The Nose of the Sphinx

In 1798, Napoleon Buonaparte proposed a French invasion of Egypt and Syria. Since he wasn’t emperor yet, he had to ask permission from the Directoire, which was a panel of five people who were running France in the late days of the French Revolution. Napoleon’s pitch was that an invasion of Egypt would protect French interests and damage English trade, and also put France in a good position to start cutting deals with the princes of India, who were mostly under direct or indirect control of the English. France and England were at war at this time, so it sounded good to the Directoire. They gave him the troops and their blessing, however improbable Napoleon’s scheme was.

The campaign in Egypt didn’t go as well as Napoleon had hoped. His troops wound up fighting both the English and the Ottoman Empire. Though they saw a lot of victories, Egypt was just too much to control, and those two empires were just too much to fight. The invasion resulted in the deaths of 40,000 French soldiers, 30,000 British soldiers, and 220,000 Ottoman soldiers.

During this campaign, legend has it, the nose of the Sphinx was shot off by a French soldier. This legend is repeated quite a bit, but it isn’t actually true. There’s a similar (and more believable) legend that Napoleon, a pioneer in the use of artillery in the battlefield, lobbed cannonballs at the Sphinx for target practice, destroying the nose and damaging the ears of the statue. This is also not true, though the armies and citizens of the many countries that would spend the next 17 years fighting Napoleon were probably all too glad to spread this rumor around. We can be sure it wasn’t Napoleon who disfigured the Sphinx because there are texts that blame the invading Mamluk Empire for the disfiguring following their invasion of Egypt in 1380.

However, the oldest story (and the most credible) puts the blame on one man: Mohammed Sa’im al-Dahr, a fanatical Sufi Muslim who took to extremes Islam’s prohibition on representations of images. It’s said that al-Dahr damaged the nose and ears. Though al-Dahr came from one of the oldest and most highly respected Sufi convents in Cairo, that didn’t earn him enough credit among the locals, who were rather proud of the ancient statue. They were so upset, al-Dahr was lynched, and his body was burned near the grounds of the Sphinx.

While the French didn’t mess up the Sphinx’s face, they did plenty of defacing all around Egypt during the short time they were there. French soldiers in Napoleon’s army were fond of carving the distance to Paris into the ancient monuments of Egypt. This might be why so many people find the falsehood that Napoleon’s army vandalized the Sphinx so easy to believe—they had a reputation! See below the French mark on the Temple of Isis.

Translation: "The French Republic was here, Revolutionary Year 7 (1799)"

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