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Horemakhet: the Great Sphinx's name, Horus in the horizon
17 October 2026
Horemakhet is the name the Egyptians of the New Kingdom gave the Great Sphinx of Giza: ḥr-m-ꜣḫt, said "hor-em-AKH-et", "Horus in the horizon". They worshipped the statue as a sun god under that name, and the Greeks later turned it into Harmachis.
The name is three signs: a falcon, an owl and the sun rising between two hills. The name came late: by the 18th Dynasty, when it first appears, the statue was already more than a thousand years old, and what its builders called it is unknown.
Three signs write Horus in the horizon
The falcon (G5) is ḥr, Horus, the sky god whose living image was the king. The owl (G17) is the sound m, here the little word "in". The last sign (N27) shows a sun disc sitting in a dip between two mountains: ꜣḫt, "akhet", the horizon where the sun is born each morning and sinks each evening.
Put together the name reads Hor-em-akhet. In longer forms the god is joined to other suns. On the Dream Stela he calls himself Hor-em-akhet-Khepri-Ra-Atum: the scarab (L1) writes Khepri, the morning sun. The disc (N5) writes Ra, the sun at noon. The sledge (U15), read tm, writes Atum, the evening sun.
The Sphinx is a lion with a king's head
The Sphinx was carved out of the bedrock of the Giza plateau, the same stone the pyramid builders quarried. It is about 73 metres long and 20 metres high. The body is a lying lion. The head wears the nemes, the striped linen headcloth of kings.
The nemes may explain the name. Kings were Horus on earth, so a royal head on a lion read naturally as Horus. Seen from the east-southeast, the Sphinx's head also sits between the pyramids of Khufu and Khafre on the skyline, like the sun disc between two hills in the akhet sign. The team of Mark Lehner, who mapped the Sphinx, has pointed out that likeness.
The Dream Stela stands between its paws
The Sphinx carries no inscription of its own. Its name comes from what later kings set up around it. The most famous is the Dream Stela of Thutmose IV, a granite slab about 3.6 metres tall, dated to the first year of his reign, around 1400 BC. The stone itself is thought to be a recycled door lintel from Khafre's pyramid temple.
The text tells how Prince Thutmose, out hunting, rested in the Sphinx's shadow at midday and fell asleep. The god spoke to him like a father to a son, promised him the kingship and asked him to clear away the sand piled against the statue. Scenes at the top show Thutmose twice, offering to the Sphinx under a winged sun disc. About half the text is lost, and the lower lines are worn.
Egyptologists read the dream as royal propaganda: a god choosing the king. Some take it as a hint that Thutmose was not first in line to the throne.
Visitors can still read the name at Giza
The cult began a little earlier. Amenhotep II, Thutmose IV's father, built a temple to Horemakhet northeast of the Sphinx, and later visitors left stelae there. In the New Kingdom the Sphinx was also linked with Hauron, a Canaanite god, which may lie behind its Arabic name, Abu el-Hol.
At Giza, you can see the Dream Stela from the viewing area in front of the Sphinx. A zoom lens and a cropped photo help: the scene and cartouches at the top are larger and better kept than the lines below. Look for the akhet sign wherever the god's name appears in the text.
Khafre is the likeliest builder
Most Egyptologists credit Khafre, around 2558 to 2532 BC. The Sphinx and its temple sit beside the causeway and valley temple of his pyramid, and Lehner's mapping showed the Sphinx, its temple and Khafre's valley temple were made in one quarrying and building project. The face is usually compared with his statues.
No text of his time names the Sphinx, so the link is an inference. Some scholars have proposed his father Khufu or his brother Djedefre instead. An early copy of the Dream Stela showed the syllable ḫꜥf, "khaf", in a damaged line, and Thomas Young added a sun to complete Khafre's name. That part of the stone flaked away before the 1925 excavation, and what the line said about Khafre is unknown.
A popular story blames Napoleon's soldiers for the missing nose. Frederic Norden's drawings of 1737 already show it gone, and chisel marks show it was cut off on purpose.
The horizon sign is a sun between two hills
Draw two rounded hills side by side with a dip between them, then set a full circle in the dip to make akhet. Add the falcon and the owl in front of it and you have written the Sphinx's New Kingdom name.
The same sign turns up in the name of Akhenaten's city, Akhetaten, "Horizon of the Aten", and in Khufu's pyramid, which the Egyptians called Akhet Khufu.
Questions
What does Horemakhet mean?
"Horus in the horizon", or "Horus who is in the horizon". Horus is the falcon god of kingship, and the horizon is the place where the sun rises and sets.
Is Horemakhet the same as Harmachis and Ra-Horakhty?
Harmachis is the Greek spelling of Horemakhet. Ra-Horakhty, "Ra-Horus of the two horizons", is a related sun god with a different name, and the two are often confused.
How old is the Great Sphinx?
If it was made for Khafre, about 4,500 years old. Claims that it is thousands of years older rest on theories about water erosion that most Egyptologists reject.
Glossary
- cartouche
- An oval ring drawn around a royal name, a loop of rope tied at one end. Kings wrote their two main names in cartouches.
- dynasty
- A line of kings counted together, usually one family. Egyptologists number Egypt's kings in about 30 dynasties, following the priest Manetho.
- New Kingdom
- Egypt's age of empire, about 1550 to 1069 BC, the time of Hatshepsut, Akhenaten, Tutankhamun and Ramesses II.
- pyramid
- A royal tomb with four sloping sides meeting at a point, built in the Old and Middle Kingdoms. Khufu's Great Pyramid at Giza is the largest.
- scarab
- The dung beetle, sign of the rising sun and of the word ḫpr, "to come into being". Carved scarabs were used as seals and amulets.
- sphinx
- A statue with the body of a lion and the head of a king, a guardian of temples and tombs. The Great Sphinx at Giza is the largest.
- stela
- An upright stone slab carved with words and pictures, set up in tombs and temples or to mark a border.
- temple
- The house of a god, where priests served the god's statue. Temples for dead kings kept up their offerings after death.
People in this article
Where to see it
- Great Sphinx of Giza monument
- Giza Pyramids site
Sources
More to read
- The Aten in hieroglyphs: the sun disc of Akhenaten The Aten hieroglyph: how the sun disc's name is written, why the god has two cartouches like a king, and the rays ending in hands on Amarna reliefs.
- Amun's name in hieroglyphs: the god inside Tutankhamun and Amenhotep Amun's name in hieroglyphics: the reed, game board and water that spell imn, the hidden one, and how they sit in the names of Tutankhamun and Amenhotep.
- Eye of Horus vs Eye of Ra: the difference, and how to tell them apart Eye of Horus vs Eye of Ra: the moon eye that heals and the sun eye that attacks as a goddess. The difference, left and right, and clues on real objects.