“The Moon Snows, the Sphinx Glows”

“Think of it, soldiers; from the summit of these pyramids, forty centuries look down upon you.” The thrill that Napoleon sent down the spines of his army as they listened, arrayed in serried ranks on the Giza plateau, was destined to echo through the rest of the nineteenth century. Since that day, armies of travelers have been hypnotized by the stony gaze of the Sphinx; and illustrated verse, romantic novels, and shadow plays have tirelessly given the Sphinx a starring role. An apocryphal version of The Rest on the Flight into Egypt by French painter Luc-Olivier Merson depicts the Sphinx in the role of a mother hen protectively guarding the sleep of a weary migrant family: Mary of Nazareth, her son, and the carpenter Joseph; a dazzling theatrical invention that allows us to behold, in a single image, both a new religion in its infancy and another, much older one in the glimmer of its final sunset.