<P> Later, Ramesses II the Great (1279--1213 BC) may have undertaken a second excavation . </P> <P> Mark Lehner, an Egyptologist who has excavated and mapped the Giza plateau, originally asserted that there had been a far earlier renovation during the Old Kingdom (c. 2686--2184 BC), although he has subsequently recanted this "heretical" viewpoint . </P> <P> In AD 1817 the first modern archaeological dig, supervised by the Italian Giovanni Battista Caviglia, uncovered the Sphinx's chest completely . </P> <P> One of the people working on clearing the sands from around the Great Sphinx was Eugène Grébaut, a French Director of the Antiquities Service "In the beginning of the year 1887, the chest, the paws, the altar, and plateau were all made visible . Flights of steps were unearthed, and finally accurate measurements were taken of the great figures . The height from the lowest of the steps was found to be one hundred feet, and the space between the paws was found to be thirty - five feet long and ten feet wide . Here there was formerly an altar; and a stele of Thûtmosis IV was discovered, recording a dream in which he was ordered to clear away the sand that even then was gathering round the site of the Sphinx ." </P>

When was the great sphinx of giza discovered