[eric_h]

> The Sphinx was used for target practice.

This was the first I've heard that assertion, so it sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole.

Turns out it's a common story that Napoleon used the Sphinx for target practice, hence the lost nose. It also turns out that that is most certainly not true. Napoleon, being wholeheartedly in favor of the enlightenment, would never have destroyed antiquities (only plundered them for his own profit -- lets not forget that the Rosetta Stone was discovered during a Napoleonic campaign).

Further, a 15th century Arab historian notes that the nose was missing in his era and "attributes the loss of the nose to iconoclasm by Muhammad Sa'im al-Dahr—a Sufi Muslim from the khanqah of Sa'id al-Su'ada—in AD 1378, upon finding the local peasants making offerings to the Sphinx in the hope of increasing their harvest. Enraged, he destroyed the nose, and was later hanged for vandalism."[0]

0) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Sphinx_of_Giza#Missing_n...

P.S. thanks for sending me down that rabbit hole - I haven't idly done some armchair egyptology since I was a teenager

[logfromblammo]

The way I heard it, the target practice was responsible for the loss of a piece of an ear. Not having been there to see it myself, I suppose I am not a reliable source for this. Thanks for the fact-checking, as I didn't think to do it myself.