Photo by Galen C. Dalrymple, copyright 2024. All Rights Reserved.
Perhaps the two most iconic things to see in Egypt are the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx. I’ve shared some pictures of both already, but not together – until today.
I must say that the images you often see of the Sphinx looking like it is right next to the Great Pyramids are deceptive. There is a fair bit of distance between them as you can see in today’s photo. The pyramid you see is the Great Pyramid, the largest of the three main pyramids at Giza, and the one closest to the Sphinx. As you can see, it sits down lower in the ground and has a rock wall around it that is visible from this angle.
The Sphinx sits down in an semi-enclosed area that had to be excavated for the body of the Sphinx to be recovered from the desert sands. At one point, only the head was visible. The face of the Sphinx is badly eroded by the desert winds, having been literally sand-blasted for millennia. In addition, there is a record of a defacing of the Sphinx by a fanatical Muslim cleric who was against any image of a “god”. The stories about Napoleon’s army shooting the nose off the Sphinx are incorrect – the nose was gone long before he arrived with his armies and Napoleon would have been very ticked off if his men had done such a thing.
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY: in 1824, George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, died in what is now Greece, where he had traveled to support the Greek struggle for independence from Turkey. Even today, he is considered a Greek national hero.
Byron’s scandalous history, exotic travels, and flamboyant life made such an impression on the world that the term “Byronic” was coined to mean romantic, arrogant, dark, and cynical. Byron was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1788. His clubfoot and his impoverished environment made his childhood difficult, but at age 10 he inherited his great uncle’s title. He attended Harrow, then Trinity College, Cambridge, where he ran up enormous debts and pursued passionate relationships with women and men. His first published volume of poetry, Hours of Idleness (1807), was savaged by critics, especially in Scotland, and his second published work, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809), attacked the English literary establishment.
After getting his master’s degree in 1809, he traveled in Portugal, Spain, and the Near East for two years. His experiences fed into his later works, including Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812), which brought him almost instant acclaim in England. As he said at the time, he “awoke one morning and found myself famous.” His poetry, manners, fashion, and tastes were widely imitated.
In 1815, he married Anne Isabella Milbanke, and the couple had a daughter, August Ada, the following year. Ada proved to be a mathematical prodigy and is considered by some to be the first computer programmer, thanks to her work on Charles Babbage’s computing machine.
The marriage quickly foundered, and the couple legally separated. By this time, scandal had broken out over Byron’s suspected incest with his half-sister, Augusta Leigh, and he was ostracized from society and forced to flee England in 1816. He settled in Geneva, near Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. There, he became intimately involved with Mary’s half-sister, Claire Clairmont, who bore his daughter Allegra in January 1817.
Byron moved to Venice that year and entered a period of wild debauchery. In 1819, he began an affair with the Countess Teresa Guiccioli, the young wife of an elderly count, and the two remained attached for many years. Byron, always an avid supporter of liberal causes and national independence, supported the Greek war for independence. He joined the cause in Greece, training troops in the town of Missolonghi, where he died just after his 36th birthday. – The History Channel
TRIVIA FOR TODAY: The largest rhinoceros species that ever lived was Paraceratherium. These prehistoric beasts stood 16 feet tall at the shoulder and weighed 20 tons.
Twolfgcd's Blog (Galen Dalrymple) 