Sphinx Expedition Excavated Buried Monument

About 3,400 years ago, Egyptian prince Thutmose cleared sand from the Great Sphinx of Giza and restored it, according to a granite slab between its paws. The inscription says the Sphinx appeared in his dream and promised him the throne if he rescued it, and he later became Egyptian pharaoh Thutmose IV. Sand eventually buried the monument again up to its shoulders, and in the early 1800s, a Genoese adventurer named Giovanni Battista Caviglia led 160 men in a failed excavation attempt. Egyptian archaeologist Selim Hassan finally freed the Sphinx from the sand in the late 1930s.

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