Surveying the sands of the Giza, the great Sphinx has stood guard since about 2500 B.C. The greatest enormous sculpture in the ancient world, the Sphinx is carved out of a single ridge of stone 240 feet (73 meters) long and 66 feet (20 meters) high. It represents whole body of a lion with the head of a king or a god.
The Great Sphinx is located in Egypt on the Giza plateau, situated about six miles west of the Cairo. This area is part of the necropolis of ancient Memphis, the seat of power for the pharaohs.
Badly disintegrate, it has undergone numerous restorations over the millennia, beginning with one conducted about 1400 B.C. by pharaoh Tuthmosis IV, who dreamt that this Sphinx asked him to clear the sand around it in return for the crown of Upper and Lower Egypt. The Sphinx has recently undergone a major modern renovation.
Unlike the Greek sphinx which was female, the Egyptian sphinx is typically shown as male. In addition, the Egyptian sphinx was viewed as tenderhearted in contrast to the malevolent Greek version and was thought of as a angel often flanking the entrances to temples. The most famous sphinx is the gigantic sphinx at Giza which is part of the funerary complex of Chephren (Khafre); which wasd located beside the pharaoh's Valley Temple and the covered causeway that point the way to the Mortuary Temple beside the pyramid. It was carved from an outcropping of limestone and represented the sun god; its features were apparently those of Chephren, the builder of the second pyramid at Giza. While it has a god's face, it has a lion's body. The royal headdress originally had uraeus--the sacred serpent--but it was used for target practice by the Turks and thus lost not only the uraeus but where as nose.
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