About that ‘Victorian archaeologists knocked the noses off of Egyptian statues’ thing: this kind of reductionist white/coloniser vs PoC/colonised view of history that a lot of Tumblr espouses really bothers me because it completely ignores the fact that non-European countries can actually have complex and ambiguous histories that don’t easily fit into our received narratives.
Case in point, Egyptians were known to knock off the noses of statues of their dead enemies because that was thought to prevent their spirit from returning to the statue, and the Sphynx of Giza probably lost its nose because of 14th century Islamic iconoclasm.
Totally agree with you, and it’s frustrating as an Egyptologist to see this crap spouted on Tumblr incessantly.
I’d also like to add that early Christian iconoclasm destroyed a lot of Egyptian art too. Particularly at sites like Philae, you see images of the gods hacked out and crosses carved into the walls. For example, two of my own photos from Philae:
The Sphinx may have been partial iconoclasm, and then also 5000 years worth of sand blasting damage. It’s in pretty bad shape, and was almost entirely buried in sand when it was discovered. It was even pretty badly damaged during the New Kingdom, since we have a stele of Thutmosis IV (known at the Dream Stele) in which he states he dreamt of the Sphinx and sought to dig it out and repair it. Ramesses II even undertook projects to dig it out of the sand (since it kept getting buried over the centuries). It was not uncommon for Pharaohs to attempt to repair monuments that were built by their forefathers (think of them like an Ancient English Heritage etc), as it was seen as in keeping with the practice of Ma’at. Some state that it was Napoleon who took the nose off the Sphinx, but with sketches made in 1738 showing the Sphinx with its nose already missing, this theory is debunked as Napoleon wasn’t born until 1769. Suck it haters. It also had a beard, which fell off and wasn’t discovered until the Sphinx was fully excavated between 1925-1936. This appears to have been a later New Kingdom addition to the sculpture though, as the chin shows no sign of hacking damage, and therefore points to an addition which fell off rather than one which was prised off.
But hey, don’t listen to me, Tumblr. It’s not like I have degrees in stuff…
