Construction of the Great Sphinx
The Great Sphinx was carved at Giza around 2540 BC, most probably for Khafre, whose pyramid stands directly behind it. It is cut from the living rock — a single limestone outcrop left standing in the quarry that supplied the blocks for the pyramids, rather than built from them. It is about 73 metres long and 20 high, the largest monolithic statue ever made. The body is a lion and the head a king in the nemes headdress, and the proportions are the thing archaeologists argue about: the head is small for the body, which has been read as evidence that it was recarved from something earlier, or simply that the good stone ran out. The attribution to Khafre rests on the alignment with his causeway and valley temple, on the facial resemblance to his statues, and on a fragmentary inscription. No text from the Old Kingdom mentions it at all, which is remarkable for a monument of that scale. The nose was gone by the fifteenth century, and a contemporary account attributes it to a Sufi who was outraged to find peasants making offerings to it. Napoleon's soldiers did not shoot it off; drawings predating them show it already missing. It was buried to the shoulders in sand for most of its history, which is why it survived. Thutmose IV cleared it around 1400 BC and set a stele between its paws recording a dream in which the Sphinx promised him the throne if he did. Restoration has continued on and off for 3,400 years, which makes it one of the longest-maintained structures anywhere.
- Year: 2540 BCE
- Category: Cultural
