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Continental €oxmp\\bti\tt,
[from our own correspondknt.]
ARTISTIC.
The Great Gizeh Sphttnx.
M. Ernest Renan has written' a letter to the
Dcbats to propose the opening of a subscription
to enable M. Maspers to complete the work of
digging out tha great Sphynx of Gizeh, near the
Pyramids, in Egypt, for which a sum of 20,000
fr., is required. The exoavationa were com
menced two months back with the resources of
the Museum of Boulag, but money is now
wanting.
This monument, M. Renan writes is the most
astonishing piece of work by the hand of man
that has descended from past ages. It is an
immense block of carved rock of 70 metres
(280 feet) long. Upon the surface of the ground
the monster would rise above the highest
houses. No monument in Egypt or in all the
world oan compare with this strange idol, the
remains of a state of humanity that bewilders
all ideas.
xne impression mat must nave ocen caused
by such a vision on races of men dominated by
the senses and imagination may be judged by
that felt by Egyptians of the present day before
that enormous head emerging from the sand
and casting its mournful gaze over the dessert.
The Arab flies; in terror, throwing a stone or
firing a shot at the fantastic figure.
The unburyingof the Sphynx was a cherished
scheme of Marietta. His design was to dig
,down to the rock and raise a wall at a distance
of sixty feet from the Sphynx to prevent the
excavation being filled up again by sand. He
anticipated most interesting discoveries from
the work, Pliny affirmed that tho Sphynx
was a tomb, and Mariette admitted that tho
hypothesis might be partly correct.
His own opinion was that the body of the
monster contains a crypt, cave, or chapel. Tho
Sphynx restB oa the strata of the highest
Egyptian .antiquity. Who oan Bay, asks M.
Ronan, whether tho study of those mysterious
depths will not carry still farther back the
limits of ah historical past which seoms to
retreat from us at every step we take to approach
it.
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