Napoleon Bonaparte, tiny on a black horse, sits alone on a rise in the desert and faces the head of the Great Sphinx, which fills the right side of the canvas under a clear blue sky. Far away, small lines of French troops maneuver across the sand. The pyramids are missing from the view. The scene belongs to the French campaign in Egypt, before the Battle of the Pyramids on July 21, 1798.

The Fondation Napoléon says Jean-Léon Gérôme left out the pyramids so that the picture could stage a lone confrontation between Bonaparte and the Sphinx. The picture belongs to a group of canvases of Bonaparte in Cairo and the desert that Gérôme finished around 1867, as the centenary of Napoleon's birth approached. Gérôme first showed the canvas at the Salon of 1886 under the title Oedipus, comparing the man who freed Thebes with the hero who brought salvation to France. Cartoonists noticed that the Sphinx's head echoes Bonaparte's famous hat.

The painting is only about 24 by 40 inches (61.6 × 102.9 cm). It is at Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California.