| Material: | Granite |
| Created: | 2550 BC |
| Discovered Place: | Tanis, Sharqia, Egypt |
| Location: | Paris, Ile-de-France, France |
The Great Sphinx of Tanis is a granite sculpture of a sphinx, whose date may be as early as the 26th century BC. It was discovered in the ruins of the Temple of Amun-Ra in Tanis, Egypt's capital during the 21st Dynasty and the 23rd Dynasty. It was created much earlier, but when exactly remains debated with hypotheses of the 4th Dynasty or the 12th Dynasty.[1] All that is left of its original inscription are the parts alluding to pharaohs Amenemhat II (12th Dynasty), Merneptah (19th Dynasty) and Shoshenq I (22nd Dynasty).
The Louvre acquired it in 1826 as part of the second Egyptian collection of Henry Salt, whose purchase was led on behalf of the French state by Jean-François Champollion. Initially, plans were made to place it outdoors, at the center of the Cour Carrée,[2] but they were not implemented. Instead, the sphinx was exhibited in the museum's courtyard, since then known as the French: cour du Sphinx, from 1828 until 1848,[3] when it was relocated to the French: galerie Henri IV, which is still the main monumental sculpture room of the museum's Egyptian Department. In the mid-1930s, the Sphinx was transferred to its present location in the crypt created by Louvre architect Albert Ferran to connect the two halves of the southern wing of the Cour Carrée.