Antiquity History

Article · Ancient Egypt

The Sphinx of Giza: Mystery and History

The Great Sphinx of Giza is the oldest and largest monumental sculpture in the world, and one of the most famous. Carved out of a single outcrop of limestone bedrock on the west bank of the Nile, the Sphinx is a recumbent lion with the head of a pharaoh, measuring 73 meters (240 feet) long and 20 meters (66 feet) high. The Sphinx has been standing watch over the Giza plateau for more than four thousand years, and it has been the subject of intense archaeological study, of romantic speculation, and of one of the great debates of Egyptology. The Sphinx has been associated with the pharaoh Khafre, the builder of the second pyramid, but the actual date of the monument and the identity of the original pharaoh are still debated. The Sphinx has been buried in sand, exposed by excavation, damaged by time, and restored by modern conservators, and it remains one of the most impressive monuments of the ancient world.

This page is a complete guide to the Great Sphinx. It explains the history, the construction, the modern restoration, and the legends. It links back to the Pyramids of Giza cluster, the Egyptian Pharaohs cluster, and the Great Pyramid page.

The Form of the Sphinx

The Great Sphinx is a mythological creature with the body of a lion and the head of a human. In Egyptian art, the Sphinx was a form of the sun god, and it was often depicted as a guardian of sacred places, tombs, and temples. The most famous Egyptian Sphinx is the Great Sphinx of Giza, but there are many others, including the Sphinx of Hatshepsut, the Sphinx of Amenhotep III, the Avenue of Sphinxes at Karnak, and the smaller sphinxes that guard many of the New Kingdom tombs.

The Great Sphinx is carved out of a single outcrop of limestone bedrock that formed the southern boundary of the Giza plateau. The body of the Sphinx is the natural shape of the rock, and the head, the paws, and the back were carved out by the ancient sculptors. The face of the Sphinx was almost certainly painted in bright colors in antiquity, and traces of the red and blue pigments have been found on the cheeks and the headdress.

The Construction and Date

The Great Sphinx has been the subject of one of the great debates of Egyptology. The traditional attribution, based on a stele of the pharaoh Thutmose IV (the so-called Dream Stele, dated to around 1400 BCE), is that the Sphinx was already ancient when Thutmose saw it, and that the pharaoh was told in a dream to clear away the sand that had buried it.

The most common modern view is that the Sphinx was built by the pharaoh Khafre, the builder of the second pyramid at Giza. This view is based on:

An alternative view, advanced by the geologist Robert Schoch and the writer Graham Hancock, holds that the Sphinx is much older than the Old Kingdom, possibly dating to as early as 7000–5000 BCE, on the basis of the apparent water erosion of the Sphinx enclosure. This view is highly controversial and is rejected by most Egyptologists, but it has attracted a great deal of public attention.

The Burials of the Sphinx

The Sphinx was buried in sand for most of its history. The first known attempt to clear the sand was made by Thutmose IV in the fourteenth century BCE. The pharaoh recorded his dream in the famous Dream Stele, which stands between the paws of the Sphinx. The next major clearance was made by the Roman emperor Septimius Severus in the second century CE. The Sphinx was then buried again, and was finally cleared by the French archaeologist Émile Baraize in 1926.

The Missing Nose

The most famous damage to the Sphinx is the missing nose. The nose was almost certainly lost in the fourteenth century CE, when a Sufi Muslim cleric named Sa’im al-Dahr allegedly vandalized the monument in protest against the local peasants’ continuing to worship the Sphinx as a fertility deity. The legend that the nose was lost to Napoleon’s troops is false; the nose was already missing in the 1737 drawings of the Sphinx by the French artist Frederic Louis Norden.

The Sphinx also lost its beard, the long plaited beard that hung from the chin. Fragments of the beard are now in the British Museum and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The Sphinx also lost its nose, the uraeus (the sacred cobra) on the forehead, and the paint that once covered the face.

The Modern Restoration

The Sphinx has been the subject of major restoration projects in the modern era. The most controversial was the project of the Egyptian Antiquities Organization in the 1980s, which replaced the ancient stone blocks of the body with modern concrete blocks. The restoration was intended to stabilize the monument, but it was criticized for the use of inappropriate materials and the loss of original stone.

A more recent project, started in the 1990s, has focused on the documentation and conservation of the monument. The project has used modern techniques, including 3D scanning, to map the Sphinx in detail and to identify the most urgent conservation needs. The Sphinx is also the subject of ongoing research into the effects of pollution, humidity, and wind on the limestone, and of efforts to mitigate these effects.

The Legends

The Sphinx has been the subject of many legends. The ancient Egyptians believed that the Sphinx was a form of the sun god Horus, and the Sphinx was the guardian of the Giza necropolis. The Greeks identified the Sphinx with the mythological Sphinx of the legend of Oedipus — the monster that asked the riddle of the Thebans, killed those who could not answer, and finally killed herself when Oedipus answered correctly.

In the Middle Ages, the Sphinx was associated with the Egyptian sun god, and later with the Christian anchorite Saint Macarius of Egypt. The Sphinx was visited by many European travelers in the 18th and 19th centuries, and it became a powerful symbol of the romantic, mysterious East. The famous Description de l’Égypte, published by the savants of Napoleon’s expedition, contained the first modern account of the Sphinx.

The modern fascination with the Sphinx is, in many ways, a continuation of this long tradition. The Sphinx has been the subject of poems, paintings, photographs, and films. It is one of the most recognizable monuments in the world, and it has become the symbol of Egypt itself.