Researchers and historians answer the question: Who broke the noses of the statues of the pharaohs?!
It draws the attention of antiquities lovers that the pharaonic statues generally appear without noses, despite the Egyptians' mastery in the art of sculpture, not only statues, but even wall inscriptions, and this strange phenomenon needs an explanation.
The Egyptian historian, Bassam Al-Shamma, answers this question, noting that "the nose is one of 3 members that are weaker than others in any statue, and these organs are the ears, the neck and the nose, and on the other hand, any protrusion in the statue is easy to break, whether by human hands or by factors There is no clear, directly tangible evidence of why these statues broke their noses, or who is responsible for them.
Al-Shammaa added: "The nose of the Sphinx, for example, was not destroyed by natural weather-related factors such as wind, rain, lightning and lightning, despite the fact that part of the Sphinx was destroyed by lightning, but it was not the nose."
He continued: "When we look at the nose of the Sphinx, we find a large hole at the top and a hole below it, which indicates a crack above and below the nose in a way that led to its fall, but it is not yet clear who did this definitively, and history has proven that Napoleon Bonaparte did not break the nose of Abu Al-Hol, while the historian Al-Maqrizi mentioned that a person called (the fasting of time) broke the nose for fear of worshiping the Sphinx, and this narration cannot be relied on definitively with our respect for Al-Maqrizi.
Al-Shammaa indicated that "there is no written evidence about the reason for the broken noses of the statues of the pharaohs, but it can be said that in contrast to the presence of a large number of statues with a broken nose, there are many statues that do not have a broken nose, and in the Egyptian Museum there are large numbers of statues, some of which have a broken nose and some are not. , which reveals that the process of cracking the nose was not systematic on all statues, and that the issue was relatively.
Al-Shammaa continued to explain the motives for breaking the statues, saying: "The ancient Egyptian culture of greeting was the approach of the nose to the nose, and cracking the nose meant that a person would not be able to salute, and breaking it was a kind of insult to the owner of the statue, and another factor is that the nose is the first thing in The face, and perhaps the idea of breaking it was seen as a symbol of cracking the front of a person, especially since it is a fast-breaking part, and this can be done in secret.
The Egyptian historian also touched on the "idea of the breath" of the ancient Egyptian, explaining that "there are religious texts called breath texts, and they are part related to a religious ritual, and when the nose is broken, this reduces the value of the statue's owner according to this idea."
He continued, "In addition to the fact that the nose is an important organ in the human body in the ancient Egyptian, and there was an old custom in the era of the Greeks, that when a person dies, they sit next to him to get the last breath from him, and all these factors indicate the importance of the nose, which justifies focusing on it." .
Al-Shammaa pointed out that in the temples of Philae in Aswan, we find fractures in the inscriptions on the wall and scrapings in the images of the king in the hands, feet, face and hands, while leaving the rest of the body and what the king wears without any abrasions.
He pointed out that "this is a process aimed at paralyzing the important organs that the king will use in the afterlife, according to the ancient Egyptian culture, scraping the feet so that the owner of the statue does not walk in the afterlife, and scraping his hands so as not to give gifts to the deities, and the king's face is broken in the inscription until The deity does not recognize him in the afterlife."
He added, according to "Sky News Arabia", "The rest of the things in the statue were neglected, and the goal was to remove the power of the image. Whoever broke it believed in the strength of the sight engraved on the walls, and whoever broke it was someone who knew what you believe and believe."
Al-Shammaa concluded that "the smashing of the nose in the ancient Egyptian statues was done in an unsystematic manner and over different ages for different reasons, but mainly the ancient Egyptians who did this, who believed in the power of inscriptions and carvings and wanted to break things to remove the power of these images and statues."
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