SPHINX

A fabled monster, half woman and half lion, said by the Grecian poets to have infested the city of Thebes, devouring its inhabitants till such time a? a riddle it had proposed to them sliould be solved. This was done by CEdipus, who slew the sphinx, and was, by the gratitude of the The bans, chosen their king. The Grecian sphinx was probably borrowed from Egypt; where the enormous figure, now half buried in the sand, was probably the archetype of the more elegant monster of Greece. This figure is close to the Pyramids of Ghizeh, and was disinterred by the late Mr. Belzoni, but has been again nearly covered. It has been said (on the authority of Pliny) that the sphinx represented the Nile in a state of flood; that event regularly occurring under the signs of the Virgin and Lion. But others contend that the original Egyptian sphinx was male (Androsphinx), like the specimen described by Hero dot us, book ii. (Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians.) But the greater part of the enormous number around the temples of Luxor (1500 in a single avenue) are said to be female. (Libr. of Entertaining Knowledge.) Sphinxes are also represented with the heads of rams and hawks (Criosphinx, Hieraco-sphinx). The Egyptian sphinx had no wings; these appendages were added by the Greek artists. [s. 1151]