Egyptian Sphinx Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

Trivia quiz questions with answers about the Sphinx.

Egyptian Sphinx Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

What is the Great Sphinx?
A: The Great Sphinx, commonly referred to as the Sphinx of Giza or just the Sphinx, is a limestone statue of a reclining sphinx, a mythical creature with the body of a lion and the head of a human.

Facing directly from West to East, it stands on the what?
A: Giza Plateau on the west bank of the Nile in Giza, Egypt.

The face of the Sphinx is generally believed to represent what?
A: The Pharaoh Khafre.

Cut from the bedrock, the original shape of the Sphinx has been what?
A: Restored with layers of blocks.

How long is it from paw to tail?
A: 73 meters (240 ft).

It is the oldest known monumental sculpture in Egypt and is commonly believed to have been built by whom?
A: Ancient Egyptians of the Old Kingdom during the reign of the Pharaoh Khafre (c. 2558–2532 BC).

The Sphinx is a monolith carved into what?
A: The bedrock of the plateau, which also served as the quarry for the pyramids and other monuments in the area.

The nummulitic limestone of the area consists of layers which offer differing resistance to what?
A: Erosion (mostly caused by wind and windblown sand).

This has caused the uneven degradation apparent in what?
A: The Sphinx's body.

The lowest part of the body, including the legs, is what?
A: Solid rock.

The body of the lion up to its neck is fashioned from what?
A: Softer layers that have suffered considerable disintegration.

The layer in which the head was sculpted is what?
A: Much harder.

It is impossible to identify what name the creators called their statue, as the Great Sphinx does not appear in any what?
A: Any known inscription of the Old Kingdom and there are no inscriptions anywhere describing its construction or its original purpose.

In the New Kingdom, the Sphinx was called what?
A: Hor-em-akhet.

The commonly used name "Sphinx" was given to it in classical antiquity, about how long after the commonly accepted date of its construction?
A: 2000 years.

Though there have been conflicting evidence and viewpoints over the years, the view held by modern Egyptology at large remains that the Great Sphinx was built when?
A: In approximately 2500 BC for the pharaoh Khafra, the builder of the Second Pyramid at Giza.

The Sphinx Temple was built using blocks cut from the what?
A: The Sphinx enclosure.

Those of the Valley Temple were quarried from the plateau, some of the largest weighing upwards of how much?
A: 100 tons.

A diorite statue of Khafre, which was discovered buried upside down along with other debris in the Valley Temple, is claimed as what?
A: Support for the Khafra theory.

Theories held by academic Egyptologists regarding the builder of the Sphinx and the date of its construction are not universally accepted, and various persons have proposed what?
A: Alternative hypotheses about both the builder and dating.

Some early Egyptologists and excavators of the Giza pyramid complex believed the Great Sphinx and associated temples to predate what?
A: The fourth dynasty rule of Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure.

In 1857, Auguste Mariette, founder of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, unearthed the much later Inventory Stela which tells what?
A: How Khufu came upon the Sphinx, already buried in sand.

Although certain tracts on the Stela are considered good evidence, this passage is widely dismissed as what?
A: Late Period historical revisionism, a purposeful fake, created by the local priests with the attempt to certify the contemporary Isis temple an ancient history it never had.

Such acts became common when religious institutions such as temples, shrines and priest's domains were doing what?
A: Fighting for political attention and for financial and economic donations.

Gaston Maspero, the French Egyptologist and second director of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, did what in 1886?
A: Conducted a survey of the Sphinx.

What did he conclude?
A: He concluded that because the Dream stela showed the cartouche of Khafre in line thirteen, it was he who was responsible for the excavation and therefore the Sphinx must predate Khafre and his predecessors—possibly Dynasty IV, c. 2575–2467 BC.

English Egyptologist E. A. Wallis Budge agreed that the Sphinx predated Khafre's reign, writing what, in The Gods of the Egyptians (1914)?
A: "This marvelous object [the Great Sphinx] was in existence in the days of Khafre, or Khephren, and it is probable that it is a very great deal older than his reign and that it dates from the end of the archaic period [c. 2686 BC]."

Maspero believed the Sphinx to be what?
A: "the most ancient monument in Egypt".

Frank Domingo, a forensic scientist in the New York City Police Department and an expert forensic anthropologist used detailed measurements of the Sphinx, forensic drawings and computer imaging to conclude what?
A: That the face depicted on the Sphinx is not the same face as is depicted on a statue attributed to Khafra.

The Sphinx water erosion hypothesis contends that the main type of weathering evident on the enclosure walls of the Great Sphinx could only have been caused by what?
A: Prolonged and extensive rainfall, and must therefore predate the time of the pharaoh Khafra.

Colin Reader, a British geologist, studied the erosion patterns and noticed that they are found predominantly on what?
A: The western enclosure wall and not on the Sphinx itself.

Author Robert K. G. Temple proposes that the Sphinx was originally a statue of what?
A: The Jackal-Dog Anubis, the God of the Necropolis, and that its face was re-carved in the likeness of a Middle Kingdom pharaoh, Amenemhet II.

Temple bases his identification on the style of what?
A: The eye make-up and style of the pleats on the headdress.

At some unknown time the Giza Necropolis was abandoned, and the Sphinx was eventually buried up to what in sand?
A: Its shoulders.

The first documented attempt at an excavation dates to c. 1400 BC, when the young Thutmose IV (1401–1391 or 1397–1388 BC) gathered a team and, after much effort, managed to do what?
A: Dig out the front paws.

Later, Ramesses II the Great (1279–1213 BC) may have what?
A: Undertaken a second excavation.

In AD 1817 the first modern archaeological dig, supervised by the Italian Giovanni Battista Caviglia, uncovered what?
A: The Sphinx's chest completely.

In the beginning of the year 1887, what were all made visible?
A: The chest, the paws, the altar, and plateau.

Flights of steps were unearthed, and finally what were taken of the great figure?
A: Accurate measurements.

The height from the lowest of the steps was found to be what?
A: One hundred feet.

The space between the paws was found to be what size?
A: Thirty-five feet long and ten feet wide.

When was the entire Sphinx was finally excavated?
A: 1925 to 1936.

In 1931 engineers of the Egyptian government repaired what?
A: The head of the Sphinx.

What part of it had fallen off in 1926 due to erosion?
A: Its headdress, which had also cut deeply into its neck.

This questionable repair was by the addition of a what?
A: A concrete collar between the headdress and the neck, creating an altered profile.

When were many renovations to the stone base and raw rock body done?
A: In the 1980s, and then redone in the 1990s

What is missing from the face?
A: The one-meter-wide nose.

Examination of the Sphinx's face shows that long rods or chisels were hammered into the nose, one down from the bridge and one beneath the nostril, then used to do what?
A: Pry the nose off.

Residues of what are visible on areas of the Sphinx's face?
A: Red pigment.

In the New Kingdom, the Sphinx became more specifically associated with what god?
A: The god Hor-em-akhet or "Horus-at-the-Horizon", which represented the pharaoh in his role as the Shesep-ankh (English: Living Image) of the god Atum.

From the 16th century far into the 19th century, observers repeatedly noted that the Sphinx has what?
A: The face, neck and breast of a woman.