Editing Sphinx (section)

=== Greece ===
[[File:Amth33.jpg|thumb|260px|A sphinx or a female centaur on a Mycenaean larnax from [[Tanagra]], 14th – 12th century BC, in the [[Archaeological Museum of Thebes]].]]

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|date=December 2019}} 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. [[Bibliotheca (Pseudo-Apollodorus)|Apollodorus]] describes the sphinx as having a woman's face, the body and tail of a lion and the wings of a bird.<ref name="apollod-358">[[Bibliotheca (Pseudo-Apollodorus)|Apollodorus]], Library [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0022%3Atext%3DLibrary%3Abook%3D3%3Achapter%3D5%3Asection%3D8 Apollod. 3.5.8]</ref> [[Pliny the Elder]] mentions that Ethiopia produces plenty of sphinxes, with brown hair and breasts,<ref>[https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Plin.+Nat.+8.30 Pliny the Elder, Natural History 8.30 ]</ref> corroborated by 20th-century archeologists.<ref>p. 5,6,24. Fattovich, Rodolfo. "Remarks on the pre-Aksumite period in northern Ethiopia." ''Journal of Ethiopian Studies'' 23 (1990): 1-33.</ref> [[Statius]] describes her as a winged monster, with pallid cheeks, eyes tainted with corruption, plumes clotted with gore and talons on livid hands.<ref>[https://www.theoi.com/Text/StatiusThebaid2.html Statius, Thebaid, 2.496 ]</ref> Sometimes, the wings are specified to be those of an [[eagle]], and the tail to be [[snake|serpent]]-headed.{{citation needed|date=December 2019}} According to [[Hesiod]], the Sphinx was a daughter of [[Orthrus]] and an unknown she—either the [[Chimera (mythology)|Chimera]], [[Echidna (mythology)|Echidna]], or [[Ceto]].<ref>[[Hesiod]], ''[[Theogony]]'' [https://www.loebclassics.com/view/hesiod-theogony/2018/pb_LCL057.29.xml 326&ndash;327]. Who is meant as the mother is unclear, the problem arising from the ambiguous referent of the pronoun "she" in line 326 of the ''Theogony'', see Clay, [https://archive.org/details/hesiodscosmos0000clay/page/159 p.159, note 34]; Most, [https://www.loebclassics.com/view/hesiod-theogony/2018/pb_LCL057.29.xml p. 29 n. 20]; Gantz, pp. 23&ndash;24.</ref> According to Apollodorus<ref name="apollod-358" /> and [[Lasus of Hermione|Lasus]],<ref>[[iarchive:in.ernet.dli.2015.233311/page/n237|Lasus fr. 3, on ''Lyra Graeca II'']]</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite book|last= Sear|first= David|title=Greek Imperial coins and their values – The Local Coinages of the Roman Empire|year=2010|publisher=Nabu Press|page=xiv}}</ref>

==== Riddle of the Sphinx ====
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[[File:Oedipus and the Sphinx of Thebes, Red Figure Kylix, c. 470 BC, from Vulci, attributed to the Oedipus Painter, Vatican Museums (9665213064).jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|Attic red-figure kylix c. 470 BCE: Oedipus ponders the riddle of the Sphinx]]
The Sphinx is said to have guarded the entrance to<!--any other area needs to be made specific--> 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.<ref>{{cite book|last= Edmunds|first= Lowell|title=The Sphinx in the Oedipus Legend|year=1981|publisher=Hain|location=Königstein im Taunus|isbn=3-445-02184-8}}</ref>

It was said in late lore that [[Hera]] or [[Ares]] sent the Sphinx from her [[Aethiopia]]n homeland (the Greeks always remembered the foreign origin of the Sphinx) to [[Thebes (Greece)|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".<ref name="apollod-358" /> In some lesser accounts,<ref>{{cite book|last=Grimal| first=Pierre|others=trans. A. R. Maxwell-Hyslop|title=The Dictionary of Classical Mythology|isbn=0-631-20102-5|publisher=Blackwell Publishing|year=1996}} (entry "Oedipus", p. 324)</ref> 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—''[[wiktionary:ἡμέρα|ἡμέρα]]'' and ''[[wiktionary:νύξ|νύξ]]'', respectively—are feminine in Ancient Greek). This second riddle is also found in a Gascon version of the myth and could be very ancient.<ref>Julien d'Huy (2012). [https://ehess.academia.edu/JuliendHuy/Papers/1949877/LAquitaine_sur_la_route_dOedipe_La_Sphinge_comme_motif_prehistorique._-_Bulletin_de_la_SERPE_61_2012_15-21 L'Aquitaine sur la route d'Oedipe? La Sphinge comme motif préhistorique.] ''Bulletin de la SERPE'', 61: 15-21.</ref>

Bested at last, the Sphinx then threw herself from her high rock and died;<ref>Apollod. 3.5.8</ref> or, in some versions Oedipus killed her.<ref>"Sphinx"{{cite book|last=Hornblower|first=Simon|others=Anthony Spawforth, Esther Eidinow|title=Oxford Classical Dictionary|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2012}}</ref> An alternative version tells that she devoured herself.{{citation needed|date=October 2020}} In both cases, Oedipus can therefore be recognized as a "[[Liminality|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, [[Twelve Olympians|Olympian]] gods.{{citation needed|date=October 2020}}

===== The riddle in popular culture =====
In [[Jean Cocteau]]'s retelling of the Oedipus legend, ''[[The Infernal Machine (play)|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.<ref>'An Autobiographical Study', Sigmund Freud, W. W. Norton & Company, 1963, [https://books.google.com/books?id=xkU5eiigOZoC&dq=freud%20Autobiographical%20Study&pg=PA39 p.39]</ref>

Numerous riddle books use the Sphinx in their title or illustrations.<ref>Regier, ''Book of the Sphinx'', chapter 4.</ref><gallery>
File:Marble stele (grave marker) of a youth and a little girl 530 BCE Greece.jpg|Funerary stele, 530 BC, [[Greece]]
File:Limestone funerary stele (shaft) surmounted by two sphinxes Greece 530 BCE.jpg|[[Cesnola Sphinx Funerary Stele|Limestone funerary stele (shaft) surmounted by two sphinxes]]. Greece, 5th century BC.
File:Marble capital and finial in the form of a sphinx.jpg|Marble capital and finial in the form of a sphinx, 530 BC
File:Carved tomb in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum - panoramio.jpg|Sphinxes on the [[Lycian sarcophagus of Sidon]] (430–420 BC)
File:Naxos Sphinx with humans for size.jpg|The [[Sphinx of Naxos]], on its 12.5-meter [[Ionic column]], [[Delphi]], 560 BC (reconstitution)
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