Great Place in The World: The Sphinx of Egypt
The Sphinx. This sculpture, which depicts a lion with a human face (is believed to represent the pharaoh Khafra, at least, wears on his head the typical klaft, mantle worn by the pharaohs) is contemporaneous with the pyramids, is 70 meters long and 20 high. To build it, took a mound of limestone on the plains, who carved and filled with stone blocks. When I had a thousand year old Pharaoh Tuthmosis IV between his legs made carve a scene depicting a dream in which the Sphinx gave him the throne in return for saving her to die buried under the desert sand.
More than a thousand years later, in Roman times, a shrine was excavated within the Sphinx. And when the Sphinx and more than four thousand years after these changes came to be destructive rather than constructive: the first iconoclasts, and the Mamluks then mutilated the monuments, damaging his tearing eyes and nose. Here we see a first example, although unfortunately not the last, which shows that among the capabilities of man is not only to build wonders, but also destroy them.