“Napoleon” (2023), by Ridley Scott, his latest feature film - which was considered the “best since Gladiator” - was released this week in theaters.
The film includes one of the greatest conspiracy theories in art history: that Napoleon Bonaparte, France's first and most famous emperor, had his troops fire cannons at the Great Pyramid of Giza during his Egyptian campaign in 1798, shattering it. the nose of the Great Sphinx in the process.
But did the French emperor really damage the nose of the Great Sphinx? TIME spoke with historian Michael Broers, who consulted on the film, who commented that Scott knew “none of this happened.” The director decided to keep the scene where the top of the Great Pyramid was reached, after making Broers laugh. In an interview with the “Times”, Ridley Scott himself described the scene as “a quick way of saying that Napoleon took Egypt”. The Great Pyramid and Sphinx of Giza are iconic images of Egypt, with archaeological evidence placing the Sphinx's construction at 2,500 BC, while the Great Pyramid is the only remaining wonder of the ancient world.
However, it was not Napoleon's cannon shots that damaged the face of this colossal structure. In drawings made by Danish explorer Frederic Louis Norden in 1737 and exhibited in 1744, the Sphinx had already lost its nose at least 60 years before Napoleon's invasion. Historian Bassam el-Shamaa also confirmed that the story was nothing more than a myth in his 2009 book, “Hokam Misr El-Qadema” (Rulers of Ancient Egypt), as Napoleon's battle actually took place in the neighborhood of Imbaba, the about four hours walking distance from the Pyramid complex.
The main theories to explain the loss of the Sphinx's nose are the iconoclastic attacks that occurred between the 10th century and the beginning of the 18th century, or the progressive natural erosion of the elements over the five millennia of the limestone statue's life. The Napoleonic conspiracy theory is believed to have emerged around the beginning of the 20th century.
Source: Artnet News