Discover Great Sphinx of Giza

The Sphinx was carved directly from a single mass of limestone bedrock left over from the quarrying of stone for the nearby pyramids, rather than built up from separately cut blocks — an approach that makes it, in effect, one enormous sculpture rather than a constructed building. It measures roughly 73 meters (240 feet) long and about 20 meters (66 feet) high, making it one of the largest monolithic statues in the ancient world.

Later restoration work, both ancient and modern, has added stone blocks to reinforce sections of the body and paws, since the relatively soft limestone of the core has always been vulnerable to weathering — a genuine ongoing conservation concern for a structure of this age.