Great Sphinx of Giza Facts

Sphinx Facts

The Sphinx has been a symbol of Egypt from ancient times to the present. It has inspired the imaginations of artists, poets, adventurers, scholars, and travelers for centuries. It has also inspired endless speculation about its age, meaning, and secrets it might hold.

A Description of the Great Sphinx

The Great Sphinx of Giza is an immense stone sculpture of a creature with a lion's body and a human's head. The most notable monumental sculpture in the ancient world, it is carved out of a single ridge of limestone 240 feet (73 meters) long and 66 feet (20 meters) high.

The Sphinx sits in a shallow depression to the south of the pyramid of the Pharaoh Khafre (also known as Chephren) on the west bank of the Nile River near the city of Cairo.

The rock stratum from which the Sphinx has been made varies from a soft yellowish to a hard grey limestone. The massive body is made of the softer stone, which is easily eroded, while the head is formed of the harder stone.

To form the lower body of the Sphinx, enormous blocks of stone were quarried from the base rock, and these blocks were then used in the core masonry of the temples directly in front and to the south of the Sphinx.

Despite the hard quality of the stone of the head, the face is badly damaged, and not only by natural erosion. The nose is missing altogether, and the eyes and the surrounding areas are seriously altered from their original state. Napoleon's artillerymen have been blamed for using the face of the Sphinx for target practice.

Some scholars believe that the Great Sphinx originally had a beard. Pieces of this beard discovered by excavation are in the British Museum in London and the Cairo Museum. These pieces, however, may be dated to the New Kingdom times of 1570-1070 BCE.

The History of the Sphinx

According to orthodox Egyptology, the Sphinx was constructed during the 4th Dynasty (2575 – 2467 BCE) by the Pharaoh Khafre. However, an accumulating body of archaeological and geological evidence indicates that the Sphinx is far older than the 4th Dynasty and was only restored by Khafre during his reign.

There are no inscriptions on the Sphinx or on any of the temples connected to it that offer evidence of construction by Khafre. The so-called 'Inventory Stele' (uncovered on the Giza plateau in the 19th century) tells that the Pharaoh Khufu (Cheops) – Khafre's predecessor - ordered a temple built alongside the Sphinx, meaning, of course, that the Sphinx was already there, and thus could not have been constructed by Khafre.

Based on geological considerations, R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz has suggested a much greater age for the Sphinx. Schwaller de Lubicz observed, and recent geologists (such as Robert Schoch, Professor of Geology at Boston University) have confirmed that the extreme erosion on the body of the Sphinx could not be the result of wind and sand, as has been universally assumed, but instead was the result of water.

Geologists agree that Egypt was subjected to severe flooding in the distant past. Wind erosion cannot occur when the body of the Sphinx is covered by sand, and the Sphinx has been in this condition for nearly all of the last five thousand years - since the alleged time of its 4th Dynasty construction.

If wind-blown sand were responsible for the deep erosion of the Sphinx, we would expect to find evidence of such erosion on other Egyptian monuments built of similar materials and exposed to the wind for a similar length of time. Yet the fact of the matter is that even on structures that have had more exposure to the wind-blown sand, there are minimal effects of erosion, the sand having done little more than scour clean the surface of the dressed stones.

The purpose of the Sphinx is not known. Some orthodox archaeologists assume it was a memorial to a Pharaoh or functioned as a talisman or guardian deity. Other scholars, however, believe the Sphinx functioned as an astronomical observation device that marked the rising sun's position on the spring equinox day in the time of Leo the Lion, which lasted from 10,970 to 8810 BCE. The leonine shape of the Sphinx supports this interpretation.

In 1798, when Napoleon came to Egypt, the Sphinx was buried in sand up to its neck. Between 1816 and 1858, a series of adventurers and antiquarians, including Giovanni Caviglia, Auguste Mariette, and Gaston Maspero, attempted to clear the sand from around the body of the Sphinx but were each forced to abandon the project due to the enormous amount of sand. Finally, between 1925 and 1936, the French engineer Emil Baraize successfully cleared the sand to reveal the base of the Sphinx. 

The Mystery of the Sphinx

Edgar Cayce (1877-1945), the 'sleeping prophet,' could put himself into a deep trance. In some of his trances, he stated that Egypt was the repository for records of the alleged civilization of Atlantis, about 10,500 B.C. This repository was an underground library called the "Hall of Records," which contained the wisdom of Atlantis. Cayce claims that the Sphinx points toward the "Hall of Records." His reading states: "There is a chamber or passage from the right forepaw of the [Sphinx] to this entrance of the Hall of Records, or chamber."

In the 1980s and 1990s, the Edgar Cayce Foundation conducted research around the Sphinx to verify Cayce's reading. Additionally, other researchers have looked for this chamber with sophisticated instruments, yet none have found the Hall of Records.

There are three passages into or under the Sphinx, two of them of obscure origin. One known cause is a short dead-end shaft behind the head drilled in the nineteenth century. No other tunnels or chambers in or under the Sphinx are known to exist. Several small holes in the Sphinx body may relate to scaffolding at the time of carving. 

The Pre-Dynastic era age of the Sphinx

Evidence suggesting a construction period for the Sphinx – considerably predating the 4th Dynasty - may be indicated by the astronomical significance of its shape, which is that of a lion. Roughly every two thousand years (2160 to be exact), and because of the precession of the equinoxes, the sun on the spring equinox rises against the stellar background of a different constellation. For the past two thousand years, that constellation has been Pisces, the Fish, a symbol of the Christian age. Before the age of Pisces, it was the age of Aries the Ram, and before that, it was the age of Taurus the Bull. Interestingly, during the first and second millennia BC, approximately the Age of Aries, ram-oriented iconography was standard in Dynastic Egypt. At the same time, during the Age of Taurus, the Bull cult arose in Minoan Crete. Perhaps the builders of the Sphinx likewise used astrological symbolism in designing their monumental sculptures. Geological findings indicate that the Sphinx may have been sculpted sometime before 10,000 BC, and this period coincides with the Age of Leo the Lion, which lasted from 10,970 to 8810 BC.

Further support for this vast age of the Sphinx comes from a surprising sky-ground correlation proven by sophisticated computer programs such as Skyglobe 3.6. These computer programs are able to generate precise pictures of any portion of the night sky as seen from different places on Earth at any time in the distant past or future. Graham Hancock explains in his book Heaven’s Mirror that “computer simulations show that in 10,500 BC the constellation of Leo housed the sun on the spring equinox - i.e. an hour before dawn in that epoch Leo would have reclined due east along the horizon in the place where the sun would soon rise. This means that the lion-bodied Sphinx, with its due-east orientation, would have gazed directly on that morning at the one constellation in the sky that might reasonably be regarded as its own celestial counterpart.”

Restoration of the Sphinx

Repairs to the Sphinx have been made over the centuries by the Pharaohs Tuthmosis IV and Ramesses II, as well as during the Roman era. Restoration attempts have continued to the present time, yet the Sphinx continues to deteriorate because of the relentless wind, humidity, and the ever-increasing smog from nearby Cairo.

In the 1980s, during a six-year period, more than 2000 limestone blocks were added to the body of the Sphinx, and various chemicals were injected in the hopes of preventing its further deterioration. This treatment was not successful and, in fact, contributed to the deterioration. 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.