During excavations of a limestone cabin in Egypt’s southern Delta region, an archaeological team uncovered a statue of a sphinx.
The expedition was operating east of Dendera Temple in the southern province of Qena, and it was led by Dr. Mamdouh El Damaty, a former antiquities minister and a professor of archaeology at Cairo’s Ain Shams University.
There was a big water basin, constructed of red brick and covered with mortar, within the two-story cabin.
The expedition concluded it was from the Byzantine era based on preliminary dating.
It was in the basin that the sphinx statue was discovered.
The Nemes, an ancient Egyptian headdress of striped fabric used by pharaohs beneath their crowns, is draped over the sphinx’s stone noggin.
It was traditional for royal sculptures to include a flared cobra over the forehead, and so it is with this sphinx.
“Preliminary analysis of the sphinx’s face shows that the sphinx is a portrayal of the Roman emperor Claudius,” the ministry said.
From 10 B.C.E. until 54 C.E., Claudius governed Egypt as part of the Roman Empire.
“The statue is incredibly magnificent, its face is defined by regal characteristics that are reproduced pretty perfectly,” Dr El Damaty stated. A dimple can be observed on either side of its lips, suggesting that it once smiled. Face has some yellow and red in it.
In addition to the sphinx, a tablet from the time of Roman control in Egypt was also discovered at the site. Hieroglyphic and demotic (an ancient Egyptian script) inscriptions may be found on it.
The academic group plans to keep working at Dendera, where there is a little temple to the goddess Isis that was likely constructed by the Roman emperor Nero, Claudius’s predecessor.
There is also a temple devoted to the ancient Egyptian deity Horus on the complex’s eastern side, and archaeologists believe the two are connected via an underground passage.