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In 1857, Auguste Mariette, founder of the Khafre in line 13, it was he who was respon-
Egyptian Museum in Cairo, unearthed the sible for the excavation and therefore the
much later Inventory Stela (estimated to be Sphinx must predate Khafre and his prede-
from the Twenty-sixth Dynasty of Egypt, c. cessors—possibly Dynasty IV, c. 2575–2467
664–525 BC), which tells how Khufu came BC. English Egyptologist E. A. Wallis Budge
upon the Sphinx, already buried in sand. agreed that the Sphinx predated Khafre’s
Although certain tracts on the Stela are
considered good evidence, this passage reign, writing in The Gods of the Egyptians
is widely dismissed as Late Period histori- (1914): “This marvelous object [the Great
cal revisionism,a purposeful fake, created Sphinx] was in existence in the days of Kha-
by the local priests as an attempt to im- fre, or Khephren,[b] and it is probable that
bue the contemporary Isis temple with an it is a very great deal older than his reign
ancient history it never had. Such acts be- and that it dates from the end of the archaic
came common when religious institutions period [c. 2686 BC].” Maspero believed the
such as temples, shrines and priests’ do- Sphinx to be “the most ancient monument
mains were fighting for political attention in Egypt”.
and for financial and economic donations. In 1931 engineers of the Egyptian govern-
Gaston Maspero, the French Egyptologist ment repaired the head of the Sphinx. Part
and second director of the Egyptian Mu- of its headdress had fallen off in 1926 due to
seum in Cairo, conducted a survey of the erosion, which had also cut deeply into its
Sphinx in 1886. He concluded that because neck.
the Dream Stela showed the cartouche of
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Sphinx_of_Giza
