Pharaoh’s Sphinx Found in Israel Stirs 4,500-Year Mystery

The clawed feet of an ancient sphinx engraved with a hieroglyphic inscription and belonging to a pyramid-building pharaoh shows evidence of Egyptian influence in the biblical state of Canaan, archaeologists said.

“Beloved by the divine manifestation ... that gave him eternal life,” reads the inscription that Hebrew University archaeologists say indicates the sphinx originally came from the ancient city of Heliopolis, or the biblical city of On, just north of modern Cairo.