THE GIZA Plateau was a hive of activity yesterday, reports Nevine El-Aref. In addition to the usual tourists roaming around the monuments, a group of Egyptian workmen, together with restorers and Egyptologists, were busy at work at the foot of the Sphinx, installing iron scaffolding around the body of the statue barely eight years after the decade-long project to restore it ended in 1998. "The sphinx will always have to be looked after," Zahi Hawass, secretary- general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), told Al-Ahram Weekly. He explained that conservation work this time will include the re-casing of sections affected by air pollution and erosion as well as consolidating weak points in the statue's chest and neck. Carved during the fourth dynasty (2600-2500 BC), the Sphinx has for millennia acted as the guardian of the Western approaches of the Giza Plateau, during which time it has been the subject of periodic restoration. During the reign of New Kingdom Pharaoh Tuthmosis IV, craftsmen covered the sphinx's body with limestone casing slabs. The surface of the core body had eroded into a series of deep recesses and rounded protrusions. Further work was undertaken during the reign of Ramses II, and during the 26th Dynasty, when limestone was inserted to consolidate the earlier restoration. During Roman times some blocks were replaced with relatively soft and friable limestone. Some restoration attempts have caused rather more harm than good. The 1981-1987 restoration, says Hawass, in which the restorers removed all the Roman casing and in places used cement, resulted in a large chunk of limestone falling from the south shoulder in February 1988. The 10-year restoration project that ended in 1998 involved the removal of the casing stones, harmful cement and gypsum mortar of previous restorations. Following the restoration Culture Minister Farouk Hosni described the project as nothing less than the "resurrection of the Sphinx". "The restoration work was carried out," he said, "according to the best and most modern techniques devised by man." That may have been the case, but as the Sphinx knows full well, no restoration last forever.
