Missing Sphinx Head Found in Ancient Greek Tomb

By Megan Gannon

Besides its broken nose, the sphinx head is rather intact. Credit: Greek Ministry of Culture

Archaeologists have discovered the missing head of one of the two marble sphinxes guarding a huge Macedonian tomb under excavation in Amphipolis, Greece.
The statue's head has wavy hair that falls to its left shoulder, and it bears traces of red paint, according to an update yesterday (Oct. 21) from the Greek Ministry of Culture. Excavators also found fragments of the broken wings from the pair of sphinxes that stand at the entrance of the tomb.
Enclosed by a marble wall 1,600 feet (490 m) in perimeter, the monumental burial mound at Amphipolis in northern Greece could be the largest of its kind in the Greek world. The archaeologists leading the ongoing excavation have not yet determined who is buried in the tomb (or if it is even intact), but they have said they believe the complex dates back to the fourth century B.C., during the era of Alexander the Great. [See Photos of the Mysterious Ancient Tomb in Amphipolis]

The head belonged to the eastern sphinx (at right) guarding the entrance to the Amphipolis tomb.
Credit: Greek Ministry of Culture

 

The excavators don't expect to find Alexander the Great's long-lost grave inside the tomb, as historical records indicate the Macedonian empire-builder died in Babylon and was buried in Alexandria. But dig leader Katerina Peristeri told reporters last week that whoever was buried there must have been "extremely important."
The dig attracted widespread attention after the headless sphinxes at the entrance to the tomb were revealed in August. As the archaeologists have probed deeper into the tomb's soil-filled inner chambers, they've made some remarkable discoveries. Last week they uncovered an elaborate floor mosaic made from colorful pebbles arranged to show the Greek goddess Persephone being whisked away to the underworld by Hades in a chariot drawn by a pair of white horses. The messenger god Hermes is also present in the figurative scene wearing his signature broad-brimmed hat.
The newly revealed sphinx head was missing part of its nose, but was otherwise quite intact. It was found beyond the floor mosaic, in the fourth chamber of the tomb, according to the Greek Ministry of Culture. In Greek art, sphinxes typically have the body of a lion, the wings of a bird and the head of a woman. In the face, the sphinx somewhat resembles the larger-than-life, intricately carved caryatids discovered in the Amphipolis tomb a few weeks ago. The caryatids — female statues that take the place of columns or pillars — flank the doorway of the second entrance to the tomb.

Live Science

Giant Sphinx from 'Ten Commandments' Film Unearthed 91 Years Later

By Laura Geggel

Archaeologists unearth one of the giant sphinxes from the film, "The Ten Commandments." Credit: Applied EarthWorks,

Hidden for more than 90 years beneath the rolling sand dunes of Guadalupe, California, an enormous, plaster sphinx from the 1923 blockbuster movie "The Ten Commandments" has been rediscovered and is now above ground.
The public will be able to see the sphinx on display as early as next year, once it has been reconstructed — a necessity since it became weather-beaten during its stint beneath the sand, said Doug Jenzen, the executive director of the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes Center, who oversaw the recent excavation.
The roughly 15-foot-tall (4.6 meters) sphinx is one of 21 that lined the path to Pharaoh's City in the 1923 silent hit, directed by Cecil B. DeMille. He later remade the film, with Charlton Heston as Moses, in 1956. [See Photos of the Film's Giant Spinxes & Excavation]
"[The 1923 film] was one of the largest movie sets ever made, because they didn't have special effects," Jenzen told Live Science. "So anything that they wanted to look large, they had to build large." The facade to Pharaoh's City stood an estimated 12 stories tall and about 720 feet (219 meters) across. "It's giant," Jenzen said.

Applied EarthWorks archaeologists uncovered one of the 21 giant sphinxes (shown in its original state) from the 1923 movie "The Ten Commandments."
Credit: Dunes Center, Guadalupe, CA.

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The film crew originally built the sphinxes' body parts in Los Angeles, and transported them about 165 miles (266 kilometers) to Guadalupe, where they assembled them into giant, hollow statues. The crew even built an extra sphinx so that the actors playing slaves could drag it around during filming, Jenzen said.
Legend has it that after filming ended, the movie crew dynamited the set and buried the sphinxes in a trench, but Jenzen has found little evidence of such a dramatic end. Instead, the wind, rain and sand likely collapsed and buried a large part of the set under the ever-shifting dunes. The sphinxes are in roughly the same place they were during filming, he said.
In fact, the film helped guide an excavation of the site in 2012.
"We'd work during the day, and we'd watch the movie at night to figure out what we were finding," said M. Colleen Hamilton, a historical archaeology program manager and senior historical archaeologist with Applied EarthWorks in California.
The first excavation took place in the 1990s, when the Dunes Center, then a part of the Nature Conservancy, had archaeologists comb through the abandoned movie site. They found dozens of small artifacts, including tobacco tins and cough syrup bottles — likely holding a substitute for alcohol during the Prohibition Era, which lasted from 1920 to 1933, Jenzen said.
"What objects like that tell us is that there wasn't a whole lot to do at the making of this movie," he said. "These guys had a lot of really good times before takes."
Mysterious sphinx
In 2012, the Dunes Center invited an archaeology group to survey the set again. This time, the archaeologists found the head of a sphinx about "the size of a pool table" buried in the dunes, Jenzen said.
The archaeologists excavated the fragile plaster of Paris head, now on display at the Dunes Center, but they didn't have time to exhume its body. Now, two years later, Applied EarthWorks returnedwith the goal of finishing the project.
But it wasn't to be, said Hamilton. Although the archaeologists had buried the body in sand in 2012 to protect it, the wind had uncovered the sphinx's remains, leaving a greying, crumbling mess.
"The site is basically being destroyed through erosion," Hamilton said. "It's become more critical to try to salvage some materials before they disappear." [Sand Scenes: California's Shifting Dunes]
The wind, however, helped them find the body of another sphinx. Sand had filled its hollow insides, and exposure to the moist beach air had dulled its red and ochre colors, making a careful excavation paramount.
From Oct. 6 to 14, the archaeology team, headed by Applied EarthWorks archaeologist Kholood Abdo Hintzman, slowly excavated the sphinx's body. To keep the paper-thin plaster of Paris from cracking, they wrapped it in cheesecloth soaked in a preservation chemical. Then, they carefully funneled sand out of the hollow statue, replacing the empty space with expanding insulation foam, Hamilton said.
The team could only work a few hours each day. In the morning, the thick, moist fog prevented them from doing their fragile work, and strong winds in the afternoon also stymied their progress. But, after eight days, they finally removed the body and placed it in an off-site building to dry and shrink to its normal size.
Fans of old Hollywood will be able to see the reconstructed body of the sphinx at the Dunes Center in mid- to late 2015, along with the head of the other reconstructed sphinx, Jenzen said. The movie itself is a piece of history, as it was the most expensive film made at that time, costing upward of $1 million, he said. Some scenes were filmed in Technicolor, and the crew used Jell-O as a special effect during the Biblical parting of the Red Sea.
"I think it's a great piece of Americana," Jenzen said. "But you have to hunker down to watch the whole thing, because it's more than three hours long and it's silent."

Live Science

Sphinxes Emerge From Huge Ancient Greek Tomb

by Rossella Lorenzi

Two headless sphinxes emerged from a massive burial site in northern Greece as archaeologists began removing large stones from the tomb’s sealing wall.
The headless, wingless 4.8-foot-high sphinxes each weigh about 1.5 tons and bear traces of red coloring on their feet. They would have been 6.5 feet high with their heads, the Greek Culture Ministry said in a statement.
The statues are believed to have been placed there to guard the burial, which is the largest tomb ever uncovered in Greece.

The tomb dates back to around 325-300 B.C., at the end of the reign of warrior-king Alexander the Great. It lies in the ancient city of Amphipolis, in Greece’s northeastern Macedonia region about 65 miles from the country’s second-biggest city, Thessaloniki.
The city, an Athenian colony, was conquered by Philip II of Macedon, Alexander’s father, in 357 B.C.
Prominent generals and admirals of Alexander had links with Amphipolis. It’s here that Alexander’s wife Roxana and his son Alexander IV were killed in 311 B.C. on the orders of his successor, King Cassander.
Archaeologists began excavating the site, a huge mound complex, in 2012. They revealed a circular tomb measuring 1,600 feet across which featured a 10-foot high perimeter wall. This was built of marble brought from the island of Thassos.
The burial complex site was possibly built by Dinocrates, a famous architect of the time and a close friend of Alexander. It is 10 times larger than the tomb of Alexander’s father, Philip II, which was discovered in Vergina, central Macedonia, in the 1970s.
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A wide path leads to the tomb whose entrance is guarded by the two sphinx statues.
“Pieces of the sphinx’s wings were found at the site, allowing for a full restoration,” the Greek Ministry of Culture said.
“Part of the back of the statue of the Lion of Amphipolis was also unearthed at the site,” the statement said.
Work led by Katerina Peristeri, the archaeologist in charge of the dig, proved the impressive 16-foot-tall marble lion statue which now stands on a pedestal three miles from the excavation site, once crowned the monumental tomb.
Much of the tomb was demolished during the Roman occupation of Greece, and several marble blocks were reused to stabilize the banks of the river Strymon. It was right on the river bed that the 4th century B.C. lion and other marble blocks were found in 1912 by the Greek army.
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According to the Culture Ministry, the sphinxes and the lion, both in Thassos marble, appear to be have been crafted in the same workshop.
“The seated sphinxes — as opposed to the lying sphinxes in Egyptian art — are unusual,” classical archaeologist Dorothy King wrote in her blog.
“The closest parallel I can think of are those from the Hecatomnid Androns at Labraunda, about a quarter of a century earlier,” she said.
Those bearded Hecatomnid figures reflected Persian royal iconography, King noted.
Behind the sphinx guarded entrance, the archaeologists found a mosaic floor featuring black and white rhombus shapes.
What lies behind the entrance remains a mystery. A geophysical survey carried out last year indicates the interior of the tomb consists of three rooms.
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Peristeri’s team hopes to fully explore the burial by the end of the month to determine who was laid to rest there.
Archaeologists have debunked speculation that the body of Alexander the Great lies in the tomb. Alexander, the overlord of an empire stretching from Greece to India, died at Babylon, now in central Iraq, in June of 323 B.C. — just before his 33rd birthday.
His elusive tomb is one of the great unsolved mysteries of the ancient world.
History has it that after Alexander died in Babylon, his body, en route to Macedon, was hijacked by Ptolemy and taken to Egypt. The sarcophagus of the warrior king was then moved from Memphis to Alexandria, the capital of his kingdom, and there it remained until late Antiquity.
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By the fourth century A.D., the tomb’s location was no longer known.
At the moment, the leading theory is that a senior general of Alexander’s army was buried in the imposing tomb at Amphipolis.
But what if the Lion Tomb was indeed built for Alexander?
“If Alexander was on his way to being buried in Macedonia when Ptolemy pinched his body … to me that suggests that there was a tomb that had been or was being prepared for him in Macedonia,” King wrote.
Image: The headless sphinxes carved from Thassos marble guard the tomb’s entrance. Credit: Greek Ministry of Culture and Sport.
http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/sphinxes-emerge-from-huge-ancient-greek-tomb-140821.htm