As a strong wind blew off Egypt's western desert last Monday night, the Sphinx, that most enigmatic of monuments, emerged from a silver-starred white shroud to present its new, improved self to the world.
Of the many dignitaries watching the unveiling of the long-awaited facelift, which was followed by speeches and a laser and classical music show, none was happier than Dr Zahi Hawass, the man who oversaw the painstaking 10-year restoration of what is arguably the world's most famous sculpture.
For a long time the Sphinx was sick, but now it is smiling again, he said proudly.
For Egyptians, the half man, half lion statue known as Abul Hol, or the Terrible One, is a national icon symbolising a glorious past. But by the late 1980s it had become a national disgrace when, after a series of botched restorations, large chunks of limestone fell off its shoulder.
According to Hawass the work leading up to that shocking moment was cosmetic and poorly supervised. They did not plan it properly and they left the workmen to do the work, he said, so they made mistakes.
Not surprisingly the international outcry that followed made the Egyptians highly sensitive to charges that they were not qualified to look after a world heritage site. The then director of antiquities was fired and a committee was formed to launch a new restoration on a more professional basis.
For the Sphinx, watching impassively from the desert, this was the least that could be done. Apart from the damaging restoration, uncontrolled urban growth in the 1970s and 1980s had brought the worst of the 20th century right up to it. A huge slum, Nezlet el-Samaan, had grown up in front of it, directly over the ancient ruins of the city that once housed the builders of the pyramids. Visitors to the site are now bombarded with neon fast-food signs poking up from the jumble of tourist shops, stables and houses that sit only metres away from the statue's enclosure.
Even worse, for years the illegally-built suburb lacked a sewage system. Water and sewage seeped into the ground and were absorbed by the nearby monuments, making them even more vulnerable to the elements. Eventually a sewage system was built, a tacit acknowledgement that the slum was there to stay.
Despite the indignities the Sphinx remains a remarkable sight. Carved from the Giza bedrock some 4,500 years ago to guard the pyramid of the pharaoh Khafre (Chephren), it was the first truly colossal sculpture in ancient Egypt, towering some 20 metres high. With the body of a lion, symbol of the sun in many Near Eastern cultures, and the head of a pharaoh, giving it power and intelligence, it was a guarantor of maat or cosmic order for the ancient Egyptians.
Because the Sphinx's position was so precise - it was placed so that in ancient times the setting sun of the spring and autumn equinox would merge its shadow with that of the pyramid behind it - its builders were forced to fashion the sculpture from the bedrock they found in situ. But as they began working on the stone they encountered serious defects: huge fissures running through the bottom of two of the three geological layers from which it was carved.
This weakness is one of the reasons that the Sphinx is so vulnerable. Attempts to halt the deterioration of the lion-body go back as far as 1401 BC.
In that year a young prince took a nap near the statue and dreamed that it spoke to him, promising that if he cleared away the surrounding debris and restored its damaged body, he would become Pharaoh. The prince later placed limestone blocks around the eroding bedrock and eventually ruled Egypt as Tuthmose IV. He placed a plaque recounting the incident in front of the Sphinx, where it remains to this day.
More repairs were undertaken in later Pharaonic times and again in the Greco-Roman period, but as the Pharaonic religion wore out, the already ancient figure was neglected and sand built up around its body, preserving it from deterioration. When French explorers dug it out of the sand in the early 19th century, they unwittingly started the clock ticking again and throughout the 20th century archaeologists have been struggling to preserve its rapidly eroding body.
Ironically, the Sphinx's battered-looking head is the strongest part of the structure. Although archaeologists do not know when its beard came off (only 13 per cent of it was ever found and the fragments are now in the British and Egyptian Museums), the famously missing nose was destroyed by human hands. According to a 15th century Egyptian chronicler a religious zealot, outraged to find locals still worshipping the pagan figure, vowed to destroy it. Try as he might, he only succeeded in smashing the statue's nose and popular legend has it that the destruction unleashed a curse on the area causing crops to fail.
The restoration unveiled this week used a combination of ancient and modern techniques to try to halt the damage that pollution, time and previous restorations have caused to the Sphinx's body. In a painstaking process, costing some $2.5 million, the team of Egyptian specialists mapped every nook and cranny of the statue, giving a number to every block covering the vulnerable lower area. They then removed the blocks, which were stuck on with concrete in the 1980s, and replaced them with far smaller ones, using the same dimensions Greco-Roman restorers did centuries before. A total of 12,478 blocks were used, and they are kept in place by a special natural mortar that will not damage the bedrock.
Although Dr Hawass and his colleagues are well aware that the Sphinx will continue to need constant attention, the restoration is seen as a vindication of their reputation as caretakers of one of the world's most ancient treasures.
For the Sphinx, still standing guard over Khafre's pyramid after so many thousands of years, it can only be hoped that this time they have got it right.