To call a visit to the Great Sphinx of Giza a highlight of one’s life has to be one of the all time biggest understatements. I was on a very special trip with John Anthony West, rogue Egyptologist and symbolist interpreter of the ancient civilization that, more than any other, has drawn me so much in my life. We had full access to the enclosure, could walk right up to it and touch the ancient stone, while hearing about how the weathering on the walls around it out of which it was carved from the living rock is water weathering, meaning the Sphinx had to have been carved when the area was inundated with heavy rain, which would put it at more than ten thousand years old, so much older than she is thought of by egyptologists. As John says, ‘if you don’t see Egypt through symbolist eyes, you don’t see Egypt at all.’
