This is Sleepy History. Sleepy History is a production of Slumber Studios. To listen, add free... Get access to bonus episodes and support the ongoing production of this show. Check out our premium feed. is The Sleepy History of the Great Sphinx of Giza, narrated by Arif Hanzik, written by Joe Steer. This evening... we're unraveling the mysteries of a monument, the Great Sphinx of Giza. To millions around the world, it's the face of ancient Egypt.
as memorable and magnificent as the pyramids behind it. But who built this incredible structure, and why? What is the significance of the mighty lion figure with the head of a pharaoh? And what secrets is it guarding? We'll work our way through both the facts… and the stories surrounding this amazing monument. So, just relax and let your mind drift. as we explore the sleepy history of the Great Sphinx of Giza.
There are few civilizations that could rival the legacy of the ancient Egyptians in Northeast Africa. A kingdom spanning over 3,000 years, Their style and sophistication remains impressive to this day. Nowhere is this truer than in Egyptian architecture. Structures that tourists still flock to see. Buildings like the pyramids evoke awe and confusion. Some can't quite comprehend.
how such wonders were built. Located in Giza, on the west bank of the Nile, the pyramids have become emblems of ancient Egypt. as has the statue in the very same complex, the Great Sphinx of Giza, which we're exploring tonight. It's the oldest known monumental statue in all of Egypt and is familiar to millions across the globe. A giant limestone statue… depicting a mythical creature. It has the body of a lion and the head of a pharaoh.
It's an image that comes to mind for many people today when asked to think of ancient Egypt. A magnificent creature sitting on its haunches like a guard dog at the feet of the pyramids. In Egyptian mythology, the Sphinx commonly takes the role of guardian and protector. of what's sacred or royal. The Great Sphinx of Giza is the protector of the pyramids and the bodies of the pharaohs buried within them.
However, when it was built, likely around 2500 BCE, it wouldn't actually have been called a sphinx. That name wasn't used until 2,000 years later, when the Greeks likened it to a similar creature. It's unclear what name it was known by, in the so-called Old Kingdom between 2700 and 2200 BCE, also called the Age of Pyramids. It's during this time that the Sphinx was constructed. Later though, in Egypt's New Kingdom era, it seems to have been known as Hormakit.
This is a specific reference to the sun god Horus, translated into English as Horus of the Horizon. This was the name given on an inscribed plaque, the so-called Dream Stele, as the epigraph became known, and the name of the god… to whom a nearby temple was dedicated around the turn of the 14th century BCE. We'll come back to this later in the story. and learn how the sun god was linked to the statue. First, let's take our minds to the old kingdom and consider what we know
about how the Sphinx was built. It's believed that it was commissioned by the pharaoh Gaffray, who ruled sometime around the 26th century. BCE. He was a ruler in Egypt's fourth dynasty, a golden age in the kingdom's history. reigned through a time of peace and prosperity when Egyptian rulers sought to showcase their power. It's during the Fourth Dynasty… that the pyramids were constructed, as well as many other monuments, including the Great Sphinx. Among his other building projects,
Kafre is also responsible for the second-largest of the Three Great Pyramids. It was built to entomb his earthly remains. allowing his spirit to be reborn in the afterlife. The face of the Sphinx is thought to represent Kafre. matching other sculptures of the pharaoh from this time. He wears the famous headdress, striped blue and gold, with a cobra at the front, representing divinity and royalty. The Great Sphinx is what's known as a monolith, a large block of stone shaped into a monument.
It's positioned at the east of the pyramid complex, facing directly from west to east and the famous River Nile. The area around the complex is rich in limestone. It was quarried for the pyramids, other temples, and statues. The sphinx was cut from bedrock.
sculpted and painted, and transformed into a colossal and magnificent creature. What's really fascinating is that recent findings suggest that the Sphinx isn't entirely human-made, that it's equally a product of its natural environment, formed in part by people and in part by nature. Farouk Elbaz is an Egyptian geologist and a former scientist for the space agency NASA. Using remote sensing technology,
Albaz has theorized that the sphinx's head was carved first out of natural yardang. A yardang might be described as a ridge of bedrock, or any consolidated or semi-consolidated sediment, sometimes sharp and irregular in shape. They're often positioned in desert locations. where they're exposed to the force of strong desert winds. Yardongs are the result of wind erosion, which shapes the rock over many years.
The wind itself becomes the sculptor and often produces shapes which have the appearance of animals. has been echoed by Dr. Leif Ristroff, who published his findings in 2023. He tested the Yardang theory in a laboratory setting, leading a team from New York University. They sought to mimic the Egyptian weather, as it would have been in ancient times. and to watch the effects of erosion on the landscape, particularly lone bedrock exposed to strong winds.
They used a mixture of clay and harder materials, chosen for their similarities to the Egyptian desert. This was to mimic the Ridge of Bedrock. while fast-flowing water would replicate strong winds. Water was spurted out past the miniature bedrock, imitating the impact that strong winds would likely have had. Technologies were utilized to study currents in the water. and see how and where wind might have flowed around the bedrock. They watched as swirling currents formed what looked like a head.
from the harder material within the clay lump, and how it carved other features, like a cat-like neck and paws, extended at the front of a body. Each time the team repeated the experiment, it resulted in what looked like a mini yardang. And each yardang bore a resemblance to a cat-like animal. seated on its haunches. Thus, it seems plausible that the Great Sphinx itself was formed from a yardang, sculpted
by desert winds. Animals featured heavily in Egyptian mythology. So, the Egyptians likely recognized the creature. within the stone. Of course, a great many things still needed to happen before the Yardang was transformed into a sphinx. Time… effort, manpower and resources, and a huge amount of skill and expertise. Farouk El-Baz, whom we heard about earlier,
put forward an argument about how the monument was built. He believes that first of all, a moat was dug around the frame of the sandy Yardang. This would add to the creature's height and form a deep recess around the statue. Stone from this recess was quarried and utilized to make the walls of an enclosure and a temple before the statue. Although neither the walls nor the Sphinx temple were finished,
What was completed has proved useful to experts. It gave insight into initial construction and the movement of stone around the complex. Egyptologist Mark Lenner noted that they were alternating layers of hard and soft stone. These are visible around the sphinx's body. but also on the stone that was used to make the temple. According to Lenner, these bands in the stone
actually date back over 50 million years. Back then, the plateau was actually a lagoon, one with an abundance of fish and sea life. Over thousands of years, the bodies of these creatures became fossilized sediment on the lagoon floor. These were revealed to be distinctive limestone. when the Earth's climate grew warmer and the seas retreated. Lennar argues that every block of stone has a unique set of fossils and markings.
This geological fingerprint means that blocks can be traced back to the location from which they were taken. With the use of technology, We can see the plateau and Yardang as they would have looked 5,000 years ago. We can follow the journey of each block of stone… as it was moved by ancient Egyptians. Many details of the monument's construction have been lost to time. So…
This kind of insight is invaluable to experts. Certainly, it shows what a huge undertaking it would have been. We can't be certain how long it took to build, having no exact dates for the Sphinx's construction. Some experts estimate that a workforce of 100 could have completed the project in just three years. At first, to many, this might sound unrealistic, but it's less so.
when you consider other building projects from the area. The Great Pyramid, for instance, was a mammoth undertaking and yet, it was completed in possibly just a decade or two, based on plausible theories. The most accepted labor analysis shows that the workforce probably fluctuated between 15,000 and 40,000 people over a span of about 10 years, with a rate of three blocks per minute being put into place. The Egyptians, we should remember, were experts in engineering, about as skilled
and efficient a workforce as could be. The workforce was likely a mix of professional builders, sculptors, and the like. In citizens doing their labor tax, or annual service. A modern equivalent would be something like jury duty, whereby citizens of a country might be called to help the court. For ancient Egyptians, in the age of pyramid building, it often meant helping with ongoing construction.
workers were paid an above-average wage and housed in lodgings, close by the worksite. Roles ranged from making tools and equipment, to administration and doing paperwork relating to the project. The bulk of citizens who were assigned to the Sphinx would likely have worked as manual laborers. Thousands of tons of stone had to be cut and quarried before the exterior of the creature was shaped and sculpted.
Again, we don't have many details about the Sphinx, but we can make assumptions from what we do know about the pyramids. We might suppose that workers used similar methods and equipment, and that they were similar in skill set and ability to do the job. Typically, Stone would be cut from the quarry and then secured with rope to long cedar sleds. Blocks weighed an average of 2.5 tons, so a team
would be required to pull the limestone across the sand. People would walk in front of the sled and wet the sand with buckets of water. This made for a smoother journey as the blocks were heaved towards their destination. Where stone had to be raised around walls or the temple, workers relied on ramps and pulleys. Ramps also allowed sculptors to work high up, using hammers and chisels to shape the surface.
Once the sculptors were done, it was a team of painters who put the finishing touches on the face of the monument. Today, the color has faded from the stone. but were given clues to how it looked through pigment residue. The Egyptians made paint from minerals and even gemstones. grinding them into powder and mixing it with a binder. Red and yellow ochre might have been blended with beeswax.
and painted across the sphinx's face as the skin. The whites of the eyes might have been the result of white gypsum. The large black pupils… may have come from the soot of many candles. And that signature eye makeup, the thick outline around the eyes, could have been lapis lazuli. or deep blue azurite. The same blue paint would likely have been used to create the pharaoh's distinctive headdress.
and the striped pattern on the beard alternating between blue and yellow-gold ochre. We can't know for sure what the sphinx's face would have looked like. but it's reasonable to assume that it was vivid, even dazzling. We can see from wall paintings that have retained their pigment, that the Egyptians were fond of bold, bright colors. Painters were likely both skilled and meticulous, and they would have been held
to very high standards. If we go by the efforts of those working on the pyramids, then there was no room for anything but perfection. Every block had to be cut and measured precisely, and positioned at exactly the right angle and location. and all using tools like plum weights and wooden set squares, the best of what there was in the long-distant past.
we might say that it was the ancient Egyptians who paved the way for the Greeks to follow in certain respects. They developed new techniques for surveying and building. devised mathematical rules and formulae to ensure precision and stability. The accuracy of structures built throughout this age continues to amaze people today. Especially when you consider the scale of this particular monument, which is estimated to weigh
around 20,000 tons. It's 20 meters tall, as measured from its base to the top of the headdress on the head of the Pharaoh. The length of its body, from paw to tail, is 73 meters. That's roughly the size of a modern jumbo jet, with a width of about 19 meters. Even to people so used to impressive buildings, the Great Sphinx or Hormakhet must have seemed… otherworldly. It was a sacred landmark to a deeply religious people and the embodiment of one of Egypt's most important deities.
Horus was the god of the sun, moon, and sky, along with kinship and the healing of the sick. Depicted as a man with the head of a falcon, Horus was the protector of all Egypt. You might remember that Hormaket was used to refer to the monument in the New Kingdom era. This was a period of great prosperity for Egypt between the 16th and 11th centuries BCE. It was at least a thousand years after the monument had been erected and the pyramid complex had been somewhat abandoned.
Drifting sands had surrounded the Great Sphinx, burying the creature up to its shoulders. That would change. in 1400 BCE, when Pharaoh Thutmose IV stumbled across it. The eighth ruler of the 18th dynasty, he was a young man, eager to make his mark. As legend has it, Thutmose was out walking, enjoying the solitude of a stroll around the complex. When he became too warm in the midday sun, he sat down to rest in the great sphinx's shadow. The pharaoh settled down in the lovely, cool shade.
reclining in comfort at the base of the creature. Soon, he fell into a deep sleep. And it's then that the sun god came to him in a dream. Horus told the pharaoh that he should clear away the sands, restoring the Great Sphinx to its former glory. His reward, the god promised, would be a secure seat on the throne as ruler of a unified upper and lower Egypt. Now, we'll never know if this was truth or fiction. Egyptian pharaohs were masters of propaganda. It's possible that Thutmose sought
to legitimize his rule by raising his profile as an ally of the gods. Either way, he did as instructed. sending a team of workers to dig around the Sphinx. It must have taken a great deal of effort and manpower, but they managed to resurrect the creature from the sand. A shrine was erected between the lion-like paws, including the granite plaque that we heard about earlier. The Dream Stele
was inscribed with a story. It recounted what Horace had told Thutmose in his dream. It's also possible that the Khafre was mentioned. but on parts of the granite that have been lost or damaged. The word calf was noted in 19th century observations and thought to be the beginning of the pharaoh's name. Only the hieroglyphics were lost in 1925, when the plaque was re-excavated and further damaged.
Little more is known about the Sphinx in this period, though it's likely that the creature enjoyed a revival. The rulers of Egypt's 18th dynasty… would become known for their buildings and artistic splendor. Statues of Sphinx were common during this period. It's believed that there were thousands erected over time. Rulers like Hatshepsut, wife of Thutmose II, commissioned statues made in their own image.
The sphinx of Hatshepsut remains intact today, a pink granite masterpiece three and a half meters long. Though this… like other statues, as marvelous as they are, cannot be compared to the Great Sphinx of Giza. The ancient Greeks would travel to Egypt and marvel at the beauty of this pharaoh-headed lion. They heard stories from soldiers who had visited the region and read the accounts of writers who described…
what they had seen. As we've mentioned briefly, the title Great Sphinx was attributed to the monument by the ancient Greeks. A sphinx in Greek mythology was a similar creature, with the body of a lion often depicted sitting on its haunches. Though typically… It had the face of a woman and the wings of an eagle on its back. It was obviously not so different that it would bother the Greeks, who thought it a fitting label.
to what they deemed an antiquity. Giza would become known as a tourist destination, a place to marvel at the Great Sphinx. and the pyramids, first by the Greeks and then by the Romans, who would conquer Egypt in the first century CE. After the defeat of Cleopatra, Egypt became a personal possession of Octavian, who then made it a province of the Roman Empire in 27 BCE. when he had himself declared Augustus. Thankfully, for us all, these rulers weren't bent on destruction. They sought to preserve
even enhance long-standing architecture. The Sphinx was in need of care and attention, being part buried once again, by the first century CE. But the Romans cleared the sand and uncovered the great statue in honor of their emperor, who at the time… was Nero. Being adept builders themselves, the Romans also went further and worked to restore walls around the monument. The enclosure dated back to Egypt's old kingdom, but like the temple, it had never been finished.
It's thanks to the discovery of another granite stele that we actually have a date for the enclosure's restoration. It was 166 CE. in the second century, when Rome was jointly ruled by Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus. The Romans also built a stairway 12 meters long, leading up to a podium between the massive pause. This provided views of the nearby Sphinx Temple. and allowed one to see the sculpture from much closer up. Today, the stairway is no longer there.
It was taken down during excavations in the early 1930s. We can only imagine how many feet might have walked across it. Centuries of tourists who came to see the great creature. One of those tourists was Pliny the Elder, a Roman author. writing in the first century CE. He recounts the Sphinx as a wondrous object of art, describing its reddish-colored face and enormous measurements.
He goes on to comment on the aura around the monument, the quiet contemplation of people near it. Pliny is aware that to the Egyptian locals, The stone monument is divine and sacred. With accounts such as this, it's hardly surprising that the Sphinx would continue to attract attention. After Rome's time, it ended in the 5th century CE and throughout the rise and fall of many more great empires. It maintained its mystique
during the Middle Ages, despite once more being partially hidden beneath the sand. Arab writers at the time spoke of the statue like a sacred talisman. protecting the desert. Medieval historian Al-Makrizi noted that the Egyptians linked the Sphinx to the Nile. They believed that it controlled the flooding of the river, the most important event in the Egyptian calendar.
This yearly inundation determined how fertile the land was and could mean the difference between abundance and famine. Therefore, we can assume As was common practice, Egyptians might have prayed and made offerings to the statue. Another account from Muhammad al-Adrisi. seems to confirm this very thing. He wrote that citizens gifted incense to the monument in the hopes that they might gain promotions within the government.
Certainly, it seems clear that for a great many people, the monument held spiritual or religious connotations. The names of deities might have changed with the passing of different eras, but the Sphinx remained constant as a source of peace and contemplation. At the same time, it saw a steady stream of tourists, with numbers increasing alongside advancements in sea travel.
Fascination grew between the 16th and 19th centuries as wealthy Europeans flocked to Egypt. The accounts of these travelers make for fascinating reading, telling us as much about the Sphinx as the people who saw it. At this stage, the paint had faded from the statue, and… the pharaonic headdress resembled long hair. Many Europeans thought it part lion, part woman – a wingless version of what they'd likely seen in Greece.
Writers saw the monument through their own cultural lenses, with a mix of curiosity and childlike wonder. Even those describing it as having the head of a monster… imbued their accounts with reverence and awe. Such descriptions have proved useful in a practical sense too, especially those that included prints of the statue. These allow us a glimpse into the Great Sphinx's past and help us to track any changes that have occurred.
over the centuries. The most obvious change, and one still visible today, is that the nose of the sphinx has been deliberately removed. Once rumored to be the work of Napoleon's cannons, we now know that this is incorrect. The nose is shown as missing on earlier sketches. made by Danish explorer and archaeologist Frederick Louis Norden. These were drawn in 1737. 60 years before Napoleon led his armies to Egypt. The reason for the damage and those responsible
continued to elude experts in the 21st century. Most likely, it was defaced during a wave of iconoclasm. when religious images were deemed heretical. Less is known about the ceremonial beard, which either fell off… or was removed in ancient times. However, some pieces are housed today in the British Museum. where visitors can see patterns carved across the stone. By the 19th century, like many times before,
The monument needed to be dug out from the sand. American writer John Lawson Stoddard described it as being wrapped in a winding sheet of gold. Excavations took place in 1817 and the sand was cleared from the front of the statue. This also led to the discovery of that Roman-made stairway. and the dream stele which told of Thutmose's vision. In part, it's a result of excavations over time that holes… and tunnels have appeared on the statue. Some, too, were likely made by Tomb Raiders of the past.
hoping to burrow their way into treasure-filled, secret chambers. To date, no such chambers have ever been found. even after the monument was fully excavated. More recent efforts have focused on restoration in an attempt to slow down natural erosion. The real treasure, it would seem, is the sphinx itself. A feat of ancient engineering, style, and beauty. a monument that has outlived so many ancient wonders, and one that continues to thrill tourists from all across the globe.
solemn and silent in the presence of the desert, veiled in the mystery of unnamed ages. These are words that are as true today… as when they were written by John Lawson Stoddart over a century ago. To Stoddart, the Great Sphinx was a symbol of eternity. forever gazing on into the future. It has outlived so many eras, so many empires and their leaders. and it will continue to do so for a long time to come.