With a height of 20m, it is not only the oldest but also the greatest sphinx and one of the biggest statues ever to have have been built in Ancient Egypt.

The sphinx is a combination of the body of a crouching lion with the head of a human. The head is clad with the nemes headdress and adorned with a uraeus, both typically royal emblems. The human head is therefor none other than that of the king who built the sphinx.

The lion was not only a symbol of power in general, it is also very common throughout the Ancient Near East as a symbol of the solar cult and of royalty. The combination with the head of the king makes the latter a powerful symbol of royalty and divinity.

There is a significant and much commented difference in the size of the head of the Great Sphinx compared to its body. This has led some people to assume that the current head is the result of a recarving of the statue, the alleged original head being proportionally more in balance with the body of the sphinx.

The problem, however, lies in the fact that several natural fissures run through the body of the Sphinx, the greatest one cutting straight through the thinnest part of the Sphinx's body. This forced the ancient sculptors to elongate the body, making it disproportionate with its head.
 

A sphinx combines the head of a king with the body of a lion, making it a powerful symbol of the divine kingship.

The disproportionate head compared to the body of the Sphinx is vert obvious when seen from behind.

Throughout its long history, the sphinx has been subject to a lot of weathering, damage and attempted restorations. Fragments of the beard it once sported, and that served the practical purpose of supporting the head, are now in the British Museum in London.

Although a lot of stories have been told about the nose of this famous statue, it is not really known when it got lost. The drawings made by European travellers of the 16th and 17th centuries almost invariably show the sphinx's face with nose. The final prints of these drawings were, however, made by people who had never seen the actual sphinx, so no matter how accurate the travellers' orginal drawings might have been, they are not very reliable. It would take until Napoleon's expedition to Egypte in the early 19th century, before the sphinx would be faithfully rendered, but at that time, the nose was already missing.
 

The damaged face of the Sphinx, with the pyramid of Kheops in the background.

Older drawings also show the Sphinx buried up to its head in the sands of Giza. That this was already the case during the 18th Dynasty is shown by the so-called Dream Stela erected between the Sphinx's front legs by Thutmosis IV.

In this stela, the king recalls how, as a young prince, he falls asleep after a hunting party in the shadow of an ancient statue, buried in the sands. The solar god Harakhte, who by then was associated with the Sphinx, appears in the prince's dream and promisses to give him kingship if young Thutmosis frees this statue from the sands. The prince obviously obeys the will of this god and as a reward becomes the next king.

Thutmosis' father and predecessor, Amenhotep II, had already built a small temple for the Sphinx to the northeast of it. Located much higher than the Sphinx Temple that Khefren had built centuries before, it is quite obvious that in the middle of the 18th Dynasty, the Sphinx was indeed buried in the sands.