The Great Sphinx of Giza (photo by Maxime Du Camp)  

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The Great Sphinx of Giza by Maxime Du Camp, 1849, taken when he traveled in Egypt with Gustave Flaubert.

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The Great Sphinx of Giza (1849) is the informal title of a photo by Maxime Du Camp, taken of the Great Sphinx of Giza when he traveled in Egypt with Gustave Flaubert.

The photo, take on December 9, 1849, shows the Sphinx's head and shoulders look out from the hole dug by Karl Richard Lepsius.

"De aanblik van de sfinx Aboe el-Hol (de Vader van de Schrik). - Het zand, de piramiden, de sfinx, alles grijs, badend in een grootse roze toon; de hemel is helder blauw, de adelaars cirkelen langzaam om de toppen van de piramiden. We maken halt voor de sfinx, hij laat zijn ijzingwekkende blik op ons rusten; Maxime ziet wit als een doek, ik vrees te gaan duizelen en tracht mezelf weer meester te worden." --Flaubert

This calotype is one of the first known photographs of the Sphinx, taken only four years after the Giza plateau was mapped by Lepsius and his German expedition, and fifty years after the Sphinx was sketched by Vivant Denon in the French campaign in Egypt and Syria.

The photo was published in 1852 in one of the earliest books to be illustrated with real photographic prints made from negatives - Egypte, Nubie, Palestine, Syrie - in this case calotype paper negatives.

Du Camp traveled with Flaubert in Egypt between 1849 and 1851. 'No drawing I have seen conveys a proper idea of it,' wrote Flaubert, 'the best thing is an excellent photograph that Max took.'

In one of Du Camp's two photographs, the benefits of the recent sand-clearances are still to be seen. In the background is the pyramid of Menkaure. Khafre's pyramid is out of frame to the right.

Du Camp's book Egypte, Nubie, Palestine, Syrie (1852) was illustrated with 125 photographic plates made from calotype paper negatives.

Maxime Du Camp's mission to Egypt and the Near East in 1849–51 to make a photographic survey of monuments and sites is well documented in his writings and in those of his fellow traveler, Gustave Flaubert. After an initial stay in Cairo, the two friends hired a boat to take them up the Nile as far as the second cataract, after which they descended the river at leisure, exploring the archaeological sites along its banks. A journalist with no experience in photography, Du Camp learned the craft from Gustave Le Gray shortly before his departure for Egypt. By the time he came to Abu Simbel in March 1850 to explore the rock-cut temples built by Ramesses II (r. 1279–1213 B.C.), Du Camp was thoroughly at ease with the medium. Always in search of a neat, documentary clarity, he preferred a frontal view and midday light for this picture of one of the colossal effigies of Ramesses II. Du Camp's album Égypte, Nubie, Palestine et Syrie, in which this image appeared as plate 106, was published in 1852 and contained 125 photographs. It brought its author instant fame.[1]

See also

• The Sphinx at Giza, being measured by French surveyors[2] (drawing by Vivant Denon; Description de l'Egypte 1802).