How did the Sphinx of Giza lose its nose?

Many theories have been put forward to explain the Sphinx’s disfigured face. We’ll tell you straight away: it wasn’t Obelix who damaged the statue, as told by Goscinny and Uderzo in comic book Asterix and Cleopatra, or even the sculptor that was distracted by Aladdin and Jasmine‘s flying carpet ride in the Disney animated film.

Several theories

One legend has it that the nose was destroyed by a cannonball fired by Napoleon Bonaparte‘s soldiers. But several historians have attributed responsibility for the mutilation to the Mamelukes who occupied Egypt before Bonaparte’s campaign.

 

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In 1980, German historian Ulrich Haarmann, relying on several Arab authors of the Middle Ages, revealed that the face of the Sphinx was damaged in 1378 by Mohammed Sa’im al-Dahr, an iconoclastic Sufi who wanted to destroy what he considered a pagan idol. For this, the man was hanged for vandalism and his body burned by the locals in front of the damaged monument.