Map - Great Sphinx of Giza (Sphinx)

The Great Sphinx of Giza is a limestone statue of a reclining sphinx, a mythical creature with the head of a human, and the body of a lion. Facing directly from west to east, it stands on the Giza Plateau on the west bank of the Nile in Giza, Egypt. The face of the Sphinx appears to represent the pharaoh Khafre.

The original shape of the Sphinx was cut from the bedrock, and has since been restored with layers of limestone blocks. It measures 73 m long from paw to tail, 20 m high from the base to the top of the head and 19 m wide at its rear haunches. It is uncertain why the Sphinx’s nose was broken off. According to a popular myth, the Sphinx’s nose was broken by cannonballs fired by Napoleon Bonaparte’s army during one of the military battles of the French campaign in Egypt in 1798. However, this is refuted by several sources predating the birth of Napoleon. Not only are there paintings from the 17th century which depict the Sphinx in this way but the 15th century Arab historian al-Maqrīzī also acknowledged its broken nose, attributing it to a Sufi Muslim extremist called Mohamed Sa'm al-Dahr who he claimed broke it in 1378 and was later executed for vandalism. However, this is also unlikely to be the case as an archaeological study performed by Mark Lehner concluded that although the Sphinx’s nose was intentionally broken, as opposed to being damaged by weather and corrosion, it happened sometime between the 3rd and 10th centuries.

The Sphinx is the oldest known monumental sculpture in Egypt and one of the most recognizable statues in the world. The archaeological evidence suggests that it was created by ancient Egyptians of the Old Kingdom during the reign of Khafre (c. 2558–2532 BC).

The original name the Old Kingdom creators gave the Sphinx is unknown, as the Sphinx temple, enclosure and possibly the Sphinx itself were not completed at the time, and thus cultural material was limited. In the New Kingdom, the Sphinx was revered as the solar deity Hor-em-akhet ("Horus of the Horizon"; Hellenized: Harmachis), and the pharaoh Thutmose IV (1401–1391 or 1397–1388 BC) specifically referred to it as such in his Dream Stele.

The commonly used name "Sphinx" was given to it in classical antiquity, about 2,000 years after the commonly accepted date of its construction by reference to a Greek mythological beast with the head of a woman, a falcon, a cat, or a sheep and the body of a lion with the wings of an eagle. (although, like most Egyptian sphinxes, the Great Sphinx has a man's head and no wings). The English word sphinx comes from the ancient Greek Σφίγξ ( transliterated: sphinx) apparently from the verb σφίγγω ( transliterated: sphingo / to squeeze), after the Greek sphinx who strangled anyone who failed to answer her riddle.

Medieval Arab writers, including al-Maqrīzī, call the Sphinx by an Arabized Coptic name Belhib (بلهيب) and Belhawiyya (بلهويه), which in turn comes from pꜣ-Ḥwr, a name of the Canaanite god Hauron with whom the Sphinx was identified. The modern Egyptian Arabic name is أبو الهول (ʼabu alhōl / ʼabu alhawl, "The Terrifying One"; literally "Father of Dread") which is a phono-semantic matching of the Coptic name.