OASIS  - PHARAONS  - SITES  - VILLES

Abu Simbel  -  Musée greco romain  -  Les Catacombes de Kom El Shoufa  -  Les colonnes de Pompeiy  -  Fort Qaitbay  -  Le theatre romain  -  Elephantine Island  -  Kitchener's Island  -  Kalabsha Temple  -  Agha Khan Mausoleum  -  The Unfinished Obelisk  -  The High Dam  -  Les pyramides  -  Sphinx  -  Sakkara  -  Memphis  -  Les musées égyptiens  -  Coptic Cairo and Hanging Church  -  Mohamed Ali Mosque  -  The Citadel  -  Khan el-Khalili  -  Luxor  -  West Bank  -  Colossi of Memnon  -  East Bank

Sphinx

In a depression to the south of Chephren's Pyramid sits a creature with a human head and a lion's body. The sphinx appears to have started in Egypt in the form of a sun god. The sphinx is usually a head of a king wearing his head dress and the body of a lion. The Great Sphinx is to the north east of Chephren's Valley Temple. Where it sits was once a quarry. Chephren's workers shaped the stone into the lion and gave it their king's face over 4,500 years ago. The sphinx faces the rising sun with a temple to the front, which resembles the sun temples, which were built later by the kings of the 5th Dynasty.
The body is 60m in length and 20m tall. The face of the sphinx is 4m wide and its eyes are 2m high. Part of the uraeus (sacred obra), the nose and the ritual beard are now missing. The beard from the sphinx is displayed in the British Museum.
It is possible that it is Chephren. If that is so, it would then be the oldest known royal portrait in such large scale.