| in Did You Know Facts
The Sculpture Has Been Buried Under Sand For Quite Some Time.
Several times over its lengthy existence, the Great Sphinx has been destroyed by the shifting sands of the Egyptian desert. Thutmose IV, who would shortly rise to the throne as Egypt's king, was responsible for the first documented repair of the nearly totally buried Sphinx. The monument was once again covered by the three millennia that followed. By the nineteenth century, the statue's front arms had sunk well into Giza's walking surface. It wasn't until the 1920s that the statue was fully unearthed again.