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50 free The Great Sphinx trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Great Sphinx trivia starts simply, with the lion body, the human head, the limestone and the direction it faces, then gets into what Egyptologists actually argue about: was it Khafre, Khufu or the little-known Djedefre, and why is there still not one contemporary inscription that settles it? The quiz covers the New Kingdom cult of Hor-em-akhet, Thutmose IV's Dream Stele and the recycled door lintel it was carved on, Nero's staircase, Pliny's red face and the last emperor to bother with the statue. The middle section is the stuff people really want to know: the missing nose (not Napoleon; drawings from 1737 prove it), the Sufi accused of prying it off in 1378, the chisel marks that show it was deliberate, the beard, the paint traces, and the tunnels, shafts and hatches drilled by Vyse, Caviglia, Mariette and Baraize. It also asks about the concrete collar of 1931, why the middle of the body has crumbled, and the water-erosion and Atlantis theories that mainstream scholars reject. The final questions turn to the wider sphinx: androsphinxes and criosphinxes, Hatshepsut's sphinx in New York, and the riddle-asking monster Oedipus outwitted at Thebes. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the Great Sphinx, the Dream Stele, the sphinx in myth and the water-erosion hypothesis, with the supporting sentence attached to each question. Easy questions suit anyone who has seen a photo; the expert tier reaches Ludwig Borchardt, Thomas Young's cartouche and George Sandys.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Great Sphinx of Giza has the body of a lion and the head of what?
A human
Like most Egyptian sphinxes it has a man's head and no wings, unlike the winged, woman-headed Greek version.
Q 02From what kind of stone was the Great Sphinx carved?
Limestone
It was cut from the bedrock of the Eocene-aged Mokattam Formation, the same plateau that served as the quarry for the pyramids.
Q 03In which compass direction does the Great Sphinx face?
East
It sits on the west bank of the Nile, gazing towards the sunrise, which fits its later identity as a solar deity.
Q 04Roughly how long is the Great Sphinx from paw to tail?
73 metres
It is 19 metres wide at the rear haunches.
Q 05How high is the Great Sphinx from its base to the top of its head?
20 metres
The 1817 dig measured 100 feet from the lowest step, and the space between the paws at 35 feet long.
Q 06The Sphinx is dated to the reign of Khufu or which son, builder of Giza's second pyramid?
Khafre
Selim Hassan admitted in 1949 that not one contemporary inscription connects the Sphinx with that king; the evidence is circumstantial.
Q 07What is the Sphinx's status among Egyptian sculptures?
The oldest known monumental sculpture
It is part of the Memphite Necropolis and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Q 08Which pharaoh, per Vassil Dobrev's 2004 theory, may have built the Sphinx in the image of his father Khufu?
Djedefre
Djedefre was a half-brother of the second pyramid's builder; Dobrev argues the causeway to the second pyramid was built around an already existing Sphinx.
Q 09The Sphinx is a monolith, meaning it was made how?
Carved from a single mass of bedrock
Geologist Farouk El-Baz has suggested the head was carved first from a natural wind-sculpted ridge called a yardang.
Q 10What did Egyptians of the New Kingdom revere the Sphinx as?
The solar deity Hor-em-akhet
The name means 'Horus of the Horizon', Hellenised as Harmachis; a later pharaoh built a temple to the cult nearly a thousand years after the statue was carved.
Q 11Which pharaoh set up the Dream Stele between the Sphinx's paws around 1401 BC?
Thutmose IV
The stele records a dream in which he was told to clear the sand from the statue; it was rediscovered in 1818 during Caviglia's clearance.
Q 12The Dream Stele was recycled from what earlier architectural element?
A temple door lintel
Pivot sockets on the back of the granite slab match those at the temple threshold.
Q 13According to the Dream Stele, what was the prince doing on the Giza plateau before his nap?
Hunting and target shooting
Q 21With which Canaanite god did some ancient non-Egyptians identify the Sphinx?
Hauron
Medieval Arab writers such as al-Maqrizi called it Belhib, an Arabised Coptic name derived from the same god's Egyptian form.
Q 22Which popular story about the Sphinx's missing nose is false?
Napoleon's troops shot it off
Drawings from 1737 already show the nose gone, more than 60 years before the French arrived.
Q 23Which traveller's 1737 drawings prove the Sphinx's nose was already missing before Napoleon?
Frederic Louis Norden
His prints appeared in Voyage d'Egypte et de Nubie in 1755.
He was shooting copper bolts at a target and coursing lions in his chariot with two followers, 'while not a soul knew it'.
Q 14Roughly how much does the granite Dream Stele weigh?
15 tons
It is 3.6 metres tall and originally formed the back wall of a small open-air chapel between the paws.
Q 15Who inserted the glyph 'ra' into a damaged Dream Stele cartouche to complete a royal name?
Thomas Young
When the stele was re-excavated in 1925 the lines referring to 'Khaf' had flaked off entirely.
Q 16In the first century AD the Sphinx was cleared of sand in honour of which Roman emperor?
Nero
A monumental stairway more than 12 metres wide was built down to the paws; it was dismantled in 1931–32.
Q 17Which Roman writer described the face of the Sphinx as coloured red and gave measurements for it?
Pliny the Elder
Traces of red pigment survive on the face, and yellow and blue elsewhere; Mark Lehner says it was once 'decked out in gaudy comic book colours'.
Q 18Who is the last Roman emperor connected with the monument, around 200 AD?
Septimius Severus
After Roman power faded the sands swallowed the Sphinx once more.
Q 19The English word 'sphinx' comes from a Greek verb meaning what?
To squeeze
The link is with the Greek sphinx, who strangled anyone who failed her riddle; the name was applied to the Giza statue about 2,000 years after it was carved.
Q 20What does the medieval Egyptian Arabic name for the Sphinx, Abu al-Hawl, mean?
Father of terror
It may be a folk reinterpretation of the name of a Canaanite god with whom the statue was identified.
Q 24According to the historian al-Maqrizi, who broke off the Sphinx's nose in 1378?
Muhammad Sa'im al-Dahr, a Sufi
He was said to be outraged that peasants were making offerings to the statue for better harvests; locals blamed the encroaching sand on his act.
Q 25What physical evidence shows the nose was removed deliberately?
Marks from rods or chisels on the face
One mark sits at the bridge of the nose and another below the nostril; the nose was then apparently pried off.
Q 26Which Italian supervised the first modern archaeological dig at the Sphinx in 1817, uncovering its chest?
Giovanni Battista Caviglia
His clearance the following year rediscovered the Dream Stele between the paws.
Q 27Which founder of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo unearthed the Inventory Stela in 1857?
Auguste Mariette
The stela is Late Period revisionism, probably faked by priests to give their Isis temple a fictitious ancient pedigree.
Q 28Which German Egyptologist argued the Sphinx dates to the Middle Kingdom and resembles Amenemhat III?
Ludwig Borchardt
Most scholars stick with the Fourth Dynasty; Gaston Maspero's 1886 survey even argued it predated the king usually credited.
Q 29What did engineers add to the Sphinx in 1931 after part of the headdress fell off in 1926?
A concrete collar at the neck
The questionable repair altered the statue's profile; the base was reworked again in the 1980s and 1990s.
Q 30Why has the middle of the Sphinx's body eroded far more than the head?
Its limestone layer is softer
The head was sculpted from a harder stone layer, and the lowest part including the legs is solid rock.