A century with the Penn Museum’s Sphinx

By Heather A. Davis

In 1913, a massive piece of granite arrived in Philadelphia that forever changed the scope of the Penn Museum’s collection.

This was the arrival of the Sphinx, an approximately 15-ton single piece of red granite from Memphis, Egypt. The Sphinx—the largest such stone sculpture in the Western Hemisphere and the sixth largest in the world—caused a stir when it landed in the city. According to a Philadelphia Inquirer article from October of 1913, “Its coming was unheralded and street car motorists, taxicab chauffeurs and pedestrians stopped all work to see the strange, solid sphinx, oblivious to the furor it was causing.”

It also helped put the Penn Museum and its then-fledgling Egyptian collection on the map.

“It helped us begin the Egyptological program, both at the Museum and at the University itself, and established this as the center for Egyptology as it is today,” says David Silverman, curator-in-charge of the Penn Museum’s Egyptian Section and the Eckley Brinton Coxe, Jr., Professor in the Department of Eastern Languages and Civilizations. “It anchored the Museum in a fantastic place.”

Part of Egyptian Sphinx found in Northern Israel

Artifact bears the name of Mycerinus, the king who was one of the builders of the Giza pyramids.

By Arutz Sheva

First Publish: 7/9/2013

As modern Egypt searches for a new leader, Israeli archaeologists have found evidence of an ancient Egyptian leader in northern Israel.

At a site in Tel Hazor National Park, north of the Sea of Galilee, archeologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have unearthed part of a unique Sphinx belonging to one of the ancient pyramid-building pharaohs.

Photocredit: Prof. Amnon Ben-Tor and Dr. Sharon Zuckerman

The Hazor Excavations are headed by Prof. Amnon Ben-Tor, the Yigael Yadin Professor in the Archaeology of Eretz Israel at the Hebrew University’s Institute of Archaeology, and Dr. Sharon Zuckerman, a lecturer at the Hebrew University’s Institute of Archaeology.

Working with a team from the Institute of Archaeology, they discovered part of a Sphinx brought over from Egypt, with a hieroglyphic inscription between its front legs. The inscription bears the name of the Egyptian king Mycerinus, who ruled in the third millennium BCE, more than 4,000 years ago. The king was one of the builders of the famous Giza pyramids.