poetry / writing prompts

Enigma of Giza

Chris Hall59 Comments

What secrets lie behind those sightless eyes?
What words remain unspoken by those muted lips?
Splendid in your solitude, presiding over barren sands
Relic of antiquity made inscrutable by time.

Awed, we gaze upon your enigmatic face
Charmed by the essence of your fading gaze
Veiled in ancient mystery, emblem of eternity
Focused on a future which persists beyond our ken.

Come, rise phoenix-like from that aeolian tomb!
Ascend the dunes and navigate the silken sands of yore
Spirit traversing the tracks of vanished acolytes
A wild wind whispering the secrets of the past.

Written in response to Sadje‘s What do You See #80 photo prompt.

Image credit: Alka Jha @ Unsplash
The image shows the Sphinx in the desert of Giza, Egypt.

59 thoughts on “Enigma of Giza”

  1. Always attracted by the giant structure and the mysteries it carry. What if it actually rises one day and reveals the secrets of the past to the world. Enjoyed the poem.

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  5. Wow. I’ve visited the Sphinx and felt the history there and with the Pyramids, but wished I could see what they’ve witnessed over time. Slowly they reveal some secrets, but they keep far more under wraps!
    Great poem, Chris! 🙂

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  6. Oh, it really does feel like the Sphinx is waiting, doesn’t it? Any day, any sunset, it could shake the sands of the present off its back and walk into the past to awaken the gods. And then we’re in trouble! 🙂

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  19. “The Arab historian al-Maqrīzī, writing in the 15th century, attributes the loss of the nose to Muhammad Sa’im al-Dahr, a Sufi Muslim from the khanqah of Sa’id al-Su’ada in 1378, who found the local peasants making offerings to the Sphinx in the hope of increasing their harvest and therefore defaced the Sphinx in an act …”

    There is so much controversy and history involving the Sphinx. If you go to the Wiki information site you can see part of the Sphinx ‘beard’ in a glass case. One Pharaoh was supposed to be lead to uncover the Sphinx in a dream, but he wasn’t the one to build it. With the head being so out of proportion with the body some believe the head wasn’t original and the original was more ‘animal’ than ‘human’.

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