The Riddle of the Sphinx

Greek sphinx.
Photo: Jeanhousen

In Greek mythology the sphinx was a malevolent creature with the face of a woman, the body of a lion, the wings of an eagle and the tail of a serpent.  It was said that a sphinx guarded the approach to the city of Thebes and asked each passer-by a riddle.  She strangled and devoured all those who did not know the answer.  There are different versions of the riddle of the sphinx.  Here is one.

“What is it that goes on four legs in the morning, on two legs at noon and on three legs in the evening?”

The answer is man who crawls on all fours as a baby, walks upright in his prime and uses a stick to walk in old age.

The Great Sphinx at Giza
Photo: Marek Kokjan

The sphinx did not originate in Greece but in Egypt.  There the sphinx had the body of a lion and the face of a man – no wings or tail.  In Egypt the sphinx was seen as benevolent – a guardian of temples and holy places.  The largest and most famous of all is the Great Sphinx of Giza which sits on the bank of the Nile by the Great Pyramids.  We don’t know exactly when this sphinx was built.  Its face is thought to represent Pharaoh Khafra who reigned in about 2,570 BCE.  He built the second largest pyramid in Giza.

 

Pharaoh Menkaure
Photo: Iry-Hor

 

Last week it was announced that a team from the Hebrew University’s Institute of Archaeology had discovered the front legs of a sphinx from ancient Egypt in Tel Hazor in Upper Galilee.  Between the feet was a hieroglyphic inscription bearing the name of Pharaoh Menkaure (in Greek: Mycerinus) a son of Khafra whom he succeeded to the throne in about 2,530 BCE.  Menkaure built the smallest of the three Great Pyramids of Giza.  This is the only sphinx of Menkaure discovered anywhere in the world and the only royal sphinx discovered in the eastern Mediterranean.

 

Now here is another riddle of the sphinx.  We know of no connection between Egypt and Canaan during the reign of Menkaure.  It would be another 800 years before Egypt ruled Canaan.  How did the statue get to Hazor? 

 

 

Photo: Prof. Amnon Ben Tor
and Dr. Sharon Zuckerman

There are some clues to help us solve this riddle.  The fragment of the statue was found at the entrance to the city palace in a destruction layer dated to 13th century BCE.  At that time Hazor was the largest and most important city in the region.  The text of the inscription describes Menkaure as “Beloved by the divine manifestation… that gave him eternal life”.  The inscription, say Professor Amnon Ben-Tor and Dr Sharon Zuckerman who lead the excavation at Hazor, suggests that the sphinx originated in ancient Heliopolis a few miles north of the modern city of Cairo.  It seems that centuries later it may have been a gift from a King of Egypt to the King of Hazor during the 15th to 13th centuries BCE when Canaan was under Egyptian rule.

 

By any standards this is a major archaeological discovery but perhaps this photo will explain why it especially interests me.  It shows my parents in 1950 standing in front of the Great Sphinx of Giza with the pyramid of Khufu, Menkaure's grandfather, in the background.  The little boy my father is holding is me.

And the Egyptians ill-treated us...

One of the ways we describe the festival of Passover is “z’man heruteinu”.  It is the festival of our redemption, of our freedom from slavery in Egypt.  As a child this always puzzled me because my father ע"ה was born in Egypt, actually on the first day of Passover, and grew up there.  How did he sit with his family around the seder table celebrating having been taken out of Egypt when he was still living there?  It is a mystery to me!

The Bible tells us that the Egyptians enslaved the Children of Israel in Egypt.  The archaeologists and historians add that they ruled over the land of Canaan during the Late Bronze Age, from 1550 BCE to 1200 BCE.  In Biblical terms this was the time of Joseph in Egypt through the Exodus to the time when the Israelites approached the Land of Israel.  So where in Israel can we see evidence of those 350 years of Egyptian domination?

Megiddo

Megiddo City Gate Photo: Golf Bravo

Megiddo is a huge and impressive archaeological site.  It’s not surprising.  It was one of the mightiest city states in Canaan.  For thousands of years it dominated the ancient trade route between Egypt to the south and the empires to the north and east.  It has been the site of some critical battles.  The last of these was the British General Allenby’s defeat of the Turkish army in 1917.

Thutmose III attacks his enemies

from the temple at Karnak

In 1482 BCE the King of Mitanni was stirring up revolt in Canaan against Egypt.  Pharaoh Thutmose III marched north with his army to put down the rebellion.  The Canaanite forces gathered for battle near Megiddo.  Thutmose took the Canaanites by surprise by choosing the most dangerous but most direct route from the coastal road through the valleys to Megiddo.  The next day the two armies met on the battlefield.  When the Egyptian infantry charged the Canaanites fled and sought refuge in Megiddo.  Instead of pressing their advantage the Egyptian troops took time out to loot the Canaanite camp.  They lost the element of surprise.  It took a seven month siege before Megiddo fell to Thutmose.  Egypt continued to rule Caanaan for the next 300 years and established garrisons in Megiddo and around the country in Gaza, Beit Shean and Afeq.   In an inscription at the Temple of Karnak in Upper Egypt Thutmose recorded that 119 cities in Canaan had bowed down before him. 

Jerusalem

A letter from Tel el-Amarna

In 1887 a peasant woman was digging in the ruins of el-Amarna in Upper Egypt when she came across a pile of palm-sized clay tablets inscribed in cuneiform script in Accadian, the diplomatic language of the Late Bronze Age.  What she had discovered was Egypt’s Foreign Office archive from the time of Pharaoh Akhenaten.  These were mainly letters between the Egyptian administration and their representatives and client kings in Canaan and Amurru (modern Lebanon).  Six of the letters are from Abdi-Heba, the king of Jerusalem, to Pharaoh.  He pleads with Pharaoh to help defend against attacks from neighbouring cities and from nomadic fighters called the Apiru.  One letter opens:

“Say to the king, my lord: Message of Abdi-Heba, your servant. I fall at the feet of my lord 7 times and 7 times.  Consider the entire affair.  Milkilu and Tagi brought troops into Qiltu against me... ...May the king know (that) all the lands are at peace (with one another), but I am at war.  May the king provide for his land. ...”

In 2009, while the archaeologist Eilat Mazar was excavating a gatehouse tower in the wall of First Temple Jerusalem, a small fragment of a clay tablet with fragments of nine lines of Akkadian cuneiform script.  We don’t know for sure but this seems to be a fragment of one of Abdi-Heba’s letters to Pharaoh – a copy perhaps stored in his archive.  You can see it on display in the Davidson Centre in Jerusalem.

Anthropoid coffin from Deir el-Balah:

Hecht Museum, Photo: Hanay

At the entrance to the Archaeology Wing of the Israel Museum there is a group of strange anthropoid coffins from the Late Bronze Age.  They were discovered at Deir el-Balah, a few kilometres south-west of Gaza.  They may have been made for Egyptians but they certainly reflect the influence of Egypt in Canaan at that time.  The Hecht Museum in Haifa also has an anthropoid coffin from this period.

Beit Shean



Inscribed tablet governor's house

Beit Shean. Photo: Yukatan

Mention Beit Shean and most people think of the magnificent remains of Scythopolis, a Roman Byzantine city destroyed by an earthquake in 749.  At the northern edge of the Roman city is Tell el-Husn, the mound of ancient and biblical Beit Shean - an Egyptian regional centre for 300 years.  An Egyptian basalt stele (standing stone) was found here celebrating the defeat by Pharaoh Seti I of a group of Canaanite cities that tried to capture the city in 1318 BCE.  The governor’s house from the time of a later Pharaoh Ramses III was built in Egyptian style from mud bricks.  A bust of the Pharaoh stands in one of the rooms.  Over the doorpost was a stone tablet bearing the name of the governor, Ramse-Weser Khepesh, and his titles.  The stone artefacts on display are copies.  The originals are in the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem.

Timna Valley

Solomon's Pillars Timna Valley

Photo: Chmee2

Copper has been mined in the Timna Valley,in the south west Aravah about 30 km north of Eilat, for over 6,000 years.   In the Late Bronze Age the Egyptians established a sophisticated copper mining and production centre here.  Their mine shafts can still be seen.  Three huge sandstone pillars, known as Solomon’s Pillars, stand near the copper mines.  At their base is a small temple to Hathor, the Egyptian goddess of mining.  The engraved stelae in the temple contain a lot of information about the groups of Egyptians who came to mine here.  Above the temple on the side of one of the sandstone pillars is a carving of Ramses III with Hathor.

A Final Word?

Merneptah Stele
Photo: Webscribe

Mernheptah, the son of Ramses II, reigned from 1213 – 1203 BCE.  He was the last Egyptian king to personally enter Canaan to put down a rebellion.  In 1896 A basalt stone known as the Merneptah Stele was found at the Pharaoh’s burial temple in Thebes in Egypt.  A part of the inscription refers to Mernheptah’s victories during a military campaign in Canaan.  It includes the earliest known reference to Israel.  It reads:

“Canaan is captive with all woe. Ashkelon is conquered, Gezer seized, Yanoam made nonexistent; Israel is wasted, its seed is no more.”

The scholars tell us that “Israel” here refers to a people, the Ancient Israelites, rather than to a state and that the “seed” refers to its supply of grain.  Even so this is one of many times when our conquerors have underestimated our resilience.  As the Passover Haggadah tells us:

“For not just one alone has risen against us to destroy us, but in every generation they rise against us to destroy us; and the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from their hand!”

Chag sameach!