The Dream Stele stands between the paws of the Great Sphinx, placed there by pharaoh Thutmose IV around 1401 BC. The stele recounts how, as a prince, Thutmose fell asleep in the shadow of the Sphinx and received a divine promise of kingship in exchange for clearing the accumulated sand. He fulfilled the bargain, ascended the throne, and erected this granite monument — one of the earliest examples of royal propaganda in history.
The stele is granite, about 3.6 metres tall, and the hieroglyphic inscription is still legible in places despite millennia of weathering. It is enclosed within the Sphinx sanctuary and visible when you descend to the Sphinx enclosure. Easy to overlook amid the scale of the surrounding monuments, but worth pausing at — it is one of the oldest texts that gives a first-person account of a king's inner life, even if the account is politically shaped.