Some time ago I posted a picture of Sophia Loren on a sphinx for no better reason that it was a beautiful photograph – well, in a similarly spurious vein, here is Russian ballet star Anna Pavlova (1881-1931) in front of a sphinx at the Serapeum, Alexandria in 1923. A regular trooper when it came to touring, she was in town for a run of seven nights of performances at the Grand Theatre Mohamed Aly (she’d also been in Egypt in 1910 and would return in 1928). Below, she poses in Cairo with a more famous Sphinx, while bottom that’s her beside a hideous fountain in the garden at Shepheard’s, which is presumably where she stayed.
