Qualla: Great Sphinx of Giza https://qualla.com/great-sphinx-of-giza en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:30 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/s/t/q/4/great-sphinx-of-giza-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Great Sphinx of Giza https://qualla.com/great-sphinx-of-giza Great Sphinx of Giza: Introduction https://qualla.com/great-sphinx-of-giza/ Photo credit Hamerani, CC BY-SA 4.0. Mark Lehner, after decades of studying the Sphinx, concluded the monument "was once decked out in gaudy comic book colours." Traces of red pigment still cling to the face; yellow and blue have been found on the body. Strip away four millennia of sand erosion and cultural reimagining, and the Great Sphinx of Giza was not the austere, weathered guardian of popular imagination. It was a painted colossus -- a lion's body with a pharaoh's face, likely Khafre's, staring due east toward the rising sun, its surface alive with color against the tawny limestone plateau.

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Image: Hamerani | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/t/q/4/great-sphinx-of-giza-wp/stq4-great-sphinx-of-giza-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Great Sphinx of Giza: Carved from the Earth Itself https://qualla.com/great-sphinx-of-giza/ Photo credit Sattaher, CC BY-SA 4.0. Unlike the pyramids, which were assembled from quarried blocks, the Sphinx was sculpted directly from the bedrock of the Giza Plateau during the Fourth Dynasty, roughly 2500 BC. This makes it the largest monolithic statue of the ancient world. The limestone varies in hardness by ...

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Image: Sattaher | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/t/q/4/great-sphinx-of-giza-wp/stq4-great-sphinx-of-giza-carved-from-the-earth-itself.mp3 0:06 2 full Great Sphinx of Giza: Dreams Between the Paws https://qualla.com/great-sphinx-of-giza/ Photo credit Peter van der Sluijs, CC BY-SA 3.0. A thousand years after the Sphinx was carved, a young prince named Thutmose fell asleep in its shadow. In a dream, the Sphinx -- speaking as the sun god Hor-em-akhet, or "Horus at the Horizon" -- promised him the throne of Egypt if he would clear the sand burying its body. Thutmo...

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Image: Peter van der Sluijs | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/t/q/4/great-sphinx-of-giza-wp/stq4-great-sphinx-of-giza-dreams-between-the-paws.mp3 0:06 3 full Great Sphinx of Giza: The Nose Nobody Shot Off https://qualla.com/great-sphinx-of-giza/ Photo credit Mohammed fayez aldalou, CC BY-SA 4.0. The most persistent myth about the Sphinx is that Napoleon's army shot off its nose with a cannonball. Frederic Louis Norden's detailed sketches from 1737, published in 1755, show the nose already missing -- more than sixty years before Napoleon reached Egypt. Examination of the ...

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Image: Mohammed fayez aldalou | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/t/q/4/great-sphinx-of-giza-wp/stq4-great-sphinx-of-giza-the-nose-nobody-shot-off.mp3 0:06 4 full Great Sphinx of Giza: Tourists for Two Thousand Years https://qualla.com/great-sphinx-of-giza/ Photo credit Public domain. Giza was already a tourist destination in Graeco-Roman times. The Sphinx was cleared of sand in the first century AD to honor Emperor Nero, and a monumental stairway over twelve meters wide was built leading to a pavement before its paws. Pliny the Elder described the face as pai...

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Image: Public domain

]]> Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/t/q/4/great-sphinx-of-giza-wp/stq4-great-sphinx-of-giza-tourists-for-two-thousand-years.mp3 0:06 5 full