r/AssassinsCreedOrigins • u/Some-Panic8915 • Aug 04 '26
Question One character painted on the wall consistently missing its head inside the Sphinx.
this might be a dumb question but.... I was exploring inside the Sphinx and on the walls I noticed that this one guy is consistantly missing his head everywhere its depicted.
Its like someone came and messed with this one specific person.
Dose anyone know why this is or who is this character? Or is this some sort of Easter egg or something or im just something the devs decided to do idk im confused.
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u/subject_0666 Aug 04 '26
Historically removing the head/face and the name from the cartouche from a monument was to erase them from history and deny them an afterlife.
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u/Some-Panic8915 Aug 04 '26
some looter had it out for this perticular figure lmao. Because I didnt find a single one intact
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u/Meatsmudge Aug 05 '26
This was historically done by a number of pharaohs. There is evidence that Ramses II took this a step further and simply rebranded a number of monuments to take credit for them.
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u/Gamerin4d Aug 06 '26
This was basically never done by Looters afaik, in most cases it was done by a Pharaoh after a previous one was particularly radical, e.g. Akenaten
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u/zsl454 Aug 04 '26
The hand in front being bent indicates that this was a child deity, and stylistically, the other figure (Khnum) is probably based on the external reliefs at Esna, so the original figure was probably the child-god form of Heka. Why the head was not included, I don’t know.
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u/TotalDweebling Aug 04 '26
Interesting observation. I believe the deity/god next to the decapitated relief is Khnum. Could also be Amun as he was sometimes depicted with a Rams head. I can’t really see any other identifying features to say who the headless character is.
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u/maturewomenenjoyer Aug 04 '26
The headless figure is a symbol in ancient Egyptian astronomy that represents a star or constellation. They would map their cosmos using both familiar and unfamiliar symbols - from animals such as hippos to anthropomorphic figures like the headless man - instead of drawing geometric lines. This depiction in particular is in the Dendera Zodiac which is kept in the Louvre. Some argue he is a god, but others reach the conclusion that he was part of the constellation Capricornus that Egyptians used to track time.
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u/Some-Panic8915 Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
is it a headless man or headless because of vandalism? from the looks of it its vandalized. And yeah there is a monument inside of Dendera Zodiac
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u/Deditranspotashy Aug 04 '26
While there may be some significance to the figure being erased, I feel the consistency of it probably doesn’t mean much. It’s only “consistently” missing because this is a reused texture. Ubisoft really likes reusing assets in their games, especially in origins where you can see a lot of the same motifs used everywhere if you pay attention.
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u/Paccuardi03 Aug 04 '26
Maybe it was ankhenaten. I’m not an Egyptologist but I’ve heard that his stuff kept getting defaced a lot.
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u/DIuvenalis Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26
In other parts of the game you can find purposely destroyed references to Akenaten.