Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Great Sphinx of Giza

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Great Sphinx of Giza[edit]

Original - The Great Sphinx, albumen print created between 1867 and 1899 with the sphinx partially excavated.
Reason
For thousands of years the Great Sphinx of Giza was partially buried by desert sands. Excavation began with Napoleon in the early nineteenth century and continued into the twentieth century. A high resolution photograph of the partially excavated sphinx. Restored version of File:Sphinx partially excavated.jpg. See also File:Sphinx partially excavated2 courtesy copy.jpg (compressed for viewers with slow connection speeds).
Articles this image appears in
Great Sphinx of Giza, Giza Necropolis
Creator
Maison Bonfils
  • Support as nominator --DurovaCharge! 05:50, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment No lossless uploads? I wanted to poke at it since it seemed a bit dark, but it appears only JPEGs exist. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 10:54, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • The TIFF didn't fit under the upload limit. You can get it here (102 MB) MER-C 14:42, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Due to licensing reasons this is uploaded locally, and en:wiki doesn't support TIFFs. DurovaCharge! 15:16, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • If it's only just over 100 megs as a TIFF, it should certainly be uploadable as a PNG, which has better compression schemes. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 16:37, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It's a question of project scope: en:wiki is not an image archive. DurovaCharge! 17:14, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well, in any case, it's clearly out of copyright, so could be put on commons: "Egyptian Law states that photos paintings and drawing are protected for 25 years starting from the publication date, after which they are in public domain." --Commons:Commons:Licencing
Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 23:36, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This was not published in Egypt, and please move procedural discussions unrelated to FPC candidacy merits to talk. DurovaCharge! 23:38, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. This is a fascinating historical representation of the Sphinx as it was being excavated. This shot cannot be recreated, and it is of superb quality. It is a shame that the English Wikipedia does not support tiff files, but this JPEG version is very fine indeed. Great work. PeterSymonds (talk) 16:38, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support facinating to see how a tourist attraction of today used to be largely under the sand. GerardM (talk) 14:24, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - Great find and beautiful restoration. Kaldari (talk) 16:56, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support (with EV issue). Great find. I don't think I've ever seen an image of the sphinx being excavated before, and didn't know there were any. Grumbles on description/EV though - first I think it would be better at Great_Sphinx_of_Giza#Restoration than Great_Sphinx_of_Giza#Name where it's hard to see any relevance to the text. Secondly the only description of the 'modern' excavation says "In 1817 CE, the first modern archaeological dig...uncovered the Sphinx’s chest completely. The entire Sphinx was finally excavated in 1925." The image page/caption says this was taken "between 1867 and 1899". Where's the correlation between article text and image? That's one of my big frustrations with a lot of the historical material we see here (well frankly a lot of the material we see here regardless), that editors don't ensure that the picture gels with the article text. And on a minor point, both articles have in the caption on the actual article page that it's an "albumen print" - do article readers care? If they do, they'll check the image page for that sort of information (which, for the record, does not provide that information when it should). --jjron (talk) 13:33, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • The original source says the image was "Created/published" between 1867 and 1899, which doesn't provide much clarification. :( Kaldari (talk) 16:01, 20 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • The first link I just found in a quick Google search provides a bit more information - see here. It mentions an excavation in 1858, another in 1885, and says the 1925 excavation referred to in the article wasn't actually completed until 1936. Clearly the Wikipedia article is lacking in this respect, but that's largely my point - between them, the article and image aren't providing enough info and they don't correlate well. --jjron (talk) 01:52, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support The critera for featured pictures asks for candidates that follow the adage, "A picture is worth a thousand words". This certainly fits that description - this high quality picture captures the wonder one must have felt when first uncovering and excavating the monolith. That sense of wonder is what motivated archaeologists to excavate the figure and is what enthralled the minds of so many during "The Great Exploration". Today, everyone has scene a picture of the sphinx, fully excavated, surrounded by scaffolds or tourists. Witnessing the partially-buried sphinx, with the pyramids as well, revives the mystique it once had before submitting to the scrutiny of the whole world; the mysteriousness of Egypt that captured the public's interest can certainly be considered a zeitgeist. And a photo that can give a modern day viewer an idea of the times is definitely what wikipedia is looking for in a featured picture. Having explored the featured picture section myself, I say this should absolutely be included. helmchief (talk) 01:19, 21 May 2009 (PDT)
  • Oppose Colours way too dark, sorry. This is a desert scene, and the shadows aren't very long, hence, it's around mid-morning, early afternoon. There should be a lot more light. I would have fixed it myself, but no lossless uploads makes that impossible. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 09:12, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Impossible? It's getting pretty silly frankly if you're complaining that 25MB files are too small. --jjron (talk) 03:05, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Anyone who's seen modern images or been to Egypt will find this picture amazing, so much more has been excavated behind the sphinx, a corridor of temple leading to the pyramids which are behind. Now there are tourists, crowds, its one of the world's crowd pullers, impossible to photograph without human presence... whereas this picture, is from another time, when the Egyptian civilization was forgotten, buried under, the whole area deserted... This picture will generate interest to read further on the egyptian civilization..Lilaac (talk) 11:45, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Fantastic selection. Static Bullet (talk) 16:13, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose per shoemaker. Should be fixable. Noodle snacks (talk) 15:45, 23 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Promoted File:Sphinx partially excavated2.jpg --wadester16 | Talk→ 18:22, 25 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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