Count C. Volney

Vivant Denon etched the image of the Sphinx of Giza around 1798. This image (above) and written account (a part of Dr. Freeman's collection) is from the 1803 issue of Universal Magazine. What is most intriguing is that Denon does not mention any damage to the nose or lips of the Sphinx. From that same magazine, here is the written account about the Sphinx of Giza in Denon's own words:     

   "...Though its proportions are colossal, the outline is pure and graceful; the expression of the head is mild, gracious, and tranquil; the character is African, but the mouth, and lips of which are thick, has a softness and delicacy of execution truly admirable; it seems real life and flesh.   Art must have been at a high pitch when this monument was executed; for, if the head wants what is called style, that is the say, the straight and bold lines which give expression to the figures under which the Greeks have designated their deities, yet sufficient justice has been rendered to the fine simplicity and character of nature which is displayed in this figure..."

            -- The Sphinx of Giza image (above) is from the Freeman Institute Black History Collection

In 1787, Count Constantine de Volney -- a French nobleman, philosopher, historian, orientalist, and politician -- embarked on a journey to the East in late 1782 and reached Ottoman Egypt were he spent nearly seven months.

           

   Constantine de Volney was troubled much by the institution of slavery. His expressed opinion that the ancient Egyptians were black Africans much departed from the typical European view of the late eighteenth century, but it gave many people cause for reflection. During his visit to Egypt he expressed amazement that the Egyptians – whose civilization was greatly admired in Europe – were not White!

   "All the Egyptians," wrote de Volney, "have a bloated face, puffed-up eyes, flat nose, thick lips – in a word, the true face of the mulatto. I was tempted to attribute it to the climate, but when I visited the Sphinx, its appearance gave me the key to the riddle. On seeing that head, typically Negro in all its features, I remembered the remarkable passage where Herodotus says:

  ' As for me, I judge the Colchians to be a colony of the Egyptians

because, like them, they are black with woolly hair...

   "When I visited the Sphinx, I could not help thinking that the figure of that monster furnished the true solution to the enigma (of how the modern Egyptians came to have their 'mulatto' appearance)

 

   "In other words, the ancient Egyptians were true Negroes of the same type as all native-born Africans. That being so, we can see how their blood, mixed for several centuries with that of the Greeks and Romans, must have lost the intensity of its original color, while retaining nonetheless the imprint of its original mold.

   "Just think," de Volney declared incredulously, "that this race of Black men, today our slave and the object of our scorn, is the very race to which we owe our arts, sciences, and even the use of speech! Just imagine, finally, that it is in the midst of people who call themselves the greatest friends of liberty and humanity that one has approved the most barbarous slavery, and questioned whether Black men have the same kind of intelligence as whites!

   "In other words the ancient Egyptians were true Negroes of the same stock as all the autochthonous peoples of Africa and from the datum one sees how their race, after some centuries of mixing with the blood of Romans and Greeks, must have lost the full blackness of its original color but retained the impress of its original mould."

      M. Constantine de Volney, Travels through Syria and Egypt in the Years 1783, 1784, and 1785 (London: 1787), p. 80-83.