Great Sphinx of Giza

Seventy-three metres long and twenty high, the Sphinx was not assembled but subtracted — carved in place from a single limestone outcrop left over from the quarry that supplied the Great Pyramid. The body is soft, coarsely bedded rock that has eroded into deep horizontal grooves; the head is harder stone, which is why it has kept its features while the flanks have crumbled and been patched.

Stand at the viewing terrace first, then walk the southern side. From there you get the alignment the builders intended: the Sphinx facing due east, with Khafre's pyramid rising directly behind its shoulder.

Most Egyptologists attribute it to Khafre, around 2500 BCE, carved as part of his pyramid complex — a lion's body with a king's head, guarding the approach to the tomb. Its ancient name is unknown. "Sphinx" is Greek, applied more than two thousand years after it was made.

The dream between the paws

By the New Kingdom the statue had been buried to its neck in drifting sand for centuries. A young prince, out hunting on the plateau, is said to have slept in the shade of the head and dreamt that the Sphinx spoke to him: clear away the sand, and you will be king. He did, and he was — and Thutmose IV set up a granite stele between the paws recording the bargain. It is still standing there, which makes it one of the oldest surviving pieces of political publicity in the world.

About the nose

Napoleon's artillery did not do it. The nose was already gone when Europeans began drawing the Sphinx, and the Arab historian al-Maqrizi records that it was deliberately broken off in the 14th century by a Sufi named Muhammad Sa'im al-Dahr, who was reportedly enraged at finding peasants making offerings to the statue for a good harvest.