What the monument actually is
The Great Sphinx is about 73 m long, 20 m high, and 19 m wide at the rear, carved from the Mokattam Formation limestone on the Giza Plateau and usually dated to the Old Kingdom (Khufu or Khafre period debates continue) [Wikipedia: Great Sphinx of Giza, checked 2026-10-19].
Because it is bedrock sculpture plus later masonry repairs, there is no tourist corridor through a chambered interior the way some pyramid packages sell ascending passages. Tour operators who imply "Sphinx interior" usually mean viewing platforms, the temple in front, or a different Giza underground feature entirely.
Known holes vs public access
| Feature | What it is | Public entry? |
|---|---|---|
| Head opening | Historic access; closed with a hatch by Baraize in 1926 | No |
| Perring's Hole (1837) | Boring behind the head/neck; rods stuck; later cleared | No |
| Major waist fissure | Natural bedrock split; roofed/sealed in 1926 restorations | No |
| Rump passage | Upper and lower shafts rediscovered 1980; dead-ends / groundwater | No |
| Sphinx Temple (in front) | Separate Old Kingdom temple ruins east of the statue | Viewing as site rules allow; not "inside the Sphinx" |
Wikipedia's "Holes and tunnels" section, drawing on Mark Lehner's documentation, is the checklist above in prose form: every famous opening has been entered by excavators and found limited, not a Hall of Records walkway.
Fringe claims of Atlantis vaults under the paws (Edgar Cayce and later) are filed under pseudohistory on the same page. Conservators keep the known shafts sealed; none of them is sold as a public walk-through of the statue.
What you can do at Giza instead
Stand at the designated viewpoints facing the Sphinx, photograph the Dream Stele area between the paws from allowed positions, and visit the associated temple remains when tickets and pathways permit.
If you want an interior experience on the plateau, that is a pyramid-entry ticket question (Khufu/Khafre/Menkaure rules change), not a Sphinx question. For another "how old / what is it really" monument page on this site, see how old is the Pantheon.