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GREAT SPHINX OF GIZA
The Great Sphinx (near the Pyramids in Giza) is the famous colossal statue with the body of a lion and head of a Pharaoh-god. Situated in a pit on the Nile side of the Pyramids, it is 74 meters (242 feet) long and 20 meters (66 feet) high and is reached by walking through a temple made of massive rectangular blocks of stone. The Sphinx faces east towards the Nile and guards the entrance to the Pyramid complex. Although it is a massive statue it is dwarfed by the Pyramids and barely visible in front of them from a distance. [Main Source: Mark Lehner, National Geographic , April 1991].
The word “sphinx” is of uncertain origin. It may be derived from the Egyptian term shesep-ankh, which means “living image”. The term was used to refer to depictions of a god or pharaoh. The face of the Sphinx is believed to be a likeness of Khafre (Chephren), the builder of the second largest pyramid of Giza, and was intended to represent the pharaoh reborn as the sun god. There was once a false beard, a sign of virility. Parts of a royal headdress with a cobra still remain. In the 2000s it was discovered that there is a solar alignment between the sphinx and a temple built by Khafre. When the setting winter solstice sun is observed from doorway of an 18th dynasty temple built a thousand years later than the Sphinx, it traces the outline of the head of the sphinx.
The Great Sphinx is one of the world’s oldest works of monumental sculpture and one of the largest. Much of the it was carved directly from the limestone rock of Giza and then supplemented with more limestone blocks. According to National Geographic: It has become an instantly recognizable symbol of ancient Egypt, inspiring grand replicas all over world, from Las Vegas to Lanzhou, China. It’s popularity rose and fell, much like the desert sands that engulfed it during periods of neglect. When the Sphinx would reemerge, it aroused curiosity and wonder in those who gazed upon its colossal form. [Source: National Geographic, July 28, 2023]
The Sphinx’s head has a royal look and bears some traditional symbols of ancient Egypt’s monarchy. It wears the nemes, a cloth headdress worn by Egyptian pharaohs. Time has robbed the Sphinx of its nose but the rest of its features remain well-defined despite erosion. Two massive paws stretch out before the Sphinx’s leonine body. A tail wraps around it. Much of the body was once faced with high-quality limestone blocks from the quarry at Tura. This surface layer has deteriorated over time. Some has been entirely lost in places despite restoration projects over the centuries. Archaeologists have found traces of blue, yellow, and red pigments on parts of the Sphinx, making it likely that it was once colorfully decorated. Writing in the first century A. D., Roman author Pliny the Elder described the Sphinx’s vivid appearance: “The face of the monster is colored red. ”
Websites on Ancient Egypt: UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, escholarship.org ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Egypt sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Discovering Egypt discoveringegypt.com; BBC History: Egyptians bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians ; Ancient History Encyclopedia on Egypt ancient.eu/egypt; Digital Egypt for Universities. Scholarly treatment with broad coverage and cross references (internal and external). Artifacts used extensively to illustrate topics. ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt ; British Museum: Ancient Egypt ancientegypt.co.uk; Egypt’s Golden Empire pbs.org/empires/egypt; Metropolitan Museum of Art www.metmuseum.org ; Oriental Institute Ancient Egypt (Egypt and Sudan) Projects ; Egyptian Antiquities at the Louvre in Paris louvre.fr/en/departments/egyptian-antiquities; KMT: A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt kmtjournal.com; Egypt Exploration Society ees.ac.uk ; Amarna Project amarnaproject.com; Abzu: Guide to Resources for the Study of the Ancient Near East etana.org; Egyptology Resources fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk
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Origin of the Sphinx
No one is sure who built the Sphinx. Unlike the Pyramids, there are no historical records of it being built. It can not even be dated properly. Based on estimates of rain wear in the cracks and wind erosion patterns, some scientists have concluded that the front and sides of the sphinx date to between 5000 and 7000 B.C., when the rainfall was heavier in the region. Scientists say that a “proto-sphinx” may have been carved at that time.
The Sphinx is generally believed to have originally been created around 2500 B.C. for the fourth-dynasty pharaoh Chephren (Khafre), who also built the pyramid bearing his name. It is thought that the Sphinx was an important part of his funerary complex and may been carved from a limestone outcropping left behind in a U-shaped pit where stone was quarried for the pyramids. Chephren died before the Sphinx was completed and the monument was left unfinished. When Giza was abandoned the Sphinx was covered by sand.
According to National Geographic: The Sphinx and the pyramid are definitely connected; the giant guardian appears to sit right between two of them, each erected by a different fourth-dynasty pharaoh. Khufu, who reigned around 2500 B.C., built the Great Pyramid, and his son Khafre built his own slightly smaller yet still impressive tomb. [Source: National Geographic, July 28, 2023]
The most popular hypothesis on the Sphinx's origin, held by Egyptologists like Mark Lehner and Zahi Hawass, is that Khafre commissioned the Sphinx as part of his monumental building projects, including his resting place and the surrounding temple complex. These scholars have studied the remains of the necropolis and the various structures each king commissioned there. The Sphinx’s positioning within Khafre’s scheme for his pyramid and mortuary temples is a better fit, suggesting careful planning and logic. They believe that the Sphinx itself was carved from a massive piece of limestone, which was likely exposed as workers were quarrying big pieces of rock for the construction of nearby temples.
Some have proposed a much earlier dating based on the Inventory Stela, a text from circa 670 B.C., millennia after the events it describes. It suggests that the Sphinx was restored in the time of Khufu, implying that the monument existed before these early pharaohs. This stela, however, is full of anachronisms, leading many experts to treat the text with a healthy dose of skepticism.
In the early 1990s, John Anthony West, along with Boston University geologist Robert Schoch, stated that the Great Sphinx of Giza, Egypt, showed evidence of rainfall erosion, suggesting that the Sphinx was carved during or before the rains that marked the transition of northern Africa from the last Ice Age to the present interglacial epoch, a transition that occurred in the millennia from 10,000 to 5000 B.C. [Source: Kevin Jackson, BBC, February 17, 2011]
Thutmose IV's Dream About the Sphinx
About 1400 B.C., Egyptian prince Thutmose IV fell asleep under the Sphinx's chin and had a dream that someday he would free the statue from the sand. When he became Pharaoh he covered the Sphinx with limestone blocks, added the masonry forelegs and painted it yellow, blue and red. He placed a statue of his father — and a red granite stela with the story of his dream — on the Sphinx's chest. In the time of Thutmose IV the Sphinx was as ancient as Chatres cathedral is to us today. Ramses the Great later reworked the statue, added two more stelae and scratched in his name (and probably erased the name of Thumose's father).
Granite bust of Thutmose IV
According to National Geographic: Following the decline of the old kingdom, the Sphinx and the structures around it were abandoned and fell into ruin. They lay dormant for centuries as the desert sands piled up around them. The Sphinx would be reborn during the New Kingdom (circa 1539-1075 B.C.), when a young pharaoh used the Sphinx to tie his reign to the kings of old. [Source: National Geographic, July 28, 2023]
Standing between the paws of the Sphinx is the Dream Stela of Thutmose IV. Discovered in 1817, the stela was a late addition to the Sphinx complex, installed sometime during the 18th dynasty. The Dream Stela is a massive piece of solid granite, weighing some 15 tons and standing about 12 feet tall. Its ornately carved inscriptions relate an episode from the life of Pharaoh Thutmose IV, the eighth king of the 18th dynasty, when he was a young prince and the Sphinx was buried up to its shoulders in sand.
According to the stela, Thutmose took a noonday nap in the shadow of the Great Sphinx, and the sun god Horemakhet-Khepri-Re-Atum appeared in the form of the Sphinx. The god told the prince that if he cleared the sands from the statue, then he would make Thutmose king. The end of the story has been lost to time, as the inscription has been worn away. Thutmose IV used the account of the dream to legitimize himself as king. He had not been first in line to succeed his father, Amenhotep II. The dream, whether real or not, helped serve as propaganda to link the new pharaoh to the divine and his ancient royal heritage. The pharaoh then began a restoration project of the Sphinx, helping it reemerge from the sand. As part of this restoration, scholars believe that Thutmose IV had a stone braided beard attached to the Sphinx’s chin. The facial hair fell off, but fragments of it were discovered in 1817.
Was the Sphinx Created from a Wind-Eroded Yardang
Some think the sphinx may be a modified yardang — an unusual, aerodynamically-stable rock formation that looks like an upside-down boat hull, with its prow end pointed into the wind. Sculpted smooth and streamlined by desert winds and sand carried by the winds. Yardangs may be tens of meters high and kilometers long. In a 1981 Smithsonian Magazine article, geologist Farouk El-Baz, theorizes this idea, suggesting that desert winds formed the overall contours of the sphinx and ancient stonemasons chiseled in face and body features.
In an October 17, 2023 study published in the journal Physical Review Fluids, a team from New York University suggested that a yardang can naturally develop into a sphinx-like formation and on top of this the ancient Egyptians shaped the Sphinx's iconic features. Owen Jarus wrote in , Live Science: To investigate the Sphinx's shape, the team took a mound of soft clay with harder material inside and placed it within a water tunnel that had a fast-flowing stream meant to simulate thousands of years of wind erosion, the team said in a statement. At the start of the experiment, the team molded the clay into a "half ellipsoid" or half of an oval shape. As the water eroded some of the clay, it left a sphinx-like shape. They found, for instance, that the "harder or more resistant material became the 'head' of the lion," the statement said, with frontal features that looked a bit like a neck and paws also appearing. [Source:Owen Jarus, Live Science, November 5, 2023]
We "showed that the natural process of erosion can indeed carve a shape that looks like a lying lion with [a] raised head," study senior author Leif Ristroph, an associate professor of mathematics at NYU, told Live Science. Ristroph cautioned that while it is possible that a natural feature like this existed at Giza, we do not know if it actually did. Even if a natural feature like this did exist, Ristroph noted, the ancient Egyptians still would have carried out a considerable amount of work to create the iconic structure. There is "no doubt that the facial features and detail work was done by humans," Ristroph said. Egyptologists and other scientists not involved with the study said that while the findings are interesting, it doesn't mean that a natural feature in a sphinx-like shape actually existed at Giza.
a yardang in Dunhuang China
The study shows "a very real possibility of how a natural limestone formation came to have a kind of amorphous sphinx-like shape," said Kathryn Bard, a professor emeritus of archaeology and classical studies at Boston University who has conducted extensive work in Egypt. Bard cautioned, however, that although she has seen yardangs at the Dakhla Oasis in Egypt's Western Desert, she has never seen a yardang that looks like the one the team produced in their study.
Even if a sphinx-shaped yardang existed at Giza, the Egyptians would have "had to add onto the natural formation with limestone blocks to complete the front part/lion legs & paws," Bard told Live Science.
Judith Bunbury, a geoarchaeologist at the University of Cambridge who has conducted extensive work in Egypt, told Live Science that "there have been hypotheses in the past that the outline shape of the Sphinx was created by natural erosion. " The current study is "a rather nice model to show how a yardang, with a harder patch inside it might come to resemble a [sphinx]," Bunbury said.
Laura Ranieri Roy, an Egyptologist and the founder-director of Ancient Egypt Alive, noted that fieldwork carried out in the 1930s by the archaeologist Émile Baraize suggested that the Sphinx was actually built on two yardangs located close together, with the rear of the Sphinx built atop one yardang and the head and chest of the Sphinx atop another. The work the Egyptians did to build the Sphinx across the two yardangs was extensive, the 1930s research suggested
Yardangs
Yardangs are the ridge-like, castle-like, or hill-like erosional landforms that can reach considerable size and exist primarily in extremely arid region, or basins in arid region, where non-completely consolidated sediments have been sculptured by the wind and flood. [Source: National Commission of the People's Republic of China for UNESCO]
According to a report submitted to UNESCO: “The internationally recognized geomorphic term “Yardang” originated from Uygur language and means small hill with steep escarpments, and was proposed by Swedish explorer Sven Hedin as a formal technical expression when he was exploring the Lop Nor region of Northwest China in the early 20th century. Types of yardangs include ones with ridge-like shapes, whale back shapes and castle shapes at their the peak stage, and isolated hill relics, pagoda forest shapes, cone-like shapes at their late stage. The three most representative shapes: ridges, castles, and isolated hill relics.
Yardangs evolve in arid regions where there is abundant wind and frequent sand/dust storm. The lithology of Yardang stratum are often, mudstone and siltstone. There are various types of yardangs representing all the developing processes from the surface weathering, embryonic states, and mature states to disappearance resulting from wind-erosion, and complex wind and water erosion geomorphic processes. The major external forces are weathering, wind erosion, flood, gravity collapse, etc. In particular, weathering and flood are active in the early stages, wind erosion is active in the middle stage and gravity collapse occurs in the late stage.
Sphinx Rocks and Artifacts
Mark Lehner told PBS: On a couple of different occasions I was able to excavate natural solution cavities in the limestone from which the Sphinx is made. Natural solution cavities are like holes in Swiss cheese. When the limestone formed from sea sediments 50 million years ago there were bubbles and holes and so on, and fissures later developed from tectonic forces cracking the limestone. So for example, right at the hind paw of the Great Sphinx on the north side, this main fissure that cuts through the whole body of the Sphinx and then through the floor opens up to about 30 centimeters wide and about a meter or more in length. And in tandem with Zahi Hawass in 1979-'80, we were clearing out this fissure, which now is totally filled with debris again. But we actually reached down to our armpits, lying on our sides on the floor, scooping out this clay. And in the clay was embedded, not only charcoal, but bits of pottery that were very characteristic of the pottery that was used during the time of Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure, the 4th Dynasty. [Source: PBS, NOVA, February 4, 1997]
We did that again on the floor of the Sphinx temple which is built on a lower terrace directly below the paws of the Sphinx. Directly in front of the Sphinx, we found a solution cavity in 1978, during what's called the SRI Project, which has been written about. We actually cleared out this cavity. We found dolomite pounders, these round balls of hard dolomite that are characteristic hammerstones of the age of the pyramids that they used for roughing out work in stone. Beyond that, Zahi and I excavated deposits on the floor of the Sphinx, even more substantial, deposits that were sealed by an 18th Dynasty temple, built by Tutankamen's great grandfather when the Sphinx was already 1,200 years old. But it was built by a pharaoh named Amenhotep II and his son, Thelmos IV. They put the foundation of this temple right over deposits of the Old Kingdom, and sealed it, so that they were left there and were not cleared away by earlier excavators in our era in the 1930s.
Zahi and I sort of did a stratographic dissection of these ancient deposits. That is we did very careful trenches, recorded the layers and the different kinds of material. The bottom material sealed by a temple built by Tutankamen's great or great great grandfather, was Old Kingdom construction debris. They stopped work cutting the outlines of the Sphinx ditch — the Sphinx sits down in this ditch or sanctuary. We were able to show exactly where they stopped work. They didn't quite finish that. We found tools, we found pottery, characteristic of the Old Kingdom time of Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure.
Temple of the Sphinx
Temples of the Sphinx
Opposite the Great Sphinx are the remains of a temple that was likely begun at the same time as the gigantic sculpture. According to National Geographic: Although the building was never completed, it is believed to have been consecrated. Archaeologists have found representations of different aspects of the solar divinity Re. The Sphinx, located behind the sanctuary, would have formed part of this sacred complex. [Source: National Geographic, July 28, 2023]
Excavations in the early 20th century revealed the ruins of the temple’s megalithic limestone blocks. It was likely that these would have been faced with granite. The floor was made of alabaster. According to German Egyptologists Herbert Ricke and Siegfried Schott, the 24 columns within the temple’s central courtyard may represent the 24 hours of the day. Statues of the pharaoh could have been placed against them. An altar stood in the center.
The temple had two sanctuaries, an eastern one and a western one. The first may have been dedicated to the morning sun god, Khepri, and the second to the evening sun god, Atum. It’s likely that both sanctuaries were enclosed, while the central area would have been open to the sky. At midday, it would have let the light of the mighty sun god Re shine in at the zenith of its daily course. A recreation of the complex near the Great Sphinx, including the bright paint it once had, shows the long covered pathway that linked Khafre’s Valley Temple with his high temple, located next to his pyramid. The funeral procession bore Khafre’s body along this path.
During the equinoxes, an astronomical solar alignment can be observed among the Temple of the Sphinx, the Sphinx itself, and Khafre’s pyramid. An observer standing on the eastwest axis of the temple and looking toward the setting sun in the west would see the equinoctial sun set on the south side of the Sphinx and Khafre’s pyramid. (Scholars point to this phenomenon to support the theory that Khafre built the Sphinx. )
About a thousand years later, Pharaoh Amenhotep II of the 18th dynasty built another small temple near the ruins of Khafre’s complex. The New Kingdom structure is made from adobe bricks and sits next to the northeast corner of the Sphinx’s temple. It was dedicated to the god Har-em-akhet, “Horus on the Horizon,” who was then associated with the Sphinx.
Riddles of the Sphinx and Oedipus
The Sphinx was known in Roman-Greco times. In ancient Greece, a sphinx was a monster with a woman’s head, a lion’s body, and a bird’s wings. She was greatly feared and would kill any person who couldn’t answer her riddles. She contrasts with her Egyptian cousin, who was a benevolent, protective being who guarded kings and country. [Source: National Geographic, July 28, 2023]
The riddle of the sphinx (What animal walks on all fours in the morning, two at noon and three at night? Answer: man as a crawling baby, upright adult and an old man with a cane) was an important plot devise in the Greek play “Oedipus Rex” . In Roman times, sand was cleared away from the Sphinx to make it presentable to Nero. Not long afterwards it was covered in sand again.
Oedipus answering the Sphinx’s riddle on a kylix found in the Vatican Museum
Oedipus, the King of Thebes, is the most famous tragic Greek character. He killed his father and married his mother and solved the riddle of the sphinx , and gave Freud a name for one of his complexes. Sophocles wrote a trilogy that covers Oedipus and his children: “Oedipus the King,” “Oedipus of Colonus” and “Antigone”.
The Oedipus story begins with Oedipus's father, King Laius learning from an oracle that his son will kill him. He therefore has his newborn son's feet pierced and bound up and left on Mount Cithaeron to die of exposure. A shepherd finds the child, names him Oedipus, meaning swollen feet, and takes him to the King of Corinth, who rears him like a son. When Oedipus is told by an oracle that he will murder his father, he leaves Corinth, thinking its king is his father.
On his journey Oedipus comes across a charioteer, whose servant rudely orders Oedipus out of the way. Oedipus get angry and kills the servant and his msater, without realizing the master is his real father, Ling Laius. Around this time a terrible sphinx appears in Thebes and tells anyone who can not answer the riddle of the sphinx — What animals walks on all fours in the morning, two at noon and three at night? — will be devoured. Oedipus figures out he answer — man as a crawling baby, upright adult an old man with a cane. Afterwards the sphinx kills herself by leaping off a cliff.
As a reward Oedipus is made King of Thebes and marries his mother. Not long afterwards Oedipus learns the truth: he was killed his father and married his mother. Horrified, he puts out his eyes while his mother hangs herself with her veil. Oedipus becames an outcast but is cared for until his death by his sister Antigone. Antigone is presented as paragon of self sacrifice, which comes out more graphically in her own play.
History of the Sphinx After Ancient Times
The Sphinx has often been buried up to its neck. Records indicated that has been dug out at least three times: once in 1400 B.C. by Pharaoh Thutmose Iv; another time in the Roman era; and a third time in 1925 by the French engineer Emile Baraize. Despite its semi-burial, the Sphinx still drew an audience. In the 12th and 13th centuries, locals were recorded making offerings to the Sphinx to flood the Nile and boost harvests. In the 11th century, the North African geographer Al-Idrisi reported that those who wished to obtain positions in the Fatimid caliphate, based in Egypt, presented themselves to the Sphinx. [Source: National Geographic, July 28, 2023]
Arab historians in the 15th century reported that the Sphinx was already seriously disfigured. In 1818, an Italian sea captain found the Ramses stelae during an excavation (they are now in the Louvre). Parts of the beard were uncovered around the same time (they are now in the British Museum). The French cleared the sand away in the 1840s, which opened the monument up to the decaying process of wind and weather. The Sphinx wasn't completely cleared of sand until 1925.
The Sphinx's missing nose has been blamed on soldiers in Napoleon's army and the armies of the Turkish sultans, who shot it off for target practice. Mark Twain wrote in “Innocents Abroad” that a tourist in his party tried to hammer of a piece of the Sphinx's face for a souvenir. Napoleon’s army didn't do it. The nose was gone by the time the French general arrived in Egypt. It is generally believed that a 10th-century Islamist knocked the nose off the Sphinx for the same reason the large Buddhist statues in Afghanistan were destroyed in 2001: because the Sphinx violated the Muslim prohibition on religious images of humans and animals. Scientists are not sure who robbed the Sphinx of its nose but they know how it was done: Vandals hammered rods or chiseled into the top of the nose and its right nostril and pried the piece off.
ram-headed sphinxes at Karnak temple
Falcon-Headed Sphinxes and Sphinx Alley in Luxor
There are other depictions of sphinxes in different eras of ancient Egypt. The lion’s body remains consistent, but heads change. In addition to human heads, there are also animal ones, including rams, jackals, falcons, and crocodiles. These kinds of statues were often found as part of Egypt’s sacred spaces. A pair of 13th-century B.C. falcon-headed sphinxes were found at Ramses II’s temple at Abu Simbel. [Source: National Geographic, July 28, 2023]
The remains of hundreds of ancient ram-headed sphinxes have been unearthed in Luxor and have recently been renovated and put on public display. Many were found on a road that had been identified as the ceremonial route "Sphinx Alley". 3-kilometer (The 1.7-mile) -long Sphinx Alley, also known as the Avenue of the Sphinxes and the Kabash path, connected the vast Karnak Temple in ancient Thebes to the Luxor Temple. Ancient Egyptians walked along the route once a year carrying the statues of the deities Amun, ancient Egypt's supreme god king, and Mut, a goddess worshipped as a mother, in a symbolic re-enactment of their marriage. [Source: Michael Theodoulou, The Australian, November 17, 2010]
Michael Theodoulou wrote in the The Australian, “The road was later used by the Romans and is believed to have been renovated by Cleopatra, who left her name in hieroglyphics at the temple in Luxor.” "It maybe shows that Cleopatra brought Mark Antony or Caesar (on a journey up the Nile River) to visit Sphinx Alley," said Zahi Hawass, the renowned Egyptian archeologist. The Romans ruled Egypt after defeating Antony and Cleopatra.
The remains of 850 fragmented sphinxes have been discovered along a section of Sphinx Alley that was built by Pharaoh Amenhotep III, who ruled about 3400 years ago. They were erected on either side of the road, alongside chapels stocked with offerings for the deities. About 1350 sphinx statues are thought to have once flanked the path. Twelve discovered in 2010 — most missing their heads — were inscribed with the name of Nectanebo I, the founder of the last Pharaonic dynasty, who died in 362BC. They were found along an east-west road that adjoins the north-south Kabash path. Scholars knew of the road from ancient texts. The new finds were the first proof of its existence.
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, The Louvre, The British Museum, The Egyptian Museum in Cairo
Text Sources: UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, escholarship.org ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Egypt sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Tour Egypt, Minnesota State University, Mankato, ethanholman.com; Mark Millmore, discoveringegypt.com discoveringegypt.com; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Discover magazine, Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, BBC, Encyclopædia Britannica, Time, Newsweek, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art” by H.W. Janson Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.
Last updated August 2024