Great Sphinx of Giza: History, Builder and Mysteries

The Great Sphinx of Giza is a colossal statue with the body of a lion and the head of a king, carved from the limestone bedrock of the Giza plateau around 2500 BC. About 73 metres (240 feet) long and 20 metres (66 feet) high, it is the largest monolithic statue of the ancient world. Most Egyptologists believe it was made for the pharaoh Khafre as part of his pyramid complex, and it has been a symbol of Egypt for more than 4,000 years.

Background: Khafre’s complex at Giza

In the Fourth Dynasty, Egypt’s kings built enormous pyramid complexes on the Giza plateau west of the Nile. Khufu built the Great Pyramid of Giza, and his son Khafre built the second pyramid beside it. Each complex had a pyramid, a mortuary temple, a long causeway and a valley temple at the edge of the floodplain.

The Sphinx lies at the lower end of the Pyramid of Khafre complex, immediately north of Khafre’s causeway and next to his valley temple. In front of it stands a separate building, the Sphinx Temple, built in the same style and with the same type of huge limestone blocks as the valley temple.

How the Sphinx was carved

The Sphinx was not built from blocks. It was carved from a knoll of rock left standing in a quarry. Workers cut a deep ditch around the knoll, removing stone that was then used to build the nearby temples. What remained was shaped into the lion’s body, while the head was carved from a harder layer of rock at the top.

The bedrock consists of layers of different quality. The lowest layer, from which the base and lower body are cut, is fairly hard. The middle layers, which form most of the body, are softer and have weathered badly. The head, made from better stone, has survived in comparatively good condition.

The king’s head wears the nemes, a striped royal headcloth, and originally had a uraeus, a rearing cobra, on the forehead. Traces of red pigment survive on the face, showing that the statue was once painted. The paws and parts of the body were later covered with masonry blocks during ancient repairs.

The Sphinx Temple

The Sphinx Temple, directly in front of the statue, was built with limestone blocks cut from the Sphinx ditch, some weighing many tonnes. It had an open central court surrounded by pillars and was probably meant to hold statues of the king. Many scholars believe it was never finished, since it lacks clear signs of later use and offering.

Lehner and others have noted that the temple has two sanctuaries, one on the east and one on the west, which may relate to the rising and setting sun. Around the equinoxes, an observer at the temple sees the sun set close to the south side of Khafre’s pyramid. Such solar symbolism fits later Egyptian beliefs about the Sphinx, though how far it was planned is uncertain.

Who built the Sphinx?

No inscription from the Fourth Dynasty names the builder of the Sphinx. The attribution to Khafre rests on archaeological context. The Sphinx and its temple are aligned with Khafre’s valley temple, and the quarrying that created the Sphinx is closely tied to the construction of his causeway and temples.

The American Egyptologist Mark Lehner, who mapped the Sphinx in detail for the American Research Center in Egypt between 1979 and 1983, concluded that it was carved as part of Khafre’s building programme. Many scholars also note similarities between the Sphinx’s face and statues of Khafre, although such comparisons are less conclusive because of erosion and damage.

A minority view, argued by the German Egyptologist Rainer Stadelmann, credits Khufu, based on details of the headdress. Another, proposed by the French Egyptologist Vassil Dobrev, credits Khufu’s son Djedefre. These ideas have not displaced the majority view.

The Dream Stele and the New Kingdom

By the New Kingdom, more than a thousand years after it was carved, the Sphinx had been partly buried by windblown sand. Around 1400 BC the young king Thutmose IV set up a large granite slab, the Dream Stele, between its paws.

The text tells how Prince Thutmose, resting in the Sphinx’s shadow after a hunt, dreamed that the Sphinx spoke to him. It promised him the throne if he would clear the sand that was choking its body. The story served to legitimise his kingship, and it shows that the Sphinx had become an object of worship.

At this time the Sphinx was identified with Horemakhet, “Horus in the Horizon”, a form of the sun god. Thutmose IV’s father, Amenhotep II, built a temple nearby, and many people left small stelae dedicated to the Sphinx. One damaged line of the Dream Stele contains part of a name that may be Khafre’s, but the text is too broken to prove anything.

Later history and the missing nose

The Sphinx continued to be visited and repaired. In the Roman period the area around it was cleared, and stairways and viewing platforms were built in front of it. Later the sand returned, and for long periods only the head and shoulders were visible.

The missing nose is the subject of a famous myth. The medieval historian al-Maqrizi recorded that in 1378 a Sufi named Muhammad Sa’im al-Dahr damaged the face because he objected to local people making offerings to it. Lehner’s study found marks suggesting that rods or chisels were hammered in to pry the nose away deliberately.

The Sphinx also once had a ceremonial beard, probably added after the Old Kingdom. Fragments of it were found in the early 19th century, and pieces are now held in the British Museum and in Cairo. In Arabic the statue became known as Abu al-Hol, often translated “father of terror”.

Excavations and conservation

Modern clearance began in 1817, when the Italian explorer Giovanni Battista Caviglia, sponsored by the British consul Henry Salt, dug out the front of the Sphinx and found the Dream Stele. In 1858 the French archaeologist Auguste Mariette removed some of the sand, but it soon drifted back.

The French engineer Émile Baraize worked at the Sphinx from 1925 to 1936, clearing much of it and carrying out repairs. The Egyptian archaeologist Selim Hassan completed the excavation in 1936–1937, freeing the whole body and the surrounding enclosure for the first time in modern history.

Since then, conservation has been a constant challenge. Groundwater, salts, wind, pollution and earlier poorly matched repairs have all damaged the soft limestone. In 1988 a block fell from the Sphinx’s shoulder, prompting a major restoration programme by Egypt’s antiquities authorities in the late 1980s and 1990s.

Travellers and artists

From the Middle Ages onward, Arab geographers and European travellers described the Sphinx, often only as a head rising from the sand. Early European pictures, made in the 16th and 17th centuries, were often inaccurate, adding features the artists had only heard about. More careful drawings followed in the 18th century, and the scholars of the French expedition of 1798–1801 recorded the monument in the great publication Description de l’Égypte.

In the 19th century the Sphinx became one of the first subjects of early photography in Egypt. Its image spread across Europe and North America and made it a lasting symbol of ancient Egypt, used on everything from postage stamps to Hollywood films.

Myths and facts

Myth: Napoleon’s soldiers shot off the nose. This story is false. The Danish traveller Frederic Louis Norden drew the Sphinx in 1737–1738, and his drawings, published in 1755, already show it without a nose, decades before Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt in 1798.

Myth: the Sphinx is thousands of years older than Egyptian civilisation. In the early 1990s the geologist Robert Schoch and the writer John Anthony West argued that weathering on the enclosure walls was caused by heavy rainfall long before 2500 BC. Most Egyptologists and many geologists reject this, pointing to the Sphinx’s tie to Khafre’s complex, the absence of any older culture at Giza able to carve it, and other explanations for the weathering.

Myth: secret chambers under the Sphinx hold lost records. Claims of a hidden “Hall of Records”, popularised by the American psychic Edgar Cayce in the 20th century, have no archaeological support. Surveys have found only small natural fissures and a few short tunnels, some of them dug in modern times.

By the numbers

Timeline

• c. 2500 BC: The Sphinx and Sphinx Temple are carved and built, most likely under Khafre.
• c. 1400 BC: Thutmose IV erects the Dream Stele between the paws.
• Roman period: The Sphinx is cleared and repaired, and stairways are built in front of it.
• 1378: According to al-Maqrizi, the face is deliberately damaged.
• 1737–1738: Frederic Louis Norden draws the Sphinx without its nose.
• 1817: Giovanni Battista Caviglia excavates in front of the Sphinx and finds the Dream Stele.
• 1925–1936: Émile Baraize clears and repairs much of the monument.
• 1936–1937: Selim Hassan completes the excavation of the Sphinx and its enclosure.
• 1979–1983: Mark Lehner’s mapping project records the Sphinx in detail.
• 1988: A fragment falls from the shoulder, prompting a major restoration.

Why it matters

The Great Sphinx is one of the most recognised monuments on Earth. It shows the skill of the Fourth Dynasty’s builders, who turned a lump of quarry rock into a royal guardian, and it records more than 4,000 years of worship, neglect, repair and study. Together with the pyramids of Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure, it remains the heart of the Giza plateau.