50 Fun Facts About The Great Sphinx

The Great Sphinx of Giza has the body of a lion and the head of what?

Like most Egyptian sphinxes it has a man's head and no wings, unlike the winged, woman-headed Greek version.

From what kind of stone was the Great Sphinx carved?

It was cut from the bedrock of the Eocene-aged Mokattam Formation, the same plateau that served as the quarry for the pyramids.

In which compass direction does the Great Sphinx face?

It sits on the west bank of the Nile, gazing towards the sunrise, which fits its later identity as a solar deity.

Roughly how long is the Great Sphinx from paw to tail?

It is 19 metres wide at the rear haunches.

How high is the Great Sphinx from its base to the top of its head?

The 1817 dig measured 100 feet from the lowest step, and the space between the paws at 35 feet long.

The Sphinx is dated to the reign of Khufu or which son, builder of Giza's second pyramid?

Selim Hassan admitted in 1949 that not one contemporary inscription connects the Sphinx with that king; the evidence is circumstantial.

What is the Sphinx's status among Egyptian sculptures?

It is part of the Memphite Necropolis and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Which pharaoh, per Vassil Dobrev's 2004 theory, may have built the Sphinx in the image of his father Khufu?

Djedefre was a half-brother of the second pyramid's builder; Dobrev argues the causeway to the second pyramid was built around an already existing Sphinx.

The Sphinx is a monolith, meaning it was made how?

Geologist Farouk El-Baz has suggested the head was carved first from a natural wind-sculpted ridge called a yardang.

What did Egyptians of the New Kingdom revere the Sphinx as?

The name means 'Horus of the Horizon', Hellenised as Harmachis; a later pharaoh built a temple to the cult nearly a thousand years after the statue was carved.

Which pharaoh set up the Dream Stele between the Sphinx's paws around 1401 BC?

The stele records a dream in which he was told to clear the sand from the statue; it was rediscovered in 1818 during Caviglia's clearance.

The Dream Stele was recycled from what earlier architectural element?

Pivot sockets on the back of the granite slab match those at the temple threshold.

According to the Dream Stele, what was the prince doing on the Giza plateau before his nap?

He was shooting copper bolts at a target and coursing lions in his chariot with two followers, 'while not a soul knew it'.

Roughly how much does the granite Dream Stele weigh?

It is 3.6 metres tall and originally formed the back wall of a small open-air chapel between the paws.

Who inserted the glyph 'ra' into a damaged Dream Stele cartouche to complete a royal name?

When the stele was re-excavated in 1925 the lines referring to 'Khaf' had flaked off entirely.

In the first century AD the Sphinx was cleared of sand in honour of which Roman emperor?

A monumental stairway more than 12 metres wide was built down to the paws; it was dismantled in 1931–32.

Which Roman writer described the face of the Sphinx as coloured red and gave measurements for it?

Traces of red pigment survive on the face, and yellow and blue elsewhere; Mark Lehner says it was once 'decked out in gaudy comic book colours'.

Who is the last Roman emperor connected with the monument, around 200 AD?

After Roman power faded the sands swallowed the Sphinx once more.

The English word 'sphinx' comes from a Greek verb meaning what?

The link is with the Greek sphinx, who strangled anyone who failed her riddle; the name was applied to the Giza statue about 2,000 years after it was carved.

What does the medieval Egyptian Arabic name for the Sphinx, Abu al-Hawl, mean?

It may be a folk reinterpretation of the name of a Canaanite god with whom the statue was identified.

With which Canaanite god did some ancient non-Egyptians identify the Sphinx?

Medieval Arab writers such as al-Maqrizi called it Belhib, an Arabised Coptic name derived from the same god's Egyptian form.

Which popular story about the Sphinx's missing nose is false?

Drawings from 1737 already show the nose gone, more than 60 years before the French arrived.

Which traveller's 1737 drawings prove the Sphinx's nose was already missing before Napoleon?

His prints appeared in Voyage d'Egypte et de Nubie in 1755.

According to the historian al-Maqrizi, who broke off the Sphinx's nose in 1378?

He was said to be outraged that peasants were making offerings to the statue for better harvests; locals blamed the encroaching sand on his act.

What physical evidence shows the nose was removed deliberately?

One mark sits at the bridge of the nose and another below the nostril; the nose was then apparently pried off.

Which Italian supervised the first modern archaeological dig at the Sphinx in 1817, uncovering its chest?

His clearance the following year rediscovered the Dream Stele between the paws.

Which founder of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo unearthed the Inventory Stela in 1857?

The stela is Late Period revisionism, probably faked by priests to give their Isis temple a fictitious ancient pedigree.

Which German Egyptologist argued the Sphinx dates to the Middle Kingdom and resembles Amenemhat III?

Most scholars stick with the Fourth Dynasty; Gaston Maspero's 1886 survey even argued it predated the king usually credited.

What did engineers add to the Sphinx in 1931 after part of the headdress fell off in 1926?

The questionable repair altered the statue's profile; the base was reworked again in the 1980s and 1990s.

Why has the middle of the Sphinx's body eroded far more than the head?

The head was sculpted from a harder stone layer, and the lowest part including the legs is solid rock.

What did Mark Lehner conclude from the pigment traces on the Sphinx?

Red survives on the face, with yellow and blue found elsewhere on the body.

Who directed John Shae Perring to drill a tunnel into the back of the Sphinx in 1837?

The boring rods stuck at 27 feet; when the hole was cleared in 1978 a fragment of the nemes headdress was found in the rubble.

A rump passage discovered in 1926 was forgotten and then rediscovered in 1980 thanks to whom?

The tunnel's lower section descends about 5 metres into the bedrock and ends in a pit at groundwater level.

What did the 16th-century traveller Johann Helffrich report about the Sphinx's head?

A hole in the top of the head may have anchored a crown shown on New Kingdom stelae; it was sealed with a metal hatch in 1926.

Which French archaeologist cleared the Sphinx of sand in 1926 and sealed its fissures and holes?

He roofed the natural fissure through the waist with iron bars and cement and fitted an iron trap door.

Which alternative Egyptologist championed the Sphinx 'water erosion hypothesis' with geologist Robert Schoch?

Inspired by Schwaller de Lubicz, West attributed the erosion to Nile floods between 15,000 and 10,000 BC.

Which mystic's readings claimed Atlantean refugees built the Sphinx and Great Pyramid around 10,500 BC?

Most archaeologists reject any pre-dynastic date and attribute the statue to the Fourth Dynasty.

Geologist Colin Reader argues the Sphinx predates the Giza quarries but by how much?

He suggests a late Predynastic or Early Dynastic origin, when Egyptians were already capable of sophisticated masonry.

What did the 1556 writer André Thévet claim the Sphinx was?

His engraver pictured it as a curly-haired monster with a grassy dog collar; Athanasius Kircher, who never went to Egypt, drew it as a Roman statue.

What was built from the stones cut away from around the Sphinx's body?

Neither the enclosure nor the temple was finished, which suggests no Sphinx cult existed in the Old Kingdom.

Egyptian sphinxes typically have a man's head; what is this type called in Greek?

Ram-headed criosphinxes lined the approaches at Karnak, each fronted by a full-length statue of the pharaoh.

In Greek myth, at the gates of which city did the Sphinx pose her riddle to travellers?

Hera or Ares was said to have sent her from her Aethiopian homeland; the Greeks always remembered her foreign origin.

Who solved the Sphinx's riddle of the creature that goes on four, two and then three feet?

The answer is man: crawling as a baby, walking upright, then leaning on a stick in old age. The Sphinx threw herself from her rock.

Two sisters, each giving birth to the other: what is the answer to this second riddle of the Greek Sphinx?

Both Greek words, hemera and nyx, are feminine, which is why the riddle speaks of sisters.

According to Hesiod, the Greek Sphinx was the daughter of which two-headed dog?

Apollodorus instead made her the daughter of Echidna and Typhon.

The sphinx was the emblem of which Greek island city-state, appearing on its coins from the 6th century BC?

There was only one sphinx in Greek mythology, a unique demon of destruction and bad luck.

A granite sphinx with the head of which female pharaoh is in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art?

The alabaster Sphinx of Memphis is another famous example, displayed at that site's open-air museum.

Which god do the 900 ram-headed criosphinxes built in Upper Egypt's great temple city represent?

His cult was strongest in that city, home of the Karnak temple complex.

Which pharaoh built a temple to Hor-em-akhet northeast of the Sphinx, 1,000 years after it?

Ramesses II may have carried out a second clearance of sand after the Dream Stele king's.

Which 17th-century traveller declared that the Sphinx was a harlot?

Others saw a hairnet or a rounded hairdo with a bulky collar where the nemes headdress actually is.