The Sphynx - Part 2
Jan 18th, 2007 by Lee (admin)
The sphynx was carved from material that was otherwise useless following the completion of the Great Pyramid of Khufu. It sits on the site of a quarry and was the work of Khufu’s son Khafre.
The sphynx was regarded as a icon of great power and wisdom and may have been intended to ward off evil. The beard and uraeus (the sacred cobra which sits on the headdress of the pharaoh) have fallen away. The nose is also missing and the story goes that it was a Napoleonic cannonball that was responsible for this act of destruction, using the sphynx for target practice.
Pictures from this period already show that the nose is missing, so in fact it may well have been marauding Turks a couple of centuries earlier. Although there are no records 
regarding the construction of the Sphinx, there are records of its restoration. The “Sphinx Stela,” a stone-engraved inscription dated around 1400 B.C. is the oldest known record concerning the Sphinx. It describes the restoration of the Sphinx by Pharaoh Thutmoses IV (1401-1391 B.C.) of the 18th Dynasty.
The Stela states that during a hunting trip Prince Thutmosis became tired and slept in the shadow of the Sphinx. He had a dream that the Sphinx promised to reward him with the double crown of Egypt if he would remove the sand from it and restore the sculpture. Due to erosion of the stella, no-one knows how this was achieved.
[...] the most famous sphynx of all can be found on the Giza plateau in Egypt, just a short distance from Khufu’s Great [...]