The Great Sphinx of Giza

The Sphinx is not a built structure. It was carved down into the bedrock — quarried out of a single natural limestone ridge, so it sits in a hollow rather than on a platform. That is why you look slightly down at it from the approach, which surprises people who expected to look up.

It is about 73 metres long and 20 metres high, which makes it one of the largest single-stone sculptures anywhere in the world.

It is fifteen minutes from the pyramids and it takes fifteen minutes to see, so the real question is not whether to go but where to stand. The classic view — Sphinx in front, pyramid behind — is a trick of alignment from the terrace on the eastern side, and it is worth walking round to find it rather than shooting from the first railing you reach.

The second thing worth doing is looking at the stone itself. The layers the Sphinx is carved from are of very different hardness, and the softer bands have eroded far faster than the hard ones. The result is a body that reads almost like a cross-section of geology. Much of what you see at the lower level is modern restoration masonry, added in blocks over the last century.

Between the paws stands a granite slab known as the Dream Stele, put there by Thutmose IV in the 15th century BC. It records the young prince falling asleep in the Sphinx's shadow and being promised the throne if he cleared the sand away. That is the earliest written account we have of somebody restoring the monument — which means the Sphinx was already ancient, and already buried, more than a thousand years before the Greeks arrived.

The Sphinx is generally attributed to Khafre, builder of the second pyramid, which places it in the middle of the 26th century BC. It sits at the end of his causeway, alongside his valley temple, and the face is usually read as his. Not every Egyptologist agrees, and the attribution rests on context rather than an inscription.

For most of its existence it has been buried. Sand fills the hollow quickly, and the monument has been dug out at least three times that we know of — by Thutmose IV, again in the Roman period, and comprehensively in the 1920s and 30s. Photographs from the 19th century show it buried to the shoulders.

The nose is missing, and the beard, part of which is now in the British Museum. The popular story that Napoleon's soldiers shot it off is not supported by anything: drawings made before the French expedition already show the nose gone.

• The alignment view with Khafre's pyramid directly behind
• The Dream Stele of Thutmose IV, standing between the paws
• Khafre's valley temple beside it — huge granite piers, one of the best-preserved Old Kingdom buildings in Egypt
• The visible layering of hard and soft limestone across the body
• The Sphinx enclosure, the quarry hollow the whole figure was cut out of

It is inside the Giza plateau ticket, so there is no separate decision to make — but the entrance nearest the Sphinx is not the same as the main plateau gate, and a driver who knows that saves you a long walk.