Defending the Sphinx against the enemies of civilization

Not far from where I live, some local University of Michigan students have created a large Sphinx out of snow, and I took a few pictures earlier.

A view from the front:

A side view:

And a view from the rear:

Aside from having fun with the show, I suspect the goal of the students here was to express a little solidarity with their counterparts in Egypt, but I thought I would take advantage of the pictures to express a little solidarity with the Sphinx itself.

I am glad the military is in charge right now and I hope they guard the Sphinx well, because it would be an unspeakable crime against the ages if Egypt’s national monuments were to befall the same fate as Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Buddhas, which were destroyed by the Taliban.

There has already been damage done to Egyptian antiquities as a result of the unrest:

On the night of Friday, January 28, looters broke into the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo and vandalized some of its most precious artefacts (including objects from the Tutankhamun collection). Elsewhere — at Saqqara, Abu Sir, Qantara to name but a few — ancient monuments have been damaged, museums broken into and archaeological storage magazines ransacked.

Nor is it simply ancient remains that have been targeted. In Cairo, the city’s Coptic Museum and the early 20th century El-Manial Palace have both suffered looting.

As Zahi Hawass, head of the country’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, says on his website: “My heart is broken and my blood is boiling.”

On one level, of course, the loss of a few objects, when set against so many deaths and injuries, is wholly irrelevant.

Even before the current upheavals, the preservation of historical remains featured low on the list of priorities of a majority of Egyptians, for whom simply getting food on the table is a daily struggle.

On another level, however, the damage to its cultural remains strikes at the very heart of the Egyptian identity.

In Egypt, history matters. This is a country that for 3,000 years under the pharaohs was one of the world’s predominant superpowers. It played a crucial role in the development of early Christianity (it was the birthplace of the monastic tradition) and was the political center of the Muslim world under the Fatimid and, later, the Mamluk dynasties. In modern times, under Gamal Abdel Nasser, it was at the forefront of the Arab Nationalist movement.

What especially worries me is that this wasn’t simply a question of looting for profit (which at least allows for the possibility of recovery of the items upon their later rediscovery). Two mummies were beheaded (for religious reasons?), but fortunately a human chain formed around the museum to prevent further damage. 

Naturally, this should raise questions about the longterm safety of Egypt’s national treasures, because according to the damnable Wahhabi (meaning paid for by our petrodollars) interpretation of Islam, both the Pyramids and the Sphinx are “un-Islamic” and even blasphemous.

Although it wasn’t as widely reported as it should have been, a religious fatwa was issued against them.

….there’s a fatwa against the Sphinx as man-animal figure is against order of nature ordained by god. Will Progressive Muslim Brotherhood will do a Bamiyan on these Sphinx and pyramids when they capture power ?

Let’s hope the bastards never capture power, because if they do, they are just small-minded and spiteful enough to destroy what are arguably the greatest cultural treasures in history.

National Geographic reported a very important fatwa from Egypt’s top cleric in 2006:

Egypt’s Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, the country’s top Muslim religious authority, last month issued a religious ruling, or fatwa, condemning the display of statues in Egypt.

As one important Islamic website explains, “Allah knows best”:

…the statues should be destroyed and raised tombs should be leveled with the ground. If the sphinx or pyramids or any other statues contain tombs these are two reasons to destroy the same. First, because they are raised tombs and secondly because they are statues.
Allah knows best.

Rarely have I seen a more perfect example of religious delusion than the above. Fortunately, many (and hopefully most) Egyptians disagree with such hallucinatory authoritarianism. Some have formed a Facebook group attacking the fatwa:

We demand the incrimination of religious clerks or organizations calling for the destruction of Ancient Egyptian monuments, to avoid the repetition of the atrocities that occurred several times on the hands of Arab conquerors that destroyed many Ancient Egyptian artifacts like the nose of Sphinx that has been destroyed by Sa’im al-dahr according to Islamic theologists and historians and the incident was documented by the most famous of them all Al-Maqrizi, the broken nose is now blamed by the Pan Arabism and former British propaganda on Napoleon’s troops that have described on their arrival to the Giza site “a NOSLESS sphinx”.

[…]

I liked to address the topic by starting this group as it should be after being exposed to the Wahhabi call for the destruction of The Great Pyramids in Egypt and the Sphinx, the most famous and bewildering statue known to humanity.

Good for him. Scholars now seem to agree that the disfiguring of the Sphinx was not done by Napoleon, but by earlier Muslim fanatics.

In a discussion of the museum rampage, Freepers make it clear that they are on the side of the Egyptians who want to preserve their ancient monuments

The anthropomorphic Sphinx will be a much more likely target of the iconoclastic muzzies…much like the Bamiyan Buddhas were in Afghanistan when the Taliban took over.

And,

To all

The Muslim Brotherhood has said they will destroy the ancient monuments because they are un-Islamic.
To fundamentalist Muslims there is no history prior to Mohammed & the Koran!

Since the UN has declared the Egyptian antiquities to be cultural treasures of all mankind, I wonder then if the UN will send a very strongly worded note (as opposed to only a strongly worded note!) objecting to their destruction?

We can only hope that the above is wrong and that the Muslim Brotherhood has not vowed to destroy the ancient monuments. Because if they have, then I think serious measures to save them would be called for. 

Some things are worth fighting for.

People who are insane enough even to contemplate such crimes against civilization should never, ever be allowed to have power.

The destruction of the Sphinx and the Pyramids is horrifying to contemplate — so much so that I can’t believe I would ever have to write a post about such a thing. 

Cynical as I am (and much as I enjoyed the “blasphemous” snow sculpture), this is not funny.