Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 54-03, Section: A, page: 0984.

Adviser: William Kelly Simpson.

This study is the first systematic description of the Great Sphinx of Giza. It is an architectural, archaeological, and geo-archaeological approach, based on five years of field work at the Sphinx between 1979 and 1983.

The setting and layout of the site of the Sphinx are described and the history of previous research and excavation is reviewed in detail, including eight years of excavation results from the 1920s and 30s that are documented here for the first time. Published sources about the history and significance of the Sphinx are reviewed. The features of the Sphinx and its site are described on the basis of the field work. This work has led to the following conclusions:

Builders, under the 4th Dynasty pharaoh, Khafre (ca. 2,500 B.C.), quarried a series of terraces and a U-shaped sanctuary for the Sphinx. They extracted the stone in the form of multi-tonned core blocks that they used for making the Khafre Valley Temple and the Sphinx Temple on a terrace in front of the Sphinx. The Sphinx and its associated temple were not completed, and it is doubtful whether a cult service specific to the Sphinx was ever organized.

The Sphinx was mostly abandoned and neglected for nearly a millennium. Detailed documentation of the Sphinx's stratified masonry indicates that 18th Dynasty rulers carried out the earliest and largest reconstruction of the statue. At the same time, they quarried Khafre's pyramid and temples for granite and hauled away his colossal statues. They carried out their reconstruction of the Sphinx body with limestone slabs taken from Khafre's pyramid causeway. They made a royal chapel at the base of the Sphinx's chest and repaired of the divine beard, which was original to the 4th Dynasty. There is evidence that they placed a colossal royal statue above the chapel and under the beard to embody the selection of the sovereign and his protection by the Sphinx, now known as the god, Horemakhet.

The 18th Dynasty builders added masonry boxes to the flanks of the Sphinx body. These served as pedestals for naoi. The largest may have been for a statue of Osiris, or an Osiride statue of a king and related to the cult of Osiris, Lord of Rosetau. The Sphinx was repaired again, probably in the 26th Dynasty, and in Roman times. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)