Dream Stele


The Dream Stele, also called the Sphinx Stele, is an epigraphic stele erected between the front paws of the Great Sphinx of Giza by the Ancient Egyptian pharaoh Thutmose IV in the first year of the king's reign, 1401 BC, during the 18th Dynasty. As was common with other New Kingdom rulers, the epigraph makes claim to a divine legitimisation to pharaohship.

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Stele description

The Dream Stele is a vertical rectangular stele, 360 cm Ht, 218 cm W, 70 cm D. The upper scene lunette, shows Thutmose IV on the right and left making offerings to the Great Sphinx.

Medical analysis of the Stele

In 2012, Dr Hutan Ashrafian, a surgeon at Imperial College London, analysed the early death of Thutmose IV and the premature deaths of other Eighteenth Dynasty pharaohs. He concluded that their early deaths were likely a result of a familial temporal epilepsy. This would account for the untimely mortality in Thutmose IV and can also explain his religious vision described on his Dream Stele due to this type of epilepsy's association with intense spiritual visions and religiosity.