Featuring Mark Lehner, Zahi Hawass, Rick Brown, Gunter Dreyer, Richard Redding, Rainer Stadelman, and Fathi Mohamed.

Riddles of the Sphinx primarily features Dr. Mark Lehner, but we also have significant face time with ancient tools specialist Rick Brown and informative snippets with Gunter Dryer, Richard Redding, Rainer Stadelman, and the obligatory sequences with Zahi Hawass.  It was written and produced by Gary Glassman of Providence Pictures for the PBS series NOVA (Original air date—January 19, 2010).

As the title suggests, the program addresses several timeless riddles of the Great Sphinx, namely, who built it, why, and how?

Who Built the Great Sphinx?

The question of who built the Great Sphinx is tackled by Rainer Stadelman, who makes the case for Pharaoh Khufu, and Mark Lehner, who makes a pretty convincing argument for Khufu’s son, Khafre.  Lehner points to the Sphinx’s location on the Giza Plateau.  Granted, it is located between the pyramids of both Khufu and Khafre, but Lehner explains that at the equinox the sun is aligned with the Sphinx, the Sphinx Temple, and Khafre’s Pyramid, which seems to associate these three monuments together.

Rainer Stadelman makes a much simpler, but nonetheless potent, argument:  the face of the Sphinx looks a lot more like Khufu than Khafre.  Incidentally, Em Hotep looks at this question in the article “The Great Sphinx: What We Know, What We Think We Know, What We Will Never Know”.  I have to admit, I didn’t get any further than Drs. Lehner and Stadelman in settling the question of who built the Sphinx, which isn’t too surprising!  But the face does seem to look an awful lot like Khufu.

One possibility the video does not address is that Khafre built the Sphinx, but may have attached his father’s face to it.  Some see this as a bit of a stretch, and Lehner’s geographic argument is pretty tight.  But there are geographic reasons for associating the Great Sphinx with Khufu as well, which are detailed in the Em Hotep article.

Why Was the Great Sphinx Built?

To explore why the Great Sphinx was built, the video first looks at what it represents.  We start with a trip to Abydos with Dr. Gunter Dreyer of the German Archaeological Institute.  Excavations of the tomb of Aha, the second pharaoh of the First Dynasty, revealed that along with human servants, lions were sacrificed and buried with the king.  This shows that even in the earliest days of Egyptian history, lions were associated with the monarch.

The video states that these leonean sacrifices are the first clue to the meaning of the Sphinx’s form.  The lion was a symbol of pharaonic power, but the Great Sphinx was also a god.  The Egyptians often depicted their gods as human/animal hybrids, but typically with human bodies and animal heads.  But the sphinx has the body of a lion, to represent power and ferocity, and the head of a man, to represent intelligence and good judgment.

Riddles of the Sphinx goes on to explain that by the Eighteenth Dynasty, after a thousand years of obscurity and neglect, the Sphinx was back in style.  After being rescued and restored by Pharaoh Thutmose IV the Sphinx becomes associated with the god Horemakhet (the video says Horus Akhet—same god), who is the personification of “Horus on the Horizon.”  The horizon is the gateway to the afterlife, and thus, the Sphinx is the guardian—and gatekeeper—of the afterlife.

Building on Lehner’s theory of who constructed the Sphinx, the video concludes that the reason for its construction was to assure Khafre’s passage into the afterlife.  Just as the sun aligns on the horizon with the Sphinx, its temple, and Khafre’s Pyramid during the equinox, the time of both rebirth and harvest, so the Sphinx as Horus on the Horizon guides the deceased Pharaoh into the hereafter.

But this is where I think the video glosses over some other possibilities.  A thousand years is a long time.  Egypt experienced a lot of development, along with a couple of Dark Ages, in the gulf between the Fourth Dynasty, when the Sphinx was presumably built, and the Eighteenth Dynasty, when it was clearly associated with Horemakhet. I don’t think the video makes a convincing case for the Eighteenth Dynasty interpretation of the Sphinx being a revival of the original beliefs and practices surrounding the Great Sphinx.

The Fourth Dynasty is silent with regard to the Great Sphinx.  There are no textual or graphic representations of what it meant or how it was revered within the Sphinx Temple, the pyramids, or on the Sphinx itself.  What we know comes from the time of Amenhotep IV, and may be more of a contemporary interpretation than an ancient revival. After all, everything Amenhotep IV knew of the Sphinx he learned in a mystical vision.

As with who built the Sphinx, the video does not really settle the question of why it was built either.

How Was the Great Sphinx Built?

The question of how the Great Sphinx was built takes up a generous portion of the video and is some of the most enjoyable viewing.  Operating on the philosophy that experience is the best teacher, the subjects of the video divide into two teams who attempt to reproduce various aspects of the building process. 

On one team we have Egyptologist Dr. Richard Redding of the University of Michigan working with local sculptor and stonemason, Fathi Mohamed.  Team One sets about sculpting a miniature sphinx from the same limestone that was used to construct the head of the original, which happens to also be the hardest layer of the strata from which the Sphinx was carved.  Redding and Mohamed use modern steel hand tools in their project.

On the other team, Mark Lehner joins Rick Brown, a specialist in ancient tools, who reproduces the pounders and copper chisels that would have been used by the original stonecutters.  For their project, Lehner decides to attempt to reproduce a scaled-down model of the Great Sphinx’s missing nose using only the tools employed by the Fourth Dynasty builders.  This idea turned out to be better on the strategic level than on the tactical level.  Implementation had… mixed results.

Right off the bat Mohamed and Redding discover that the hard limestone is bending their steel tools.  As for Lehner and Brown, their copper chisels are faring much more badly.  They find they can only get a few dozen strikes out of each chisel before it is fouled beyond use.  They discover very quickly that the process of reheating and reshaping the chisels back at the forge is at least as labor intensive as the actual stonecutting itself.

One of the unexpected joys of watching Riddles of the Sphinx was how surprisingly musical the hammering and pounding were.  Not the chisels so much, but the sound of the harder stone pounders striking the limestone was actually very resonate and pleasing to the ear.  Striking varying densities of stone would produce different tones, so one can only imagine what a symphony the workers must have produced.  It is something you have to hear to understand, and is one of the several reasons I recommend you check out this video for yourself.

The effects of the limestone on the tools themselves, however, was decidedly less pleasant, and by the end of the video Lehner and Brown are forced to resort to a pneumatic chisel and a circular saw designed to cut stone.  But even using modern power tools they find that the methods for cutting the stone are the same.  Parallel cuts are made in the stone, and then a chisel is used to remove the material between the cuts.

This method of carving away the limestone by making cuts and then chiseling away the material between is actually very similar to how the layers of surrounding strata were cleared from the Sphinx enclosure.  The video explains that the ancient workers started out by cutting a horseshoe-shaped trench around what would become the Sphinx enclosure.  Then parallel lines were cut into the plateau and blocks were cut away from the material between.

In working this way the stonecutters carved through the strata, downward and inward, until a large central block was isolated, from which the Great Sphinx itself was then carved.  The blocks that were removed in the process were carted off for other projects such as temple and pyramid building.  In fact, by matching layers of strata, Lehner seems to have demonstrated that the blocks which make up the Sphinx Temple were quarried from around the Sphinx itself.

Although we may not know who made the Sphinx or why, we have a pretty good idea of how.  And even though Lehner and Brown had to abandon their ancient-style tools, they were able to complete enough work with them to calculate how long the project would have taken.

They counted an average of about 200 strikes with the stone pounders per five minutes, and given a constant supply of replacement chisels, a worker could remove one cubic foot of stone in about 40 hours.  Lehner projects that it thus took about 1 million man-hours to carve the Great Sphinx, or three years for 100 men.  But that is only counting the stonecutters.  There were also the smiths who reworked the spent chisels, the people who gathered fire wood for the forges, the runners carrying tools, etc.  As we shall see in the in-progress Pyramid City series, entire towns emerged around these construction projects.

Redding and Mohamed were also successful in completing their miniature sphinx, but given that Lehner and Brown also ended up resorting to modern tools, I am not really sure of what Redding and Mohamed contributed to the program. 

Riddles Upon Riddles

There are other riddles addressed in the video as well.  For example, Dr. Zahi Hawass addresses another question people often ask about the Sphinx—If it was carved from one massive block, straight out of the living stone of the Giza Plateau, then why are there so many smaller blocks visible?  The answer is simple:  thousands of years of repair work by various cultures.  In addition to the original project by Thutmose IV, the Sphinx has undergone renovations right up to modern days.

Part of the problem in modern times is the pollution and vibrations caused by tourists, traffic, and near-by construction.  But the main destructive force, and one which has been in progress since the Sphinx was first built, is the process of rising ground water forcing residual salt up into the limestone.  The salt then dries and crystallizes, which is literally pushing the grains of limestone apart from within.

The effect is devastating.  In one particularly wince-worthy scene, Mark Lehner pulls a flake of limestone the size of his hand from the surface of the Sphinx and literally crumbles it to dust.  The effect of viewing this is akin to hearing fingernails on a chalkboard, but Lehner gets his point across—the Great Sphinx is in great peril.

(Author’s Rant:  If Albert Zink and Carsten Pusch can drill holes into royal mummies, and Mark Lehner can tear chunks from the Great Sphinx and crush them in his bare hands, then why is Jean-Pierre Houdin not allowed to, in effect, take high tech photographs of the Great Pyramid?  Is someone afraid that Houdin’s work might drill holes in, or crumble to dust, something more personal?  Hmmmm?)  

Riddles of the Sphinx, which I had the privilege of viewing in high definition, is beautifully filmed and edited.  In addition to the above-mentioned musical stones, there are many scenes which make its viewing well worth your time.  In one scene, for instance, we see Zahi Hawass walking down the back of the Sphinx toward its head.  This is an angle of the Sphinx we normally do not see, and it drives home how long and narrow the structure is.  The odd shape of the Sphinx—its long body and disproportionately small head—has spawned its own series of queries and riddles.

I highly encourage you, Gentle Reader, to check out Riddles of the Sphinx for yourself.  I am not convinced with all of the answers it proposes, but sometimes the fun is in not yet knowing.  I tend to enjoy journeys more than arrivals, myself.

Transcripts of the video are available here.

See Also

• The Great Sphinx: What We Know, What We Think We Know, What We Will Never Know

Copyright by Keith Payne, 2010.  All rights reserved.

Drawing “Stone-cutters finishing the dressing of limestone blocks” Drawn by Faucher-Gudin (Maspero, Gaston. History of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria. Vol. II, Part A. London: Grolier Society) courtesy of Project Gutenberg.

We will also look at how the Great Sphinx’s significance in both religion and politics has changed over the many centuries of its known lifetime. From the ancient days of early Egypt, when little is really said about the Sphinx and its existence seems to be taken for granted, to the height of Egyptian culture, when the Sphinx was synonymous with the great solar deities and had the power to legitimize a king’s reign, the more we learn about the Sphinx, the more we know about Egypt.

What is an Egyptian Sphinx?

Most of the sphinxes in Egypt are statues with the body of a lion and the head of a royal person, such as a pharaoh or a queen. There are several levels to this symbolism. Most obvious is the combination of the power and ferocity of the lion combined with the intelligence and judgment of a human. On a deeper level, the lion is a cross-cultural symbol of royalty and is associated with the sun, which in its many forms, is the primary deity throughout most of ancient Egypt’s history. So the royal sphinxes of Egypt may be thought of as a symbol of the power and wisdom of the king, as well as his association with the eternal life-giving sun.

When most people think of a sphinx, they tend to envision the Great Sphinx of Giza, and not without good reason. The Great Sphinx is second only to the pyramids as a symbol of Egypt, and is among the largest, oldest, and most impressive monuments ever created. But sphinxes were fairly common in ancient Egypt, and a number of very remarkable examples have been recovered by archaeologists. They are usually associated with a particular temple or tomb where they stood as guardians.

The Sphinx of Queen Hatshepsut (Photo by Keith Payne)

The Greek Sphinx, Sphiggein (Photo by Rosemanios)

The word sphinx has two possible derivations. It is commonly thought of as having its roots in the Greek word sphiggein, which means “to draw tight,” and is often translated as “the strangler.” This name originally applied to a creature from Greek mythology, a winged lion with the head of a woman who set upon visitors to the ancient city of Thebes. Before gaining access to the city the unfortunate traveler had to answer a riddle, and if they failed, they were strangled to death.

More recently it has been speculated that the word sphinx is a mistranslation of an ancient Egyptian phrase. Susan Wise Bauer has suggested in The History of the Ancient World that the original may have been shesep ankh, which means “living image.”

A British Egyptologist and linguist named Alan Gardiner took this a step further with shesep ankh Atum, which means “the living image of [the sun god] Atum.” In Word and Image in Ancient Egypt , Sergei Ignatov points out that the word shesep specifically refers to a type of statuary “in which [the] spiritual essence of a human or deity is instilled.” Thus, a sphinx is a statue constructed to receive the essence of the person or being it represents.

The sphinx is thought to be an invention of the Fourth Dynasty, a period of ancient Egyptian history characterized by social stability, religious sophistication, and centralized political power. Many of Egypt’s greatest monuments were constructed during this period, including all three of the Giza Pyramids and, according to conventional Egyptology, the Great Sphinx itself.

The head from King Djedefre’s Sphinx (Photo by Neithsabes)

Of the two earliest sphinxes recovered so far, there is some disagreement as to which may be the oldest. According to many, the sphinx of Djedefre is the oldest known sphinx. Djedefre was one of Khufu’s sons who ruled Egypt for a few years prior to his more well-known brother, Khafre. However, some think that the sphinx of Queen Hetepheres II may predate that of Djedefre.

The Sphinx of Queen Hetepheres II (Photo by Jon Bodsworth)

Hetepheres II was a daughter of Khufu who married her brother, Djedefre, so it is very likely that their sphinxes were created within a few years of each other.

Arguing for Hetepheres II’s sphinx being first is the fact that before being married to Djedefre she was married to Kawab, the original heir to Khufu who died before assuming the throne. Thus, as the future queen her sphinx may have been constructed prior to Djedefre, who was not originally in line for the throne. Without a contemporary account detailing when each sphinx was made it is unlikely this question will ever be resolved.

Sphinxes are a particularly common sight around the temple complexes of Luxor and Karnak. More than 2,000 sphinxes bearing the head of the Thirtieth Dynasty King Nekhtnebef I originally lined the causeway connecting the Luxor and Karnak complexes, many of which still remain. Although most sphinxes have human heads, this is not always the case. The approach to the Great Temple of Amun at Karnak is lined on each side with 20 ram-headed sphinxes erected by the Nineteenth Dynasty Pharaoh Ramesses II.

The Approach to the Great Temple of Amun located at Karnak, with its row of criosphinxes (Photo by Keith Payne)

Also called criosphinxes, these ram-headed sentinels guard the way to the First Pylon of Karnak, which marks the entrance to the Great Temple of Amun. An additional 52 criosphinxes are located in the courtyard within, with 19 situated along the northern colonnade and 33 along the south. A symbol of the god whose temple they protect, each ram-headed sphinx holds a statue of Ramesses II in Osiris form between their paws.

One of Karnak’s ram-headed criosphinxes, Ramesses II in Osiris form held protectively between his paws (Photo by Keith Payne)

Sphinxes were made of a variety of materials, most often limestone or granite, but other materials were used as well. A sphinx thought to depict Ptolemy XII, the father of famed Cleopatra VII, is made of diorite, a common material for royal statuary. The colossal sphinx that once guarded the Temple of Ptah at Mit Rahina was carved from a single 90-ton piece of alabaster.

The Alabaster Sphinx, guardian of the Temple of Ptah at Mit Rahina (Photo by Keith Payne)

At an impressive 26 feet long and 13 feet high, the Alabaster Sphinx is indeed quite large, but is a distant second to the largest sphinx in Egypt.

The Great Sphinx of Giza

The Great Sphinx of Giza is the oldest sculpted monument known, and at 240 feet long and 66 feet high it is certainly one of the largest. It is believed to date from between 2589 to 2532 BC, having been created sometime during the reigns of Khufu, Djedefre, or Khafre, although there are arguments for an earlier date. While most Egyptologists believe the Great Sphinx is strictly a creation of the early Fourth Dynasty, there are persistent and not altogether unreasonable theories that it may predate the pyramids, and may have even been why Khufu built his pyramid at Giza.

The Great Sphinx of Giza crouches behind the ruins of the Old Kingdom Sphinx Temple and before the Pyramid of Khafre (Photo by Keith Payne)

Located near Khafre’s valley temple, the Great Sphinx was sculpted from a limestone monolith that was first defined by a horseshoe-shaped trench that formed the borders of the Sphinx enclosure. Although the enclosure seems to have been planned around the monolith that was carved into the Sphinx, it also seems to be a byproduct of the quarrying which produced some of the surrounding temples and which contributed to the pyramids themselves. This is offered as an argument against an earlier dating of the Sphinx.

Over thousands of years the Great Sphinx has suffered indignities from man and nature alike. There is evidence that at some point the Sphinx’s head was used for target practice. The notorious air pollution of modern Cairo likewise exacts a constant toll. But the most damage has been caused by the corrosive effects of wind and water. The combination of groundwater and torrential rains, along with windborne sand and grit, have eroded the Sphinx and worn deep scars into its surface. Ironically, the accumulation of the very sand that has blasted away at the Sphinx may also be responsible for its protection.

The Great Sphinx, circa 1880 (‘Le Sphinx Armachis, Caire’ by Henri Bechard, courtesy of the National Media Museum)

Because the Sphinx enclosure forms a trough that is considerably lower than the surface of the plateau, sand tends to accumulate pretty easily around the Sphinx. The Sphinx has been buried and restored numerous times throughout history, with the most famous restoration having been that of Pharaoh Thutmose IV, who we will discuss in more detail below. The most recent major restoration was conducted by the French engineer Emile Baraize between 1925 and 1936, although restoration and conservation efforts continue to this day. The Great Sphinx is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which helps fund its maintenance. The most imminent modern peril is the rising of the water tables, a problem that is threatening structures all over Egypt.

Why Does the Head Look So Odd?

Many questions and speculations, ranging from far-flung to undeniably valid, involve the Sphinx’s head. Even in the company of other human-headed lions, there is just something out of place about the head of the Great Sphinx. It just doesn’t seem to really belong to the body on which it rests!

The most obvious difference is its condition. The head of the Sphinx, bullet wounds and missing nose aside, is clearly in much better shape than the rest of its body. While the face and the headdress are smooth, the rest of the body is worn down to the point where the varying levels of strata are clearly visible, with channels of erosion making much of the body look like a natural mesa.

The head of the Great Sphinx, which is carved from a harder layer of limestone than the body, shows much less erosion, but is that the only reason for its smoother appearance? (Photo by Keith Payne)

Part of this can be explained by the nature of the limestone itself. The limestone where the Sphinx is located grows softer and more porous the deeper you dig, with the head having been formed from the hard top layer that was used for exterior casing stones in the surrounding monuments. The body is cut from the lower quality layers making it more vulnerable to the elements. This is one explanation for the head being in better condition than the body, but there are other questions as well.

Shown from profile, the Sphinx’s head appears disproportionately tiny compared to the rest of its body (Photo by Keith Payne)

Another inconsistency between the head and the body is the size. The Sphinx’s head is proportionately much smaller than the rest of its body, which prior to erosion would have been even larger than it is now. A number of explanations for the unusually small head have been offered. One idea is that the builders ran out of usable stone and had to shape the head smaller than originally planned. This doesn’t seem to make sense, as the quality of the stone would have been apparent before the rest of the body was shaped. Why didn’t they scale the body down to match the head?

According to another theory, the Sphinx’s head seems disproportionately small in profile because it was actually intended to be viewed from the front. The smaller size is intended to produce a dramatic effect when properly viewed. By creating a tapered appearance from the front, the small head makes the Great Sphinx appear larger and more imposing when viewed from that perspective. But there are a couple of problems with this explanation as well.

First, when viewed from a distance this effect is lost. To get the tapering effect one has to be standing close enough to the Sphinx to be looking up, and both the head and the body must be visible. However, the body of the Sphinx is largely obscured from this perspective by the Temple of the Sphinx, which is located in front of the Sphinx itself. While the tapering effect can be somewhat observed from the temple that lies to the northeast, and certainly from the chapel that was built between its paws, both of these structures date from the Eighteenth Dynasty, more than a thousand years after the head is believed to have been sculpted.

The Great Sphinx as viewed from the ruins of the Old Kingdom Sphinx Temple (Photo by Keith Payne)

The second problem with this theory is that there are legitimate questions about whether the Great Sphinx was intended to be viewed from the front or the side. This is no trivial question, and is tied to who the face on the Sphinx was intended to represent. We will be discussing this in detail later in the article. But if it does so happen that the Sphinx was intended to be viewed in profile rather than from the front, then this brings us back to the question of why it is so small, which in turn brings us back to the question of its age.

One of the more controversial explanations for the small head posits that its current shape is not the original, and that the monument predates the Fourth Dynasty. According to this theory, the original head may have been simply the head of a lion, which would have been proportionate to the rest of the body, and that the human head is the result of modifications dating from the Fourth Dynasty. A more recent date for the current shape of the head may also help explain its finer condition than the rest of the body. These alterations may have been the result of a pharaoh, most likely Khufu or Khafre, usurping the colossal lion for their own purposes.

Alternately, the change may have been the result of a genuine effort to restore an earlier monument where the head had been damaged to the point where it was already out of proportion to the body. Rather than attempt to recreate a lion’s head, which would have been carved even smaller than the current human head in order to shape the snout, perhaps a decision was made to turn the lion into a royal sphinx. As we saw in the first section, the sphinx was already a statuary form in the Fourth Dynasty.

To piece together possible answers to these dilemmas we first have to formulate a reasonable theory about who the face represents, and that requires a better understanding of the lay of the land. To see the Great Sphinx in context we need an idea of what structures surround it, when they were built, and by whom.

The Great Sphinx Complex

Although we often think of the structures of the Giza Plateau in terms of individual monuments, temples, and tombs, it would be more accurate to think of the entire region from Saqqara in the south to the Giza Plateau in the north as one large necropolis made up of distinct but integrated complexes. Pyramids, for example, are but the centerpiece of mortuary complexes consisting of temples, monuments, family cemeteries, sometimes complete microcosmic models of the entire kingdom, all within an enclosure wall. Pyramid and tomb complexes combine to represent dynasties, and some areas serve to connect entire periods of Egypt’s long history.

The complex of the Great Sphinx is laid out in such a way that allows us to see how the Sphinx was viewed in the context of different epochs. Some of these periods are better understood than others due to more complete records and more easily interpreted archaeological discoveries. The role of the Great Sphinx as a god during the New Kingdom Period, for example, is well attested to. Less obvious is what the Sphinx represented to the Old Kingdom, where we have what was apparently a major temple dedicated to its service, but not a single tomb attributed to one of its priests.

The Old Kingdom Temple

The Old Kingdom Temple is situated directly in front of the Great Sphinx, although there is no direct passage leading from the temple to the Sphinx. The core of the Sphinx Temple was constructed of the same porous limestone as the body of the Sphinx and bears the same signs of erosion, which seems to indicate that they were both constructed at around the same time. The inside of the temple was originally lined with superior Tura limestone and pink granite imported from Aswan. The floor was paved with fine alabaster, and the temple’s overall construction closely resembles that of the valley and mortuary temples of Khafre.

The outside of the temple was partially faced with granite and it appears that it was originally intended to be entirely covered, leading to speculation that it may have never been completed, or possibly never even used. This, while a mystery by its own right, would at least explain why no priests’ tombs have been located, and why no Old Kingdom records of the temple’s use have been found. Most of its internal granite and finer limestone were stripped away long ago, exposing the soft core to erosion. There are no surviving inscriptions, if there ever were any.

The eastern wall of the Old Kingdom Temple of the Sphinx, which lies just to the east of the Sphinx itself (Photo by Jon Bodsworth)

The Old Kingdom Sphinx Temple was built with a north-south orientation with two entrances—each with its own chapel—on the eastern face. The entrances and their chapels may have represented Upper and Lower Egypt. The temple proper, which has east, west, and central sanctuaries, is thought to have been associated with the sun god as he made his daily transition. In the morning the Sphinx and his temple would face Khepri, the rising sun. At noon they would be under Re at his zenith. In the evening the Sphinx in its enclosure and the temple before it would lie in the shadows cast by Atum at his setting.

The Solar Temples of Re built by the kings of the Fifth Dynasty appear to have been modeled after the Sphinx Temple. There was a center court that was open to the sky, and the face of the Sphinx was visible to devotees. The court was ringed with rectangular columns, and there are indentations in the floor before these columns that suggest statuary would have once lined the court. Covered sanctuaries are located in the east and west sections of the temple, within their own colonnades.

Indentations in the alabaster floor of the Sphinx Temple where cult statues would have once stood (Photo by Daniel Mayer)

The similarities between the Old Kingdom Sphinx Temple and Khafre’s adjacent valley temple cannot be denied. The core masonry of Khafre’s valley temple appears to be made of the same limestone as the Sphinx Temple and the body of the Sphinx itself. Like the Sphinx Temple, the valley temple was dressed with higher quality limestone and pink Aswan granite, and has similar rectangular pillars unadorned with inscriptions. The floors of both temples were paved with alabaster and even posses the same square indentations for cult statues. (For more read Khafre’s Valley Temple.)

A good case is made for Khafre being the pharaoh who had the Great Sphinx and its Old Kingdom Temple constructed. But there are other contenders, and before we can fully consider all the evidence we need to leap forward a millennium to the next major phase of construction—and reconstruction—in the complex of the Great Sphinx.

The Dream of Thutmose IV

The Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt is full of intrigue, high drama, and famous pharaohs. Hatshepsut, Akhenaton, Tutankhamun.. Their stories have filled books and made careers. Amidst these larger than life personalities we have Thutmose IV, a pharaoh who was probably not intended to be king, but who wrote his own romance and crafted his story with the skill of a Hollywood promoter.

Thutmose IV (Photo by Siren)

Once upon a time, as the story goes, a young prince named Thutmose IV, son of Amenhotep II, was hunting on the Giza Plateau. Finding himself tired and in need of a nap, the prince sought shelter in the shade of the head of the Great Sphinx, which had become buried up to its neck in the drifting sand. As he dozed, the sun god Horemakhet came to Thutmose and promised him that if he would clear away the accumulated sand and restore the Sphinx to his former glory, then he would become the next pharaoh. This was good news indeed for, while he may have been a royal prince, Thutmose was not next in line to become king.

A reproduction of the Dream Stela of Thutmose IV, the original remains in the votive chapel between the Great Sphinx’s paws (Photo by Capt. Mondo)

Thutmose IV did his part by clearing out the Sphinx enclosure and making various repairs and restorations, including a small open chapel between the Great Sphinx’s paws, and a large memorial stela that detailed the dream and the pact formed between the prince and Horemakhet. For his part, Horemakhet kept his promise and Thutmose IV became the next pharaoh after Amenhotep II.  

The Great Sphinx as Horemakhet, Validator of Thutmose IV

By the Eighteenth Dynasty the Great Sphinx had become associated with the sun god Horemakhet, which means “Horus in the horizon.” At least as early as the time of Thutmose I the area around the Sphinx was a hive of activity. Royalty and commoners alike made pilgrimages from all over Egypt to pay homage at the pyramid complexes of Khufu and Khafre and to make offerings to Horemakhet.

In the first year of his reign Amenhotep II constructed a temple dedicated to Horemakhet just to the north of the Old Kingdom temple on a small bluff overlooking the Sphinx enclosure. Although this was the primary New Kingdom temple dedicated to the Great Sphinx as Horemakhet, Amenhotep II built numerous terraces, chapels, and related facilities around the Sphinx dedicated to the sun god as well as the cults of royal ancestors. It might be fair to say that Thutmose IV’s clearing of the enclosure and restoration work on the Sphinx was an extension and continuation of the building projects already instituted by his father.

The Great Sphinx as viewed from behind the New Kingdom Temple of Horemakhet built by Amenhotep II during the Eighteenth Dynasty (Photo by Francesco Gasparetti)

When viewed in the context of his political circumstances, Thutmose IV’s civic improvements, and indeed, the story on the Dream Stela itself, seem to have more to do with propaganda than piety. Thutmose was not the heir apparent, and the destruction of memorial stelae erected by his brothers in their father’s Sphinx temple suggests his ascension was not without conflict. Evoking not only the blessing of Horemakhet, but a prophetic covenant with the sun god of the Sphinx would have helped legitimize his reign in the eyes of the people.

Thutmose IV’s construction program may have served as a grand diversion from the political turmoil associated with his ascension to the throne. But whatever the Dream Stela may or may not tell us of Thutmose IV’s rise to power, it is thought by some to contain a clue as to who built the Great Sphinx.

Who Built the Sphinx?

Egyptologists traditionally attribute the construction of the Great Sphinx to Pharaoh Khafre. Along with the above cited similarities between the Old Kingdom Sphinx Temple and the valley temple of Khafre, the Sphinx’s location in relation to Khafre’s pyramid complex is taken by some to suggest the Sphinx was intended to be a part of that complex. The valley temple and the Sphinx Temple are parallel to each other, with Khafre’s causeway angling past the Sphinx to his mortuary temple. The Great Sphinx’s location in front of Khafre’s Pyramid as it rises from the high point of the plateau certainly seems to have been planned for maximum effect.

The Dream Stela is considered significant to this question because part of Khafre’s name seems to be written on it, although the section is damaged, so we can’t be 100% certain. And even if it is Khafre’s name, it does not appear in a context that suggests the Sphinx’s construction is being attributed to him. It would seem that the evidence of the Dream Stela is inconclusive at best.

In addition, another tablet called the Amenhotep II Stela has been recovered from the Sphinx enclosure that dates from the same time, but lists both Khafre and Khufu, also without attributing the Sphinx to either of them. This raises the question of whether Khufu’s name may also have originally appeared on the Dream Stela in the section near Khafre’s name that has been damaged. Having these kings mentioned on a couple of stelae so clearly associated with the Sphinx without attributing the Sphinx’s construction to either of them seems odd, as if its existence during their time was a given.

Yet another argument in support of the Sphinx having been built by Khafre comes from Dr. Zahi Hawass. Hawass suggests that a drainage ditch leading from Khafre’s causeway empties into the Sphinx enclosure, something the builders would never have done if the Sphinx had already been there. Thus, the Sphinx must have been built after the pyramids of Khufu and Khafre.

But geologist Colin Reader has pointed out that the proposed drainage ditch does not actually extend all the way to the enclosure, falling some 35 meters short, and excavations have failed to indicate any evidence that the ditch ever extended beyond that point (source: Khufu Knew the Sphinx). Reader proposes that the “ditch” may actually be a boundary marker, citing more likely catchment areas for water runoff.

Rainer Stadelman, formerly of the German Archaeological Institute, has offered several reasons for thinking the Great Sphinx predates Khafre. One observation he made is that the earliest New Kingdom depictions of the Sphinx seem to associate it with Khufu’s Pyramid rather than Khafre’s. Stadelman also points to the fact that the Sphinx enclosure was quarried by Khufu’s builders as well as Khafre’s. Why would they have left the limestone outcropping from which the Sphinx is carved for Khafre to develop rather than either excavating it for building materials or creating the Sphinx themselves? Bear in mind that the section of hard limestone from the top layer that was left in place for the head suggests that a monolithic sculpture was planned from the very beginning of quarrying in the area.

The front-on view from the east, seems to associate the Sphinx with Khafre’s Pyramid complex (Photo by Keith Payne)

And let us now return the question of which angle is the Great Sphinx to be viewed from. As mentioned before, if viewed from the front (the east) then the Pyramid of Khafre does indeed frame the Sphinx in a most impressive manner. But Egyptian art, from hieroglyphics to frescos, depicts its subjects in profile. When the Great Sphinx is approached from the south, the direction of the ancient city of Memphis rather than from the much later city of Cairo, it appears in profile with Khufu’s Pyramid behind it. The presence of the Sphinx’s tail on the south side further seems to indicate that its builder intended it to be viewed from that perspective.

The profile view from the south, which shows the most detail, including the tail, seems to associate the Sphinx with Khufu’s Pyramid complex (Photo by Hedwig Storch)

This also brings us full circle to the question of the Sphinx’s smallish head, made all the more conspicuous when viewed in profile. Is it possible that the Great Sphinx was indeed originally a regal lion, a solar god from the Early Dynastic Period, possibly the First or Second Dynasty? Rather than having been constructed by Khafre or Khufu, perhaps its presence was the reason Khufu broke with tradition and built his pyramid at Giza rather than the southern part of the necropolis. And perhaps his desire for his pyramid to appear behind the Sphinx in profile may have led to his decision to build his pyramid where he did, rather than the higher, seemingly more ideal location used later by his son, Khafre.

So whose face appears on the Great Sphinx, and why did it replace the original head? The reason is uncertain and may have been, as suggested previously, due to damage rendered to the head that made restoring it as a lion impossible without throwing it even more out of proportion. But it has been suggested by some (and rejected by others) that the broad, flat face and the square chin seem to favor Khufu more than Khafre.

The Great Sphinx’s Beard – An Eighteenth Dynasty addition, or an Old Kingdom artifact that was updated (Photo by Jon Bodsworth)

It has also been pointed out that, unlike both the Sphinx and Khufu, Khafre was always depicted with a beard. A beard for the Great Sphinx has been discovered, but its style is more indicative of the Eighteenth Dynasty, leading some to believe that it is an attachable beard created for the Sphinx sometime around the reign of Thutmose IV. However, Dr. Zahi Hawass and Dr. Mark Lehner have found evidence suggesting the beard comes from the same layer of strata as the head, and that rather than having been created in the Eighteenth Dynasty, it was coifed (re-sculpted) to match the prevailing style. But then again, the bearded statues of Khafre all have the beard attached solidly from the chin to the neck, whereas the Sphinx’s beard appears to be detachable. Etc!

These arguments could be hashed and rehashed until we wear a hole in the floor as deep as the Sphinx enclosure. The simple truth is we do not know, and will likely never know, who built the Sphinx, when it was built, what it originally may or may not have looked like, and whose face now adorns it, sans a nose. But we will never stop trying to figure it out, nor should we.

Modern Conservation Efforts

Rising water tables is a problem that is popping up all over Egypt, and the appearance of pools of standing water around the Old Kingdom Sphinx Temple and southeast of the Sphinx enclosure made it obvious that radical measures were called for. In 2008 Cairo University’s Engineering Center for Archaeology and Environment drilled four holes beneath the Sphinx that enabled them to lower cameras and other equipment into Giza’s subterranean world.

They discovered that the ground water had risen to just over fifty feet above sea level. The decision was made to place eight pumping stations around the Sphinx complex, which remove about 7,000 cubic meters of water every day. The pools of water have mostly disappeared, and Cairo University, the Supreme Council of Antiquities, and geologists, Egyptologists, and scientists of all walks continue to search for a more permanent solution than pumping out the ground water as it seeps in.

The Great Sphinx and its related complex continue to draw thousands of visitors every day from all corners of the Earth. It is one of the world’s perennial sources of ancient information, mystical inspiration, and curious speculation. Like many of Egypt’s treasures, its ability to tease with occasional revelations while still maintaining a storehouse of unanswered mysteries is what holds our attention century after century.

The Great Sphinx will always withhold some of his secrets for himself (Photo by Keith Payne)

See Also

• Riddles of the Sphinx:  Video Review 

Additional Online Resources

Egyptian Monuments

The Sphinx, by Su Bayfield

Talking Pyramids

Riddle of the Sphinx, by Vincent Brown

Photo of the Week – Sphinx, by Vincent Brown

Tour Egypt

The Great Sphinx of Giza- an Introduction, by Allen Wilson

The Old and New Kingdom Sphinx Temples at Giza, by Allen Wilson

Heritage Key

Drilling Under the Sphinx: A Heritage Key Video About Keeping Your Paws Dry, by Keith Payne

Zahi Hawass’ Blog

Sphinx Scientific Update Report, by Zahi Hawass

Copyright by Keith Payne, 2009. All rights reserved.

Photographs “Sphinx MET 11.185.jpg,” by Rosemanios, “Louvre 032007 19” by Neithsabes (Sebi), “Le Sphinx Armachis, Caire” from National Media Museum, “Giza_Plateau_-_Great_Sphinx_temple-_area_where_ statues_used_to_be” by Daniel Mayer, “ThoutmôsisIVLouvre” by Siren, “ReproductionOfDreamSteleOfThutmoseIV RosicrucianEgyptianMuseum” by Capt. Mondo, “Giza sfinge e piramidi” by Francesco Gasparetti, courtesy of Gaspa, “Great Sphinx of Giza 0912” by Hedwig Storch are provided courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 License. In short: you are free to share and make derivative works of those files under the conditions that you appropriately attribute them, and that you distribute them only under a license identical to this one. Official license Photographs “07_sphinx_front,” “Beard_of_the_sphinx,” and “Sphinx of Hetepheres II – fourth dynasty of Egypt” are provided courtesy of Jon Bodsworth.