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Post #10: The Greek Riddle Sphinx (Video)

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Post #10: The Greek Riddle Sphinx (Video)

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This video goes over the riddle that the Greek Sphinx would go over in Greek mythology.

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The Greek Riddle Sphinx: The Story of Oedipus and the Sphinx - (Greek Mythology Explained)

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Post #9: Who's face is on the Sphinx? (Video)

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Post #9: Who's face is on the Sphinx? (Video)

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This video goes over the theories of who's face is on the face of the Great Sphinx of Giza and how it was created.

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Post #8: This wasn't supposed to be a Sphinx (Video)

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Post #8: This wasn't supposed to be a Sphinx (Video)

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This Youtube video about the theory of the Sphinx not suppose to be an actual Sphinx is a very interesting watch. Some people claim that many cultures of Egypt have messed with the statue and that the head of the Sphinx was cut off and replaced with a human head. Many as well believe in the video that the statue was actually just originally a statue of a lion and that is all.

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Post #7: Uncovering Secrets of the Sphinx (Website)

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Post #7: Uncovering Secrets of the Sphinx (Website)

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This link goes over the secrets of the Sphinx. Mark Lehner America's best archaeologist covers the secrets about the Sphinx. He talks about his journey to Egypt and his will to uncover many secrets about the Sphinx that no one has before. As well, Mark Lehner goes over how the Sphinx was made back when it was crafted and as well how it was transported to where it is now.

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When Mark Lehner was a teenager in the late 1960s, his parents introduced him to the writings of the famed clairvoyant Edgar Cayce. During one of his trances, Cayce, who died in 1945, saw that refugees from the lost city of Atlantis buried their secrets in a hall of records under the Sphinx and that the hall would be discovered before the end of the 20th century.

In 1971, Lehner, a bored sophomore at the University of North Dakota, wasn't planning to search for lost civilizations, but he was "looking for something, a meaningful involvement." He dropped out of school, began hitchhiking and ended up in Virginia Beach, where he sought out Cayce's son, Hugh Lynn, the head of a holistic medicine and paranormal research foundation his father had started. When the foundation sponsored a group tour of the Giza plateau-the site of the Sphinx and the pyramids on the western outskirts of Cairo-Lehner tagged along. "It was hot and dusty and not very majestic," he remembers.

Still, he returned, finishing his undergraduate education at the American University of Cairo with support from Cayce's foundation. Even as he grew skeptical about a lost hall of records, the site's strange history exerted its pull. "There were thousands of tombs of real people, statues of real people with real names, and none of them figured in the Cayce stories," he says.

Lehner married an Egyptian woman and spent the ensuing years plying his drafting skills to win work mapping archaeological sites all over Egypt. In 1977, he joined Stanford Research Institute scientists using state-of-the-art remote-sensing equipment to analyze the bedrock under the Sphinx. They found only the cracks and fissures expected of ordinary limestone formations. Working closely with a young Egyptian archaeologist named Zahi Hawass, Lehner also explored and mapped a passage in the Sphinx's rump, concluding that treasure hunters likely had dug it after the statue was built.

No human endeavor has been more associated with mystery than the huge, ancient lion that has a human head and is seemingly resting on the rocky plateau a stroll from the great pyramids. Fortunately for Lehner, it wasn't just a metaphor that the Sphinx is a riddle. Little was known for certain about who erected it or when, what it represented and precisely how it related to the pharaonic monuments nearby. So Lehner settled in, working for five years out of a makeshift office between the Sphinx's colossal paws, subsisting on Nescafé and cheese sandwiches while he examined every square inch of the structure. He remembers "climbing all over the Sphinx like the Lilliputians on Gulliver, and mapping it stone by stone." The result was a uniquely detailed picture of the statue's worn, patched surface, which had been subjected to at least five major restoration efforts since 1,400 B.C. The research earned him a doctorate in Egyptology at Yale.

Recognized today as one of the world's leading Egyptologists and Sphinx authorities, Lehner has conducted field research at Giza during most of the 37 years since his first visit. (Hawass, his friend and frequent collaborator, is the secretary general of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities and controls access to the Sphinx, the pyramids and other government-owned sites and artifacts.) Applying his archaeological sleuthing to the surrounding two-square-mile Giza plateau with its pyramids, temples, quarries and thousands of tombs, Lehner helped confirm what others had speculated-that some parts of the Giza complex, the Sphinx included, make up a vast sacred machine designed to harness the power of the sun to sustain the earthly and divine order. And while he long ago gave up on the fabled library of Atlantis, it's curious, in light of his early wanderings, that he finally did discover a Lost City.

The Sphinx was not assembled piece by piece but was carved from a single mass of limestone exposed when workers dug a horseshoe-shaped quarry in the Giza plateau. Approximately 66 feet tall and 240 feet long, it is one of the largest and oldest monolithic statues in the world. None of the photos or sketches I'd seen prepared me for the scale. It was a humbling sensation to stand between the creature's paws, each twice my height and longer than a city bus. I gained sudden empathy for what a mouse must feel like when cornered by a cat.

Nobody knows its original name. Sphinx is the human-headed lion in ancient Greek mythology; the term likely came into use some 2,000 years after the statue was built. There are hundreds of tombs at Giza with hieroglyphic inscriptions dating back some 4,500 years, but not one mentions the statue. "The Egyptians didn't write history," says James Allen, an Egyptologist at Brown University, "so we have no solid evidence for what its builders thought the Sphinx was....Certainly something divine, presumably the image of a king, but beyond that is anyone's guess." Likewise, the statue's symbolism is unclear, though inscriptions from the era refer to Ruti, a double lion god that sat at the entrance to the underworld and guarded the horizon where the sun rose and set.

The face, though better preserved than most of the statue, has been battered by centuries of weathering and vandalism. In 1402, an Arab historian reported that a Sufi zealot had disfigured it "to remedy some religious errors." Yet there are clues to what the face looked like in its prime. Archaeological excavations in the early 19th century found pieces of its carved stone beard and a royal cobra emblem from its headdress. Residues of red pigment are still visible on the face, leading researchers to conclude that at some point, the Sphinx's entire visage was painted red. Traces of blue and yellow paint elsewhere suggest to Lehner that the Sphinx was once decked out in gaudy comic book colors.

For thousands of years, sand buried the colossus up to its shoulders, creating a vast disembodied head atop the eastern edge of the Sahara. Then, in 1817, a Genoese adventurer, Capt. Giovanni Battista Caviglia, led 160 men in the first modern attempt to dig out the Sphinx. They could not hold back the sand, which poured into their excavation pits nearly as fast as they could dig it out. The Egyptian archaeologist Selim Hassan finally freed the statue from the sand in the late 1930s. "The Sphinx has thus emerged into the landscape out of shadows of what seemed to be an impenetrable oblivion," the New York Times declared.

The question of who built the Sphinx has long vexed Egyptologists and archaeologists. Lehner, Hawass and others agree it was Pharaoh Khafre, who ruled Egypt during the Old Kingdom, which began around 2,600 B.C. and lasted some 500 years before giving way to civil war and famine. It's known from hieroglyphic texts that Khafre's father, Khufu, built the 481-foot-tall Great Pyramid, a quarter mile from where the Sphinx would later be built. Khafre, following a tough act, constructed his own pyramid, ten feet shorter than his father's, also a quarter of a mile behind the Sphinx. Some of the evidence linking Khafre with the Sphinx comes from Lehner's research, but the idea dates back to 1853.

That's when a French archaeologist named Auguste Mariette unearthed a life-size statue of Khafre, carved with startling realism from black volcanic rock, amid the ruins of a building he discovered adjacent to the Sphinx that would later be called the Valley Temple. What's more, Mariette found the remnants of a stone causeway-a paved, processional road-connecting the Valley Temple to a mortuary temple next to Khafre's pyramid. Then, in 1925, French archaeologist and engineer Emile Baraize probed the sand directly in front of the Sphinx and discovered yet another Old Kingdom building-now called the Sphinx Temple-strikingly similar in its ground plan to the ruins Mariette had already found.

Despite these clues that a single master building plan tied the Sphinx to Khafre's pyramid and his temples, some experts continued to speculate that Khufu or other pharaohs had built the statue. Then, in 1980, Lehner recruited a young German geologist, Tom Aigner, who suggested a novel way of showing that the Sphinx was an integral part of Khafre's larger building complex. Limestone is the result of mud, coral and the shells of plankton-like creatures compressed together over tens of millions of years. Looking at samples from the Sphinx Temple and the Sphinx itself, Aigner and Lehner inventoried the different fossils making up the limestone. The fossil fingerprints showed that the blocks used to build the wall of the temple must have come from the ditch surrounding the Sphinx. Apparently, workmen, probably using ropes and wooden sledges, hauled away the quarried blocks to construct the temple as the Sphinx was being carved out of the stone.

That Khafre arranged for construction of his pyramid, the temples and the Sphinx seems increasingly likely. "Most scholars believe, as I do," Hawass wrote in his 2006 book, Mountain of the Pharaohs, "that the Sphinx represents Khafre and forms an integral part of his pyramid complex."

But who carried out the backbreaking work of creating the Sphinx? In 1990, an American tourist was riding in the desert half a mile south of the Sphinx when she was thrown from her horse after it stumbled on a low mud-brick wall. Hawass investigated and discovered an Old Kingdom cemetery. Some 600 people were buried there, with tombs belonging to overseers-identified by inscriptions recording their names and titles-surrounded by the humbler tombs of ordinary laborers.

Near the cemetery, nine years later, Lehner discovered his Lost City. He and Hawass had been aware since the mid-1980s that there were buildings at that site. But it wasn't until they excavated and mapped the area that they realized it was a settlement bigger than ten football fields and dating to Khafre's reign. At its heart were four clusters of eight long mud-brick barracks. Each structure had the elements of an ordinary house-a pillared porch, sleeping platforms and a kitchen-that was enlarged to accommodate around 50 people sleeping side by side. The barracks, Lehner says, could have accommodated between 1,600 to 2,000 workers-or more, if the sleeping quarters were on two levels. The workers' diet indicates they weren't slaves. Lehner's team found remains of mostly male cattle under 2 years old-in other words, prime beef. Lehner thinks ordinary Egyptians may have rotated in and out of the work crew under some sort of national service or feudal obligation to their superiors.

This past fall, at the behest of "Nova" documentary makers, Lehner and Rick Brown, a professor of sculpture at the Massachusetts College of Art, attempted to learn more about construction of the Sphinx by sculpting a scaled-down version of its missing nose from a limestone block, using replicas of ancient tools found on the Giza plateau and depicted in tomb paintings. Forty-five centuries ago, the Egyptians lacked iron or bronze tools. They mainly used stone hammers, along with copper chisels for detailed finished work.

Bashing away in the yard of Brown's studio near Boston, Brown, assisted by art students, found that the copper chisels became blunt after only a few blows before they had to be resharpened in a forge that Brown constructed out of a charcoal furnace. Lehner and Brown estimate one laborer might carve a cubic foot of stone in a week. At that rate, they say, it would take 100 people three years to complete the Sphinx.

Exactly what Khafre wanted the Sphinx to do for him or his kingdom is a matter of debate, but Lehner has theories about that, too, based partly on his work at the Sphinx Temple. Remnants of the temple walls are visible today in front of the Sphinx. They surround a courtyard enclosed by 24 pillars. The temple plan is laid out on an east-west axis, clearly marked by a pair of small niches or sanctuaries, each about the size of a closet. The Swiss archaeologist Herbert Ricke, who studied the temple in the late 1960s, concluded the axis symbolized the movements of the sun; an east-west line points to where the sun rises and sets twice a year at the equinoxes, halfway between midsummer and midwinter. Ricke further argued that each pillar represented an hour in the sun's daily circuit.

Lehner spotted something perhaps even more remarkable. If you stand in the eastern niche during sunset at the March or September equinoxes, you see a dramatic astronomical event: the sun appears to sink into the shoulder of the Sphinx and, beyond that, into the south side of the Pyramid of Khafre on the horizon. "At the very same moment," Lehner says, "the shadow of the Sphinx and the shadow of the pyramid, both symbols of the king, become merged silhouettes. The Sphinx itself, it seems, symbolized the pharaoh presenting offerings to the sun god in the court of the temple." Hawass concurs, saying the Sphinx represents Khafre as Horus, the Egyptians' revered royal falcon god, "who is giving offerings with his two paws to his father, Khufu, incarnated as the sun god, Ra, who rises and sets in that temple."

Equally intriguing, Lehner discovered that when one stands near the Sphinx during the summer solstice, the sun appears to set midway between the silhouettes of the pyramids of Khafre and Khufu. The scene resembles the hieroglyph akhet, which can be translated as "horizon" but also symbolized the cycle of life and rebirth. "Even if coincidental, it is hard to imagine the Egyptians not seeing this ideogram," Lehner wrote in the Archive of Oriental Research. "If somehow intentional, it ranks as an example of architectural illusionism on a grand, maybe the grandest, scale."

If Lehner and Hawass are right, Khafre's architects arranged for solar events to link the pyramid, Sphinx and temple. Collectively, Lehner describes the complex as a cosmic engine, intended to harness the power of the sun and other gods to resurrect the soul of the pharaoh. This transformation not only guaranteed eternal life for the dead ruler but also sustained the universal natural order, including the passing of the seasons, the annual flooding of the Nile and the daily lives of the people. In this sacred cycle of death and revival, the Sphinx may have stood for many things: as an image of Khafre the dead king, as the sun god incarnated in the living ruler and as guardian of the underworld and the Giza tombs.

But it seems Khafre's vision was never fully realized. There are signs the Sphinx was unfinished. In 1978, in a corner of the statue's quarry, Hawass and Lehner found three stone blocks, abandoned as laborers were dragging them to build the Sphinx Temple. The north edge of the ditch surrounding the Sphinx contains segments of bedrock that are only partially quarried. Here the archaeologists also found the remnants of a workman's lunch and tool kit-fragments of a beer or water jar and stone hammers. Apparently, the workers walked off the job.

The enormous temple-and-Sphinx complex might have been the pharaoh's resurrection machine, but, Lehner is fond of saying, "nobody turned the key and switched it on." By the time the Old Kingdom finally broke apart around 2,130 B.C., the desert sands had begun to reclaim the Sphinx. It would sit ignored for the next seven centuries, when it spoke to a young royal.

According to the legend engraved on a pink granite slab between the Sphinx's paws, the Egyptian prince Thutmose went hunting in the desert, grew tired and lay down in the shade of the Sphinx. In a dream, the statue, calling itself Horemakhet-or Horus-in-the-Horizon, the earliest known Egyptian name for the statue-addressed him. It complained about its ruined body and the encroaching sand. Horemakhet then offered Thutmose the throne in exchange for help.

Whether or not the prince actually had this dream is unknown. But when he became Pharaoh Thutmose IV, he helped introduce a Sphinx-worshiping cult to the New Kingdom (1550-1070 B.C.). Across Egypt, sphinxes appeared everywhere in sculptures, reliefs and paintings, often depicted as a potent symbol of royalty and the sacred power of the sun.

Based on Lehner's analysis of the many layers of stone slabs placed like tilework over the Sphinx's crumbling surface, he believes the oldest slabs may date back as far as 3,400 years to Thutmose's time. In keeping with the legend of Horemakhet, Thutmose may well have led the first attempt to restore the Sphinx.

When Lehner is in the United States, typically about six months per year, he works out of an office in Boston, the headquarters of Ancient Egypt Research Associates, a nonprofit organization Lehner directs that excavates the Lost City and trains young Egyptologists. At a meeting with him at his office this past fall, he unrolled one of his countless maps of the Sphinx on a table. Pointing to a section where an old tunnel had cut into the statue, he said the elements had taken a toll on the Sphinx in the first few centuries after it was built. The porous rock soaks up moisture, degrading the limestone. For Lehner, this posed yet another riddle-what was the source of so much moisture in Giza's seemingly bone-dry desert?

The Sahara has not always been a wilderness of sand dunes. German climatologists Rudolph Kuper and Stefan Kröpelin, analyzing the radiocarbon dates of archaeological sites, recently concluded that the region's prevailing climate pattern changed around 8,500 B.C., with the monsoon rains that covered the tropics moving north. The desert sands sprouted rolling grasslands punctuated by verdant valleys, prompting people to begin settling the region in 7,000 B.C. Kuper and Kröpelin say this green Sahara came to an end between 3,500 B.C. and 1,500 B.C., when the monsoon belt returned to the tropics and the desert reemerged. That date range is 500 years later than prevailing theories had suggested.

Further studies led by Kröpelin revealed that the return to a desert climate was a gradual process spanning centuries. This transitional period was characterized by cycles of ever-decreasing rains and extended dry spells. Support for this theory can be found in recent research conducted by Judith Bunbury, a geologist at the University of Cambridge. After studying sediment samples in the Nile Valley, she concluded that climate change in the Giza region began early in the Old Kingdom, with desert sands arriving in force late in the era.

The work helps explain some of Lehner's findings. His investigations at the Lost City revealed that the site had eroded dramatically-with some structures reduced to ankle level over a period of three to four centuries after their construction. "So I had this realization," he says, "Oh my God, this buzz saw that cut our site down is probably what also eroded the Sphinx." In his view of the patterns of erosion on the Sphinx, intermittent wet periods dissolved salt deposits in the limestone, which recrystallized on the surface, causing softer stone to crumble while harder layers formed large flakes that would be blown away by desert winds. The Sphinx, Lehner says, was subjected to constant "scouring" during this transitional era of climate change.

"It's a theory in progress," says Lehner. "If I'm right, this episode could represent a kind of 'tipping point' between different climate states-from the wetter conditions of Khufu and Khafre's era to a much drier environment in the last centuries of the Old Kingdom."

The implication is that the Sphinx and the pyramids, epic feats of engineering and architecture, were built at the end of a special time of more dependable rainfall, when pharaohs could marshal labor forces on an epic scale. But then, over the centuries, the landscape dried out and harvests grew more precarious. The pharaoh's central authority gradually weakened, allowing provincial officials to assert themselves-culminating in an era of civil war.

Today, the Sphinx is still eroding. Three years ago, Egyptian authorities learned that sewage dumped in a nearby canal was causing a rise in the local water table. Moisture was drawn up into the body of the Sphinx and large flakes of limestone were peeling off the statue.

Hawass arranged for workers to drill test holes in the bedrock around the Sphinx. They found the water table was only 15 feet beneath the statue. Pumps have been installed nearby to divert the groundwater. So far, so good. "Never say to anyone that we saved the Sphinx," he says. "The Sphinx is the oldest patient in the world. All of us have to dedicate our lives to nursing the Sphinx all the time."

Evan Hadingham is senior science editor of the PBS series " Nova." Its " Riddles of the Sphinx " aired on January 19.

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After decades of research, American archaeologist Mark Lehner has some answers about the mysteries of the Egyptian colossus

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Post #6: New Sphinx uncovered in Egypt (Website)

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Post #6: New Sphinx uncovered in Egypt (Website)

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This link is very recent as it was published on September 18, 2018. This article highlights the story of a new sphinx being found in Egypt. The articfact is supposedly over 2,000 years and was found deep inside of an uncovered tomb. This Sphinx is nowhere close to the Great Sphinx of Giza in size as this Sphinx is only 38CM in height.

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(CNN) - Some amazing archeological finds involve daring adventures into hidden tombs. Others -- as is the case with the discovery of a beautiful new sphinx in Egypt -- simply involve a spot of drainage.

The newly uncovered sandstone statue, believed to be more than 2,000 years old, was revealed during work to lower the groundwater level in an ancient temple.

Images released by the ministry show a classic sphinx, with the body of lion and the head of a human, wearing a snake crown and headdress. The statue appears to be mostly intact.

Mostafa Waziri, general secretary of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, says the statue dates from the Ptolemaic era which ran from 300 BC to 30 BC. He said it was found close to the location where two sandstone reliefs of King Ptolemy V were recovered two months earlier.

More excavations are expected to take place around the temple to try to learn more about the sphinx, Abdel Moneim Saeed, general director of Aswan Antiquities, said, according to the ministry.

Sphinxes are recurring creatures in the mythologies of ancient Egyptian, Persian and Greek cultures. Their likeness are often found near tombs or religious buildings.

An ancient Egyptian tomb that was discovered in 1940 was opened to the public for the first time on September 8.

The most famous, the Great Sphinx of Giza, is believed to have been built next to the Nile river in about 2500 BC for the pharaoh Khafra, who also ordered construction of one of the pyramids of Giza.

While the Great Sphinx is an imposing 73 meters (240 feet) long and more than 20 meters high, the latest discovery at Kom Ombo is reported to be a mere 38 centimeters high.

Kom Ombo is considered unusual for an ancient Egyptian temple because it is dedicated to two separate deities -- crocodile god Sobek and falcon god Haroeris.

Three hundred crocodile mummies discovered near the temple are displayed in an adjacent Crocodile Museum.

Highlighting the fact that Egypt still has mysteries yet to uncover, the sphinx may help draw more visitors back to a country whose recent social and political upheavals led to a sharp decline in tourism.

The latest discovery follows the recent opening of the newly restored Tomb of Mehu, a 4,000-year-old burial site near Giza that has been hidden from public view since its discovery 80 years ago.

Also, near Aswan, another archeological excavation uncovered a sandstone coffin containing mummified human remains. The coffin, bearing hieroglyphics, was found in a site close to the banks of the Nile.

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(CNN) - Some amazing archeological finds involve daring adventures into hidden tombs. Others -- as is the case with the discovery of a beautiful new sphinx in Egypt -- simply involve a spot of drainage. The newly uncovered sandstone statue, believed to be more than 2,000 years old, was revealed during work to lower the groundwater level in an ancient temple.

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This link is the mainframe of information about the Sphinx. It is a wikipedia link so it gives everybody access to input their own information into the document and give everyone useful information about the beautiful creature. The wikipedia link touches on all subjects ranging from Egyptian culture all the way into how the Sphinx impacts pop culture in 2018. As well the wikipedia link gives useful information about similar creatures that readers may be interested in as well.

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In Greek tradition, the sphinx is a treacherous and merciless being with the head of a woman, the haunches of a lion, and the wings of a bird. According to Greek myth, she challenges those who encounter her to answer a riddle, and kills and eats them when they fail to solve the riddle. This deadly version of a sphinx appears in the myth and drama of Oedipus.

In Egyptian mythology, in contrast, the sphinx is typically depicted as a man (an androsphinx ( Ancient Greek: ανδρόσφιγξ)), and is seen as a benevolent representation of strength and ferocity, usually of a pharaoh. Unlike Greek or Levantine/Mesopotamian ones, Egyptian sphinxes were not winged.

Both the Greek and Egyptian sphinxes were thought of as guardians, and statues of them often flank the entrances to temples. During the Renaissance, the sphinx enjoyed a major revival in European decorative art. During this period, images of the sphinx were initially similar to the ancient Egyptian version, but when later exported to other cultures, the sphinx was often conceived of quite differently, partly due to varied translations of descriptions of the originals, and partly through the evolution of the concept as it was integrated into other cultural traditions.

However, depictions of the sphinx are generally associated with grand architectural structures, such as royal tombs or religious temples.

The word sphinx comes from the Greek Σφίγξ, associated by folk etymology with the verb σφίγγω ( sphíngō), meaning "to squeeze", "to tighten up". This name may be derived from the fact that lions kill their prey by strangulation, biting the throat of prey and holding them down until they die. However, the historian Susan Wise Bauer suggests that the word "sphinx" was instead a Greek corruption of the Egyptian name "shesepankh", which meant "living image", and referred rather to the statue of the sphinx, which was carved out of "living rock" (rock that was a contiguous part of the stony body of the Earth, shaped, but not cut away from its original source), than to the beast itself.

The Great Sphinx of Giza, with the Great Pyramid in the background

A lion-headed goddess is a lion-goddess in human form, while a royal sphinx, conversely, is a man who has assumed the form of a lion. Henry Fischer[7][8]

The largest and most famous sphinx is the Great Sphinx of Giza, situated on the Giza Plateau adjacent to the Great Pyramids of Giza on the west bank of the Nile River and facing east (). The sphinx is located southeast of the pyramids. While the date of its construction is not known for certain, the general consensus among Egyptologists is that the head of the Great Sphinx bears the likeness of the pharaoh Khafre, dating it to between 2600 and 2500 BC. However, a fringe minority of late 20th century geologists have claimed evidence of water erosion in and around the Sphinx enclosure which would prove that the Sphinx predates Khafre, at around 10,000 to 5000 BC, a claim that is sometimes referred to as the Sphinx water erosion hypothesis but which has little support among Egyptologists and contradicts other evidence.

What names their builders gave to these statues is unknown. At the Great Sphinx site, a 1400 BC inscription on a stele belonging to the 18th dynasty pharaoh Thutmose IV lists the names of three aspects of the local sun deity of that period, . Many pharaohs had their heads carved atop the guardian statues for their tombs to show their close relationship with the powerful solar deity Sekhmet, a lioness. Besides the Great Sphinx, other famous Egyptian sphinxes include one bearing the head of the pharaoh Hatshepsut, with her likeness carved in granite, which is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the alabaster Sphinx of Memphis, currently located within the open-air museum at that site. The theme was expanded to form great avenues of guardian sphinxes lining the approaches to tombs and temples as well as serving as details atop the posts of flights of stairs to very grand complexes. Nine hundred sphinxes with ram heads (Criosphinxes), believed to represent Amon, were built in Thebes, where his cult was strongest. At Karnak, each Criosphinx is fronted by a full-length statue of the pharaoh. The task of these sphinxes was to hold back the forces of evil.

The Great Sphinx has become an emblem of Egypt, frequently appearing on its stamps, coins, and official documents.

In March 2023, a limestone sphinx was discovered at the Dendera Temple Complex. This sphinx, which is depicted with a slight grin and dimples, is thought to be made in the image of the Roman emperor Claudius.

La Granja, Spain, mid-18th century

The revived Mannerist sphinx of the late 15th century is sometimes thought of as the "French sphinx". Her coiffed head is erect and she has the breasts of a young woman. Often she wears ear drops and pearls as ornaments. Her body is naturalistically rendered as a recumbent lioness. Such sphinxes were revived when the grottesche or "grotesque" decorations of the unearthed Domus Aurea of Nero were brought to light in late 15th-century Rome, and she was incorporated into the classical vocabulary of arabesque designs that spread throughout Europe in engravings during the 16th and 17th centuries. Sphinxes were included in the decoration of the of the Vatican Palace by the workshop of Raphael (1515-20), which updated the vocabulary of the Roman grottesche.

The first appearances of sphinxes in French art are in the School of Fontainebleau in the 1520s and 1530s and she continues into the Late Baroque style of the French Régence (1715-1723). From France, she spread throughout Europe, becoming a regular feature of the outdoors decorative sculpture of 18th-century palace gardens, as in the Upper Belvedere Palace in Vienna, Sanssouci Park in Potsdam, La Granja in Spain, Branicki Palace in Białystok, or the late Rococo examples in the grounds of the Portuguese Queluz National Palace (of perhaps the 1760s), with ruffs and clothed chests ending with a little cape.

Caresses (1896) by Fernand Khnopff, a Symbolist depiction of Oedipus and the Sphinx[13]

Sphinxes are a feature of the neoclassical interior decorations of Robert Adam and his followers, returning closer to the undressed style of the grottesche. They had an equal appeal to artists and designers of the Romanticism and subsequent Symbolism movements in the 19th century. Most of these sphinxes alluded to the Greek sphinx and the myth of Oedipus, rather than the Egyptian, although they may not have wings.

The Decadent Movement, a European movement that was attributed to the notion of "decadence" around the 1890s, implores the main notion of finding beauty in the decline of civilization in the form of macabre or taboo subjects such as the sphinx. The motif of the sphinx can also be connected to the motif of the "femme fatale" figure in decadent texts in which a typically female-like figure or beast seduces and murders men. The "femme fatale" is used to establish a decline or decay ranging from perversion, death, prostitution, and other taboos of Victorian society.

Deborah Barker discusses, in "The Riddle of the Sphinx: Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's The Story of Avis", how the painter Avis used the Sphinx as a representation of what women truly were in the nineteenth century. Avis thought that she could solve the prejudice that resulted from her gender and race through the Sphinx to show how she is an artist by tapping into the logic of Western Culture and visual recognition and classification. Napoleon on the other hand felt that the Sphinx was a representation of the empire he created, while Avis' father Hegel Dobell thought that the Sphinx represented just an idea.

Oscar Wilde, a known Decadent writer, utilized this motif in his poem "The Sphinx". The poem itself establishes a connection between the Sphinx and the French due to underlying social decline such as the French Empire collapsing. Wilde describes the sphinx as a sort of half-cat and half-woman that is connected to many mythological events, typically that of Egypt and Greece, as well as how the mysterious creature is surrounded by lust and death. The writer James Thomson, similarly to Wilde, also utilizes the motif of the sphinx in his poem "The City of Dreadful Night". The poem revolves around an isolated and anxious man who runs throughout the city, his anxiety and fears taking on the personified image of a grandiose beast that has the makeup of a dragon and lion. While not inherently stated, the beast is likely that of a decadent form of a sphinx due to its appearance and grand nature.

In the Bronze Age, the Hellenes had trade and cultural contacts with Egypt. Before the time that Alexander the Great occupied Egypt, the Greek name, sphinx, was already applied to these statues. [citation needed ] The historians and geographers of Greece such as Herodotus wrote extensively about Egyptian culture.

There was a single sphinx in Greek mythology, a unique demon of destruction and bad luck. Apollodorus describes the sphinx as having a woman's face, the body and tail of a lion and the wings of a bird. Pliny the Elder mentions that Ethiopia produces plenty of sphinxes, with brown hair and breasts, corroborated by 20th-century archeologists. Statius describes her as a winged monster, with pallid cheeks, eyes tainted with corruption, plumes clotted with gore and talons on livid hands. Sometimes, the wings are specified to be those of an eagle, and the tail to be serpent-headed. [citation needed ] According to Hesiod, the Sphinx was a daughter of Orthrus and an unknown she-either the Chimera, Echidna, or Ceto. According to Apollodorus and Lasus, she was a daughter of Echidna and Typhon.

The sphinx was the emblem of the ancient city-state of Chios, and appeared on seals and the obverse side of coins from the 6th century BC until the 3rd century AD.

Riddle of the Sphinx

The Sphinx is said to have guarded the entrance to the Greek city of Thebes, asking a riddle to travellers to allow them passage. The exact riddle asked by the Sphinx was not specified by early tellers of the myth, and was not standardized as the one given below until late in Greek history.

The Sphinx of Naxos, on its 12.5-meter Ionic column, Delphi, 560 BC (reconstitution)

It was said in late lore that Hera or Ares sent the Sphinx from her Aethiopian homeland (the Greeks always remembered the foreign origin of the Sphinx) to Thebes in Greece where she asked all passersby the most famous riddle in history: "Which creature has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed?" She strangled and devoured anyone who could not answer. Oedipus solved the riddle by answering: "Man-who crawls on all fours as a baby, then walks on two feet as an adult, and then uses a walking stick in old age". In some lesser accounts, there was a second riddle: "There are two sisters: one gives birth to the other and she, in turn, gives birth to the first. Who are the two sisters?" The answer is "day and night" (both words- and , respectively-are feminine in Ancient Greek). This second riddle is also found in a Gascon version of the myth and could be very ancient.

Bested at last, the Sphinx then threw herself from her high rock and died; or, in some versions Oedipus killed her. An alternative version tells that she devoured herself.[citation needed ] In both cases, Oedipus can therefore be recognized as a " liminal" or threshold figure, helping effect the transition between the old religious practices, represented by the death of the Sphinx, and the rise of the new, Olympian gods.[citation needed ]

The riddle in popular culture

In Jean Cocteau's retelling of the Oedipus legend, The Infernal Machine, the Sphinx tells Oedipus the answer to the riddle in order to kill herself so that she did not have to kill any more, and also to make him love her. He leaves without ever thanking her for giving him the answer to the riddle. The scene ends when the Sphinx and Anubis ascend back to the heavens.

There are mythic, anthropological, psychoanalytic and parodic interpretations of the Riddle of the Sphinx, and of Oedipus's answer to it. Sigmund Freud describes "the question of where babies come from" as a riddle of the Sphinx.

Numerous riddle books use the Sphinx in their title or illustrations.

Sfinxul natural rock formation in the Bucegi Mountains

Sfinxul is a natural rock formation in the Bucegi Natural Park which is in the Bucegi Mountains of Romania. This rock formation is named for its resemblance to the Sphinx of Giza, and is located at an altitude of 2,216 metres (7,270 feet) within the Babele complex of rock formations.

Buddhist sphinx on a stupa gateway, Bharhut, 1st century BC[36]

A composite mythological being with the body of a lion and the head of a human is present in the traditions, mythology and art of South and Southeast Asia. Variously known as puruṣamr̥ga (Sanskrit, "human-animal"), purushamirugam (Tamil, "human-animal"), naravirala (Sanskrit, "human-cat") in India, or as nara-simha (Sanskrit, "human-lion") in Sri Lanka, manussiha or manutthiha (Pali, "human-lion") in Myanmar, and norasingha (from Pali, "human-lion", a variation of the Sanskrit "nara-simha") or thep norasingha ("man-lion deity"), or nora nair in Thailand. Although, just like the "nara-simha", she/he has a head of a lion and the body of a human.

In contrast to the sphinxes in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece, of which the traditions largely have been lost due to the discontinuity of the civilization, the traditions related to the "Asian sphinxes" are very much alive today. The earliest artistic depictions of "sphinxes" from the South Asian subcontinent are to some extent influenced by Hellenistic art and writings. These hail from the period when Buddhist art underwent a phase of Hellenistic influence. Numerous sphinxes can be seen on the gateways of Bharhut stupa, dating to the 1st century B.C.

In South India, the "sphinx" is known as puruṣamr̥ga (Sanskrit) or purushamirugam (Tamil), meaning "human-animal". It is found depicted in sculptural art in temples and palaces where it serves an apotropaic purpose, just as the "sphinxes" in other parts of the ancient world. It is said by the tradition, to take away the sins of the devotees when they enter a temple and to ward off evil in general. It is therefore often found in a strategic position on the gopuram or temple gateway, or near the entrance of the sanctum sanctorum.

Male purushamriga or Indian sphinx guarding the entrance of the Shri Shiva Nataraja temple in Chidambaram

The puruṣamr̥ga plays a significant role in daily as well as yearly ritual of South Indian Hindu temples. In the Shodhasha-Upakaara (or sixteen honors) ritual, performed between one and six times at significant sacred moments through the day, it decorates one of the lamps of the Deepaaradhana or lamp ceremony. And in several temples the puruṣamr̥ga is also one of the or vehicles of the deity during the processions of the Brahmotsava or festival.

In Kanyakumari district, in the southernmost tip of the Indian subcontinent, during the night of Maha Shivaratri, devotees run 75 kilometres while visiting and worshiping at twelve Shiva temples. This Shiva Ottam or Running for Shiva is performed in commemoration of the story of the race between the Purushamirugam and Bhima, one of the Pandavas of the Hindu Epic Mahabharata.

The Indian conception of a sphinx that comes closest to the classic Greaco-Roman idea is the Sharabha and Gandabherunda, two mythical creatures, part lion, part human, part mammal and part bird, and the form of Sharabha that god Shiva took on and fought with the god Vishnu as Narasimha and Shiva as Sharabha was killed by Vishnu as Gandabherunda in the form of Narashima when Narashima killed Hiranyakashipu.

In Sri Lanka [citation needed ] the sphinx is known as narasimha or human-lion. As a sphinx, it has the body of a lion and the head of a human being, and is not to be confused with Narasimha, the fourth incarnation of the deity Vishnu; this avatara or incarnation of Vishnu has a human body and the head of a lion and Vishnu as Narashima killed Hiranyakashipu. The "sphinx" narasimha is part of the Buddhist tradition and functions as a guardian of the northern direction and also was depicted on banners.

Burmese depiction of the Manussiha

In Burma ( Myanmar), the sphinx-like statue, with a human head and two lion hindquarters, is known as ( manuthiha). It is depicted on the corners of Buddhist stupas, and its legends tell how it was created by Buddhist monks to protect a new-born royal baby from being devoured by ogresses.

Nora Nair, Norasingha and Thep Norasingha are three of the names under which the "sphinx" is known in Thailand. They are depicted as upright walking beings with the lower body of a lion or deer, and the upper body of a human. Often they are found as female-male pairs. Here, too, the sphinx serves a protective function. It also is enumerated among the mythological creatures that inhabit the ranges of the sacred mountain Himapan.

Giorgio Amitrano's Echoes of Ancient Greek Myths in Murakami Haruki's novels and in Other Works of Contemporary Japanese Literature explores how Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore share thematic elements of decadence with Oedipus' myth and parallels the protagonist's journey to self-discovery. The Sphinx motif present within the novel is established through the enigmatic creature of Murakami's design, Oshima: a mysterious, omnipotent being who has the protagonist grapple with the concept of a meaningless existence in turn of searching for authenticity by disconnecting from societal conventions of wealth and status. He tests the durability of character of the novel's protagonists through a series of tests that may challenge their perception of truth regarding their existence.

Lowell Edmunds' Oedipus in Burma is an explorative look on the Oedipus' myth in Burmese literature and culture. The folktale Pauk and the Dragon uses similar motifs from the Greek myth to explore Pauk's, the protagonist, road to destiny and fulfilling the quests needed to defeat the dragon: the Sphinx motif. Using intelligence, courage, and determination, Pauk defeats the dragon but not before facing the consequences of the knowledge he acquired on his journey. Decadent themes of fate, destiny, tragedy, mystery, and identity present themselves in the Burmese adaptations of Greek myths, in this case, it is Oedipus and the Sphinx.

Sphinx adopted as an emblem in Masonic architecture

The sphinx imagery has historically been adopted into Masonic architecture and symbolism.

Among the Egyptians, sphinxes were placed at the entrance of the temples to guard their mysteries, by warning those who penetrated within that they should conceal a knowledge of them from the uninitiated. Champollion said that the sphinx became successively the symbol of each of the gods. The placement of the sphinxes expressed the idea that all the gods were hidden from the people, and that the knowledge of them, guarded in the sanctuaries, was revealed to initiates only.

As a Masonic emblem, the sphinx has been adopted as a symbol of mystery, and as such often is found as a decoration sculptured in front of Masonic temples, or engraved at the head of Masonic documents.

Gopaitioshah - The Persian Gopat or Gopaitioshah is another creature that is similar to the Sphinx, being a winged bull or lion with human face. The Gopat have been represented in ancient art of Iran since late second millennium BC, and was a common symbol for dominant royal power in ancient Iran. Gopats were common motifs in the art of Elamite period, Luristan, North and North West region of Iran in Iron Age, and Achaemenid art, and can be found in texts such as the Bundahishn, the Dadestan-i Denig, the Menog-i Khrad, as well as in collections of tales, such as the Matikan-e yusht faryan and in its Islamic replication, the Marzubannama.

Löwenmensch figurine - The 32,000-year-old Aurignacian Löwenmensch figurine, also known as "lion-human" is the oldest known anthropomorphic statue, discovered in the Hohlenstein-Stadel, a German cave in 1939.

Manticore - The Manticore (Early Middle Persian: Mardyakhor or Martikhwar, means: Man-eater) is a Persian legendary hybrid creature and another similar creature to the sphinx.

Narasimha - Narasimha ("human-lion") is an incarnation (Avatara) of Vishnu in Hinduism in the Dashavatara of Vishnu who takes the form of half-man/half-Asiatic lion, having a human torso and lower body, but with a lion-like face and claws and in this avatara, Vishnu killed Hiranyakashipu as Narashima and saved the world from chaos in Hindu Mythology.

In ancient Assyria, bas-reliefs of shedu bulls with the crowned bearded heads of kings guarded the entrances of temples.

Many Greek mythological creatures who are archaic survivals of previous mythologies with respect to the classical Olympian mythology, like the centaurs, are similar to the Sphinx.

Winged sphinx from the palace of Darius the Great during Persian Empire at Susa (480 BC)

Achaemenid sphinx from Halicarnassus, capital of Caria, 355 BC. Found in Bodrum Castle, but possibly from the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus.

3000-year-old sphinxes were imported from Egypt to embellish public spaces in Saint Petersburg and other European capitals.

Classic Régence garden Sphinx in lead, Château Empain, the Parc d'Enghien, Belgium

Similar hybrid creatures

Lupul Dacic or the head of a wolf with the body of a snake, the sacred symbol of the Dacians, the ancient inhabitants of modern Romania.

Anzû (older reading: Zû), Mesopotamian monster

Chimera, Greek mythological hybrid monster

Centaur and Ichthyocentaur, Greek horse and human hybrid, or horse, human, fish hybrid

Cockatrice, snake with rooster's head and feet and bat's wings

Dragon, European and East Asian reptile-like mythical creature

Griffin or griffon, lion-bird hybrid

Harpy, Greco-Roman mythological bird monster with woman's face

Siren, Greco-Roman mythical creature with the combined features of a woman and bird, often a woman's head and breasts and a bird's body

Lamassu, Assyrian deity, bull/lion-eagle-human hybrid

Hippogryph, half eagle, half horse

Manticore, Persian monster with a lion's body and a humanoid head.

Nue, Japanese legendary creature

Pegasus, winged stallion in Greek mythology

Phoenix, self-regenerating bird in Greek mythology

Pixiu or Pi Yao, Chinese mythical creature

Qilin, Chinese/East Asian mythical hybrid creature

Satyr, or Faun, a Greek or Roman mythical creature that is half human half goat

Sharabha, Hindu mythology: lion-bird hybrid

Simurgh, Iranian mythical flying creature

Sirin, Russian mythological creature, half-woman half-bird

Snow Lion, Tibetan mythological celestial animal

Yali, Hindu mythological lion-elephant-horse hybrid

Ziz, giant griffin-like bird in Jewish mythology

Komainu to compare its use in Japanese culture

Chinthe similar lion statues in Burma, Laos and Cambodia

Shisa similar lion statues in the Ryukyu Islands

Nian to compare with a similar but horned (unicorn) mythical beast

Haetae to compare with similar lion-like statues in Korea.

Caldwell, Richard, Hesiod's Theogony, Focus Publishing/R. Pullins Company (1 June 1987). ISBN 978-0-941051-00-2.

Clay, Jenny Strauss, Hesiod's Cosmos, Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0-521-82392-0.

Gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, Two volumes: ISBN 978-0-8018-5360-9 (Vol. 1), ISBN 978-0-8018-5362-3 (Vol. 2).

Kallich, Martin. "Oedipus and the Sphinx." Oedipus: Myth and Drama. N.p.: Western, 1968. N. pag. Print.

Most, G.W., Hesiod, Theogony, Works and Days, Testimonia, Edited and translated by Glenn W. Most, Loeb Classical Library No. 57, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2018. ISBN 978-0-674-99720-2. Online version at Harvard University Press.

Stewart, Desmond. Pyramids and the Sphinx. [S.l.]: Newsweek, U.S., 72. Print.

Taheri, Sadreddin (2013). "Gopat (Sphinx) and Shirdal (Gryphon) in the Ancient Middle East". نشریه هنرهای زیبا- هنرهای تجسمی. 17 (4(زمستان 1391)). Tehran: Honarhay-e Ziba Journal, Vol. 17, No. 4. doi:10.22059/jfava.2013.30063.

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In Greek tradition, the sphinx is a treacherous and merciless being with the head of a woman, the haunches of a lion, and the wings of a bird. According to Greek myth, she challenges those who encounter her to answer a riddle, and kills and eats them when they fail to solve the riddle.

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Yu-Gi-Oh the hit japenese anime and card game has a special deck included in their franchise that is dedicated to the legendary Sphinx. This shows that franchises are inspired by the mythical creature and have chosen to include the mythical creature into their franchise. The cards in the franchise Yu-Gi-Oh are very powerful and are respected by the characters in the anime. This is a reflection on the story of the Sphinxes and how they would eat and protect their respective cities in Greek mythology.

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A Sphinx is a creature which had the head of a human body and a body that represented a lion with wings on it. Sphinxes appeared in both Greek mythology an Egyptian mythology as the two cultures were similar in mythology. The role the Sphinx had in Greek mythology included guarding the city of Thebes and asking travellers riddles. If the travellers were to answer the riddle wrong it was told that the Sphinx would eat them as they were not smart enough to enter the city.

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Post #2: The Great Sphinx of Giza (Picture)

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Post #2: The Great Sphinx of Giza (Picture)

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The Great Sphinx of Giza is one of the most known landmarks of Egyptian culture. The Great Sphinx of Giza was crafted very early into society at 2465 BC. It is believed today that the Great Sphinx of Giza was built by Khafre's brother Redjedef to commemorate their father Khufu who's pyramid, The Great Pyramid is built directly behind the Great Sphinx of Giza. In 2018 the Sphinx is in rough condition as the face has washed away from erosion unfortunately. Lastly, the nose was shot off of the statue as it is believed that one of Napoleons troops shot off the nose of the Sphinx while invading the country.

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Assignment #2
Title: Sphinx
Author: Mike Guerin JR