This error has persisted in spite of the fact that the truth can be readily found in such common reference sources as the Encyclopedia Americana (Danbury, CT: Grolier, 1995). vol.25, p.492-3 under "Sphinx", which states: "Over the centuries the Great Sphinx has suffered severely from weathering...Man has been responsible for additional mutilation. In 1380 A.D. the Sphinx fell victim to the iconoclastic ardor of a fanatical Muslim ruler, who caused deplorable injuries to the head. Then the figure was used as a target for the guns of the Mamluks." In the book The Egyptian Pyramids: A Comprehensive Illustrated Reference (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1990), p.301, the author, J.P. Lepre, adds the fact that, in addition to the 14th century damage, "The face was further disfigured by the eighteenth century A.D. ruler of Egypt, the Marmalukes [Mamluks]."
In National Geographic, April 1991, page 36, Mark Lehner, an archaeologist from Chicago's Oriental Institute who created a computer reconstruction of the Sphinx, writes: "I sought clues from history and archaeology for the computer reconstruction of the Sphinx. An early 15th-century Arab historian reported that the face had been disfigured in his time. Yet to this day the damage is wrongly attributed to Napoleon's troops." Again, the Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt (Oxford: Oxford Univ., 2001. Vol. 1, p. 30) also states of the perpetrator of the missing nose, "This accusation is most often leveled at Napoleon Bonaparte, who is said to have shot the nose off the Sphinx -a claim that is manifestly incorrect, not only because earlier western representations of the Sphinx depict it with its nose missing (for example, the drawing published in 1755 by Frederick Norden) but also because medieval Arabic texts attribute the damage to a Muslim fanatic in the fourteenth century CE."
European visitors to Egypt prior to Napoleon's expedition had already discovered the vandalism to the Sphinx. In 1546, for example, when Dr. Pierre Belon explored Egypt, he visited "the great colossus." "The Sphinx," writes Leslie Greener in The Discovery Of Egypt (London : Cassell, 1966), p.38, by this time "no longer [had] the stamp of grace and beauty so admired by Abdel Latif in 1200." Greener goes on to say: "this exonerates the artillerymen of Napoleon Bonaparte, who have the popular reputation of having used the nose of the Sphinx as a target." Frederick Norden, an artist and marine architect who visited Egypt in 1737, accurately depicted the Sphinx without its nose in his 1755 Travels. (Richard Pococke, who visited Egypt in the same year as Norden, depicts the Sphinx with its nose, but the engraving is generally considered a copy of that of Cornelius de Bruyn's earlier drawing.) The charge against Napoleon is particularly unjust because the French general brought with him a large group of "savants" to conduct the first scientific study of Egypt and its antiquities.
Finally, an article by Ulrich Haarmann, "Regional Sentiment in Medieval Islamic Egypt," published in the University of London's Bulletin Of The School Of Oriental And African Studies (BSOAS), vol.43 (1980) p.55-66, states that according to Makrizi, Rashidi and other medieval Arab scholars, the face of the Sphinx was vandalized in 1378 A.D. by Mohammed Sa'im al-Dahr, a "fanatical sufi of the oldest and most highly respected sufi convent of Cairo." The nose and ears are mentioned specifically as having been damaged at this time. According to one account, Haarmann states, the residents in the neighborhood of the Sphinx were so upset by the destruction that they lynched him and buried him near the great monument he ruined. (Thanks to Ann Macy Roth's article in the online Ancient Near East Digest (University of Chicago, Oriental Institute) for the information on Haarmann's article). This confirms information published in Selim Hassan's book The Sphinx: Its History in Light of Recent Excavations (Cairo: Government Press, 1949. P. 81-83) which states that Sa'im al-Dahr pried off the Sphinx's nose with crowbars.
http://www.napoleonseries.org/faq/sphinx.cfm
