the.com/great sphinx

means A colossal limestone statue in Giza with a lion's body and a human head, carved from a single outcrop of bedrock to guard the pyramid necropolis.

from 'Sphinx' comes from Greek, likely tied to 'sphingein' (to squeeze or strangle) — a nod to the Greek sphinx myth, the riddling monster who strangled those who failed her question. But the Egyptian statue predates that Greek word by over a thousand years and wasn't called a sphinx by its builders; the name got borrowed backward onto it once Greek travelers saw the creature and reached for the nearest familiar monster to describe it. The famous missing nose has its own folk etymology — often blamed on Napoleon's soldiers using it for target practice — but sketches made before Napoleon was born already show it noseless, so that story is almost certainly false; the real cause was likely deliberate damage or erosion centuries earlier.