View allAll Photos Tagged Sphinx
The Sphinx stands at the entrance to the great pyramids and represents a guardian for the the dead kings. It is said that the Thutmosis IV of the 18th Dynasty had a dream of the sphinx telling him to uncover the part-buried structure, and he would be king.
As legend has it, he undertook to remove the desert sand from the structure, and some years later, was crowned King.
Taken from Michael Tyler - Travel Blog: Waypoints accurate to 100ft.
The Sphinx and Gherkin Tower, London. Viewed from the Embankment.
Taken on Nikon D2X with 500mm f8 mirror lens.
Sphinx - Bucegi Natural Park. Carpathian Mountains.
The Sphinx (Romanian: Sfinxul) is a natural rock formation in the Bucegi Natural Park, Bucegi Mountains, Romania.
Photo credit: Romanian Ministry of Tourism
Afa S. Dworkin, President and Artistic Director of Sphinx Overture, and 12-year-old Joselyn Hernandez, accept the 2016 National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award from First Lady Michelle Obama in a White House ceremony on November 15, 2016. Photo credit: Steven E. Purcell
This is one of tbe bronze Victorian Sphinxes at the base of Cleopatra's Needle on the Embankment in London. Apparently the British wanted something significant to celebrate their victory over Napoleon, so a 3,500 year old obelisk (the "Needle") was brought from Egypt and erected beside the Thames. Two bronze sphinxes were made to add the finishing touches. Personally, I thought the sphinxes out-did the Needle!
Sphinx is watching the Curling again on TV, upside down! Biscuits is playing with a box. Sphinx really loves curling, especially the ladies of Team GB!
Two 3500-year-old sphinx monuments guard the entrance of the Academy of Arts Museum. The pair are the most Northern-located Egyptian sphinxes. Russian government bought the pair from Egypt in 1820 and placed them here, visible on the bank of the Neva river. This is probably the only place in the world where you can see each year Egyptian, 3500 thousand old sphinxes covered with snow in the winter.
-Wikipedia
The Sphinx is perhaps the most enigmatic of Egypt's monuments, the largest free-standing sculpture of the ancient world, carved from the living rock of the Giza plateau.
The massive figure with a lion's body and a human head is believed to date from the reign of Pharaoh Khafre, owing to the similarity of the head to statues of the king and the fact that the Sphinx also sits beside the causeway connecting Khafre's pyramid to his valley temple. The body has eroded badly over the centuries and the lower parts (including the massive front paws) had been augmented with an outer face of masonry even in ancient times, much of which has undergone restoration in more recent times.
The head wears the traditional nemes head-dress of a king and originally would have been crowned by a ureaus cobra on the forehead and a platted beard on the chin (fragments of which are preserved in museums). The lower parts of the head-dress beside the neck had been lost to wind erosion long ago, leaving the head the rather fragile appearance it has in old drawings and photographs. New masonry was added to reinforce the neck and restore a semblance of the original outline in the early 20th century to save it from further damage.
There is some speculation that the Sphinx could be much earlier owing to its heavily weathered body, Khafre's causeway making its route around the sculpture as if it already existed, and the head being too small for the body, perhaps a sign that it had later been recarved into its current human form. If the Sphinx did have an incarnation then Anubis the jackal god of the necropolis would have been the strongest candidate, with some seeing the body as more canine than feline. Either way, the Sphinx remains the powerful guardian of the Giza Necropolis and its monumental pyramids as he has done for millennia before.
The Giza Pyramids need no introduction, the largest and most famous monuments of antiquity and the sole surviving of the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World.
Situated on a desert plateau to the south west of Cairo (and indeed on the very edge of the city's modern urban sprawl) the pyramids of Giza form the heart of an extensive ancient necropolis with the monumental tombs of three of Egypt's earliest Old Kingdom pharaohs marked by the vast structures. Each of the pyramids is a colossal mass of near solid masonry, without adornment and with only a few passages within each leading to burial chambers long since emptied and robbed in antiquity.
The earliest is the Great Pyramid of Khufu (sometimes referred to by the Greek title 'Cheops', or by his full pharaonic name 'Khnum-Khufu'). It is also the largest; the structure is simply enormous and remained the World's tallest building until well into the Middle Ages.
The following pyramid was built by Khafre (also called 'Khephren') and is similarly vast (often appearing in photos of the whole group as larger due to its more central position) but is significantly smaller than Khufu's monument. The smallest of the three (at around less than half the size) was built by his successor Menkaure. Both his and Khufu's monuments have much smaller satellite pyramids at their base (some in more ruinous condition) to house the tombs of their queens.
Originally all the pyramids had a smooth outer covering of white stone but this was quarried away by later generations (much of which was used for some of Cairo's greatest Islamic monuments) leaving the rough inner blocks exposed. A small section remains at the apex of Khafre's pyramid (suggestive of a snow-capped mountain) to give a sense of the original finish and overall mass.
Today the site remains the most popular in Egypt and an astonishing testament to the skill and determination of it earliest builders.
Cleopatra's Needle is flanked by two faux-Egyptian sphinxes, designed by the English architect George John Vulliamy.
The sphinxes are cast in bronze and bear hieroglyphic inscriptions that say "netjer nefer men-kheper-re di ankh", which translates as "the good god, Thuthmosis III given life".
These sphinxes appear to be looking at the Needle rather than guarding it, due to the sphinxes' improper or backwards installation.
London, 2017
This little beauty is known as a Sphinx Moth (family Sphingidae) - also called a Hawk Moth or a Hummingbird Moth because of its hovering, swift flight patterns.
This particular species is known as the White-lined sphinx (Hyles lineata), and is evidently pretty common throughout the world. Most of the Sphinx moths are nocturnal feeding only at night ~ the White-lined sphinx is one of the few that will actually feed in broad daylight.
Sometimes we just get lucky!! I was coming home this afternoon, and as I was walking in my front door I spied this little beauty enjoying a sage bush. I rush in to get my camera (of course knowing he would be gone when I got back). To my surprise ~ not only was he still there ~ but he went about his business as if I wasn't even there... Life is Good!
Cairo, Egypt.
The Sphinx of Giza is a symbol that has represented the essence of Egypt for thousands of years. Even with all of the pictures that we see of the Sphinx, nothing can really prepare you for the time that you finally see the Sphinx with your own eyes. And its better that way.. I tried many other compositions but later I found out that they were mostly Cliche. All the compositions had already been tried long before we had started shooting digitally. To my little relief I found this photo to be bit different..of course composition wise..
The Luxor is among the most recognizable hotels on the strip because of its striking design. Designed by renowned hotel architect Veldon Simpson, the main portion of the hotel is a 350-foot-high (106 meters), 30-story pyramid of black glass (in comparison, the Great Pyramid of Giza tops out at 450 ft, or 137 m). The hotel is marked by a large obelisk with the name of the property in lighted letters, while the porte-cochere travels underneath a massive recreation of the Great Sphinx of Giza.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia