Editing Sphinx (section)

==== 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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