|
|
The Sphinx, New Light on an Ancient Mystery
 To the Greeks, it ranked first among the "Seven Wonders of the World." To the Arabs of the desert, it is "Abu al-Hawl"—the
Father of Terror.
At Giza, south-south west of Cairo, on the west bank of the Nile and at the very edge of the desert, stands the Great Sphinx,
a colossal (20 metres high and 73.5 metres long - 65 feet high and 241 feet long) statue of a crouching male lion with a human head. It was carved (not "built") from a natural rock outcropping, sometime around 2560 BC—which makes it only slightly "younger" than the nearby Great Pyramid of Cheops.
Historians have determined that the Sphinx is a royal portrait of Khafre, the 4th Pharaoh of the 4th dynasty, whose pyramid-tomb,
less massive than that of his ancestor Cheops, is also nearby. But for millenia, travellers have gawked, awe-struck, at this
seemingly eternal desert monument, mystified as to the meaning of the man-beast's enigmatic expression. Indeed, "Sphinx" became
a byword for "inscrutable."
Whatever the ultimate meaning of the Sphinx, it and the adjacent pyramids have always had one certain significance to the
Egyptian government: tourism. In 1961, at their request, Philips created a Sound and Light Spectacle for the entire
"Necropolis" (City of the Dead) at Giza, which includes the pyramids. The show consisted of floodlights with colored
filters being switched and dimmed in synchronization with sound effects and a recorded narrative.
Now, after 35 years of use (to the delight of countless night time visitors), the entire installation has been modernized,
making use of state-of-the-art sound and light technology.
An Argon laser system now projects partly-animated images onto the sides of the monuments—historical portraits, hieroglyphics,
cartouches, as well as diagrams and scenes of the construction of the monuments.
Three lighting circuits, newly equipped with energy-saving halide lamps, provide dramatic Accent Lighting; that is, they
are placed and angled so that the shadow pattern they create reveals the texture of the stonework. These new PAR 64 floodlights
are more powerful than their predecessors, but smaller—and thus less conspicuous (in keeping with the wishes of the Egyptian
Ministry of Antiquities). These banks of red, green and blue lights can be mixed in different intensities to create every color,
and are switched and dimmed in a pre-set sequence, in synchronization with the music and narration.
The sound system is also new—the complicated old 7-track tape set-up has been replaced by solid state EPROMS, and 7 columns of
(hidden) speakers now surround the audience to create an impression of spatial sound.
The ancient Egyptians, Pharaohs and slaves alike, worshipped the sun god, "Ra" and feared his counterpart, the goddess of
darkness. What would they make of this Sound and Light Spectacle, which exactly simulates the effect of the sun striking
the Sphinx, on its passage across the heavens—at night?
|
|
|
