Short History Of... - The Egyptian Sphinx

Episode Date: April 20, 2025

Measuring 240 feet long from paw to tail, and around the height of a six-story building, the Great Sphinx is one of Egypt’s most spectacular, and mysterious, monuments. Believed to have been built over four millennia ago, much of its story has been lost to history, and the rest is shrouded in myth. So what do we know about who built it? What caused such an impressive structure to be forgotten for centuries? And how is it being protected today? This is a Short History Of The Egyptian Sphinx. A Noiser Production. Written by Nicole Edmunds. With thanks to Salina Ikram, a professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo. Get every episode of Short History Of a week early with Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening, bonus material, and early access to shows across the Noiser network. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started. Or, if you’re on Spotify or Android, go to noiser.com/subscriptions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It's the year 1400 BC. The midday sun shines on the vast lush plains of Giza in Egypt, bleaching the limestone buildings a bright white as a soft breeze ripples the long grass. A dozen horses gallop across the plains, kicking up dust, stones, and sand as they go. Sitting proudly on their backs, their riders whoop and cheer with excitement, their heavy lion-skin robes snapping in the wind. excitement, their heavy lion-skin robes snapping in the wind. The rider at the front of the group, King Amun-Hotep II, sits astride a beautiful, sleek

black horse. His rich jewelry glistening in the sun, he turns around to face his men, holding up his bow in triumph to signal his hunting victory. A little way off, lying beneath a tamarisk tree, is the body of a lion, the king of the jungle, slain by the king of Egypt. The men ride on, but one of the party lags behind. The king's son, Tutmosis, slows his horse to a stop and swings his legs over its back,

landing on the dry grass with a soft thud. He watches the hunting party ride off, knowing they won't miss him if he takes a break for a minute or two. After all, he's only the king's second son. It's his elder brother who's destined to be a great pharaoh. His mouth is dry and his limbs exhausted from the morning's hunt. The hot sun has made him sleepy, so while his friends are busy admiring their prey, he shakes off his cloak and lays it on the ground. Leaning his throbbing head against a nearby slab of stone, he falls into a deep sleep.

The world around him melts away, blurring into a strange dreamscape. He sees himself running barefoot along a riverbank as crocodiles snap at his heels. Now he's standing outside the royal palace, hammering on the front doors to be let in. Then the palace shrinks, shifting into something new. A great, sandy Sphinx with the body of a lion and head of a man stands before him. The creature introduces himself as Hamaker, the god of the sun. In a silky voice, he laments that he's been trapped under the shifting desert for decades

and longs to be released. He proposes a deal. If Prince Tukmoses uncovers his body from the suffocating sand, he'll ensure he becomes Pharaoh after his father. It's an irresistible deal, so he gets to his feet, ready to shake the god's paw. But as he does so, Harmaket fades limb by limb until his entire body has vanished. It's as though the god was never there. Moments later, the prince awakens confused and groggy.

He rubs his head, which is sore from leaning against the stone. And it's when he brushes the sand away from where he was sleeping that he discovers the stone is shaped exactly like a giant animal's paw. Prince Tutmoses has been asleep against the centuries-long buried Great Sphinx of Egypt. Though we can't be sure whether this ancient prince really did dream of the Sphinx, if the legend is true, then the creature kept his end of the bargain. Thutmose eventually usurped his brother to become King Thutmose IV of Egypt.

And during his reign, Sphinx worshipping took off around the empire, perhaps in homage to the creature that made it all possible. But Thutmose's dream isn't the only myth entwined with the Sphinx. Measuring 240 feet long from paw to tail, and around the height of a six-story building, the Great Sphinx is one of Egypt's most spectacular and mysterious monuments. Believed to have been built over four millennia ago, much of its story has been lost to history.

So what do we know about who built it? What caused such an impressive structure to be forgotten for centuries, and how is it being protected today? I'm John Hopkins from the Noiser Network. This is a short history of the Egyptian Sphinx. It's 3150 BC. In the arid deserts of Africa, along the banks of the River Nile, what will become one of history's most prominent civilizations is just beginning. Through trade, economic deals, and military tactics, King Naama has joined the two regions of Upper and Lower Egypt to form a single Egyptian empire. But though now united, the people of Egypt aren't always easy to control.

So Naama employs a number of peacekeeping methods to maintain the fragile harmony of his new kingdom. Chief among them is religion. Salima Ikram is a professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo. For the ancient Egyptians, religion was terribly important because you have to think, especially early on, you really don't have any defenses against the world which is difficult and challenging and terrifying. So, gods and people who might help you become increasingly important and crucial to your own survival,

as well as the survival of the entire world around you and the cosmos, which is why the Egyptians seem to have had a very complex religion which also was inspired by nature. Much like the Romans and Greeks who will eventually follow, the ancient Egyptians hold their gods in the highest esteem. They must be worshipped, appeased, and honored with offerings or tributes to ensure general prosperity and good health. If anything goes awry, it signals the wrath of the gods. And when things go well, it must be because the gods are looking down favorably. Perhaps to distinguish them from mere mortals, the deities of ancient Egypt rarely take human form.

Anubis, god of the afterlife, is depicted as part jackal. Pathor, a goddess of the sky, has a cow's head, while Thoth, god of wisdom and magic, is variously shown with some features of a baboon or an ibis. But it's Horus, god of the sky, who's often depicted as one of the most important creatures in Egyptian religious mythology, a sphinx. An iconic image from Egypt is the sphinx, which has the head of a human and the body of a lion. And the Sphinx was associated with the Sun God.

It is a manifestation of both the king and the Sun God. So the Sphinx embodies the power of the Sun God, the power of the king, and the lion is used as this sort of part of the creation because it's the king of the beasts, it is yellow like the sun, and of course the rough of the lion is again like the rays of the sun emanating. So it was chosen as a quintessential symbol of the sun god.

Centuries later, the Greeks will popularize their version of the Sphinx, who fiercely guards the city of Thebes, killing any trespassers who fail to solve her riddle. The Greeks will also give the creature its name from the verb Sphingei, which means to bind or strangle, a testament to the Sphinx's deadly reputation. But it's in ancient Egypt where the Sphinx originates. At first, Sphinxes are drawn as simple carvings or made into small figurines to decorate people's homes, primarily the wealthy.

Then, as the Egyptian empire expands, it enters the era that will become known for its monument building. Though the craze will eventually lead to the construction of the Great Sphinx, what comes first are its predecessors, Egypt's pyramids. I've just been to Specsavers and upgraded my lenses to extra thin and light with 50% off. Now, what else can I upgrade? My cat? Wow. My scooter? Oh yeah.

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and I saw that ship breaking off. Titanic Ship of Dreams. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. In the period known as the Third Dynasty, which begins in around 2670 BC, King Zosa commissions an elaborate funerary complex that will house his body after death. The notion of the afterlife is embedded in Egyptian culture. And naturally, Zosa wants to do everything in his power to ensure a smooth journey from mortality to eternity. Of course, when people think about Egypt, in addition to the Sphinxes and mummies, they

think about pyramids. But of course, the pyramids they think about are the great pyramids of Giza. But Egypt has more than 80 pyramids. And the first amongst those was the Step Pyramid at Saqqara built for King Xhosa by his architect Imhotep. And this is an extraordinary building because it is the first monumental stone structure ever built in the world. The stone's blocks are smaller because it sort of models on mud brick architecture,

but then exaggerated, and that's why we have it the way it is. The step pyramid is really the one that started the ideas of pyramids, that established a lot of the parts of the complex. And so it started off by being a very simple stone structure that was rectangular, but then they thought, ooh, we can go higher with this, and let's make it go up towards the sky. And so you have these steps that have been added on.

So what you see now is a total of six steps, and it all used to be encased with white limestone. So it was this gleaming monumental creation dedicated to the god King Zoser. Zoser's step pyramid triggers a flurry of pyramid building throughout Egypt, with later rulers eager to make their mark on the desert landscape. A little over a century after Zosa's architectural triumph, King Khufu takes monument building to another level when he oversees the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza. For his pyramid, Khufu selects the Mokattam formation, a vast, undeveloped rocky plain

in the north of Egypt in what is now southern Cairo. Crucially, the area consists of layers and layers of solid limestone rock, strong enough to bear the weight of a giant monument. Khufu recruits hundreds of men and houses them in a workers' camp known as Gerget Khufu, the settlement of Khufu. The men are divided into teams and allocated jobs in the construction process,

from laying the foundations and quarrying limestone to transporting the bricks, each one weighing around a ton, to the desired site. It's possible that the bricks are positioned to align with the Great North Star, drawing on symbolism to connect the pharaoh to the celestial gods.

to the celestial gods. Each day the men labor from dawn till dusk, spurred on by the friendly rivalry between opposing teams. Finally, after an estimated 25 years, the Great Pyramid of Giza is complete. It measures 481 feet high and 755 feet wide. In modern terms, that's 100 foot taller than the Statue of Liberty. When Khufu dies, his mummified body is placed in a tomb inside the pyramid. Surrounded by religious artifacts within a divine structure, his soul will no doubt have a splendid afterlife. His great pyramid becomes legendary in ancient Egypt. So when his second son and eventual heir Khufra comes to the throne, he has enormous shoes

to fill. Thanks to his trail-blazing father, the kingdom Khatre inherits is hugely successful. By now the Egyptian empire is at its zenith, stretching from Libya in the west to the Sinai Peninsula in the east and Nubia in the south. Protected by the Nile in one direction and the desert in the other, any would-be invaders are kept at bay. With such a stable empire at his fingertips, Khufri is able to focus on the future, particularly his own.

Keen for his funerary monument to equal, if not surpass that of his father, Khufrae flexes his pharaonic powers and orders the construction of a second pyramid on the Giza plateau. When complete, his pyramid will be a few feet shorter than his father's. But because it's built on an elevated area of the plateau, from a distance both structures will appear to be of equal height. However, while the men are hard at work on the pyramid, Khafre is already embarking on his most ambitious architectural project yet.

It's sometime during the year 2500 BC. In a horseshoe-shaped stone quarry a few miles east of the Giza complex, a swarm of men are at work. Hundreds are deep inside the excavation, working in teams of four to move enormous slabs of limestone onto a set of wooden tracks. They wind ropes around the massive bricks, then drag them along the slats, pulling and heaving until their muscles burn. These blocks of limestone are being transported to the Giza Complex, where they'll form the

base of King Hafre's pyramid. Above these laborers, standing high on a rugged formation of limestone, are more men. But their job is different. They are artists, here not to build a pyramid, but a great statue. Their task is to use the rock that's left over and shape it into a giant sphinx with the body of a lion

and the head of their pharaoh. Clutching their tools, they climb around the rock, shaving sections into enormous pores, whittling down its chest and gently shaping its ears. One of the artists, a skinny teenage boy, sits on the northern corner of the platform, working on what will eventually be the creature's chest. Bare feet dangling off the side, he taps away at the limestone with a chisel and hammer until he has a smooth, sandy surface. The teenager pauses to run his hand along it, but now a dusting of sand showers his head.

He looks up and spots the culprit, an elderly stone worker balanced on a wooden scaffold a few feet above. The boy climbs up to examine his work and sees the old man is carving a deep oval hole, the length of a man lying down in the very front of the rocky platform. At the center of the depression is a great round stone. As he stares at it, it seems to stare back. The artist is carving the eye of their king. The sight is impressive and as the youth gets back to work he is distracted. Imagine being important enough to have your face carved on a monument. But it gives him an idea.

Soon the other workers are taking a quick break for lunch, downing tools and hurrying towards the shade of the tamarisk trees. With the coast clear, the teenager takes his chance. Ignoring the rumble of his stomach, he clambers down from the platform and heads towards one of the blocks lying on the tracks. Withdrawing a chisel from his tunic pocket, he crouches next to the rocks and scrapes the blade into the limestone.

With surgical precision, the teenager carves his initials. He smiles as he sits back and admires his handiwork, knowing that his name will be preserved for eternity as one of the builders of King Hafreys' Great Sphinx. The Great Sphinx of Giza is a fabulous monument because it's carved out of the living rock and it is in the place where one of the quarries used to get the stone for the pyramid of King Khufu

was located. But it seems that for some reason, this rock was just left in place either deliberately. They decided, oh, this is a good site to make a huge massive sculpture that would act as the guardian of the entire cemetery. So it's really carved out of the living rock and they quarried away around it. They used the stone to make the pyramid, but then they fashioned this wonderful lion

with a human head, which then they would have to have had scaffolding to get up to do all of this work. And there is quite a lot of fineness you can see still, and paint, so what you see as the great sphinx now as a sort of gray-white thing, was once brilliantly painted with yellowish things for the headdress, blue maybe, red for the face, eyes outlined.

So really like a massive living image of the king as a god presiding over this necropolis. So it was made very carefully by people clambering all over it. But while historians offer their ideas regarding how the Sphinx is built, there's ongoing controversy as to who it's built for. Most agree it's likely constructed under the orders of King Hafre, but there is room for speculation. Many scholars think that King Hafre was the one who constructed the strings, or ordered its construction, because of its location near his valley temple.

However, other scholars think that King Khufu had this made and that's why King Khafrey's valley temple was chosen to be there, but there's also a misalignment between his pyramid and the causeway. And fewer scholars think that it was King Jeddahf who had something to do with it, but that is because his name is Jeddeth Ray, i.e. the first king in that dynasty to really use the word Ray, which is the name of the Sand God. Under the instruction of its creator, whichever king that may be, the Sphinx transforms from limestone rock to mythological creature, built as the eternal guardian of the royal tombs. All around it, other funerary monuments are erected.

Eventually, 23 statues of Hafre decorate the Valley Temple. Meanwhile, a road, the ceremonial causeway, links the elements of the complex, tying together the Sphinx, the pyramid and temple as part of Half-Ray's journey to the afterlife. The Great Sphinx at Giza was made as a guardian of the entire cemetery and also as a manifestation of the might and power of the ruler. So you have the ruler's face as the sun god and it would be the first thing that people saw and in fact you had that and you have these huge pyramids rearing up behind. So it was mainly protection, the presence of a god on earth, manifestation of power

and ostentatious display of control and wealth. Following Hafrey in 2532 BC, his son Men'kori takes the reins and continues his father and grandfather's building legacy. He constructs a third pyramid at the Giza Plateau to complete the trio. However, towards the end of Menkori's rule, pyramid building takes a back seat in Egypt. The Old Kingdom is noted for its magnificent pyramids, the huge Sphinx, and its very great monumental architecture. But what happened is that as time progressed, the whole ethos changed. And because the rulers wanted to use their resources for different things, so you have mud bricks and then they faced with stone, so it looks like a big fancy pyramid.

But then instead they also said, well, we want a more complicated temple with more decoration and also by the way, we need to build a canal here. We need a network of canals. So instead of taking all their labor and resources for this monument, they still had a lot dedicated to that. But they spent their resources for other things, such as temple building for cults and living of gods, as well as sort of public works

that benefited the entire country. So it's not that the monumental ability stopped, it's just that they used resources differently. As well as the monuments, rulers have other things on their minds. As the Old Kingdom enters its final days, the power of pharaohs is challenged by provincial governors and wealthy landowners. New pockets of independence spring up, creating instability throughout the Empire. The eras that follow see bouts of famine, war, and poverty, along with transient episodes

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While the Egyptian empire shifts, Sphinx imagery stays in vogue. Apotropaic wands, curved ceremonial knives made of hippopotamus ivory, inscribed with double-headed sphinxes, become popular as gifts, said to protect women in childbirth and babies. But though the idea of the sphinx is going strong, the same cannot be said of the Great

Sphinx. As it was built from a natural formation of rock, many of its foundations sit below ground level, allowing decades of sand to be blown over the statue and fill in the gaps. The Sphinx is buried in a sandy tomb, while the pyramids sitting high above the desert landscape escape this fate. It is interesting to see that, you know, in the New Kingdom they needed to clear the Sphinx of sand because throughout Egyptian history, although the Sphinx was important, maybe the site of Giza was not given as much focus or attention,

and that's why the Sphinx would come and go in terms of religious popularity. So people around it knew that it was an important monument, that it was the Sun God, that he would protect them in their little area. But the and the court who is in charge of looking after such monuments obviously was not equally attentive throughout the 3,000 years of Egyptian history. However the Sphinx's fortunes are about to change. In 1427 BC, King Amenhotep II of the 18th Dynasty takes the throne. Amongst the new kingdom pharaohs, Amenhotep II is really the quintessential jock.

He is the one who was always boasting about, I know my horses, I love my horses, I'm horse racing. Or I'm in my chariots and I am pulling my bows and arrows and I'm piercing these huge ingots at high speed while I go by. So he also was at the Giza Plateau and it seems to have turned into a place where kings frolicked. So the area between Giza and Saqqara, I think they might have even had a place, a sort of

a game reserve for hunting, places for chariot racing, places for sportsmanship, and you had these little tiny kiosk kind of things made by different kings around the area of the Sphinx, because it would have been an obvious magnet. Sometimes the Sphinx was all covered up, but the Sphinx's head, and then the Giza pyramid, so of course it was a royal playground. It's during this era between the reigns of Amenhotep II and his son, Thutmose IV, that sorting fact from fiction gets even murkier. Some historians claim that it's Amenhotep II who recognizes the great sphinx as a representation of the sun god Hamakhet,

and though it's almost completely buried by this point, constructs a temple next to it to worship the god. But a second school of thought argues that it's in fact took Moses IV who restores the sphinx. So there's a wonderful story which we know because there's a big piece of stone, a stele, between the paws of the Sphinx that tells the story. And in it, the man who became king took Moses. He was not the heir to the throne. But in it he says, I was hunting in this area, I was hunting lions and all the things. And then I got really tired.

And so I went and I slept in the shadow of the sphinx, and I had a dream. And Rehobochti, which is what the sphinx is, the guard said to me, if you clear away the sand from around me and let me be seen again, then you will become Pharaoh. So promptly took Moses, cleared the sand away, and then somehow his older brother died and he became king.

And so this is all about it and he was also very big on Reharaphite and solar gods. So that is how if you look after a monument you can be king. As king, Thutmose places importance on the worship of sphinxes and organizes the monument's first major restoration. Having endured years of wind, scorching temperatures and neglect, the body of the sphinx has begun to fall away in large chunks. When it's freed from the sand, it emerges misshapen and rugged, its face lacking the detail the ancient artists painstakingly carved.

So, took Moses' builders insert a large boulder into the back of the Sphinx to support its foundation. Then they fill its body with masonry to strengthen the softer layers, restore the creature's shape and touch up the color. To protect it from unwanted visitors, a massive mud brick wall is also built to encircle the Sphinx. But Thutmose's pharaonic pride doesn't allow him to complete the restoration without a little something to recognize his own brilliance.

Between the pores of the Sphinx, he erects a fifteen-ton, eight-foot-tall steela or stone plaque. Through a series of hieroglyphs, it retells the dream encounter between himself and the Sphinx, uniting their names for eternity. Sadly, Thutmose IV is the final Egyptian pharaoh to pay tribute to the great Sphinx. After he is headed off to the afterlife, the monument has to wait until the arrival of the Greek rulers, the Ptolemies, in the third century BC, to experience a taste of its former glory. In the Ptolemaic era, we have all these kings doing some kind of conservation work, especially down near the Pores. And so you can see that the Ptolemies did it and probably even the Romans continued this thing.

And it's nice to think of Cleopatra popping over to Giza saying, oh, the Sphinx needs a fresh coat of paint here. So let's do something and the eyeliner looks wretched. Please touch it up at once. When the Romans arrive in 30 BC, they are overjoyed to inherit such grand monuments and numerous emperors lead reconstruction projects. In the second century AD, Marcus Aurelius sets about restoring the Sphinx and his efforts are continued by Emperor Septimus

Severus. Under Roman instruction, the Sphinx gains a staircase inside the hollow portion of its body and its flaky limestone walls are reinforced with stone and plaster. A platform is erected on the outside of the statue to allow esteemed guests to witness religious ceremonies in the temples below. So you can see that the Sphinx has been modified as well as restored over time, and it was not a static monument, it was a dynamic monument, so that whenever people were paying attention and when the Sphinx was exposed, it would be altered, added to, changed, restored, repainted. And it was a place where, of course, for the locals,

or people who lived anywhere in the greater capital area, the Sphinx was something of a place to go and hang out and be blessed by. The Western Roman Empire eventually crumbles in the 5th century AD, but the Sphinx's fame perseveres. The monument becomes a site of pagan pilgrimage throughout the Middle Ages, and many travelers from the time report visiting it in their journals. But not all of them are impressed. In 1402, an Arab historian writes that the Sphinx has been

disfigured to remedy some religious errors. And a century later, a French naturalist claims it no longer has the stamp of grace and beauty. stamp of grace and beauty. Few centuries after this, rumors start up about the Sphinx's nose. One of the first people to document the Sphinx without a nose is a Danish naval captain who sketches the monument in 1737. As his drawings circulate, one theorist suggests that the nose was removed by rulers of opposing religions to suffocate the Egyptian spirits living inside.

Another suggests it's the fault of a jealous Muslim leader. There are lots of stories when you go to Giza about how the Sphinx lost its nose, and in fact it was because there was a fundamentalist Muslim who thought that people were paying too much reverence to this place and to the Sphinx. And also they said its Arabic name is Abu al-Hall, father of fear. So in a way he wanted to say, look, it's just a statue.

It doesn't have control over you or anything else. And so he got people in and basically blew off the Sphinx's nose and attacked it to say, I am doing this, I'm still alive, the Sphinx has no power over you. Get a grip, guys. One of the most famous theories about the Sphinx's nose is that it's used as target practice by Napoleon Bonaparte and his troops, when they invade the country in 1798. Given that the first reports of the missing nose come around 60 years before the French invasion, it's clear the claim is false. But it is true that the French emperor pays the monument a visit.

When Napoleon arrives at Imbabah, a small city 10 miles north of the Giza complex, his army prepares to fight against the Egyptian troops and seize the city. But Napoleon isn't in Egypt for a one-off war. A long-time lover of all things Egyptian, he wants to settle. Which is why he's brought along almost 200 scholars, architects, doctors, geographers, engineers, and artists. Looking out towards the pyramids and the great sphinx, the emperor pays homage to Egyptian architecture, instructing his troops, think of it, soldiers. From the summit of these

pyramids, forty centuries look down upon you. In the same way the Sphinx witnessed the age of pharaohs come to an end, followed by the demise of Greek and Roman emperors, so too does it watch on as Napoleon's hubris proves to be his undoing. Led by Admiral Nelson, British forces defeat the French in 1801 and drive them out of Egypt. But as it turns out, you can take the dictator out of Egypt, but you can't take Egypt out of the dictator. On Napoleon's return to Europe, a fascination with ancient Egypt blossoms.

During the 19th century, a field of study known as Egyptology becomes fashionable. Academics and archaeologists grow obsessed with the notion of Egypt as a kind of unopened treasure chest. A mysterious nation crawling with thousands of years of magical secrets. In 1817, Italian captain Giovanni Battista Caviglia attempts to dig the monument out of the tons of sand that bury it. Using planks of wood to prevent the sand from pouring back in, his team of 160 men eventually reveal its chest. Kaviglia discovers a fragment of the Sphinx's beard partially dissolved in the sand,

as well as a statue of King Thutmose IV between its paws, and numerous remains of Sphinx figurines. and numerous remains of Sphinx figurines. Sadly, Kaviglia ultimately admits defeat, realizing that although the Sphinx temple and parts of its chest and head are now free, he cannot prevent the sand from returning to bury the Sphinx's body. Further archaeologists continue Kaviglia's vision, clearing San throughout the 19th century. But it isn't until 1937 that Egyptian archaeologist Salim Hassan finally succeeds in exhuming

the Sphinx. Between October 1936 and June 1937, Hassan and his team move around 1300 cubic meters of sand per day. Like Kaviglia, they discover a treasure trove of ancient remains buried around the Sphinx. Statues, religious ornaments, monuments to King Amenhotep II and Ramesses II, as well as traces of Roman and Greek graffiti. By the end of Hassan's project, the Sphinx is finally free. For the first time since perhaps the days of Thutmose IV, visitors can admire every inch of the monument, from the base of its paws to the tip of its headdress.

Around the time of Hassan's work, a stranger-than-fiction rumor relating to the Sphinx begins circulating through American popular culture. American clairvoyant Edgar Cayce claims to have psychic ability to see historical events, using a technique called retrocognition. Through various readings on ancient Egypt, he claims that not only was he formerly the Egyptian priest Ra Ta, but he knows what happened to the lost city of Atlantis. According to Cayce, refugees fled from Atlantis to Egypt and buried their secrets in a hall of records beneath the Sphinx.

It's a tall tale, to say the least, and Casey is hardly the most reputable source. But his claim sparks interest throughout America and years later reaches the ears of a young archaeologist called Mark Lehner. It's late in the afternoon in March 1980 on the Giza Plateau in Egypt. Nestled between the enormous pores of the Sphinx is a wooden office, a temporary home of American archaeologist Mark Lehner. Most of the other workers have gone home, but Lehner remains. Dogged in his determination to discover the monument's mysteries, he sits scribbling

notes at his makeshift desk. Finishing the latest observations, he snaps the work into a binder, then checks his watch. There's still time to get another set of measurements before calling it a night. He grabs his canvas bag from a hook and then heads outside. With the sun dipping below the pyramids, he climbs a ladder leaning against the rump of the great stone beast. Standing on the top rung,

he withdraws a wooden drawing board and folding ruler from the bag draped over his shoulder. In his teeth, he grips a pencil. Now he gets to work. Layner extends the ruler from the very corner of the sphinx's rear to a small indentation further up its body. Carefully stepping from the ladder to the sandy surface, he scribbles the measurement down on his drawing board. As he scratches the results, Lena notices the paper he's writing on is starting to

glow. Looking to the west, where the sun is setting, he allows himself a moment to appreciate the glory of it. The shadows of the enormous pyramids stretch out towards the godlike Sphinx, as if the ancient pharaohs are bowing down to it. Lena might be observing it over four millennia later, but tonight, on the March equinox, the ancient Egyptian architecture is as powerful as ever. all-inclusive dining and dive into endless activities. And now with Transat's Kids Stay and Eat Free promo, your vacation just got even better. Book between April 8th and 21st, 2025. For more details, visit Transat.com. Over five years, Mark Lehner and his team

survey all aspects of the Sphinx, from the stones that form its crumbling crown to the dead-end tunnels and abandoned passageways that crawl beneath. What results is the most detailed map of the monument ever created? Mark Lehner has done a lot of work on the Sphinx and part of it of course involves some clearance and a closer study. In those days he did it some time ago so you couldn't do the same kind of photogrammetry you do now. But it was extremely close scholarly work on how the Sphinx was made, what the different layers are in terms of the geology, and also he became able to pinpoint which restoration might have been made in say the New Kingdom

or the Middle Kingdom or the Ptolemaic period. By taking samples of the different bricks that make up the statue, Lena constructs a detailed and layered image. Though the rocks of the Sphinx were likely all taken from the Mokotm formation. The base of the Sphinx, its paws, tail, and lower half of its body, consists of stone known as member one. A hard material providing a strong foundation. The member one stone rises to a height of twelve feet at the Sphinx's rump and three feet at the Sphinx's rump and 3 feet at its paws.

By far the largest portion of the Sphinx's body is cut from member 2 stone. Seven layers alternate from soft to hard as they rise in elevation. The more delicate elements such as the Sphinx's head, neck, and facial features are carved from member 3 stone. Much softer, it's ideal for shaping details, but it's also less durable, and succumbs to weathering at a faster rate. This ladder of hard to soft stone explains why the Sphinx has eroded in such an uneven way, but it also proposes an alternative theory as to how the Sphinx was created.

It's possible that rather than being built simply through the excavation of material for Half-Reyes pyramid, its construction was carefully planned, with the bricks deliberately layered and positioned. We'll never know for certain which method was used, but it's possible that the truth lies in a combination of the two theories. Perhaps the foundations of the Sphinx were left over from quarrying Half-Rays pyramid, while the upper levels were more selectively chosen. the phrase pyramid, while the upper levels were more selectively chosen. Though Leina never proves the existence of Casey's mythical Hall of Records, he does make another curious discovery.

Littered around the plateau are fragments of discarded tools, suggesting workers left the job before it was finished. Some scholars who found tools lying around at the base of the Sphinx have thought that this is because the Sphinx was incomplete. But it is also possible that the tools don't date back to the time when the Sphinx was being made, because the Sphinx was restored several times in antiquity by many different rulers so it's quite possible that the tools that were found are really not from the original carving of the Sphinx but from the restorations that happened over the millennia. But Leina's work does also pose an intriguing question.

When the archaeologists are exploring some of the deeper tunnels below the sphinx, they find significant traces of moisture. How did water penetrate a statue sitting in the middle of a bone-dry desert? One of the issues with the sphinx why it constantly needs conservation conservation in addition to being attacked from outside wind and so on. Because there is groundwater eventually and the Sphinx is actually at a lower level than the rest of the monuments in the Giza Plateau, it is quite possible that it has been absorbing groundwater which limestone does do and this has been affecting the interior of the Sphinx as well, and might have

activated salts that had been trapped in the limestone because this whole area was once underwater because it was under a big sea, and you can in fact walk around Giza and still see fossils from sea creatures. Today, 4,000 years since its likely initial creation, the Great Sphinx remains one of the most recognizable monuments in Egypt, if not the world. Every year around 14 million tourists flock to admire the Giza Plateau and bask in the impressive architecture of civilizations gone by. But though the view is astonishing, in many ways it's unrecognizable from the one enjoyed in its glory days. Our experience today of the Sphinx is very different from what it would have been

in the time that it was first made. Of course when it was first made it would have been in the time that it was first made. Of course, when it was first made, it would have been in this gleaming white limestone, but with the face painted and maybe a yellow wash to the body to make it look more like a lion. And of course, there was also a large temple in front of it, which people sort of forget about. It's still there, but it would have been in a functional way. And the water, the river, and the canals actually came far closer to the Sphinx.

And there would have been fields and water, so you would have had this Sphinx rearing out, as if it were coming out of the sort of start of creation. And this, again, then behind the Sphinx, you would have seen the Giza Pyramids, which would have been a fabulous sight looking like massive mountains. Again, plain white with their tops covered with gold, which would have reflected the sunlight. And so you would have had this incredible image, both with the Sphinx and with the pyramids,

expressing the power of the Sun God and of the King, which would have made any common person quail in awe. However, in the 21st century, architects and admirers of the Sphinx face problems which the ancient Egyptians would never have worried about. Fumes from cars and factories have penetrated the Sphinx, causing it to deteriorate at a faster rate and pollution in the water is taking its toll too. In response, engineers have installed hydraulic pumps in the Sphinx's base which divert the corrosive groundwater. The Egyptian government has also

implemented strict laws about the proximity of factories to the monuments of Giza, and regulations about cleaner car engines. The hope is that the Sphinx's story will not end anytime soon. If it is adequately preserved, the statue can continue to guard not only the Egyptian Empire's long dead kings and queens, but the memory of one of the world's greatest civilizations. I love the Sphinx because it's just such a fun, mad, insane monument where you've got this big giant lion with a human head and I love to go and see the paint on it still. And I really wish the nose was still there because you would get a much better sense of it. But the

eye line and the eyes and then the fact that the paint is there. You think, what kind of brushes were they using? Were they using rollers or what? And how many people were employed? And was it something that people regularly did during the fourth genuset years? Sort of say, okay, three months on, must go paint the face of the Sphinx. And were there special teams for this? So looking at the Sphinx, it just gives you this insight or a lot of questions about how things were done in ancient Egypt. And also, it's just such a jolly thing to have. Next time on Short History of Will bring you a short history of the Salem Witch Trials.

The Salem Witch Trials is a historical anomaly that we somehow cannot let go. And the reason that we can't let it go is because it requires us, in America anyway, to question some of the assumptions that we like to hold about ourselves. It challenges our wide-held belief that we exist to support religious freedom, for instance. It makes us question the fact that we nominally say that we are committed to helping disempowered people in our communities. You know, it is a moment where 19 people were put to death by the state following rigid and strict legal principles in a gross miscarriage of justice. And you know it occurs at this origin point for the country where we live today.

That's next time. If you can't wait a week until the next episode you can listen to it right away by subscribing to Noiza Plus. Head to www.noiza.com forward slash subscriptions for more information.