Napoleon's soldiers did not shoot off the Sphinx's nose. It was gone before they arrived.

The story that French soldiers used the nose for target practice is popular but does not fit the evidence. The Danish naval captain and artist Frederic Louis Norden travelled in Egypt in 1737 and sketched the Sphinx. His drawings, published in 1755, clearly show a face without a nose. That was about sixty years before Napoleon's army arrived.

Earlier written sources point to deliberate damage. The Egyptian historian al-Maqrizi, writing in the fifteenth century, reported that a man named Muhammad Sa'im al-Dahr defaced the Sphinx in 1378, reportedly angered that people were making offerings to it. Archaeologist Mark Lehner has also noted marks suggesting rods or chisels were hammered into the nose to pry it off.

So the nose was removed by people, but most likely centuries before Napoleon and for very different reasons.

The Great Sphinx was carved from the limestone bedrock of the Giza plateau, most likely during the reign of the pharaoh Khafre, around 2500 BC. It has a lion's body and a human head wearing a royal headdress, and it measures about 73 meters long and 20 meters high. Sand has buried it to the shoulders many times, which partly protected it.

Napoleon's 1798 expedition included scholars who studied and drew Egypt's monuments in detail, producing the huge Description de l'Égypte. Rather than damaging the Sphinx, these scholars helped spark Europe's fascination with ancient Egypt. The French expedition also found the Rosetta Stone, which led to the decoding of hieroglyphs.

Most Egyptologists link the Sphinx to Khafre because it sits beside his pyramid complex and causeway, and its temple was built with blocks quarried from around it.

Some alternative theories claim it is far older, but these are not supported by the archaeology of the site, which fits neatly into the Fourth Dynasty.

Napoleon attracts many myths, from his height to the Sphinx. Stories like this often survive because they are vivid and have a clear villain. Historical evidence, in this case a dated drawing and a medieval text, tells a quieter but more interesting story.

The Sphinx has been restored many times since antiquity. Pharaohs, Romans and modern conservators have repaired its body with new blocks, and its weathered surface remains a constant conservation challenge.

Erosion is now the Sphinx's main enemy. Wind blown sand, groundwater salts and pollution from nearby Cairo all wear at the soft limestone. Conservation teams monitor the monument closely, and repairs over the centuries mean that parts of its lower body are now covered by later stone blocks rather than the original carved bedrock.