The Pyramid of Khafre and the Great Sphinx of Giza

The Pyramid of Khafre, the second of the three pyramids of Giza, was built c. 2558–2532 BCE for Khafre, the son and successor of Khufu and the fourth king of the Fourth Dynasty. The pyramid is famous for two reasons: originally 143.5 m (now 136.4 m / 448 ft) it appears almost as tall as its father’s, and beside it, guarding the causeway, stands the Great Sphinx of Giza, the largest monolithic statue in the world.

The Pyramid

The Pyramid of Khafre is the second of the three Giza pyramids, and the one that visitors encounter second as they approach the plateau from Cairo. It is slightly smaller than the Great Pyramid of Khufu but, because it was built on higher ground, appears almost the same height. The angle of the sides, 53°10’, is also steeper than the Great Pyramid’s 51°50’.

Like the Great Pyramid, the Pyramid of Khafre was originally cased in fine white Tura limestone. The casing was stripped during the medieval period, but a small group of casing stones survives at the very top of the pyramid, giving visitors a sense of the appearance of the original.

The Complex

The Pyramid of Khafre is the center of an extensive complex. On the east side of the pyramid is the Mortuary Temple of Khafre, largely ruined but still recognizable. From the mortuary temple, a long causeway runs down to the Valley Temple of Khafre, at the edge of the flood plain. The Valley Temple is one of the best-preserved Old Kingdom buildings, with massive blocks of red Aswan granite, fine limestone pavements, and walls of pink granite. It is also home to some of the most famous statuary of the Old Kingdom, including the diorite statue of Khafre (now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo), with the protective god Horus perched behind his head.

The causeway is one of the most striking features of the Giza plateau. It is about 495 meters (1,625 feet) long, and its walls are decorated with relief scenes of the king’s funeral procession. At the end of the causeway, on the south, sits the Great Sphinx of Giza.

The Interior

The Pyramid of Khafre is unusual among the Giza pyramids in having two entrances: one in the north face (typical for the Old Kingdom) and one in the floor of the mortuary temple. The interior is less complex than the Great Pyramid’s, with a descending passage leading to a subterranean burial chamber. The chamber is lined with red granite, and the king’s sarcophagus, empty when it was found, was sunk into the floor. The granite lid of the sarcophagus was found nearby, broken in antiquity. The King’s Chamber in the Great Pyramid was a similar design.

The History

Khafre’s reign was relatively long (about twenty-five years) and his building program was substantial. Beyond the pyramid complex, he added to the temples at Giza and elsewhere. The Sphinx, although usually attributed to Khafre, was almost certainly carved on his orders, and may even have been a portrait of the king.

The Great Sphinx of Giza

The Great Sphinx of Giza is the largest monolithic statue in the world, carved from a single outcrop of limestone bedrock on the south side of the Giza plateau. The monument is 73 meters (240 feet) long, 20 meters (66 feet) high, and 19 meters (62 feet) wide at its base. The face alone is 4 meters (13 feet) wide.

The Sphinx has the body of a recumbent lion and the head of a pharaoh, almost certainly Khafre. The pose is ancient: sphinxes, generally with the body of a lion and the head of a human, were a common form in Egyptian art from the earliest dynasties. The Great Sphinx, however, is far larger than any other sphinx ever built, in Egypt or anywhere else.

The Carving

The Sphinx was carved from a single ridge of limestone that was left when the rest of the plateau was quarried for the pyramid cores. The carving is rough and direct, especially when compared with the fine work in the pyramids themselves. The body of the lion is the natural shape of the outcrop, modified by the removal of stone; the head is shaped from the natural rock, with the aid of small patches of fine limestone to add the royal nemes headdress and the uraeus (the royal cobra on the brow).

The History and the Age Controversy

The Sphinx was almost certainly carved during the reign of Khafre, c. 2558–2532 BCE. The most important piece of evidence is a stela of the pharaoh Thutmose IV, the Dream Stele, which was placed between the paws of the Sphinx in about 1400 BCE. The Dream Stele tells the story of Thutmose IV, when he was a prince, falling asleep in the shadow of the Sphinx. In a dream, the Sphinx (called Horemakhet, “Horus of the Horizon”) appeared to him and asked to be cleared of the sand that was then beginning to bury it. Thutmose, in return, would become king. The stela is the earliest surviving mention of the Sphinx by name.

A persistent minority view, most prominently argued by the American geologist Robert Schoch and the British writer Robert Bauval in the 1990s, holds that the Sphinx is far older than Khufu or Khafre, on the grounds that the vertical erosion patterns on the Sphinx enclosure walls are the product of rainfall rather than wind and sand. If Schoch and Bauval are right, the Sphinx would have to predate the Old Kingdom, possibly by thousands of years. My own view, and I think the consensus view in mainstream Egyptology, is that the Schoch-Bauval argument is unconvincing. The Sphinx sits in a depression that holds water, so the kind of vertical erosion Schoch appeals to can be produced by ponded rainwater long after the Sphinx was carved, without requiring a pre-Old Kingdom date. The mainstream Khafre attribution also fits the archaeological context (the Sphinx temple is essentially identical in plan to the Valley Temple of Khafre) and the historical record (the Sphinx is called Horemakhet in association with Khafre’s pyramid in New Kingdom texts). Schoch and Bauval’s claim gets a great deal of popular attention, and the work is often better than its press, but on this specific question I think the weight of evidence is on the conventional side. The most useful skeptical survey of the older-Sphinx claim is probably Lehner’s, in The Complete Pyramids (1997), which addresses the geological argument point by point.

The Sphinx is missing its nose and its ceremonial beard. There are many legends about how the nose was lost. One popular story is that it was shot off by Napoleon’s troops, although this is impossible; drawings of the Sphinx made before Napoleon’s 1798 expedition already show the Sphinx without a nose. The most likely explanation is that the nose was deliberately removed in the fourteenth century CE by a Sufi cleric named Saim al-Dahr, who considered the Sphinx an idol. Records from the period describe a mob of Sufis damaging the Sphinx and being prosecuted for it.

The Sphinx has been repeatedly restored over the centuries. Major restoration campaigns took place in the Old Kingdom, in the New Kingdom (under Thutmose IV), in the Ptolemaic period, in the Roman period, and in the modern era. The modern restoration, led by the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities, has been the most extensive. It is the source of some controversy: a recent study suggested that the wind-blown sand that has periodically buried the Sphinx is, in the long run, a key to its preservation.

The Sphinx Temple

Just in front of the Sphinx, on its north side, is the Sphinx Temple, built of massive blocks of red Aswan granite. The temple is similar in plan to the Valley Temple of Khafre, and may have been designed by the same architects. The walls of the temple are made of huge blocks of granite, cut to a remarkable precision.

The Sphinx in History

The Great Sphinx has been a source of wonder for at least 4,500 years. The earliest description is in the inscriptions of the New Kingdom pharaohs, and the Sphinx appears in the descriptions of the Greek historian Herodotus and the Roman writer Strabo. The medieval Arab writers, including Al-Masudi and Al-Idrisi, recorded the legends about the Sphinx and the damage that had been done to it.

The earliest modern descriptions and drawings of the Sphinx were made by the scholars of Napoleon’s French expedition of 1798, published in the Description de l’Égypte. The first systematic excavation came later, led in the 1850s and 1860s by Auguste Mariette, the founder of the Egyptian Antiquities Service. The most important modern work has been the Sphinx restoration project led by the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities, building on the earlier excavations of Mark Lehner and Zahi Hawass.