Brugsch, Heinrich: Egypt under the pharaohs: a history derived entirely from the monuments (London, 1891)

»sw. xviii. THE SPHINX 199

over the land of Cusli and the nomad tribes, and
contains, as its only other statement of importance, the
assurance that they had been so completely beaten
that they were no longer (for the time; to be found.'

Telmti-mes IY. attributed his elevation to the throne
to the active protection and aid of the god Horemkhu,
it the account of the interference of the divine hand
ls not merely a cloak for the intrigues of the king to
reach his high aim.

The account referred to is contained in the inscrip-
tion on .the memorial stone, fourteen feet high, which is
Placed directly before the breast of the Sphinx of Gizeh.

At the time when Tehuti-mes IV. ascended the
throne, the space before the pyramids was an already
abandoned burial-ground, the king of which, Osiris-
kekar, was invoked in prayer by the pilgrims to this
spot, in his temple, close to the figure of the Sphinx.
At the foot of the hill on which the pyramids are
raised ran the ancient ' sacred road,' which, turning in
an easterly direction, led to the western boundary of
the Heliopolitan nome over the hill of Babylon, in the
neighbourhood of the present Old Cairo, opposite
to Gizeh. The whole Ions road was accounted an
enchanted region, and the Egyptians may have whis-
pered many ghost-stories of apparitions and strange ad-
ventures which happened in this neighbourhood. Be-
hind the Sphinx and the pyramids began the valley of
the desert, ' the land of gazelles,' in which huntsmen
Were wont to follow their sport, not without resting a
short time under the shadow of the Sphinx. The Sphinx
himself represented the image of the god Hor-em-khu,
that is ' Horus on the horizon ' (the Harmachis of -k.
the Greeks), who was also called by the names ^^
of Kheper, Ea, and Tmu. Hor-em-khu seems to ^
have represented the Sun in his mid-day strength. ^{m_