And when at length we arrived before the colossal visage, face to face with it--without however encountering its gaze, which passed high above our heads--there came over us at once the sentiment of all the secret thought which these men of old contrived to incorporate and make eternal behind this mutilated mask.
But in full daylight their great Sphinx is no more.

It has ceased as it were to exist.

It is so scarred by time, and by the hands of iconoclasts; so dilapidated, broken and diminished, that it is as inexpressive as the crumbling mummies found in the sarcophagi, which no longer even ape humanity.

But after the manner of all phantoms it comes to life again at night, beneath the enchantments of the moon.
For the men of its time whom did it represent?
King Amenemhat?
The Sun God?
Who can rightly tell?
Of all hieroglyphic images it remains the one least understood.

The unfathomable thinkers of Egypt symbolised everything for the benefit of the uninitiated under the form of awe-inspiring figures of the gods; and it may be, perhaps, that, after having meditated so deeply in the shadow of their temples, and sought so long the everlasting wherefore of life and death, they wished simply to sum up in the smile of these closed lips the vanity of the most profound of our human speculations.