Who shot a cannon ball at the sphinx?

The Sphinx has been damaged over time by natural means, such as erosion and sandstorms, as well as by vandalism and iconoclasm. In the 18th century, the Danish explorer Carsten Niebuhr suggested that a cannonball fired by Napoleon's troops might have caused damage to the body of the Sphinx, specifically, the missing nose, but there is no evidence or reliable information to support that theory.