Finally, after a very long time, the Sphinx has something to smile about.
From the moment it was created 4,600 years ago as a footnote to a pharaoh's pyramid, the Sphinx has been falling apart. Admirers - both kingly and not - have agonized over how to save the mammoth sculpture with the enigmatic smile.The latest effort to patch the Sphinx began six years ago as its condition turned from bad to critical. The treatment blended modern high tech with a host of ancient skills.
"The Sphinx is healing. He's becoming beautiful again," said Zahi Hawass, the antiquities official in charge of the pyramids and the Sphinx, a half-man, half-lion statue that crouches at the desert's edge.
Using ancient skills, modern Egyptian artists have reshaped the statue, returned its curves, sculpted new fingernails and given the Sphinx back most of its missing tail. Bad rocks were yanked out and strong, new ones inserted. Natural mortar has replaced cement.
If work continues at the same steady pace, the Sphinx's body will be completely restored by next year. Then the Sphinx team must decide what to do about that famous face, crinkled neck and failing chest.
"We have a lot of problems to solve, but for the first time I'm feeling good about things," said Sphinx artist Mahmoud Mabrouk.
The atmosphere at the Sphinx is far different from February 1988, when a huge chunk of his right shoulder toppled to the ground, costing the antiquities head his job and shocking the Egyptologists around the world. Experts rushed to the Sphinx's defense, offering thousands of ideas. International conferences convened.
Egypt's Culture Minister Farouk Hosni, an artist and sculptor, believed the solution lay in understanding the mind of the unknown artist who designed the Sphinx 41/2 millennia ago and of the artisans who executed his plan.
Artists Adam Henein and Mabrouk were brought in to examine the Sphinx as a sick artistic masterpiece. They searched for clues to changes in the Sphinx - so many that Egyptologists aren't sure how the young Sphinx looked.
Current work is revealing new chapters in the Sphinx's story. But many mysteries remain. Even the model for the Sphinx's face is uncertain, though most Egyptologists opt for Pharaoh Chephren, builder of the second Giza pyramid.
"The Sphinx is magic. But then, all great works of art are magic," said Henein. "To me, he is the soul of Egypt. He embodies everything about the country with such skill that even if you don't know anything about Egypt, you will understand it by looking at the Sphinx."
Among the reasons why the Sphinx suffers: the poor quality of the rock; wind erosion; pollution; dirty underground water; salts; the play of sunlight; even the dew that blankets the Sphinx each night, flaking off bits of stone as dawn breaks.
The Sphinx has spent much of its life buried in sand, which helped to protect it from some of the elements. But each time the Sphinx was pulled from its sandy grave, the statue was found to be in terrible condition.
From the moment the statue was finished, there were problems. And in the millennia to come, four restoration campaigns became part of the Sphinx's history.
The first pharaoh known to ponder the Sphinx' plight was Tuthmosis IV, who ruled more than 1,100 years after the statue was built. He ordered the Sphinx freed from the sand and made whole again.
Repairs had to be repeated 1,000 years later. This time craftsmen covered up bad parts of the statue and painted it red.
By the time the Romans arrived 500 years later, the Sphinx was in poor shape again. More restoration was added. Then in 1926, Egyptologist Emile Baraize uncovered the Sphinx and found a very sick statue.
"He did the best he could for the time," Hawass said. "That meant he stuck concrete into the Sphinx." Most of this restoration has been removed in the new campaign.