In a depression to the south of Chephren's pyramid sits a creature with a human head and a lion's body The name 'sphinx' which means 'strangler' was first given by the Greeks to a fabulous creature which had the head of a woman and the body of a lion and the wings of a bird The sphinx appears to have started in Egypt in the form of a sun god The Egyptian sphinx is usually a head of a king wearing his headdress and the body of a lion There are, however, sphinxes with ram heads that are associated with the god Amun
The Great Sphinx is to the northeast of Chephren's Valley Temple Where it sits was once a quarry Chephren's workers shaped the stone into the lion and gave it their king's face over 4,500 years ago The sphinx faces the rising sun with a temple to the front which resembles the sun temples which were built later by the kings of the 5th Dynasty The figure was buried for most of its life in the sand King Thutmose IV (1425 - 1417 BC) placed a stela between the front paws of the figure It describes when Thutmose, while still a prince, had gone hunting and fell asleep in the shade of the sphinx During a dream, the sphinx spoke to Thutmose and told him to clear away the sand because it was choking the sphinx The sphinx told him that if he did this, he would be rewarded with a kingship Thutmose carried out this request and the sphinx held up his end of the deal
The sphinx is built of soft sandstone and would have disappeared long ago had it not been buried for so long The body is 200 feet (60m) in length and 65 feet (20m) tall The face of the sphinx is 13 feet (4m) wide and its eyes are 6 feet (2m) high Part of the uraeus (sacred cobra), the nose and the ritual beard are now missing The beard from the sphinx is displayed in the British Museum The statue is crumbling today because of the wind, humidity and the smog from Cairo
Attempts to restore it have often caused more harm than good No one can be certain who the figure is to personify It is possible that it is Chephren If that is so, it would then be the oldest known royal portrait in such large scale Some say that it was built after the pyramid of Chephren was complete It may have been set as a sort of scarecrow to guard his tomb Still others say it is the face of his guardian deity, rather than Chephren himself The image of the sphinx is a depiction of royal power Only a pharaoh or an animal could be shown this way, with the animal representing a protective deity
In the 1980's, a carefully planned restoration of the Sphinx was in progress Over 6 years, more than 2,000 limestone blocks were added to the body of the sphinx and chemicals were injected This treatment did not work It just flaked away along with parts of the original rock Later, various mortars and many workers who were not trained in restoration worked for six months to repair it In 1988 the left shoulder crumbled and blocks fell off Present attempts at restoration are under the control of the Supreme Council of Antiquities' archaeologists They are concentrating on draining away subsoil seepage which is damaging the rock They are also repairing the damaged shoulder with smaller blocks and staying with the original size
The Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza has a rival for size and grandeur very close at hand: standing next to it is the pyramid of Khufu's successor Khafre, which from many angles looks bigger than the Khufu pyramid, being built on slightly higher ground Indeed, the ancient Egyptians called Khafre's 'The Great Pyramid' and that of Khufu 'The Pyramid which is the Place of Sunrise and Sunset' There were originally only a couple of metres in height between these pyramids, but our Great Pyramid of Khufu is the taller, has a shallower angle
of incline than Khafre's and encloses a greater volume
Just down the escarpment from the pyramids of Giza, the Sphinx stands alone, with no rivals either on site or elsewhere among all the sphinxes of Egypt Truly, this is the Great Sphinx, as well as being very likely the first of the breed It might possibly have had a companion if its sculptors had cared to repeat the exercise of carving it
For the Great Sphinx started life as a knoll of rock (quarried in the course of pyramid building) on the slope down from the Giza Plateau towards the river valley of the Nile; and there is another knoll not far to the south, clearly visible to every visitor to Giza, which might have been fashioned into another giant monument
The later sphinxes of Egypt were often installed as pairs to guard entrances to significant places, but the Great Sphinx of Giza is a one-off, and perhaps the other knoll was just a little too far from the necropolis to be convenient And perhaps the original meaning of the Great Sphinx was too particular to be shared with another of its kind
An eminent Egyptologist once spent some time looking for another Great Sphinx on the other side of the river, but eventually
gave up the idea
The Sphinx is in essence a carving out of the living rock, though parts of it have been repaired (and possibly were originally constructed) with cut blocks of stone It is immediately apparent that the rock strata out of which the Sphinx has been made vary from a hard grey to a soft yellowish limestone The head is formed of good, hard limestone of the same sort as was quarried all around locks of the pyramids The hulk of the body, on the other hand, is made of
poorly consolidated and therefore readily eroded limestone The rock improves again at the base of the monument, with a return to harder (but brittle) reef-formed limestone that has allowed some carved details of the beast to remain visible after at least four-and-a-half thousand years of natural and human attrition
In keeping with the whole Giza Plateau, these strata within the Sphinx run upwards from east to west, in other words from the breast to the hindquarters, and down from north to south The Sphinx faces due east, with the same great precision of orientation as is seen in the disposition of the Giza pyramids
It seems inevitable that the monument was made from the start to point directly to the equinoctial sunrise Interestingly, the face (but not including the ears) is a little awry in relation to the head as a whole: the left eye is slightly higher than the right and the mouth off-centre, and the entire face is tilted back a little
Despite the generally better quality of the stone of the head, the face - as is immediately apparent - is badly damaged, and not just by natural erosion The nose is missing altogether and the eyes and the areas around them are seriously altered from their original state as carved, as is the upper lip Napoleon's artillerymen have been blamed for using the face of the Sphinx for target practice
The alteration of the face has brought an insinuation of mood to the features, changing with different lights (sometimes into a knowing smile), that needs to be borne in mind when any attempt is made to compare the face of the Sphinx with the portrayals in sculpture of various Dyn IV kings
The Great Sphinx of Egypt
The Karnak Temple 
The Pyramids of Giza
The Sphinx of Giza