No picture of the Giza Pyramids in Cairo would be complete without the Great Sphinx of Giza. This enormous statue of a lions body with a pharaohs head is shrouded in mystery and has been an enigma for many an archaeologist. Even though not much is known about who built the sphinx the most accepted theory is that it was built during the reign of Khafre, who is the same Pharoah that built the second largest pyramid in the Giza necropolis. The one thing that is certain, is that the limestone is the same as that used to make the pyramids and it is built from one solid monolithic piece of limestone. Amazingly the Sphinx is 73 metres long and 20 metres high and is estimated to weigh 20,000 tons. How did they even move such a colossal stone into position? Especially since it is orientated west to east, towards the rising sun “Ra” and was supposedly a spiritual guardian that would show the Pharaohs the path to celestial life.
During this time, it is believed that the statue may have been referred to as Harmakhet “Horus of the Horizon”, it most certainly could not have been called a “sphynx” because that word only originated some 2000 years later in Greece. Surprisingly this amazing statue has been around for over 4500 years, for centuries in lay buried up to its shoulders in the sand and it wasn’t until the 1930’s that Egyptian archaeologist Selim Hassan managed to liberate the statue where many others had failed…. and how grateful we are.
