Great Sphinx of Giza Site Features

The Sphinx's human head, widely believed to represent Pharaoh Khafre himself, wears the traditional pharaonic nemes headdress; the missing nose and a now-vanished ceremonial beard (fragments of which are held in the British Museum and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo) are among its most-discussed missing details. The Dream Stele, a large granite slab placed between the Sphinx's front paws by Thutmose IV, records the pharaoh's own account of the statue speaking to him in a dream.

The Sphinx sits directly in front of the Pyramid of Khafre, one of the three Great Pyramids of Giza, and this pairing — pyramid and guardian statue together — is part of what makes the site's layout so visually and symbolically powerful.