I looked all over for a date and got everything from “early 1800s” to “late 1800s” but nothing exact, so I had to make an educated guess. The first cameras practical enough to take such a photo were developed around 1840 and the excavations began in 1867.
Is it just a fabrication that Germans in WWII shot off the nose, then? Because it looks as if it’s already missing the nose here.
It’s true. Hitler wanted to move the Sphinx to his base on the other side of the moon. Of course, moving the whole thing would be too difficult, so they only took the nose.
Strangely the recent documentation doesn’t mention that.
As far as I know, that is a myth. It fell off in antiquity.
Allegedly, it happened around 50 B.C.
https://www.smithsonianjourneys.org/blogs/blog/2020/05/20/photo-what-happened-to-the-sphinxs-nose/
It is possible it was destroyed by a Muslim for religious reasons though it is impossible to truly confirm.
As the article is lacking some information, here is a translstion of a part of the German Wikipedia article:
TLDR: As the Great Sphinx still has had its nose around 1200 A.D. and was already noseless in 1738, its nose must have been destroyed in the meantime, supposedly by some furious sheikh in 1378.