Overview
It was cut down into the bedrock rather than built up, which is why it sits in a hollow. The nose was gone by the fifteenth century, and the beard fragment is in the British Museum. Sand buried it to the shoulders for most of recorded history — the Dream Stele between its paws records Thutmose IV clearing it around 1400 BCE after a dream promised him the throne for doing so.
Highlights
The viewing terrace is the only public access; you cannot approach the paws. Come first thing, when the light is on the face and the plateau is nearly empty. The Valley Temple next to it is the same limestone and the same date, and shows what the Sphinx enclosure once framed.