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Photo of the Sphinx taken from a balloon before it was excavated. I can't find a date, but based on when it was excavated and the history of photography, some time between 1840 and 1867 (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 weeks ago by FlyingSquid@lemmy.world to c/historyporn@lemmy.world

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I looked all over for a date and got everything from "early 1800s" to "late 1800s" but nothing exact, so I had to make an educated guess. The first cameras practical enough to take such a photo were developed around 1840 and the excavations began in 1867.

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[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I always heard this thing was used as target practice by the Nazis in WW2 and is why the nose is all fucked up; but this seems to contradict that. The nose is all fucked up here and it's at most 100 years before WW2 started.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago

Yeah, that's just a myth. There's also the claim that Napoleon's soldiers shot it off. The truth is we don't know when it happened for sure. Medieval Muslim writers claimed it was done deliberately in the 13th century to stop the locals from worshiping it instead of Allah, but we don't even know if that is true. It's very possible it fell off long before that just due to structural flaws.

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