Sphinx

After 4,600 years, they are still messing around with the Sphinx. This time, they say, they will get it right and restore the half-man, half-lion to its ancient glory. Propped up with wooden supports and hooked up to high-tech humidity and temperature recording machines, the 240-foot-long statue has been bedeviled by "restorations" down the ages. Now Egyptian antiquarians--artists, archeologists, restorers, architects and scientists--are determined to undo the damage.

Regarding "The $35 Deal" [Oct. 11]: If the Luxor is serious about "phasing out" its Egyptian theme, it might want to start with that "ginormous" sphinx out front. Better yet, drop a giant lampshade on it. That should bring in the "hipper" crowd! Patrick Cervantes Eagle Rock

Regarding "The $35 Deal" [Oct. 11]: If the Luxor is serious about "phasing out" its Egyptian theme, it might want to start with that "ginormous" sphinx out front. Better yet, drop a giant lampshade on it. That should bring in the "hipper" crowd! Patrick Cervantes Eagle Rock

"HOW to Make Money on Foreclosures," by Denise L. Evans, is at best an uneven how-to book. The author, an attorney who has practiced in Texas and Alabama, is very savvy about foreclosure procedures. But some of her recommendations could mislead foreclosure buyers. To illustrate, she suggests that a buyer of distressed property offer the defaulting owner a lease with an option to buy the home back. In several states, that is considered a mortgage loan, not a property sale.

After a year of scientific debate, archeologists still can't figure out how to keep the Sphinx from falling apart. It's been almost six months since workmen made emergency repairs and replaced a stone that fell Feb. 7, 1988, from the crouching lion's right shoulder. But the experts can't decide what to do next. "Scholars from Egypt and around the world have given us good advice, but not one has been able to come up with a sure way to save our wonderful Sphinx," said Sayed Tawfik, Egypt's top archeological official.

Having lived as an American in Paris for four years, mingling with the aspiring expatriate literati, I was interested by Elizabeth Venant's "The Third Wave: Paris' Expatriate Literary Scene," Sept. 21). I was, however, disappointed that the one publication that has been around longer than either Passion or Sphinx was not mentioned. Bob Bishop is the editor of the Free Voice, circulation 7,000, which is the only connection some Americans in Paris have with their counterparts. He has published interviews with Peter Brook, Jean-Luc Ponty and Anthony Burgess.

The embattled Egyptian owner of Harrods, alleged to have bought London's most famous department store with lies and mystery money, says he will never be ousted. "Harrods is my pyramid. I shall stay here forever--they can bury me on the roof," Mohamed Fayed said in an interview published in the Daily Express newspaper today. "The dogs bark but the caravan passes on."

Your excellent article on the Sporting News' 100th birthday, and its colorful editor J.G. Taylor Spink, recalled for me my one and only contact with the man. It was about 1958 and, as an elementary school student in Michigan, I had been given a subscription to the Sporting News. Near the end of the subscription period, I began receiving notices asking me to renew. I wrote a tearful letter explaining I was only 11 years old, didn't have the money ($12, I think) to subscribe, but loved baseball and loved the Sporting News.

MONSIEUR TESTE IN AMERICA & OTHER INSTANCES OF REALISM by Andrei Codrescu (Coffee House Press: $9.95, paper; 138 pp.). What has America ever done to Andrei Codrescu that he should treat its readers like this? Born in Sibiu, Romania, in 1946, he came to the States in 1966, and since made a decent living churning out 17 volumes of prose and poetry, addressing the country on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered," and teaching at Louisiana State University.

Bob Bradley wasn't looking for an adventure as much as he was looking for a job after being fired as coach of the U.S. soccer team two years ago. But in Egypt he found both. When Bradley arrived in the fall of 2011 to take over Egypt's national soccer program, the country was teetering between revolution and rebellion. The Arab Spring uprising had already unseated longtime leader Hosni Mubarak, and five months after Bradley began work a deadly riot broke out at an Egyptian Premier League match, killing 74. It probably wasn't the best time to take any soccer job in Egypt.

Winless in seven starts in France, Gold Sphinx is a nose away from having a perfect record in the United States. The 4-year-old Storm Cat colt has won two of three in California. His lone loss came in an allowance race on Oct. 1 at Santa Anita, by a nose to Buckland Manor, who is headed to the $600,000 Hollywood Derby. Gold Sphinx is the 2-1 favorite tonight in Hollywood Park's seventh race, a $46,000 allowance at 1 1/16 miles on the turf.

Beginning next month, the Museum of Television & Radio will screen what it says is a never-before-seen tape of Frank Sinatra's 1979 concert in Egypt. The concert, staged in front of the pyramids and the sphinx, marked Sinatra's first visit to Egypt and was undertaken to honor President Anwar Sadat for his efforts to make peace with Israel. Museum officials said the concert was taped for documentation but not for public consumption.

Joseph J. Ellis, the author of the Thomas Jefferson biography "American Sphinx," a professor at Mount Holyoke College and a Pulitzer Prize winner, is earning fresh public attention, but not for his scholarship. Historians relish talking about how nations invent myths about themselves, but Ellis seems to have taken it a step further by applying the principle to his own life. After the Boston Globe's Walter V. Robinson reported this week that Ellis had concocted a Vietnam War record as well as participation in the antiwar movement at Yale, Ellis admitted to "distortions" about his past.

For the past month, Bonnie Harris' sixth-grade class has been re-creating ancient civilizations out of sugar cubes, clay, pasta and papier-mache. On a 6-by-4-foot wooden board laid with model-train tracks, Harris' 31 students have built their own miniature versions of Mt. Olympus and the Acropolis, Mt. Vesuvius, the pyramids, the Taj Mahal and the Great Wall of China. One student even crafted a tiny sphinx out of clay for ancient Egypt. Another sculpted a sitting Buddha for the Taj Mahal.

The Performing Arts Center Plaza was transformed into Egypt's Valley of the Kings and Queens for the gala opening of the L.A. Opera's spectacular production of Verdi's "Aida" last Wednesday. The evening also marked Placido Domingo's debut as artistic director of the company, and Ian White-Thomson's first official duty as executive director.

A granite sphinx with the head of Cleopatra's father emerged Wednesday from the choppy waters of Alexandria harbor after 1,600 years underwater. Divers led by French marine archeologist Franck Goddio winched the superbly preserved sphinx, bolted into a steel frame, onto the deck of the research vessel Princess Dudu.

Joseph J. Ellis, the author of the Thomas Jefferson biography "American Sphinx," a professor at Mount Holyoke College and a Pulitzer Prize winner, is earning fresh public attention, but not for his scholarship. Historians relish talking about how nations invent myths about themselves, but Ellis seems to have taken it a step further by applying the principle to his own life. After the Boston Globe's Walter V. Robinson reported this week that Ellis had concocted a Vietnam War record as well as participation in the antiwar movement at Yale, Ellis admitted to "distortions" about his past.

Egypt's Old Kingdom was one of the most prosperous and powerful empires of the ancient world. With trading routes through the Mediterranean and control over large areas of northern Africa, its peace and prosperity allowed an unprecedented flowering of arts and technology. Its era saw the assembly of the first large stone structure and the stepped pyramid of Djoser at Sakkara, as well as the construction of the Sphinx and the three great pyramids at Giza.