Herodotus, in 440 b.c. while traveling about Egypt nevertheless makes no mention of the Sphinx in his Histories... from which it is inferred that the Sphinx was completely buried in sand at the time... in his Egypt Book, Herodotus comments in his observations of Egyptian life, that the Egyptian women 'go to the loo' standing up, and the men, sitting down... at that curiosity I turned quickly to an explanatory note at the back of the book, where it was revealed that the political power at the time devised an elabrate method of political correctnes... including the foregoing... to weaken the men... for instance, it was also part of this political correctness that men stayed home and weaved on looms while women ran the stores in town... from which the great tradition of Egyptian cotton weaving may be derived... one may notice the similar 'sitting down' campaign that is waged today from time to time in Scandanavian countries... Herodotus' ingenius invention of history... would that history were taught as a useful resource today in the schools...
... yet... about Herodotus... he was so inquisitive that had the Sphinx been above sand... it would have occupied a good part of Book 2 of The Histories... something reported by Herodotus indirectly, as it were, from his not reporting anything at all about the Sphinx...