The huge sphinx that looms over the desert at Giza, probably built in about 2400 B.C.E., is another wonder. This sphinx is one of many sphinxes in ancient Egypt—all with bodies of lions and heads of other creatures, sometimes the kings themselves. No one knows for sure what the Great Sphinx signifies. But as the lion was traditionally associated with the sun and solar gods in the Near East, it is possible that the lion body and human head signified the union of the sun god with his “son,” the pharaoh.