Sphinx Gets New Plastic Surgery Team

After 4,600 years, they are still messing around with the Sphinx. This time, they say, they will get it right and restore the half-man, half-lion to its ancient glory.

Propped up with wooden supports and hooked up to high-tech humidity and temperature recording machines, the 240-foot-long statue has been bedeviled by “restorations” down the ages.

Now Egyptian antiquarians--artists, archeologists, restorers, architects and scientists--are determined to undo the damage.

For the moment, the Sphinx is a hodgepodge of restoration, mottled with large limestone additions from the 1980s and small, brown flaking stones from Greco-Roman times.

“We have almost finished the first stage,” said Zahi Hawass, director of the Giza plateau area. “Artists . . . completely restored the right paw of the Sphinx as it was before it was damaged by bad restoration in old and modern times.”

The earliest known repairs date back to a few centuries after the Sphinx was hewn out of a mound of limestone that was apparently abandoned by pyramid builders because of its poor quality.

Hieroglyphics on a granite pillar between the creature’s outstretched paws record the tale of Prince Tuthmosis, who fell asleep in front of the Sphinx and dreamed that it promised him the crown if he saved it from the desert sands.

He uncovered it and later became King Tuthmosis IV.

Modern attention focused on the Sphinx when a 600-pound chunk broke off its shoulder in 1988, opening a storm of controversy about work done between 1982 and 1987 that included a casing built around the statue.

During unsupervised restorations, the hind legs of the Sphinx were squared off in some areas, two chamber-like blocks on each side of the monster were built up at different heights and its tail area was rounded off.

Now, workers are delicately knocking out large, cracked limestone blocks from the Sphinx’s right paw, side and hind leg, removing eroding cement and salt chunks from the mother rock.

Based on photographic maps and century-old drawings, they cut up new limestone blocks by hand into small sizes, just like those used by the original builders.

Experts select the stones after many tests, including durability and porosity.

Fragile stones used by Pharaonic and Roman workmen are being removed from some parts of the statue. They will be restored and put back in place.

Egyptian sculptors are making foam molds for parts of the statue to ensure that restored areas are proportional.

“It’s the first time we’ve used an artist,” Hawass said. “We need someone who with his eyes and hands will know the proportions.”

Workers put a reinforcing belt of small limestone bricks at the bottom of the Sphinx’s chest to help support its fragile heavy head and flaking neck.

In the 1970s, scientists injected the Sphinx’s chest with a chemical substance to harden it. It flaked off, taking with it some of the original stone it was meant to preserve.

“We know we are on the right track. We are using mortar made of lime and sand which is similar to what the ancient Egyptian used 5,000 years ago,” Hawass said.

Workers have also uncovered a Pharaonic artistic error.

When the original craftsman carved the statue’s left back paw, he apparently made it too small in proportion to the body.

“That is why he added stones above it so the proportions can fit together,” Hawass said.

Work on the right side is expected to be completed this month, when work on the other side will begin.

“It’s going to take time,” he said, “but in a matter of a few years the Sphinx is going to look as good as old.”