SPHINX. The name applied in glyptic art to the combinations of lions bodies with other forms ; that with a human head being called androsphinx, with a ram's criosphinx, and with a hawk's Itiemeosphinx. They appear to have been derived from Egypt, where they were sculptured as symbolical representations of kings and queens, and they expressed in the hieroglyphic texts the idea of net) lord, or akar victory, or the sun on the horizon. In Egyptian art they are repro. Rented couchant, with a human head, the portrait of tho monarch they personify ; and recent excavations at Tanis have shown that they are as old as the 17th dynasty of Shepherds, the king Apepa or Aphophis being thus represented. In Egyptian art they are rarely winged, the only example being the sphinx of the queen Mutnemt at Turin ; Thothmes If I. and other monarchs, even the young Alexander and Ptolemies are personified as sphinxes, and there are some small sphinxes in European collections, as one in the Louvre, at Paris, of Itameses II., 23 feet long, of a block of red syenite, and a black granite sphinx of Amenophis III. at St. Petersburg; but the Largest is that at Gizeh, of 143 feet long and 62 feet high, cut out of the solid and lying about 1960 feet cast of the second pyramid. This was called liar-ma-khn, or Harmakhia, " Horns on the Horizon," and adored as a god by Thothmes IV. and Rameses If, It was approached by a stair case and surrounded by a kind of peribolos, having a temple of alabaster and granite attached to it, in which was a well filled with Nile water, into which had been thrown seven statues of green and yellow breccia of the monarch Shafra, or Kephren, the builder of the second pyramid. Winged sphinxes are often seen in Assyrian and
Babylonian art, and seem to represent deities or monarchs under this form.
The few remains of Phoenician art show that this people had adopted the form of the sphinx, probably from Egyptian sources, and the Etruscans seem to have derived the same from their oriental con nection, their early works of art being often decorated with repre sentations of this monster. The same may be also said of the Greeks and other" cognate races, winged sphinxes being a common type in Greece, Lycia, and other localities. At the earliest period of art sphinxes have reeurved wings, but _on some later monuments they are unwingcd. They have the face and breasts of a beautiful but cruel female, the body of a lioness, and sometimes the tail of a dragon. According to the earliest myths, the Sphinx was the (laughter of Typhon and Echidna, Orthus or Typhon and Chimera, and being sent by Juno to punish the Theban, proposed a fatal riddle or enigma which was solved by (Edipus, and the Sphinx destroyed. Sphinxes are also found in India as the ornaments of temples.
(Marlette, Aug., Rents AreUologique, 1860, p. 18-20, 1861, p. 20; Birch, Mils. Class. Antiq. II. p. 27 ; Vyse, Pyramids, III. p. 107; Letronne, laser. Grce. ii. 460-461; Champollion, Lett. a M. le Duo dc Blares, Svo. Paris, 1824; Layard, Ninereh ; Winckelmann, Werke; Voss, Myth. Br. ii. p. 22; Muller, Arch. d. Kunst, p. 700.)