Yet the great enigma of the bearded giant Sphinx remains unsolved! When and by whom was this colossus raised, and what was its signification? We must leave this question to be decided by our future and more fortunate successors. It is almost half-buried in sand, and the granite stele of eleven feet in height between his paws, forming alone the back wall of a small temple erected here, was altogether concealed; for the immense excavations which were undertaken by Caviglia, in 1818, have long since tracelessly disappeared. By the labour of some sixty to eighty persons for several days, we arrived almost at the base of the stele, which I had immediately sketched, pressed in paper, and cast, in order to erect it at Berlin. This stele, on which the Sphinx itself is represented, was erected by Tuthmosis IV., and is dated in the first years of his government; he must therefore have found the colossus there. We are accustomed to find the Sphinx in Egypt used as the sign for a king, and, indeed, usually as some particular king, whose features it would appear to preserve, and therefore they are always Androsphinxes, with the solitary exception of a female Sphinx, which represents the wife of King Horus. In hieroglyphical writings the Sphinx is named Neb, “the Lord,” and forms, among other instances, the middle syllable of the name of King Necta-neb-us. But what king is represented by the monster? It stands before the second pyramid, that of Shafra (Chephren), not directly in the axis, but parallel with the sides of the temple lying before it, and precisely as if the northern rock by the Sphinx had been intended for a corresponding sculpture; besides this, it was usual for Sphinxes, Rams, statues, and obelisks, to be placed in pairs before the entrances of the temples. What a mighty impression, however, would two such giant guardians, between which the ancient pathway to the temple of Chephren led, have made upon the approaching worshipper! They would have been worthy of that age of colossal monuments, and in right proportions to the pyramid behind. I cannot deny that this connection would best satisfy me. What would have induced the Thebaïc kings of the eighteenth dynasty, the only ones of the New Empire to be thought of, to adorn the Memphitic Necropolis with such a world-wonder without any connection with its surrounding objects? Add to this, that in an almost destroyed line of the Tuthmosis stele, King Chephren is named; a portion of his royal cartouche, unfortunately quite single, is yet preserved; it undoubtedly had some reference to the builder of the pyramid lying behind it.