Was the sphinx supposed to be Anubis?

Text and Photos by Antoine Gigal
Translation to English: Lisette Gagne
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Notes:
* Selim Hassan (1887-1961): He is for me, one of the three greatest Egyptologists and archaeologists of all time. He tirelessly excavated at Giza and Sakkara from 1929 to 1937 and discovered many structures that are being rediscovered today and just wrote a extraordinary 16 volume "Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt". He's published a total of 170 books on archeology in Egypt.

*** Gianbattista Caviglia (1770-1845): Italian Master Mariner, he was hired by Richard Vyse, the English Egyptologist who noticed in him a strong capacity for resourcefulness, so he began archaeological excavations with him on the small pyramid of Mykhérinos. His attention, however, was quickly captured by even more promising structures such as the Sphinx, the Great Pyramid and others.

**** Leto: The story of Leto as it is told in Greek mythology may rouse in us a strong interest in Egypt. Leto, daughter of Titans (powerful Elder Gods who ruled during the golden age under the direction of one of them: Cronos [Saturn] after his father Uranus [Heaven] for the first 21 generations of Titans) : Coeus, ruling over a celestial zone between the two terrestrial poles and Phoebe linked to the full moon and to luminous purification, and she became pregnant by Zeus. The wife of Zeus: Hera was so extremely jealous, she saw to it that "all land fled Leto" so that she could find no land on which to give birth. It is said that then Leto left Hyperborea for Lycia in Anatolia (country of the wolves, perhaps an old form of Anubis?) disguised as a she-wolf, and then went on to the island of Delos. There are several final destinations for the birth of Leto and experts are struggling to know which is correct. In any case she gave birth on an island that was not connected to the earth itself even under the sea, a floating island of some sort or an island "manufactured". In Egypt, similar stories are told of Isis taking refuge on a floating island in the Nile Delta. The Giza Sphinx with its island was indeed a place suitable to be linked to Leto. She struggled against many chthonic monsters and the Titans living underground and was attacked by Python before giving birth to the twins Artemis and Apollo. The Greek grammarian Antoninus Liberalis, a hundred years after Christ, tells us all this in great detail. He is the author of "Metamorphoses" a story about 41 metamorphic changes inflicted by offended gods). Note that Herodotus tells us that Leto was worshiped in Egypt in the form of the cobra goddess Wadjet, protectress of Lower Egypt.