Great Sphinx of Giza
Colossal limestone lion with a human head, carved from bedrock over four thousand years ago on the Giza plateau.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Great Sphinx of Giza turns on a single missing feature: the roughly one-meter gap where its nose should be, and the argument over who left it that way. It walks through the popular blame on Napoleon's cannons, then a Danish traveler's 1737 sketch that already shows the damage decades earlier, and a medieval Egyptian historian's account of a furious Sufi holy man who climbed up here in 1378. Modern archaeologists studying the tool marks have their own theory, centuries older still. Stand close to the scarred face and see what you make of the marks yourself.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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