The Great Sphinx of Giza

The Sphinx was not built but excavated — cut down into the bedrock, leaving a horseshoe-shaped quarry around it whose stone went into the nearby valley temples. It is 73 metres long and 20 metres high, the largest monolithic statue in the world, and it faces due east towards the sunrise.

Beside it stands Khafre's Valley Temple, built of colossal granite and alabaster blocks and the best-preserved Old Kingdom building anywhere.

Generally dated to Khafre's reign, around 2500 BC, though the attribution is debated. A granite stela between the paws records that Thutmose IV cleared the sand from it in about 1400 BC after dreaming the Sphinx promised him the throne in return. The nose was already missing by the 15th century AD.