They Dug Out the Sphinx (10 Photos)

October 29, 2026

By Vidar

The Sphinx that spent centuries in the sand

Around 1850, only the head and shoulders of the Great Sphinx stuck out of the desert at Giza. By the late 1930s, it stood free down to its paws. Photographers kept coming back while the diggers worked.

🏜️ Buried to the Chest — Giza, Giza Governorate, Egypt 🇪🇬

1849 or 1850. Only the head, neck and upper chest show above the sand, with a hollow scooped out in front and Menkaure’s pyramid behind. The whole Sphinx is about 240 feet (73 meters) long and 66 feet (20 meters) high, so most of it is still under the sand here.

💡 Book Fact: Maxime Du Camp made this trip with his friend Gustave Flaubert. His 1852 book of photos from it was the first photographically illustrated book to be published in France. This print is plate 11 of that book, printed by Blanquard-Evrard in Lille.

📷 Photo and cover crop: “Le Sphinx, Égypte Moyenne” by Maxime Du Camp / George Eastman Museum via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

⛏️ Digging Near the Sphinx — Giza, Giza Governorate, Egypt 🇪🇬

1853. Workers stand in a deep stone-lined pit, and far behind them the Sphinx’s head, with a small flag on top, peeks over the sand. The Metropolitan Museum of Art identifies this as the French archaeologist Auguste Mariette’s dig, which was uncovering Khafre’s Valley Temple, and the flag as the French tricolor. In the mid-1800s Mariette also cleared some of the sand from around the sculpture.

💡 Sand Fact: In 1817, Giovanni Battista Caviglia led 160 men in the first modern attempt to dig out the Sphinx. The sand poured back into their pits nearly as fast as they could dig.

📷 Photo: “[Excavations near the Sphinx]” by John Beasley Greene / The Metropolitan Museum of Art via Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

🎌 Samurai at the Sphinx — Giza, Giza Governorate, Egypt 🇪🇬

1864. Members of the Japanese mission led by Ikeda Nagaoki pose in front of the half-buried Sphinx on their way to Europe. The shogunate had sent them to negotiate with the European powers about closing the port of Yokohama again. Antonio Beato, an Italian photographer working in Egypt and the younger brother of Felice Beato, took the picture as they passed through.

📷 Photo: “Japanese-Mission-Samurai-Sphinx-Egypt-1864” by Antonio Beato / National Diet Library, Japan, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

🐪 The Chest Comes Out — Giza, Giza Governorate, Egypt 🇪🇬

Between 1867 and 1899. The Beirut studio Maison Bonfils titled this print “the Sphinx after the clearings.” A print with the same title in Norway’s National Museum is dated 1875. The chest and paws are coming out of the sand, and the Dream Stele shows between them.

📷 Photo: “Le Sphynx apres les déblaiements et les deux grandes pyramides” by Maison Bonfils / Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsca-03956, restored version via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

🧱 Down to the Floor — Giza, Giza Governorate, Egypt 🇪🇬

Around 1930. The head rises at left over a cleared enclosure, and Roman-era stairways have come out of the sand east of the Sphinx. The French engineer Émile Baraize excavated around the Sphinx from 1926 to 1936 for Egypt’s antiquities service.

📷 Photo: “Retaining walls and Roman Period stairways east of the Sphinx” by Émile Baraize / Archives Lacau, Centre Golenischeff (EPHE-PSL), via ARCE Sphinx Project Archive, Open Context and Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

☀️ Free of the Sand — Giza, Giza Governorate, Egypt 🇪🇬

Between 1934 and 1939. The whole Sphinx stands clear, with the giant blocks of the Sphinx Temple in front and the pyramids of Khafre and Menkaure behind. The Egyptian archaeologist Selim Hassan finally freed the statue from the sand in the late 1930s.

📷 Photo: “Egypt. Sphinx & pyramids. Sphinx (front view with temple in foreground, with two pyramids in background)”, G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-matpc-17961 (no known restrictions on publication)

🏗️ Scaffolding on the Chest — Giza, Giza Governorate, Egypt 🇪🇬

March 2006. Scaffolding stands against the chest and neck. That month, Egypt’s antiquities council announced that new restoration work would focus on the neck and chest.

💡 Cement Fact: Repairs in the 1920s and 1980s used modern cement and gypsum mortar, and a later campaign worked to remove it and reverse the damage. That campaign ended with a symphony concert at the Sphinx in 1998.

📷 Photo: “Sphinx in de steigers” by Marion Golsteijn / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

📜 The Stone Between the Paws — Giza, Giza Governorate, Egypt 🇪🇬

March 3, 2009. Standing between the paws, you see the face high above and the tall granite Dream Stele in front of the chest, set there by Pharaoh Thutmose IV about 1400 BC.

💡 Dream Fact: According to the stele’s own story, Thutmose IV dreamt that the Sphinx asked him to clear the sand around it in return for the crown of Upper and Lower Egypt. The sand problem is at least 3,400 years old.

📷 Photo and cover crop: “Great Sphinx with Stelae” by Chanel Wheeler / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

👀 Lines of Visitors — Giza, Giza Governorate, Egypt 🇪🇬

2022, from the south. The Sphinx lies in its dug-out enclosure below the road, the temples sit to its left, and visitors line the wall above it.

💡 Nose Fact: Napoleon’s soldiers did not shoot off the nose. 18th-century drawings suggest the nose went missing long before then, and it was more likely destroyed on purpose in the 15th century.

📷 Photo: “Great Sphinx of Giza 2022” by Onceinawhile / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

🔺 The Pharaoh’s Pyramid Behind — Giza, Giza Governorate, Egypt 🇪🇬

December 22, 2025. The head and chest of the Great Sphinx rise over the temple walls, with Khafre’s pyramid behind. Most Egyptologists agree it was Pharaoh Khafre who had it made, about 4,500 years ago.

💡 Quarry Fact: The Sphinx was not built from blocks. It was carved from a single mass of limestone left standing when workers dug a horseshoe-shaped quarry around it.

📷 Photo: “Egypt, December 2025, by Dyolf77, ZVE07580” by Habib M’henni / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)