyramid structure.
Khufu's vizier, Hemiunu, is believed to be the architect of the Great Pyramid. Many varying scientific and alternative hypotheses attempt to explain the exact construction techniques.
Attribution to Khufu
Historically the Great Pyramid has been attributed to Khufu based on the words of authors of classical antiquity, first and foremost Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus.
However, during the middle ages a number of other people were credited with the construction of the pyramid, for example Joseph, Nimrod or King Saurid.
In 1837 four additional Relieving Chambers were found above the King's Chamber after tunneling to them. The chambers, previously inaccessible, were covered in hieroglyphs of red paint.
The workers who were building the pyramid had marked the blocks with the names of their gangs, which included the pharaoh's name (e.g.: “The gang, The white crown of Khnum-Khufu is powerful”).
The names of Khufu were spelled out on the walls over a dozen times. Another of these graffiti was found by Goyon on an exterior block of the 4th layer of the pyramid.
Throughout the 20th. century the cemeteries next to the pyramid were excavated. Family members and high officials of Khufu were buried there. Most notably the wives, children and grandchildren of Khufu, along with the funerary cache of Hetepheres I, mother of Khufu.
As Hassan puts it:
"From the early dynastic times, it was always the
custom for the relatives, friends and courtiers to
be buried in the vicinity of the king they had served
during life. This was quite in accordance with the
Egyptian idea of the Hereafter."
The cemeteries were actively expanded until the 6th. dynasty, but used less frequently afterwards. The earliest pharaonic name of seal impressions is that of Khufu, the latest of Pepi II.
Worker graffiti was written on some of the stones of the tombs as well; for instance, "Mddw" (Horus name of Khufu) on the mastaba of Chufunacht, probably a grandson of Khufu.
In 1954 two boat pits, one containing the Khufu ship, were discovered buried at the south foot of the pyramid. The cartouche of Djedefre was found on many of the blocks that covered the boat pits. As the successor and eldest son he would have presumably been responsible for the burial of Khufu.
The second boat pit was examined in 1987; excavation work started in 2010. Graffiti on the stones included 4 instances of the name "Khufu", 11 instances of "Djedefre", a year (in reign, season, month and day), measurements of the stone, various signs and marks, and a reference line used in construction, all done in red or black ink.
During excavations in 2013 the Diary of Merer in the form of rolls of papyrus was found at Wadi al-Jarf. It documents the transportation of white limestone blocks from Tura to the Great Pyramid, which is mentioned by its original name Akhet Khufu dozens of times.
The diary records that the stones were accepted at She Akhet-Khufu ("The pool of the pyramid Horizon of Khufu") and Ro-She Khufu (“The entrance to the pool of Khufu”) which were under supervision of Ankhhaf, half brother and vizier of Khufu, as well as owner of the largest mastaba of the Giza East Field.
The Age of the Great Pyramid
The age of the Great Pyramid has been determined by two principal approaches:
-- Indirectly, through its attribution to Khufu and his chronological age, based on archaeological and textual evidence.
-- Directly, via radiocarbon dating of organic material found in the pyramid and included in its mortar. Mortar was used generously in the Great Pyramid's construction. In the mixing process, ashes from fires were added to the mortar, organic material that could be extracted and radiocarbon dated.
A total of 46 samples of the mortar were taken in 1984 and 1995, making sure they were clearly inherent to the original structure and could not have been incorporated at a later date.
The results were calibrated to 2871–2604 BC. A reanalysis of the data gave a completion date for the pyramid between 2620 and 2484 BC.
In 1872 Waynman Dixon opened the lower pair of air-shafts that were previously closed at both ends by chiseling holes into the walls of the Queen's Chamber.
One of the objects found within was a cedar plank, which came into possession of James Grant, a friend of Dixon. After inheritance it was donated to the Museum of Aberdeen in 1946. However it had broken into pieces, and was filed incorrectly.
Lost in the vast museum collection, it was only rediscovered in 2020, when it was radiocarbon dated to 3341–3094 BC. Being over 500 years older than Khufu's chronological age, Abeer Eladany suggests that the wood originated from the center of a long-lived tree, or had been recycled for many years prior to being deposited in the pyramid.
Construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza
-- Preparation of the Site
A hillock forms the base on which the pyramid stands. It was cut back into steps, and only a strip around the perimeter was leveled. Using modern equipment, this has been measured to be horizontal and flat to within 21 millimetres (0.8 in).
The bedrock reaches a height of almost 6 metres (20 ft) above the pyramid base at the location of the Grotto.
Along the sides of the base platform a series of holes are cut in the bedrock. Lehner hypothesizes that they held wooden posts used for alignment.
Edwards, among others, has suggested that water was used in order to level the base, although it is unclear how workable such a system would be.
-- Materials
The Great Pyramid consists of an estimated 2.3 million blocks. Approximately 5.5 million tonnes of limestone, 8,000 tonnes of granite, and 500,000 tonnes of mortar were used in the construction.
Most of the blocks were quarried at Giza just south of the pyramid, an area now known as the Central Field.
The white limestone used for the casing originated from Tura 10 km (6.2 mi) south of Giza), and was transported by boat down the Nile.
The granite stones in the pyramid were transported from Aswan, more than 900 km (560 mi) away. The largest, weighing up to 80 tonnes, forms the roofs of the King's Chamber.
Ancient Egyptians cut stone into rough blocks by hammering grooves into natural stone faces, inserting wooden wedges, then soaking these with water. As the water was absorbed, the wedges expanded, breaking off workable chunks. Once the blocks were cut, they were carried by boat either up or down the Nile River to the pyramid.
-- The Workforce
The Greeks believed that slave labour was used, but modern discoveries made at nearby workers' camps associated with construction at Giza suggest that it was built instead by thousands of conscript laborers.
Worker graffiti found at Giza suggest haulers were divided into groups of 40 men, consisting of four sub-units that each had an "Overseer of Ten".
As to the question of how over two million blocks could have been cut within Khufu's lifetime, stonemason Franck Burgos conducted an archaeological experiment based on an abandoned quarry of Khufu discovered in 2017.
Within it, an almost completed block and the tools used for cutting it had been uncovered: hardened arsenic copper chisels, wooden mallets, ropes and stone tools. In the experiment, replicas of these were used to cut a block weighing about 2.5 tonnes (the average block size used for the Great Pyramid).
It took 4 workers 4 days (with each working 6 hours a day) to excavate it. The initially slow progress sped up six times when the stone was wetted with water.
Based on the data, Burgos extrapolates that about 3,500 quarry-men could have produced the 250 blocks per day needed to complete the Great Pyramid within 27 years.
A construction management study conducted in 1999, in association with Mark Lehner and other Egyptologists, has estimated that the total project required an average workforce of about 13,200 individuals, with a peak workforce of roughly 40,000.
Surveys and Design of the Great Pyramid
The first precise measurements of the pyramid were made by Egyptologist Flinders Petrie in 1880–1882, published as The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh.
Many of the casing-stones and inner chamber blocks of the Great Pyramid fit together with high precision, with joints, on average, only 0.5 millimetres (0.020 in) wide. On the contrary, core blocks were only roughly shaped, with rubble inserted between larger gaps. Mortar was used to bind the outer layers together and to fill gaps and joints.
The block height and weight tends to get progressively smaller towards the top. Petrie measured the lowest layer to be 148 centimetres (4.86 ft) high, whereas the layers towards the summit barely exceed 50 centimetres (1.6 ft).
The accuracy of the pyramid's perimeter is such that the four sides of the base have an average error of only 58 millimetres (2.3 inches) in length, and the finished base was squared to a mean corner error of only 12 seconds of arc.
Ancient Egyptians used seked - how much length for one cubit of rise - to describe slopes. For the Great Pyramid a seked of 5+ palms was chosen, a ratio of 14 up to 11 in.
Some Egyptologists suggest this slope was chosen because the ratio of perimeter to height (1760/280 cubits) equals 2π to an accuracy of better than 0.05 percent (corresponding to the well-known approximation of π as 22/7).
Verner wrote:
"We can conclude that although the ancient
Egyptians could not precisely define the value
of π, in practice they used it.
"These relations of areas and of circular ratio
are so systematic that we should grant that
they were in the builder's design".
Alignment to the Cardinal Directions
The sides of the Great Pyramid's base are closely aligned to the four geographic (not magnetic) cardinal directions, deviating on average 3 minutes and 38 seconds of arc. Several methods have been proposed for how the ancient Egyptians achieved this level of accuracy:
-- The Solar Gnomon Method: the shadow of a vertical rod is tracked throughout a day. The shadow line is intersected by a circle drawn around the base of the rod. Connecting the intersecting points produces an east-west line.
An experiment using this method resulted in lines being, on average, 2 minutes, 9 seconds off due east–west. Employing a pinhole produced much more accurate results (19 arc seconds off), whereas using an angled block as a shadow definer was less accurate (3′ 47″ off).
-- The Pole Star Method: the polar star is tracked using a movable sight and fixed plumb line. Halfway between the maximum eastern and western elongations is true north.
Thuban, the polar star during the Old Kingdom, was about two degrees removed from the celestial pole at the time.
-- The Simultaneous Transit Method: the stars Mizar and Kochab appear on a vertical line on the horizon, close to true north around 2500 BC. They slowly and simultaneously shift east over time, which is used to explain the relative misalignment of the pyramids.
Construction Theories
Many alternative, often contradictory, theories have been proposed regarding the pyramid's construction. One mystery of the pyramid's construction is its planning. John Romer suggests that they used the same method that had been used for earlier and later constructions, i.e. laying out parts of the plan on the ground at a 1-to-1 scale.
He writes that:
"Such a working diagram would also serve to
generate the architecture of the pyramid with
precision unmatched by any other means".
The basalt blocks of the pyramid temple show clear evidence of having been cut with some kind of saw with an estimated cutting blade of 15 feet (4.6 m) in length. Romer suggests that this "super saw" may have had copper teeth and weighed up to 140 kilograms (310 lb).
He theorizes that such a saw could have been attached to a wooden trestle support, and possibly used in conjunction with vegetable oil, cutting sand, emery or pounded quartz to cut the blocks, which would have required the labour of at least a dozen men to operate it.
The Exterior Casing
[105]
At completion, the Great Pyramid was cased entirely in white limestone. There is a casing stone from the Great Pyramid in the British Museum.
Precisely worked blocks were placed in horizontal layers and carefully fitted together with mortar, their outward faces cut at a slope and smoothed to a high degree. Together they created four uniform surfaces, angled at 51°50'40.
Unfinished casing blocks of the pyramids of Menkaure and Henutsen at Giza suggest that the front faces were smoothed only after the stones were laid, with chiseled seams marking correct positioning, and where the superfluous rock would have to be trimmed off.
An irregular pattern is noticeable when looking at the pyramid's layers in sequence, where layer height declines steadily only to rise sharply again.
"Backing stones" supported the casing which were (unlike the core blocks) precisely dressed, and bound to the casing with mortar. These stones give the structure its visible appearance, following the dismantling of the pyramid in the middle ages.
In 1303 AD, a massive earthquake loosened many of the outer casing stones, which were said to have been carted away by Bahri Sultan An-Nasir Nasir-ad-Din al-Hasan in 1356 for use in nearby Cairo.
Many more casing stones were removed from the site by Muhammad Ali Pasha in the early 19th. century to build the upper portion of his Alabaster Mosque in Cairo.
Later explorers reported massive piles of rubble at the base of the pyramid left over from the continuing collapse of the casing stones, which were subsequently cleared away during continuing excavations of the site.
Today a few of the casing stones from the lowest course can be seen in situ on each side, with the best preserved on the north below the entrances, excavated by Vyse in 1837.
The mortar was chemically analyzed and contains organic inclusions (mostly charcoal), samples of which were radiocarbon dated to 2871–2604 BC. It has been theorized that the mortar enabled the masons to set the stones exactly by providing a level bed.
The Missing Pyramidion
The pyramid was once topped by a capstone known as a pyramidion. The material it was made from is subject to much speculation; limestone, granite or basalt are commonly proposed, while in popular culture it is often said to be solid gold or gilded.
All known 4th. dynasty pyramidia (of the Red Pyramid, the Satellite Pyramid of Khufu and the Queen's Pyramid of Menkaure are of white limestone, and were not gilded.
Only from the 5th. dynasty onward is there evidence of gilded capstones.
The Great Pyramid's pyramidion was already lost in antiquity, as Pliny the Elder and later authors report of a platform on its summit. Nowadays the pyramid is about 8 metres (26 ft) shorter than it was when intact, with about 1,000 tonnes of material missing from the top.
In 1874 a mast was installed on the top of the pyramid by the Scottish astronomer Sir David Gill who, whilst returning from work involving observing a rare Venus transit, was invited to survey Egypt. He began by surveying the Great Pyramid.
His measurements of the pyramid were accurate to within 1mm, and the survey mast is still in place to this day.
Interior of the Great Pyramid
The internal structure consists of three main chambers (the King's-, Queen's- and Subterranean Chamber), the Grand Gallery and various corridors and shafts.
There are two entrances into the pyramid; the original and a forced passage, which meet at a junction. From there, one passage descends into the Subterranean Chamber, while the other ascends to the Grand Gallery. From the beginning of the gallery three paths can be taken:
(a) A vertical shaft that leads down, past a grotto, to meet the descending passage.
(b) A horizontal corridor leading to the Queen's Chamber.
(c) A path up the gallery itself to the King's Chamber that contains the sarcophagus.
Both the King's and Queen's Chamber have a pair of small "air-shafts". Above the King's Chamber are a series of five Relieving Chambers.
--The Original Entrance
The original entrance is located on the north side, 15 royal cubits (7.9 m; 25.8 ft) east of the center-line of the pyramid. Before the removal of the casing in the middle ages, the pyramid was entered through a hole in the 19th. layer of masonry, approximately 17 metres (56 ft) above the pyramid's base level.
The height of that layer – 96 centimetres (3.15 ft) – corresponds to the size of the entrance tunnel which is commonly called the Descending Passage. According to Strabo (64–24 BC) a movable stone could be raised to enter this sloping corridor, however it is not known if it was a later addition or original.
A row of double chevrons diverts weight away from the entrance. Several of these chevron blocks are now missing, as the slanted faces they used to rest on indicate.
Numerous, mostly modern, graffiti is cut into the stones around the entrance. Most notable is a large, square text of hieroglyphs carved in honor of Frederick William IV, by Karl Richard Lepsius's Prussian expedition to Egypt in 1842.
-- The North Face Corridor
In 2016 the ScanPyramids team detected a cavity behind the entrance chevrons using muography, which was confirmed in 2019 to be a corridor at least 5 metres (16 ft) long, running horizontal or sloping upwards. Whether or not it connects to the Big Void above the Grand Gallery remains to be seen.
-- The Robbers' Tunnel
Today tourists enter the Great Pyramid via the Robbers' Tunnel, which was long ago cut straight through the masonry of the pyramid. The entrance was forced into the 6th. and 7th. layer of the casing, about 7 metres (23 ft) above the base.
After running more-or-less straight and horizontal for 27 metres (89 ft) it turns sharply left to encounter the blocking stones in the Ascending Passage. It is possible to enter the Descending Passage from this point, but access is usually forbidden.
The origin of this Robbers' Tunnel is the subject of much discussion. According to tradition, the tunnel was excavated around 820 AD by Caliph al-Ma'mun's workmen with a battering ram.
The digging dislodged the stone in the ceiling of the Descending Passage which hid the entrance to the Ascending Passage, and the noise of that stone falling then sliding down the Descending Passage alerted them to the need to turn left.
Unable to remove these stones, the workmen tunneled up beside them through the softer limestone of the Pyramid until they reached the Ascending Passage.
Due to a number of historical and archaeological discrepancies, many scholars contend that this story is apocryphal. They argue that it is much more likely that the tunnel had been carved shortly after the pyramid was initially sealed.
This tunnel, the scholars argue, was then resealed (likely during the Ramesside Restoration), and it was this plug that al-Ma'mun's ninth-century expedition cleared away. This theory is furthered by the report of patriarch Dionysius I Telmaharoyo, who claimed that before al-Ma'mun's expedition, there already existed a breach in the pyramid's north face that extended into the structure 33 metres (108 ft) before hitting a dead end.
This suggests that some sort of robber's tunnel predated al-Ma'mun, and that the caliph simply enlarged it and cleared it of debris.
-- The Descending Passage
From the original entrance, a passage descends through the masonry of the pyramid and then into the bedrock beneath it, ultimately leading to the Subterranean Chamber.
It has a slanted height of 4 Egyptian feet (1.20 m; 3.9 ft) and a width of 2 cubits (1.0 m; 3.4 ft). Its angle of 26°26'46" corresponds to a ratio of 1 to 2 (rise over run).
After 28 metres (92 ft), the lower end of the Ascending Passage is reached; a square hole in the ceiling, which is blocked by granite stones and might have originally been concealed.
To circumvent these hard stones, a short tunnel was excavated that meets the end of the Robbers' Tunnel. This was expanded over time and fitted with stairs.
The passage continues to descend for another 72 metres (236 ft), now through bedrock instead of the pyramid superstructure.
Lazy guides used to block off this part with rubble in order to avoid having to lead people down and back up the long shaft, until around 1902 when Covington installed a padlocked iron grill-door to stop this practice.
Near the end of this section, on the west wall, is the connection to the vertical shaft that leads up to the Grand Gallery.
A horizontal shaft connects the end of the Descending Passage to the Subterranean Chamber, It has a length of 8.84 m (29.0 ft), width of 85 cm (2.79 ft) and height of 91–95 cm (2.99–3.12 ft).
-- The Subterranean Chamber
The Subterranean Chamber, or "Pit", is the lowest of the three main chambers, and the only one dug into the bedrock beneath the pyramid.
Located about 27 m (89 ft) below base level, it measures roughly 16 cubits (8.4 m; 27.5 ft) north-south by 27 cubits (14.1 m; 46.4 ft) east-west, with an approximate height of 4 m (13 ft).
The western half of the room, apart from the ceiling, is unfinished, with trenches left behind by the quarry-men running east to west. The only access, through the Descending Passage, lies on the eastern end of the north wall.
Although seemingly known in antiquity, according to Herodotus and later authors, its existence had been forgotten in the middle ages until rediscovery in 1817, when Giovanni Caviglia cleared the rubble blocking the Descending Passage.
Opposite the entrance, a blind corridor runs straight south for 11 m (36 ft) and continues at a slight angle for another 5.4 m (18 ft), measuring about 0.75 m (2.5 ft) squared. A Greek or Roman character was found on its ceiling, suggesting that the chamber had indeed been accessible during Classical antiquity.
In the middle of the eastern half, there is a large hole called Pit Shaft or Perring's Shaft. The upmost part may have ancient origins, about 2 m (6.6 ft) squared in width, and 1.5 m (4.9 ft) in depth. Caviglia and Salt enlarged it to the depth of about 3 m (9.8 ft).
In 1837 Vyse directed the shaft to be sunk to a depth of 50 ft (15 m), in hopes of discovering the chamber encompassed by water that Herodotus alludes to. However no chamber was discovered after Perring and his workers had spent one and a half years penetrating the bedrock to the then water level of the Nile, some 12 m (39 ft) further down.
The rubble produced during this operation was deposited throughout the chamber. Petrie, visiting in 1880, found the shaft to be partially filled with rainwater that had rushed down the Descending Passage. In 1909, when the Edgar brothers' surveying activities were encumbered by the material, they moved the sand and smaller stones back into the shaft. The deep, modern shaft is sometimes mistaken to be part of the original design.
-- The Ascending Passage
The Ascending Passage connects the Descending Passage to the Grand Gallery. It is 75 cubits (39.3 m; 128.9 ft) long, and of the same width and height as the shaft it originates from, although its angle is slightly lower at 26°6'.
The lower end of the shaft is plugged by three granite stones, which were slid down from the Grand Gallery to seal the tunnel. The uppermost stone is heavily damaged.
The end of the Robbers' Tunnel concludes slightly below the stones, so a short tunnel was dug around them to gain access to the Descending Passage.
-- The Well Shaft and Grotto
The Well Shaft (also known as the Service Shaft or Vertical Shaft) links the lower end of the Grand Gallery to the bottom of the Descending Passage, about 50 metres (160 ft) further down.
It takes a winding and indirect course. The upper half goes through the nucleus masonry of the pyramid. It runs vertical at first for 8 metres (26 ft), then slightly angled southwards for about the same distance, until it hits bedrock approximately 5.7 metres (19 ft) above the pyramid's base level.
Another vertical section descends further, which is partially lined with masonry that has been broken through to a cavity known as the Grotto. The lower half of the Well Shaft goes through the bedrock at an angle of about 45° for 26.5 metres (87 ft) before a steeper section, 9.5 metres (31 ft) long, leads to its lowest point. The final section of 2.6 metres (8.5 ft) connects it to the Descending Passage, running almost horizontal. The builders evidently had trouble aligning the lower exit.
The purpose of the shaft is commonly explained as a ventilation shaft for the Subterranean Chamber, and as an escape shaft for the workers who slid the blocking stones of the Ascending Passage into place.
The Grotto is a natural limestone cave that was likely filled with sand and gravel before construction, before being hollowed out by looters. A granite block rests in it that probably originated from the portcullis that once sealed the King's Chamber.
-- The Queen's Chamber
The Horizontal Passage links the Grand Gallery to the Queen's Chamber. Five pairs of holes at the start suggest the tunnel was once concealed with slabs that laid flush with the gallery floor. The passage is 2 cubits (1.0 m; 3.4 ft) wide and 1.17 m (3.8 ft) high for most of its length, but near the chamber there is a step in the floor, after which the passage increases to 1.68 m (5.5 ft) high.
The Queen's Chamber is exactly halfway between the north and south faces of the pyramid. It measures 10 cubits (5.2 m; 17.2 ft) north-south, 11 cubits (5.8 m; 18.9 ft) east-west,[146] and has a pointed roof that apexes at 12 cubits (6.3 m; 20.6 ft) tall.
At the eastern end of the chamber there is a niche 9 cubits (4.7 m; 15.5 ft) high. The original depth of the niche was 2 cubits (1.0 m; 3.4 ft), but it has since been deepened by treasure hunters.
Shafts were discovered in the north and south walls of the Queen's Chamber in 1872 by British engineer Waynman Dixon, who believed shafts similar to those in the King's Chamber must also exist. The shafts were not connected to the outer faces of the pyramid, and their purpose is unknown.
In one shaft Dixon discovered a ball of diorite, a bronze hook of unknown purpose and a piece of cedar wood. The first two objects are currently in the British Museum. The latter was lost until recently when it was found at the University of Aberdeen.
The northern shaft's angle of ascent fluctuates, and at one point turns 45 degrees to avoid the Great Gallery. The southern shaft is perpendicular to the pyramid's slope.
The shafts in the Queen's Chamber were explored in 1993 by the German engineer Rudolf Gantenbrink using a crawler robot he designed, called Upuaut 2.
After a climb of 65 m (213 ft), he discovered that one of the shafts was blocked by a limestone "door" with two eroded copper "handles".
The National Geographic Society created a similar robot which, in September 2002, drilled a small hole in the southern door, only to find another stone slab behind it. The northern passage, which was difficult to navigate because of its twists and turns, was also found to be blocked by a slab.
Research continued in 2011 with the Djedi Project which used a fibre-optic "micro snake camera" that could see around corners. With this, they were able to penetrate the first door of the southern shaft through the hole drilled in 2002, and view all the sides of the small chamber behind it.
They discovered hieroglyphics written in red paint. Egyptian mathematics researcher Luca Miatello stated that the markings read "121" – the length of the shaft in cubits.
The Djedi team were also able to scrutinize the inside of the two copper "handles" embedded in the door, which they now believe to be for decorative purposes. They additionally found the reverse side of the "door" to be finished and polished, which suggests that it was not put there just to block the shaft from debris, but rather for a more specific reason.
-- The Grand Gallery
The Grand Gallery continues the slope of the Ascending Passage towards the King's Chamber, extending from the 23rd. to the 48th. course, a rise of 21 metres (69 ft). It has been praised as a truly spectacular example of stonemasonry.
It is 8.6 metres (28 ft) high and 46.68 metres (153.1 ft) long. The base is 4 cubits (2.1 m; 6.9 ft) wide, but after two courses - at a height of 2.29 metres (7.5 ft) - the blocks of stone in the walls are corbelled inwards by 6–10 centimetres (2.4–3.9 in) on each side.
There are seven of these steps, so, at the top, the Grand Gallery is only 2 cubits (1.0 m; 3.4 ft) wide. It is roofed by slabs of stone laid at a slightly steeper angle than the floor so that each stone fits into a slot cut into the top of the gallery, like the teeth of a ratchet.
The purpose was to have each block supported by the wall of the Gallery, rather than resting on the block beneath it, in order to prevent cumulative pressure.
At the upper end of the Gallery, on the eastern wall, there is a hole near the roof that opens into a short tunnel by which access can be gained to the lowest of the Relieving Chambers.
At the top of the gallery, there is a step onto a small horizontal platform where a tunnel leads through the Antechamber, once blocked by portcullis stones, into the King's Chamber.
The Big Void
In 2017, scientists from the ScanPyramids project discovered a large cavity above the Grand Gallery using muon radiography, which they called the "ScanPyramids Big Void". Its length is at least 30 metres (98 ft) and its cross-section is similar to that of the Grand Gallery.
The purpose of the cavity is unknown, and it is not accessible. Zahi Hawass speculates that it may have been a gap used in the construction of the Grand Gallery, but the research team state that the void is completely different to previously identified construction spaces.
The Antechamber
The last line of defense against intrusion was a small chamber specially designed to house portcullis blocking stones, called the Antechamber. It is cased almost entirely in granite, and is situated between the upper end of the Grand Gallery and the King's Chamber.
Three slots for portcullis stones line the east and west wall of the chamber. Each of them is topped with a semi-circular groove for a log, around which ropes could be spanned.
The granite portcullis stones were approximately 1 cubit (52.4 cm; 20.6 in) thick and were lowered into position by the aforementioned ropes which were tied through a series of four holes at the top of the blocks. A corresponding set of four vertical grooves are on the south wall of the chamber, recesses that make space for the ropes.
The Antechamber has a design flaw: the space above them can be accessed, thus all but the last block can be circumvented. This was exploited by looters who punched a hole through the ceiling of the tunnel behind, gaining access to the King's Chamber.
Later on, all three portcullis stones were broken and removed. Fragments of these blocks can be found in various locations in the pyramid.
The King's Chamber
The King's Chamber is the uppermost of the three main chambers of the pyramid. It is faced entirely with granite, and measures 20 cubits (10.5 m; 34.4 ft) east-west by 10 cubits (5.2 m; 17.2 ft) north-south.
Its flat ceiling is about 11 cubits and 5 digits (5.8 m;19.0 ft) above the floor, formed by nine slabs of stone weighing in total about 400 tons. All the roof beams show cracks due to the chamber having settled 2.5–5 cm (0.98–1.97 in).
The walls consist of five courses of blocks that are uninscribed, as was the norm for burial chambers of the 4th dynasty. The stones are precisely fitted together. The facing surfaces are dressed to varying degrees, with some displaying remains of bosses not entirely cut away.
The back sides of the blocks were only roughly hewn to shape, as was usual with Egyptian hard-stone facade blocks, presumably to save work.
The Sarcophagus
The only object in the King's Chamber is a sarcophagus made out of a single, hollowed-out granite block. When it was rediscovered in the early middle ages, it was found broken open and any contents had already been removed.
It is of the form common for early Egyptian sarcophagi; rectangular in shape with grooves to slide the now missing lid into place with three small holes for pegs to fixate it. The coffer was not perfectly smoothed, displaying various tool marks matching those of copper saws and tubular hand-drills.
The internal dimensions are roughly 198 cm (6.50 ft) by 68 cm (2.23 feet), the external 228 cm (7.48 ft) by 98 cm (3.22 ft), with a height of 105 cm (3.44 ft). The walls have a thickness of about 15 cm (0.49 ft). The sarcophagus is too large to fit around the corner between the Ascending and Descending Passages, which indicates that it must have been placed in the chamber before the roof was put in place.
Air Shafts
In the north and south walls of the King's Chamber are two narrow shafts, commonly known as "air shafts". They face each other, and are located approximately 0.91 m (3.0 ft) above the floor, with a width of 18 and 21 cm (7.1 and 8.3 in) and a height of 14 cm (5.5 in).
Both start out horizontally for the length of the granite blocks they go through before changing to an upwards direction. The southern shaft ascends at an angle of 45° with a slight curve westwards. One ceiling stone was found to be distinctly unfinished which Gantenbrink called a "Monday morning block".
The northern shaft changes angle several times, shifting the path to the west, perhaps to avoid the Big Void. The builders had trouble calculating the right angles, resulting in parts of the shaft being narrower. Nowadays they both lead to the exterior. If they originally penetrated the outer casing is unknown.
The purpose of these shafts is not clear: They were long believed by Egyptologists to be shafts for ventilation, but this idea has now been widely abandoned in favour of the shafts serving a ritualistic purpose associated with the ascension of the king's spirit to the heavens. Ironically, both shafts were fitted with ventilators in 1992 to reduce the humidity in the pyramid.
The idea that the shafts point towards stars has been largely dismissed as the northern shaft follows a dog-leg course through the masonry and the southern shaft has a bend of approximately 20 centimetres (7.9 in), indicating no intention to have them point to any celestial objects.
The Relieving Chambers
Above the roof of the King's Chamber are five compartments, named (from lowest upwards) "Davison's Chamber", "Wellington's Chamber", "Nelson's Chamber", "Lady Arbuthnot's Chamber", and "Campbell's Chamber".
They were presumably intended to safeguard the King's Chamber from the possibility of the roof collapsing under the weight of stone above, hence they are referred to as "Relieving Chambers".
The granite blocks that divide the chambers have flat bottom sides but roughly shaped top sides, giving all five chambers an irregular floor, but a flat ceiling, with the exception of the uppermost chamber which has a pointed limestone roof.
Nathaniel Davison is credited with the discovery of the lowest of these chambers in 1763, although a French merchant named Maynard informed him of its existence. It can be reached through an ancient passage that originates from the top of the south wall of the Grand Gallery.
The upper four chambers were discovered in 1837 by Howard Vyse after discovering a crack in the ceiling of the first chamber. This allowed the insertion of a long reed, which, with the employment of gunpowder and boring rods, forced a tunnel upwards through the masonry. As no access shafts existed for the upper four chambers they were completely inaccessible until this point.
Numerous graffiti of red ochre paint were found to cover the limestone walls of all four newly discovered chambers. Apart from leveling lines and indication marks for masons, multiple hieroglyphic inscriptions spell out the names of work-gangs.
Those names, which were also found in other Egyptian pyramids like that of Menkaure and Sahure, usually included the name of the pharaoh they were working for. The blocks must have received the inscriptions before the chambers became inaccessible during construction.
Their orientation, often side-ways or upside down, and their sometimes being partially covered by blocks, indicates that the stones were inscribed before being laid.
Hinglaj (Sindhi: هنگلاج, Urdu: ﮨنگلاج, Sanskrit: हिङ्ग्लाज, Hindi: हिंगलाज) is an important Hindu pilgrimage place in Balochistan, Pakistan and Kuldevi of Kshatriya Bhavsar Community. It is situated in Balochistan province about 250 km north of Karachi.[1]
Mythological Origin
When Lord Vishnu cut up the body of Sati into 51 pieces so that Lord Shiva would calm down and stop his Tandava, the pieces were scattered over various places of the Indian subcontinent. It is said that the head of Sati fell at Hingula or Hinglaj and is thus considered the most important of the 51 Shakti Peeths. At each of the Peeths, Bhairava (a manifestation of Shiva) accompanies the relics. The Bhairava at Hinglaj is called Bhimalochana, located in Koteshwar, Kutch. The Sanskrit texts mention the part as 'Brahmadreya' or vital essence. For details, see this.
In the Ramayana, after slaying Ravana, Lord Ram came to Hinglaj to atone for his sin of 'Brahmhatya' (killing a Brahmin). Ravana was a Brahmin and a great devotee of Lord Shiva and Durga. Lord Ram meditated at Hinglaj as it was a very important shrine.
The mantra or incantation for Devi Hinglaj is attributed to Saint Dadhichi, an important saint in Hindu mythology. The mantra is :
ॐ हिंगुले परमहिंगुले अमृतरूपिणि तनुशक्ति
मनः शिवे श्री हिंगुलाय नमः स्वाहा
OM HINGULE PARAM HINGULE AMRUTRUPINI TANU SHAKTI
MANAH SHIVE SHREE HINGULAI NAMAH SWAHA
Translation : "Oh Hingula Devi, she who holds nectar in her self and is power incarnate. She who is one with Lord Shiva, to her we pay our respects and make this offering (swaha)."
Yet another incarnation:
ब्रह्मरंध्रम् हिंगुलायाम् भैरवो भीमलोचन: |
कोट्टरी सा महामाया त्रिगुणा या दिगम्बरी ||
BRAHMARANDHRAM HINGULAAYAAM BHAIRAVO VIMALOCHANAH
KOTTARI SAA MAHAAMAAYAA TRIGUNAA YAA DIGAMVARI
Translation : "Mahaamaayaa (Queen of Illusions) who represents the supreme virtue by reigning over all three virtues, has Bhimalochana as her Bhairava, and derides the worldly trappings by dancing naked, resides in this cave of Hingula that enshrines her sacred head."
Geographical Location
Hinglaj is situated in the Balochistan province of Pakistan. It is near the peak of one of the mountains of the Makran range. It is approximately 120 km from the Indus River Delta and 20 km from the Arabian Sea. The area is extremely arid and the pilgrimage also called 'Nani ki Haj' by local Muslims takes place before summer. The pilgrimage starts at a place near the Hao river which is 10 km from Karachi.
The name of Hinglaj lends itself to the Hingol river, the largest in Balochistan and the Hingol National Park which at 6,200 square kilometers is the largest in Pakistan.
Since it is located in a desert which is called Maru in Sanskrit, the shrine is referred to in holy texts as "Marutirtha Hinglaj" which means Hinglaj, the Shrine of the desert. "Marutirtha Hinglaj" is also the name of a Bengali novel by Kalikananda Abadhut who made a pilgrimage to Hinglaj and Koteshwar. The novel is based on real-life experience and has later been adapted into a very successful Bengali movie of the same name.
The Makran Coastal Highway linking Quetta and Gwadar passes through Balochistan. It was built by FWO and follows the same path which Alexander took when he ended his campaign. The highway has made the pilgrimage and visiting the shrine very convenient.
Social Significance
Despite the partition and the increasing Islamic stance of the Pakistani Government and society, Hinglaj has survived and is in fact revered by local Muslims who call it 'Nani ki Mandir'. Muslims offer red or saffron clothes, incense, candles and a sweet preparation called 'Sirini' to the deity[citation needed]. The Muslims protected sites like Hinglaj which are the last vestiges of the Hindu society which once straddled the area.
Hingula means cinnabar (HgS Mercuric Sulphide). It was used in ancient India to cure snakebite and other poisonings and is still employed in traditional medicine. The Goddess Hingula is thus believed to possess powers which can cure poisoning and other diseases. The Muslim name 'Nani' is an abbreviation of the name of the ancient Goddess "Nanaia", whose Persian name is "Anahita".
The Pilgrimage
Although the road linking the port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea with the interior has shortened the pilgrimage a lot, the ancient path followed for millennia through the Baluch desert is endowed with a unique importance. The very journey on foot is considered a penance to purify oneself before approaching the deity. An account of such a journey is given below.
The pilgrims are led by priests or caretakers of the shrine through the desert. They hold a wooden trident in their hands. The trident or Trishul is the weapon of Lord Shiva and hence is associated with the Sati too. Since they hold the trident during the trip, they are called 'Charidaars' (Those who hold the stick or Chadi). The Chadi is draped with saffron, red or pink coloured fabrics.
The priests give a saffron cloth to every pilgrim and an oath is taken that each would help the other. However they are warned not to share their personal stores of water. This act is deemed to be a sort of fast and penance necessary for the journey.
On the path to the shrine are situated wells which are guarded by the local tribesmen. Feuds over water, a scarce commodity, is common in the area. The tribesmen are offered food consisting primarily of Roti (circular flat disks of baked flour) in lieu of water.
Baba Chandrakup
An important stop during the pilgrimage is the mud volcano called 'Chandrakup' (literally 'Moon Well'). It is considered holy and is addressed as 'Baba Chandrakup' The volcano is filled with mud, instead of magma, hence the term "mud volcano". It is considered to be the abode of Babhaknath. It is one of the few sites of active volcanic activity in the Asian mainland. The mud is semi fluid and sometimes it spills over and aggregates and cools into hillocks which surround the site. There are altogether 18 mud volcanoes in the region.
Pilgrims stay up all night at the base of the volcano making Rotis which are offered to the volcano. The activity is considered to be very holy. The ingredients, flour, ghee (clarified butter), jaggery, sugar are mixed on a cloth which is held at all times at four corners by pilgrims. This is done to ensure that it never touches the ground. The prepared Rotis are covered with wood.
At daybreak, the Rotis are carried by the pilgrims and priests to the mouth of the crater. A Chadi or Wooden Trident is planted near the edge of the crater and offerings of incense and cannabis are made along with recitation of 'mantras'. The rotis are then tore up and cast into the crater.
After this ritual every pilgrim is asked to confess his sins and ask for forgiveness. Anyone who refuses or hesitates to confess to his or her sins is ostracised and abandoned by the party. After the confession, the party proceeds with the permission of 'Baba Chandrakup'.
Reaching the Shrine
The pilgrimage continues for another four to five days after leaving Chandrakup. The final stop is a small village with wooden houses. It is home to the caretakers of the shrine and Baluch tribesmen who revere the deity even though they are Muslims. Before entering the shrine, the pilgrims bathe in the Hingol River (also called the Aghore River). The shrine is situated on the mountain on the other bank of the river. The pilgrims bathe and visit the shrine in their wet clothes.
The Shrine's Mark
The shrine is recognised by a mark which resembles the sun and the moon. This mark is upon a giant boulder at the top of the hill containing the cave. It is believed that Lord Ram created this mark with the strike of his arrow after his penance ended.
The Shrine
The shrine is called 'Mahal', a word of Arabic origin which means palace. The natural beauty of the shrine has spawned folklore that it was constructed by demigods called 'Yakshas'. The walls and roof of the cave are encrusted with colourful stones and semi-precious veins. The floor is also multi hued.
The entrance to the cave is around 50 feet in height. At the end of the cave is the sanctum sanctorum , which houses the holy relic. It is covered by red clothes and vermilion. There are two entrances to the sanctum. One has to crawl into the sanctum, take the 'darshan' and leave through the other opening. Prasad is distributed to the pilgrims and they return after seeing the Milky Way at night.
Hingula Pithas
Although the Hingula shrine in Balochistan is considered to be a true Shakti Peeth, other shrines dedicated to the goddess exist in India and Sri Lanka. One important shrine is located 14 km from Talcher in the state of Orissa in India. King Nala of the Vidarbha region of Western India was an ardent devotee of Devi Hingula. He was approached by the King of Puri for help. In order to start cooking 'Mahaprasada' for Lord Jagannath he had to procure Devi Hingula as fire for the temple kitchen. The Goddess agreed and moved to Puri as fire. The Hingula shrine in Balochistan with its location west of the River Indus (and in Balochistan) is the only Shakti Peeth outside the subcontinent.
This bronze head of a griffin - a mythological creature that was part lion, part eagle - once decorated a large cauldron. Bronze cauldrons set on tripods or conical stands were among the most spectacular votive gifts dedicated in Greek sanctuaries from the 8th to the 6th centuries BCE. Cast-bronze griffins' heads often decorated the cauldron rims; they projected outward from the shoulder of the vessel on long necks made of hammered or cast bronze. Some of the dedicated cauldrons were colossal. The Greek historian Herodotus describes one made for King Kroisos of Lydia that could hold 2,700 gallons and another dedicated on the island of Samos that was supported by huge kneeling figures. Over six hundred bronze griffins' heads from cauldrons are known today; most have been found at the sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia or at that of Hera on Samos. This enormous head is one of the finest.
This head was originally discovered in a river bed and was apparently looted from the Archaeological Museum in Olympia in the 1930s. It was donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the 1970s and has been on display there ever since. In late February, 2025, it was deaccessioned and repatriated to Greece.
Met Museum, New York (formerly 1972.118.54).
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"Western Civilization"
sculptor: C. Paul Jennewein (1933)
Left to right
Eos, Nous, Adonis, Hippomenes, Eros, lion, Aphrodite, Zeus, Demeter, Triptolemus, Ariadne, Theseus, Minotaur, Python
The western pediment features fourteen Greek deities and mythological figures. Jennewein's polychrome sculptures of painted terra-cotta figures are the only sculptural group to adorn any of the museum's eight pediments.
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The Philadelphia Museum of Art
also known as: the "Great Greek Garage" & "Parthenon on the Parkway"
architects: firms of Horace Trumbauer & Zantzinger, Borie & Medary
building's plan & massing: Howell Lewis Shay (Trumbauer)
detail & perspective drawing: Julian Abele (Trumbauer)
Masonic cornerstone ceremony: Mayor Thomas B. Smith (1919)
A collection of bronze griffins adorn the top of the building. In the 1970s, the museum adopted the griffin as it's symbol. In antiquity the griffin was known for guarding knowledge, treasure and priceless possessions as well as symbols of divine power and a guardians of the divine.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art - Main Building
2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway (West end)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Kumbh Mela, the largest spiritual gathering of mankind on the Earth, is held every 12 years on the banks of the 'Sangam'- the confluence of the holy rivers Ganga, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati. Millions of devotees take a holy dip in the sacred water during the mela. Maha Kumbha Mela held only at Prayag, once in every 144 years.
It is believed that at the historic moment of the Maha Kumbh Mela, the river turns itself into sanctity spots filled with âAmritaâ (Panacia or elixir of immortality). The pilgrims get once in a lifetime chance to bathe in the spirit of holiness, auspiciousness and salvation.
As mythology tells us, when Gods (Devtas) and Demons (Asura) used to reside on Earth, Gods were under the influence of a curse that gave birth of fear in them eventually making them weak. Brahma (the Creator) advised them to churn the milky ocean to obtain the elixir of immortality (Amrita). And Kumbh was the spot chosen to store the nectar of immortality recovered from Samudramanthan.
For 12 heavenly days and 12 heavenly nights, equivalent to 12 Earthly years, Gods were chased by Demons for the possession of Amrita. During the chase for the Amrita, few drops of this elixir out of its âKumbhaâ (Pot) fell on four places now known as Allahabad, Haridwar, Ujjain and Nasik. The whole Kumbha mela (carnival) and its cycle is a remembrance of that Mythological story. The mela takes place in all these four places. Out of these the one celebrated at the Holy Sangam in Allahabad is the largest and believed to be the holiest one. Thus the Kumbh Mela became one of the main festivals of Hindus as well as the largest spiritual gathering of mankind on Earth.
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On this fragment of a Roman sarcophagus, the mythological story of the love of Selene, the moon goddess, for the beautiful young mortal Endymion provides an allegorical message of hope for the deceased. In the center of the scene, Selene, identified by the crescent moon in her hair, alights from her chariot. Accompanied by Erotes, she approaches the sleeping Endymion. Hypnos, the god of sleep, stands behind Endymion, holding a branch of poppies and pouring a sleeping potion over him; by these means, Endymion sleeps eternally, in order to remain with the immortal goddess. In most versions of the myth, Endymion chose this fate—immortality and everlasting youth through eternal slumber. His tranquil sleep parallels the peaceful sleep of death. In this funerary context, the scene offers the comforting reminder that even in death, love endures.
At the far right, the artist shows a later moment in the story. Selene’s evening with the sleeping Endymion over, she has remounted her chariot and prepares to fly back to the sky. On the left, an elaborate pastoral scene with a shepherd and his flock does not directly enter the story; it merely serves as a setting.
Roman, Imperial, abt. 210 CE. Blue-gray marble.
Getty Villa Museum, Pacific Palisades, California (76.AA.8)
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"Western Civilization"
sculptor: C. Paul Jennewein (1933)
Left to right
Eos, Nous, Adonis, Hippomenes, Eros, lion, Aphrodite, Zeus, Demeter, Triptolemus, Ariadne, Theseus, Minotaur, Python
The western pediment features fourteen Greek deities and mythological figures. Jennewein's polychrome sculptures of painted terra-cotta figures are the only sculptural group to adorn any of the museum's eight pediments.
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The Philadelphia Museum of Art
also known as: the "Great Greek Garage" & "Parthenon on the Parkway"
architects: firms of Horace Trumbauer & Zantzinger, Borie & Medary
building's plan & massing: Howell Lewis Shay (Trumbauer)
detail & perspective drawing: Julian Abele (Trumbauer)
Masonic cornerstone ceremony: Mayor Thomas B. Smith (1919)
A collection of bronze griffins adorn the top of the building. In the 1970s, the museum adopted the griffin as it's symbol. In antiquity the griffin was known for guarding knowledge, treasure and priceless possessions as well as symbols of divine power and a guardians of the divine.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art - Main Building
2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway (West end)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Tomioka lenses have developed quite a mythological status in recent years. There are numerous debates over which lenses were made (or not made) by Tomioka for other camera brands. Such is Tomioka's reputation for making fine lenses, that a positive attribution to the company for a particular lens can seriously increase that lens's value.
The only Tomioka lens here for sure is the Auto Revuenon 55/1.2. That's because Tomioka engraved their name on the lens..... Of the other lenses, it's pretty certain the Yashica Auto Yashinon 5cm f2 was made by Tomioka, and probably the other Yashica too, and possibly the Mamiya/Sekor.
All I can add to the debate is that these four lenses are fine lenses indeed, and do have a distinctive bokeh signature wide open. It's different from (say) Takumar and other Japanese/German lenses. Not better in all cases, just different!
Hermes holding the infant Dionysos in his left arm. The mythological subjects relating to the custody of the child Dionysus to the nymphs is very popular in Greek and Roman art. Evidence of this myth are attested in vase painting, sculpture, bas-reliefs etc.
The Myth
Dionysus was the twice-born son of Zeus and Semele, snatched prematurely from his mother's womb when she was burnt to death by Zeus' thunderbolt, then stitched into his father's thigh until he could be born full-term. Zeus ordered Hermes, his messenger, to hide the newborn from his jealous wife Hera, who sought to destroy any remnants of the affair, including the newborn. Hermes carried the infant to remote mountains for hiding, where Papposylenos and the nymphs Ino and Athamas, raised the child.
German excavators discovered the statue in 1877 in the Temple of Hera, Hereion, at Olympia. Pausanias, a second century A.D. historian, describes his tour of this temple in which he saw such a statue said to be by Praxiteles. The date of this artwork is extremely controversial and as yet undetermined. Most scholars now believe it is a work of the Hellenistic period rather than of the 4th century.
Today, art historians and archaeologists disagree over whether this is an original work by Praxiteles, or one by an imitator of his style.
Marble sculpture
Height 2,15 m
Late classical Stile
Original sculpture attributed to Praxiteles [?]
Copy ca. 100 BC - ca. 100 AD
From Elis, Greece
Olympia, Archaeological Museum
Hermes holding the infant Dionysos in his left arm. The mythological subjects relating to the custody of the child Dionysus to the nymphs is very popular in Greek and Roman art. Evidence of this myth are attested in vase painting, sculpture, bas-reliefs etc.
The Myth
Dionysus was the twice-born son of Zeus and Semele, snatched prematurely from his mother's womb when she was burnt to death by Zeus' thunderbolt, then stitched into his father's thigh until he could be born full-term. Zeus ordered Hermes, his messenger, to hide the newborn from his jealous wife Hera, who sought to destroy any remnants of the affair, including the newborn. Hermes carried the infant to remote mountains for hiding, where Papposylenos and the nymphs Ino and Athamas, raised the child.
German excavators discovered the statue in 1877 in the Temple of Hera, Hereion, at Olympia. Pausanias, a second century A.D. historian, describes his tour of this temple in which he saw such a statue said to be by Praxiteles. The date of this artwork is extremely controversial and as yet undetermined. Most scholars now believe it is a work of the Hellenistic period rather than of the 4th century.
Today, art historians and archaeologists disagree over whether this is an original work by Praxiteles, or one by an imitator of his style.
Marble sculpture
Height 2,15 m
Late classical Stile
Original sculpture attributed to Praxiteles [?]
Copy ca. 100 BC - ca. 100 AD
From Elis, Greece
Olympia, Archaeological Museum
National Unicorn Day April 9
Today we celebrate unicorns: mythological animals that look like horses with horns on their foreheads. That’s right. They have a "unique horn" on their heads, that’s why they’re called uni-corns. (Okay, I won’t give up my day job, even if I am working from home!) Although the holiday is observed all around the world, it has special significance in Scotland, where the unicorn is the national animal. Unicorns may not be real, but the concept of them goes back millennia, and they have been an ever-present part of culture.
Early depictions of unicorns appeared in Mesopotamian artwork, as well as in ancient myths in China and India. The Greek historian Ctesias referenced an animal with one horn in 400 BC. He likely was referring to the Indian Rhinoceros, but he described the creature as having a white body and purple head, with a multicolored horn on its forehead. He wrote that the animal was very fast and that those who drank from its horn were protected from some illnesses. (Too bad we couldn’t have it available during this COVID-19 crisis!)
There have been other legends about the power of unicorn horns. One says poisoned waters, such as rivers, can be purified with a unicorn horn so that other animals can drink it. Because of this, "unicorn horns" became very pricey, costing more than gold. These horns were actually made from the protruding tooth of narwhals. "Powdered unicorn horns" were sold in some London pharmacies until the mid-eighteenth centuries.
Unicorns were mentioned in other places in the distant past. The Bible referenced an animal named a "re'em," which was sometimes translated to "unicorn." Those references in the King James Version of the Bible are found in Deuteronomy 33:17; Numbers 23:22, 24:8; Job 39:9,10; Psalm 22:21, 92:10, and Isaiah 34:7. Today it is usually translated to "wild ox," the correct translation. The Christian Greek text Physiologus says that the only way a unicorn can be caught is with a virgin maiden. In that text, a unicorn jumps in the maiden's lap, and she suckles it and takes it to the king's palace. Because of this, the unicorn was compared to Christ. According to one other legend, Genghis Khan decided not to take over India because he came upon a unicorn that bowed down to him.
The unicorn was the symbol of purity, innocence, masculinity, and power in Celtic mythology. The day itself has its roots in Scotland, where the unicorn is the national animal. It is unknown how unicorns became associated with Scotland, but one theory says that it happened after narwhals were spotted there, far away from their usual home in the Arctic. During the reign of William I, in the twelfth century, unicorns began being used on the Scottish royal coat of arms. On it, two unicorns are depicted having chains around their necks. As unicorns were seen as being such powerful animals, the chains may symbolize that the Scottish kings were so strong that they even were able to tame unicorns. In the fifteenth century, during the reign of King James III, two coins—known as the unicorn and half-unicorn—had unicorns on them.
So how do you observe National Unicorn Day?
Make some unicorn crafts.
Read or watch “The Last Unicorn.”
Read another book that is about or features unicorns.
Make some food using The Unicorn Cookbook.
Pick up some unicorn-themed clothes.
Buy a unicorn questing license. Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, has issued permits for "unicorn questing" since 1971.
Here, our safari hunters decided to skip looking for rhinoceroses and got their Unicorn Questing License and found this one Unicorn in the National Lego Animal Preserve.
20200409 100/366
Yes, a milestone of 100 photos thus far!
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
.Paul Bunyan is a mythological lumberjack who is usually believed to be a giant as well as a lumberjack of unusual skill. The character was first documented in the work of U.S. journalist James MacGillivray in 1910. In 1916, as part of an advertising campaign for a logging company, advertisement writer William Laughead reworked the old logging tales into that of a giant lumberjack and gave birth to the modern Paul Bunyan legend.
Trees Of Mystery
Klamath, California
Mysterious trees are familiar sites to Roadsiders. However, America's only Trees Of Mystery billed as such are in California, at the northern end of that state's Redwood Exploitation Zone, and prove that you need not be a magician to turn wood into gold.
Giant statues of Paul Bunyan and Babe the blue ox guard the entrance of Trees of Mystery, as a mid-morning crowd pours off the coast highway to embrace freaky Redwood hoo-ha. Paul's right hand gives a continual sluggish wave as his breast-pocket loudspeaker greets all who enter in cheery lumberjack fashion. "Hiya, kids. Hi, folks.".
Native American oral histories mention mythological characters that may be represented in the figures you see here. Their stories mention the mountain lion who changes into a person & helps the Creator with the earth. Some non-Native Americans believe the figure represents a horse, which would date the site to post Spanish visitation of the area.
The animal figure is oriented northwest-southwest with its head pointing toward the northwest. It measures 54.1 feet from head to tail & its body is 7.5 feet wide. Its legs measure 26.2 feet long & at the end of each leg is a small half circle, interpreted to possibly represent a paw or hoof.
Below the animal figures is an elaborate spiral figure. I measure 23.0 feet in length & is oriented northeast & has a maximum width of 8.8 feet. One interpretation is that the figure represents a coiled snake.
Is the mountain lion battling a snake?
Cultural Resources are protected under the 1906 Antiquities Act & the 1979 Archaeological Resources Protection Act.