orientalcairocit00sladuoft

On the Pyramids 319
a sort of bear-pit, a large basin in the sand, with tourists
standing all round its top, throwing ejaculations to the
Sphinx as they throw buns to bears.
I grew very fond of the Sphinx. I have seen it at sunrise
and sunset, moonrise and full moon, in the grey of early
morning, at the fiery pitch of noon, in the torpor of the early
afternoon, and at tea-time—and I feel gratitude, but contempt
for the business capacities of the managers of the Mena
House in not giving afternoon tea on the sands round the
Sphinx. There never was such a site for a tea-garden. There
are people who would go out from Cairo six days a week during
the season to take a six-piastre tea, while they watched the
Sphinx give the cold shoulder to his comic visitors. The
Eg}'ptian Sphinx is a man, though the Sphinx of the Greek
Thebes was a woman. It is odd that the various nations
cannot agree about the sex of things like the sun and the
Sphinx. The German gives his sun the feminine gender and
his moon the masculine, while the English always write
about the moon as a sentimental spinster when they are
trying to write literature.
The great Sphinx at Gizeh seems to be of the same sex
as a prison-matron. Its sex is lost in its pitiless, stony glare.
Most people are agreed that its expression is repulsive ; none
dispute that the pose of its head is as majestic as anything
in nature. Its body is rather insignificant, and was repaired
by some Balbus, who was accustomed to building walls. For
the parts which wore out in its six or eight thousand years
of existence have been walled up without any reference to
the form of animal which it was supposed to represent.
Archaeologists are agreed, I may here interpolate, that the
Sphinx was made before the Creation, if we take the date
of the Creation given in the introduction to our Bibles, which
is not the astronomical date used for deciding the age of flint
cutlery. But to return to the Sphinx, which, old as it is,
still has some rouge left on its face, to show that it was
painted like other Egyptian monuments ; it is the most
extraordinary piece of sculpture ever wrought by human
hands.