The Great Sphinx was already more than a thousand years old when the name Horemakhet appears in New Kingdom evidence. Ancient Egypt Research Associates notes that hundreds of Old Kingdom tomb inscriptions at Giza have not produced recognisable titles for priests of the Sphinx, suggesting that the later cult was not simply a continuous institution from the Fourth Dynasty. The monument's original ancient name remains unknown.

Amenhotep II helped establish the New Kingdom religious landscape around the Sphinx. Foundation deposits and nearby monuments name Horemakhet, and a temple was built north-east of the great statue. The Sphinx enclosure itself was called Setepet, 'The Chosen', in New Kingdom sources, a name that may reflect the monument's association with royal legitimacy and visits by kings.

The Dream Stela of Thutmose IV stands between the Sphinx's paws and gives the cult its best-known narrative. The prince rests in the monument's shade at midday and dreams that the god addresses him. Horemakhet-Khepri-Ra-Atum promises him the crowns and kingship of Egypt and asks him to remove the sand that has buried the divine body. The stela was erected in the first year of Thutmose IV's reign and is cut from a reused granite doorway lintel from Khafre's mortuary complex.

The dream is often interpreted as royal legitimisation, but it should not be treated as proof that Thutmose IV certainly usurped an elder brother. The text presents direct divine selection and therefore served the politics of kingship, yet the exact succession circumstances remain debated. The safest conclusion is that the stela publicly links Thutmose's rule with the favour of Horemakhet.

Horemakhet was strongly solar. The Dream Stela joins his name with Khepri, Ra and Atum, forms associated with the sun's cyclical manifestation. AERA also notes the visual relationship between the Sphinx and the hieroglyph akhet, the horizon sign, when the statue is viewed against the pyramids. This observation helps explain the later name but should not be turned into proof that the entire Fourth Dynasty complex was originally designed to spell the hieroglyph.

The cult also absorbed a western Asiatic deity, Hauron. New Kingdom votive material uses forms such as Hauron-Horemakhet, showing that the Sphinx could become a meeting point between Egyptian solar kingship and a Levantine protective or desert god. The precise path of that identification remains debated, so it is better to record the syncretism than to assign it to one particular ethnic group of workers without qualification.

Horemakhet's identity is inseparable from the Sphinx but not identical with every aspect of the monument. The stone statue belongs to Old Kingdom royal architecture; Horemakhet is the later deity through whom New Kingdom Egyptians interpreted and worshipped that ancient image. Keeping the two records distinct allows Mythopouch to explain both the monument's physical history and the later theology that gave it a divine voice.