Giza lioness

Queen Hetepheres II sphinx – Cairo Museum. 

This sphinx is contemporaneous with the Great Sphinx in Giza. And interestingly, it seems that this was originally a lion(ness) sculpture turned into a sphinx by chiseling the lion(ness) head into the queen's head...

Hetepheres II was the daughter of Khufu, the guy who built the Great pyramid in Giza and a wife of Djedefre, the guy who built the Great sphinx in Giza...

Great sphinx has weird proportions. Its head is too small for its body...Which is totally weird for Egyptians who were obsessed with perfection of measure and proportion...

So it has long been speculated that originally the Great sphinx was in fact a Great lion(ness) whose head was chiseled down into the head of Djedefre during his reign...This pic is from one such paper, "Mehit’s Stump: Unmasking the Great Sphinx of Giza"...

That the sphinx (pharaoh) head is a later addition is supported by the fact that even though, for the most of its existence, only the head was visible above the sand, it is the body that is deeply eroded by the water erosion and not the head...Sphinx before the body was excavated from the sand...

Now we know that the climate got much dryer soon after the reign of Djedefre, which means that the body of the Great sphinx must have been eroded during the centuries/millennia before the Djedefre's reign...

Now as I said already, the common conclusion is that the Great Sphix was originally a Great lion(ness). The problem is that there is no mention of any Great lioness statue anywhere in the Old Kingdom Egyptian texts...

So I wonder if what was turned into the Great sphinx by Djedefre, was not a giant sculpture of a lioness, but instead an ancient, deeply eroded, natural bedrock outcrop which loosely resembled the body of a couchant lion(ness). Like this one from Balochistan, Pakistan.

Now in my post "Sphinx", I explained why Egyptians worshiped lion(ness)s (the annual Nile flood peaks in Jul/Aug, Leo), and why Djedefre would want to create something like a Great sphinx out of a weathered outcrop that resembles a lion(ness)...

That Djedefre (means "He appears as Ra") was depicting himself as Atum/Ra, can be seen from the fact that the Great sphinx originally had "a long braided ‘divine beard’, curled at the end, that gods and deified kings wore, and not a short, square beard worn by living kings"...A part of that beard was found and preserved in the Cairo museum...

This is the same beard worn by Osiris, the god of resurrection directly linked to the annual flood...I talked about this beard and its meaning in my post "The beard of Osiris"...Figurine of a bearded man by the Naqada I culture, 3800–3500 BC, from Upper Egypt... 

In my original sphinx article I also mentioned that Atum, The Creator God, was believed to have created himself as the first thing on the primordial mound after it emerged from the primordial waters. And that some believed that he was actually the primordial mound itself...

I also mentioned that, apparently, Pyramid Texts, Coffin Texts and the Book of the Dead state that "lion emerged from the primeval mass within the primeval waters before all other animals, and mankind"...

Now here is an interesting thought: Is it possible that the Giza plateau, or the bedrock outcrop on the Giza plateau, which looked like a couchant lion(ness) was seen by the Old Kingdom Ancient Egyptians as the Benben, the primordial mound?

That would explain why Khufu would build the pyramids on the Giza Plateau...Reconstructed apex (top stone) of one of the pyramids (G1-d) of the Giza Plateau, symbolising Benben...

And this would also explain why the ancient, rain eroded rocky outcrop, resembling a couchant lion(ness) overlooking the Nile flood plain, was turned into the Great sphinx, which depicts Djedefre as Atum/Ra who emerged out of the flood as a lion mound...

And this would also explain why when Djedefre decided to turn this primordial lion(ness) shaped mound into the Great Sphinx, Egyptians thought it was such a great idea, totally in keeping with their religion, that every pharaoh worth his beard had one made for him (her) self...

What do you think? Did anyone else propose this already? Would be really surprised if no one did...It's kind of obvious...

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…then check the rest of the blog posts related to animal calendar markers I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...