2500 BC - A colossus constructed in the image of the pharaoh Khephren

When the king saw the Sphinx as it neared completion, he was flushed with pride. He, Khephren, the pharaoh of Upper and Lower Egypt, was going to fully satisfy the gods and dazzle mortals with his prestige. The statue, with the body of a lion and the face sculpted in his image, was already making the entire population in the capital, Memphis, tremble with respect. The project was certainly not lacking in audacity: its architect had the ingenious idea of using a rocky outcrop standing in isolation in the middle of a stone quarry to make a gigantic statue. It was the first time that a pharaoh had been represented in this way with the body of a lion, even though this animal had symbolised royalty since ancient Egypt’s beginnings around 3000 BC. The animal body of the Sphinx in fact represented the king’s triumphant strength. Today, 4,500 years after it was constructed, all Egyptologists agree that the Sphinx’s face is definitely that of Khephren (also known as Khafra), as proven by the numerous statues of the king dating from this era. Nobody actually knows what the Egyptians called the Sphinx, but it was probably named after the pharaoh, as there is no Egyptian word to designate sphinx. It was the Greeks, who came as “tourists” around the 6th century BC, who gave this name to these curious structures.

1398 BC - A statue elevated to the rank of a god
Following the death of Khephren, the desert gradually buried the Sphinx, to such an extent that the site was abandoned at the end of the Old Kingdom around 2100 BC. The colossus was then forgotten for 700 years, until a young prince, the future Tuthmosis IV, came to have a nap between its immense paws. The Sphinx spoke to him in his dreams: “Look at me, my son Tuthmosis, it is I, your father Harmakhis-Khephren. Look, I am like one who suffers; my whole body is in a state of ruin. The desert sand is coming closer …” Harmakhis said he would make Tuthmosis king if he removed the sand burying the Sphinx. The dream was so powerful that Tuthmosis followed the instructions. He of course became pharaoh and had a stele of pink granite engraved around the Sphinx to commemorate the prodigious event. For Egyptologists, this text dating from 1398 BC confirms that the Sphinx’s role had changed in the course of a thousand years. It was no longer the image of a king-god, but Harmakhis, a god in his own right. This is the only example of an Egyptian god created from a statue.