Sphinx Needed Excavation Millennia Ago

The Great Sphinx of Giza is so ancient that by around 1400 BCE, drifting sand had already buried much of its body up to roughly its neck or shoulders. The future Pharaoh Thutmose IV organized one of the earliest documented attempts to excavate and clear the monument, later placing the famous Dream Stele between its paws. In other words, people were digging the Sphinx out of the sand roughly 3,400 years ago, long before anything resembling modern archaeology existed.

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