NARRATOR: Cairo, Egypt.
Sitting atop a plateau just a few miles West of the Nile
River is the Giza necropolis, perhaps
the most famous collection of ruins in the entire world.
Believed to be constructed during ancient Egypt's
Fourth Dynasty around 2,550 BC, these limestone monuments
attract thousands of tourists every day
who come to marvel at the immense pyramids,
forbidding tombs, and a mysterious stone
sentinel known as the Sphinx.
I think you can argue that the Sphinx is the most recognizable
statue anywhere in the world.
Its scale is immense.
It's one single piece of stone.
It is cut from the natural rock of the Giza Plateau.
NARRATOR: The Sphinx stands 240 feet long,
66 feet tall, and 62 feet wide.
For thousands of years, this massive statue
has been an object of both fascination and wonder.
But even after centuries of study,
the Sphinx holds many secrets that archaeologists
are still trying to unravel.
RAMY ROMANY: The Sphinx that we know
today, the Sphinx from the Great Pyramids of Giza
is the most famous of all sphinxes.
But there are sphinxes all over ancient Egypt.
There are smaller sphinxes.
There's an avenue full of sphinxes between the temples.
CHRIS NAUNTON: But the Great Sphinx of Giza
is something very different.
It's a single sculpture.
It sits in a very particular place.
It doesn't seem to have perform the same function at all.
What was it for?
This is what we really want to know.
No one has understood exactly what
it means because for literally thousands of years,
this Sphinx was buried up to its neck in sand.
So it's only a head sticking out of the sand
for much of its history.
CHRIS NAUNTON: There is a very famous painting
of Emperor Napoleon standing in front
of the Sphinx buried still, at this point, up
to its shoulders.
You might think what is Napoleon got to do
with Egypt and the Sphinx.
Well, in fact, Napoleon led an invasion of Egypt
in 1798, which had a big impact back in Europe,
raising awareness and interest in ancient Egypt sites.
NARRATOR: It wasn't until the 1920s
that a team of archaeologists, led by engineer Emile Baraize,
succeeded in unearthing the Sphinx from the desert sands.
CHRIS NAUNTON: They were able to expose it
and to sort of reveal for the first time in centuries
that this was not just a head, a disembodied head,
but a full sphinx sculpture.
And this is a watershed moment for us
understanding the Sphinx.
RAMY ROMANY: Archaeologists and Egyptologists
like myself believe that the Sphinx was sculpted
around 2500 BC by King Chephren as a part
of his funerary complex.
But a lot of scholars disagree about the Sphinx.
And there's a lot of mystery surrounding when was
the Sphinx actually sculpted.
ANDREW COLLINS: One of the most important documents
we've had to do with the dating of the Sphinx
is the Inventory Stela.
This is a commemorative stone that actually records details
of how the Pharaoh Khufu repaired the Sphinx after it
was struck by lightning.
The significance of this is that Khufu came before Chephren,
the pharaoh who is conventionally
said to have constructed the Sphinx.
ROBERT SCHOCH: The Inventory Stela
has an inscription that goes back to about 4,600 years ago.
And that inscription says that the Sphinx is a much older
structure that the Egyptians adopted
and repaired and venerated.
NARRATOR: Based on the inscriptions on the Inventory
Stela, there are some archaeologists
who believe that the Sphinx is so ancient that it
could predate any records in human history that
are known to exist.
And some researchers are convinced
that physical evidence of the Sphinx's true age
can be found on the structure itself.
ROBERT SCHOCH: The first time I visit the Sphinx
was in the summer of 1990.
My early studies of the Sphinx looked
at the erosional features on the body of the Sphinx
and comparing that to other erosional features
right on the Giza Plateau.
And what I found was the body of the Sphinx
and the walls of the Sphinx enclosure
are weathered differently than everything
else on the Giza Plateau.
The rest of the plateau shows classic wind erosion.
But what is on the Sphinx is water weathering.
It's rainfall, precipitation.
And this makes no sense when the Sphinx is sitting
on the edge of the Sahara desert that
has been a bone dry desert for literally thousands of years.
So what I concluded is that the body of the Sphinx
and, therefore, the original statue
had to go back to pre-Sahara times
when there was a much more temperate climate, much more
moisture, much more rainfall.
And it has to go back not just a little bit into that period
but quite far back, given that we
have incredible amount of weathering
and erosion on the Sphinx.
I now think that it goes back to the end of the last Ice
Age, circa 10,000 BC.
I am convinced that it is a ruin from pre-dynastic Egypt.
[music playing]