The Great Sphinx of Giza combines a human head with a lion's body. It was carved mainly from the local limestone rock, with related architectural remains nearby.

Researchers generally associate it with Giza's Old Kingdom royal building complex. Some details remain disputed, and popular legends should not all be treated as settled conclusions.

The limestone monument at Giza

The Great Sphinx of Giza is a limestone statue of a resting sphinx, a mythical creature with the head of a human and the body of a lion. The monument was sculpted from the limestone bedrock of the Eocene-aged Mokattam Formation and faces east on the Giza Plateau, on the west bank of the Nile in Giza, Egypt. The oldest known monumental sculpture in Egypt, the Sphinx is part of the Memphite Necropolis and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Archaeological evidence suggests the Sphinx was created by Egyptians of the Old Kingdom during the reign of Khufu (c. 2590–2566 BC) or Khafre (c. 2558–2532 BC). Scholars and Egyptologists believe the face of the Sphinx was carved to represent either the pharaoh Khufu or one of his sons, pharaohs Djedefre and Khafre, but a consensus has not been reached and the person(s) in whose likeness the Sphinx was carved remains in dispute.

The Sphinx has undergone multiple restorations, the most recent of which involved replacing layers of limestone blocks around the base. The monument is 73 m (240 ft) long from paw to tail, 20 m (66 ft) high from the base to the top of the head, and 19 m (62 ft) wide at its rear haunches.

Old Kingdom

The archaeological evidence suggests the Great Sphinx was created between 2600 and 2500 BC for the king Khufu, the builder of the Great Pyramid of Giza, or his son Khafre, the builder of the second Pyramid at Giza. The Sphinx is a monolith carved from the bedrock of the plateau, which also served as the quarry for the pyramids and other monuments in the area. Egyptian geologist Farouk El-Baz has suggested the head of the Sphinx may have been carved first, out of a natural yardang: a ridge of bedrock sculpted by the wind. These can sometimes achieve shapes resembling animals. El-Baz suggests the "moat" or "ditch" around the Sphinx may have been quarried out later to allow for the creation of the full body of the sculpture.

The stones cut from around the Sphinx's body were used to construct a temple in front of it; however, neither the enclosure nor the temple were completed, and the relative scarcity of Old Kingdom cultural material suggests a Sphinx cult was not established at the time.

In order to construct the temple, the northern perimeter wall of the Khafre Valley Temple had to be deconstructed; therefore, the Khafre funerary complex preceded the creation of the Sphinx and its temple. Furthermore, the angle and location of the south wall of the enclosure suggests the causeway connecting Khafre's pyramid and Valley Temple already existed before the Sphinx was planned. The lower base level of the Sphinx temple also indicates it does not pre-date the Valley Temple.

Names

The original name the Old Kingdom creators gave the Sphinx is unknown, as the Sphinx temple, enclosure, and possibly the Sphinx itself were not completed at the time, and thus little is known about the statue's cultural context. In the New Kingdom, the Sphinx was revered as the solar deity Hor-em-akhet (English: "Horus of the Horizon"; Hellenized: Harmachis), and the 14th century BC pharaoh Thutmose IV specifically refers to it as such in his Dream Stele.

Modern excavations

In 1817, the first modern archaeological dig, supervised by the Italian Giovanni Battista Caviglia, uncovered the Sphinx's chest completely.

— S. Rappoport, The Project Gutenberg EBook of History of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present, Volume 12

One of the people working on clearing the sands from around the Great Sphinx was Eugène Grébaut, a French Director of the Antiquities Service.