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Sphinx / The great Sphinx of Giza

A Sphinx is an iconic image of a recumbent lion with a human head, invented by the Egyptians of the Old Kingdom, but a cultural import in archaic Greek mythology, where it received its name. The best known is the Great Sphinx of Giza. The Egyptian sphinx is an ancient iconic mythical creature usually comprised of a recumbent lion – an animal with sacred solar associations – with a human head, usually that of a pharaoh. The largest and most famous is the Great Sphinx of Giza , sited on the Giza Plateau on the west bank of the Nile River, facing due east, with a small temple between its paws. The face of the Great Sphinx is believed to be the head of the pharaoh Khafra (often known by the Hellenised version of his name, Chephren), which would date its construction to the Fourth Dynasty (2723 BC – 2563 BC). However, there are some alternative theories that re-date the Sphinx to pre-Old Kingdom – and, according to one hypothesis, to prehistoric – times.

Other famous Egyptian sphinxes include the alabaster sphinx of Memphis, currently located within the open-air museum at that site; and the ram-headed sphinxes (criosphinxes), representing the god Amun, that line either side of the three-kilometer route linking the complexes of Luxor Temple and Karnak in Luxor (ancient Thebes), of which there were originally some nine hundred. What names ancient Egyptians called the statues is unknown. The Arabic name of the Great Sphinx, Abu al-Hôl, translates as "Father of Terror". The Greek name "Sphinx" was applied to it in Antiquity though it has the head of a man, not a woman.

There was a single Sphinx in Greek mythology, a unique demon of destruction and bad luck, according to Hesiod a daughter of the Chimaera and Orthrus, or, according to others, of Typhon and Echidna— all of these chthonic figures. She was represented in vase-painting and bas-reliefs most often seated upright rather than recumbent, as a winged lion with a woman's head; or she was a woman with the paws, claws and breasts of a lion, a serpent's tail and birdlike wings. Hera or Ares sent the Sphinx from her Ethiopian homeland (for the Greeks remembered the Sphinx's foreign origins) to sit outside Thebes and ask all passersby history's most famous riddle: "Which creature in the morning goes on four feet, at noon on two, and in the evening upon three?" She strangled anyone unable to answer. The word "sphinx" comes from the Greek Σφινξ, Sphinx, apparently from the verb σφινγω, sphingo, meaning "to strangle". Oedipus solved the riddle: man – he crawls on all fours as a baby, then walks on two feet as an adult, and walks with a cane in old age. Bested at last, the Sphinx then threw herself from her high rock and died. In fact, the exact riddle asked by the Sphinx was not specified by early tellers of the story and was not standardized as the one given above until much later in Greek history.

Thus Oedipus can be recognized as a liminal or "threshold" figure, helping effect the transition between the old religious practices, represented by the Sphinx, and new, Olympian ones. Not all human-headed animals of antiquity are sphinxes. In ancient Assyria, for example, bas-reliefs of bulls with the crowned bearded heads of kings guarded the entrances to temples. In the classical Olympian mythology of Greece, all the deities had human form, though they could assume their animal natures as well. All the creatures of Greek myth that combine human and animal form are survivals of the pre-Olympian religion: centaurs, Typhon, Medusa, Lamia. In Hindu tradition, one of the Avatars of Vishnu was the Narasimha which means 'man-lion'. The Avatar had a human body and the head of a lion.

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The great Sphinx of Giza
In a depression to the south of Khafre's pyramid at Giza near Cairo sits a huge creature with the head of a human and a lion's body. This monumental statue, the first truly colossal royal sculpture in Egypt, known as the Great Sphinx, is a national symbol of Egypt, both ancient and modern. It has stirred the imagination of poets, scholars, adventurers and tourists for centuries and has also inspired a wealth of speculation about its age, its meaning, and the secrets that it might hold.

Guardian's Sphinx
The Sphinx of Giza is a symbol that has represented the essence of Egypt for thousands of years. Even with all of the pictures that we see of the Sphinx, nothing can really prepare you for the time that you finally see the Sphinx with your own eyes. Here's a look at the Sphinx that will give you a hint of what you can expect to see if you visit Egypt.

The Sphinx
The Sphinx, unlike the Pyramids, is carved out of the living rock. It is 241 feet long and in parts is 65 feet high. It faces due east,towards the equinox. It has been suggested that it was built around the same time as the construction of the Pyramid of Khafre, but recent findings by John Anthony West suggest that there are water erosions unlike any other marks found on other Giza monuments.Unlike sand and wind erosions, which produce horizontal marks, West found that the erosion marks on the Sphinx were vertical...like those associated by water,but unlike the sand and wind marks which can be explained thanks to the destructive forces of the Sahara,where did the water marks originate?

The great Sphinx
In a depression to the south of Chephren's pyramid sits a creature with a human head and a lion's body. The name 'sphinx' which means 'strangler' was first given by the Greeks to a fabulous creature which had the head of a woman and the body of a lion and the wings of a bird. The sphinx appears to have started in Egypt in the form of a sun god. The Egyptian sphinx is usually a head of a king wearing his headdress and the body of a lion . There are, however, sphinxes with ram heads that are associated with the god Amun.