Sphinx

The Great Sphinx of Giza, with the Pyramid of Khufu in the background
Mythology	Eurasian
Grouping	Legendary creatures
Sub-grouping	Mythological hybrids
Similar creatures	Griffin

Perhaps, the first sphinx, Queen Hetepheres II from the fourth dynasty (Cairo Museum)

Winged sphinx from the palace of Darius the Great during Persian Empire at Susa (480 BC).

A sphinx (Greek: Σφίγξ /sphinx, Bœotian: Φίξ /Phix) is a mythical creature with, as a minimum, the body of a lion and the head of a human or a cat.

In Greek tradition, it has the haunches of a lion, the wings of a great bird, and the face of a woman. She is mythicised as treacherous and merciless. Those who cannot answer her riddle suffer a fate typical in such mythological stories, as they are killed and eaten by this ravenous monster.^[1] Unlike the Greek sphinx which was a woman, the Egyptian sphinx is typically shown as a man (an androsphinx). In addition, the Egyptian sphinx was viewed as benevolent in contrast to the malevolent Greek version and was thought of as a guardian often flanking the entrances to temples.

In European decorative art, the sphinx enjoyed a major revival during the Renaissance. Later, the sphinx image, something very similar to the original Ancient Egyptian concept, was exported into many other cultures, albeit often interpreted quite differently due to translations of descriptions of the originals and the evolution of the concept in relation to other cultural traditions.

Generally the role of sphinxes is associated with architectural structures such as royal tombs or religious temples. The oldest known sphinx was found near Gobekli Tepe at another site, Nevali Çori,^[2] or possibly 120 miles to the east at Kortik Tepe, Turkey and was dated to 9,500 BC.^[3]

Egyptian sphinxes[link]

The sphinx is located in the north and below the pyramids. What names their builders gave to these statues is not known. At the Great Sphinx site, the inscription on a stele by Thutmose IV in 1400 BCE, lists the names of three aspects of the local sun deity of that period, Khepera–Rê–Atum. The inclusion of these figures in tomb and temple complexes quickly became traditional and many pharaohs had their heads carved atop the guardian statues for their tombs to show their close relationship with the powerful solar deity, Sekhmet, a lioness. Other famous Egyptian sphinxes include one bearing the head of the pharaoh Hatshepsut, with her likeness carved in granite, which is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the alabaster sphinx of Memphis, Memphis, Egypt, currently located within the open-air museum at that site. The theme was expanded to form great avenues of guardian sphinxes lining the approaches to tombs and temples as well as serving as details atop the posts of flights of stairs to very grand complexes. Nine hundred with ram heads, representing Amon, were built in Thebes, where his cult was strongest.

Perhaps the first sphinx in Egypt was one depicting Queen Hetepheres II, of the fourth dynasty that lasted from 2723 to 2563 BC. She was one of the longest-lived members of the royal family of that dynasty.

The largest and most famous is the Great Sphinx of Giza, sited at the Giza Plateau on the west bank of the Nile River and facing due east (29°58′31″N 31°08′15″E / 29.97528°N 31.1375°E / 29.97528; 31.1375). It is also from the same dynasty. Although the date of its construction is uncertain, the head of the Great Sphinx now is believed to be that of the pharaoh Khafra.

The Great Sphinx has become an emblem of Egypt, frequently appearing on its stamps, coins, and official documents.^[4]

Greek traditions[link]

From 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. The historians and geographers of Greece wrote extensively about Egyptian culture. Heredotus called the ram-headed sphinxes, criosphinges, and the hawk-headed ones, hieracosphinges.

The word sphinx comes from the Greek Σφίγξ, apparently from the verb σφίγγω (sphíngō), meaning "to squeeze", "to tighten up".^[5][6] This name may be derived from the fact that the hunters for a pride of lions are the lionesses, and kill their prey by strangulation, biting the throat of prey and holding them down until they die. The word sphincter derives from the same root. However, the historian Susan Wise Bauer suggests that the word "sphinx" was instead, a Greek corruption of the Egyptian name "shesepankh," which meant "living image," and referred rather to the statue of the sphinx, which was carved out of "living rock" (rock that was present at the construction site, not harvested and brought from another location), than to the beast itself.^[7]

There was a single sphinx in Greek mythology, a unique demon of destruction and bad luck. According to Hesiod, she was a daughter of Orthus^[8] and either Echidna or the Chimera, or perhaps even Ceto;^[9] according to others, she was a daughter of Echidna and Typhon. All of these are chthonic figures from the earliest of Greek myths, before the Olympians ruled the Greek pantheon. The Sphinx is called Phix (Φίξ) by Hesiod in line 326 of the Theogony, the proper name for the Sphinx noted by Pierre Grimal's The Penguin Dictionary of Classical Mythology.

In Greek mythology, a sphinx is represented as a monster with a head of a woman, the body of a lioness, the wings of an eagle, and a serpent headed tail.

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.

Athena appears in the middle of the upper-half of the middle of a sarcophagus found in the middle pyramid of Giza, with two sphinxes at her side.

Assyrian Lamassu dated 721 BC Institute Museum, University of Chicago.

Marble Sphinx dated 540 BC Acropolis Museum, Athens

The Riddle of the Sphinx[link]

The Sphinx is said to have guarded the entrance to the Greek city of Thebes, and to have asked a riddle of travellers to allow them passage. The exact riddle asked by the Sphinx was not specified by early tellers of the stories, and was not standardized as the one given below until late in Greek history.^[10]

It was said in late lore that Hera or Ares sent the Sphinx from her Ethiopian homeland (the Greeks always remembered the foreign origin of the Sphinx) to Thebes in Greece where she asks all passersby the most famous riddle in history: "Which creature walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening?" She strangled and devoured anyone unable to 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 walks with a cane in old age. By some accounts^[11] (but much more rarely), 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 are feminine in Greek).

Bested at last, the tale continues, the Sphinx then threw herself from her high rock and died. An alternative version tells that she devoured herself. Thus Oedipus can be recognized as a "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, Olympian gods.

In Jean Cocteau's retelling of the Oedipus legend, The Infernal Machine, the Sphinx tells Oedipus the answer to the riddle, to kill herself so that she did not have to kill anymore, 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, who is there to kill the victims who cannot answer the riddle, 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. Numerous riddle books use the Sphinx in their title or illustrations.^[12]

Sphinxes in South and South-East Asia[link]

Purushamriga or Indian sphinx depicted on the Shri Varadaraja Perumal temple in Tribhuvana, India

Burmese depiction of the Manussiha

A composite mythological being with the body of a lion and the head of a human being is present in the traditions, mythology and art of South and South-East Asia^[13] Variously known as purushamriga (Sanskrit, "man-beast"), purushamirugam (Tamil, "man-beast"), naravirala (Sanskrit, "man-cat") in India, or as nara-simha (Sanskrit, "man-lion") in Sri Lanka, manusiha or manuthiha (Pali, "man-lion") in Myanmar, and nora nair or thepnorasingh in Thailand.

In contrast to the sphinx in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece, where the traditions largely have been lost due to the discontinuity of the civilization,^[14] the traditions of the "Asian sphinx" are very much alive today. The earliest artistic depictions of "sphinxes" from the South Asian subcontinent are to some extent influenced by Hellenistic art and writings. These hail from the period when Buddhist art underwent a phase of Hellenistic influence.

In South India, the "sphinx" is known as purushamriga (Sanskrit) or purushamirugam (Tamil), meaning "Human-Beast". It is found depicted in sculptural art in temples and palaces where it serves an apotropaic purpose, just as the "sphinxes" in other parts of the ancient world.^[15] It is said by the tradition, to take away the sins of the devotees when they enter a temple and to ward off evil in general. It is therefore often found in a strategic position on the gopuram or temple gateway, or near the entrance of the Sanctum Sanctorum.

Male purushamriga or Indian sphinx guarding the entrance of the Shri Shiva Nataraja temple in Chidambaram

The purushamriga plays a significant role in daily as well as yearly ritual of South Indian Shaiva temples. In the shodhasha-upakaara (or sixteen honors) ritual, performed between one to six times at significant sacred moments through the day, it decorates one of the lamps of the diparadhana or lamp ceremony. And in several temples the purushamriga is also one of the vahana or vehicles of the deity during the processions of the Brahmotsava or festival.

In Kanya Kumari district, in the southernmost tip of the Indian subcontinent, during the night of Shiva Ratri, devotees run 75 kilometres while visiting and worshiping at twelve Shiva temples. This Shiva Ottam (or Run for Shiva) is performed in commemoration of the story of the race between the Sphinx and Bhima, one of the heroes of the epic Mahabharata.

The Indian conception of a sphinx that comes closest to the classic Greek idea, is in the concept of the Sharabha, a mythical creature, part lion, part man and part bird, and the form of Sharabha that god Shiva took on to counter Narasimha's violence.

In Philippines, the sphinx is known as nicolonia. It is depicted as part man and part eagle that is known to ask riddles to wanderers who trespass in the Bicol region. Anyone who fails to answer its riddle is said to be carried off to the Mayon Volcano where they are said to be offered to the volcano god, Gev'ra, to appease his anger.

In Sri Lanka, the sphinx is known as narasimha or man-lion. As a sphinx, it has the body of a lion and the head of a human being, and is not to be confused with Narasimha, the fourth reincarnation of the deity Vishnu; this avatar or incarnation is depicted with a human body and the head of a lion. The "sphinx" narasimha is part of the Buddhist tradition and functions as a guardian of the northern direction and also was depicted on banners.

In Burma, the sphinx is known as manussiha (manuthiha). It is depicted on the corners of Buddhist stupas, and its legends tell how it was created by Buddhist monks to protect a new-born royal baby from being devoured by ogresses.

Nora Nair and Thep Norasingh are two of the names under which the "sphinx" is known in Thailand. They are depicted as upright walking beings with the lower body of a lion or deer, and the upper body of a human. Often they are found as female-male pairs. Here, too, the sphinx serves a protective function. It also is enumerated among the mythological creatures that inhabit the ranges of the sacred mountain Himapan.^[16]

La Granja, Spain, mid-18th century

Fernand Khnopff's symbolist version of a sphinx.

Revived sphinxes in Europe[link]

The revived Mannerist sphinx of the 16th century is sometimes thought of as the French sphinx. Her coiffed head is erect and she has the breasts of a young woman. Often she wears ear drops and pearls as ornaments. Her body is naturalistically rendered as a recumbent lioness. Such sphinxes were revived when the grottesche or "grotesque" decorations of the unearthed "Golden House" (Domus Aurea) of Nero were brought to light in late 15th century Rome, and she was incorporated into the classical vocabulary of arabesque designs that spread throughout Europe in engravings during the 16th and 17th centuries. Sphinxes were included in the decoration of the loggia of the Vatican Palace by the workshop of Raphael (1515–20), which updated the vocabulary of the Roman grottesche.

The first appearances of sphinxes in French art are in the School of Fontainebleau in the 1520s and 1530s and she continues into the Late Baroque style of the French Régence (1715–1723).

From France, she spread throughout Europe, becoming a regular feature of the outdoors decorative sculpture of 18th-century palace gardens, as in the Upper Belvedere Palace in Vienna, Sanssouci Park in Potsdam, La Granja in Spain, Branicki Palace in Białystok, or the late Rococo examples in the grounds of the Portuguese Queluz National Palace (of perhaps the 1760s), with ruffs and clothed chests ending with a little cape.

Sphinxes are a feature of the neoclassical interior decorations of Robert Adam and his followers, returning closer to the undressed style of the grottesche. They had an equal appeal to artists and designers of the romantic, and later symbolism movements in the 19th century. Most of these sphinxes alluded to the Greek sphinx, rather than the Egyptian, although they may not have wings.

Sphinxes in Freemasonry[link]

The sphinx image also has been adopted into Masonic architecture. Among the Egyptians, sphinxes were placed at the entrance of the temple to guard the mysteries, by warning those who penetrated within, that they should conceal a knowledge of them from the uninitiated. Champollion says that the sphinx became successively the symbol of each of the gods, by which portal suggests that the priests intended to express the idea that all the gods were hidden from the people, and that the knowledge of them, guarded in the sanctuaries, was revealed to the initiates only. As a Masonic emblem, the sphinx has been adopted in its Egyptian character as a symbol of mystery, and as such often is found as a decoration sculptured in front of Masonic temples, or engraved at the head of Masonic documents. It cannot, however, be properly called an ancient, recognized symbol of the order. Its introduction has been of comparatively recent date, and rather as a symbolic decoration than as a symbol of any particular dogma.

Similar creatures[link]

• The 32,000 year old Aurignacian Löwenfrau Goddess is the oldest known anthropomorphic statue. Previously known as the Lion man, she has a human female body and a lioness head.
• Not all human-headed animals of antiquity are sphinxes. In ancient Assyria, for example, bas-reliefs of shedu bulls with the crowned bearded heads of kings guarded the entrances of the temples.
• In the classical Olympian mythology of Greece, all the deities had human form, although they could assume their animal natures as well. All the creatures of Greek myth who combine human and animal form are archaic survivals: centaurs, Typhon, Medusa, Lamia.
• Narasimha ("man-lion") is described as an incarnation (Avatar) of Vishnu within the Puranic texts of Hinduism who takes the form of half-man/half-Asiatic Lion, having a human torso and lower body, but with a lion-like face and claws.
• The Manticore is a similar creature, who also features a lion's body with human-like face.

Gallery[link]

See also[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Sphinxes

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Clay, Jenny Strauss, Hesiod's Cosmos, Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0-521-82392-0.

External links[link]

• The Sphinx: Totally Random Trivia - slideshow by Life magazine

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2009)

Graham Hancock
Born	(1950-08-02)August 2, 1950 (age 61) Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
Nationality	British
Citizenship	British
Alma mater	Durham University
Occupation	Author
Known for	Author, The Sign and the Seal, Fingerprints of the Gods, The Message of the Sphinx

Graham Hancock (born 2 August 1950 in Edinburgh, Scotland) is a British writer and journalist. Hancock specialises in unconventional theories ^[1] involving ancient civilizations, stone monuments or megaliths, altered states of consciousness, ancient myths and astronomical/astrological data from the past. One of the main themes running through many of his books is the possible global connection with a "mother culture" from which he believes all ancient historical civilizations sprang.^[2]

Biography[link]

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, Hancock's formative years were spent in India, where his father worked as a surgeon. Having returned to the UK, he graduated from Durham University in 1973, receiving a First Class Honours degree in Sociology.

As a journalist, Hancock worked for many British papers, such as The Times, The Sunday Times, The Independent, and The Guardian. He was co-editor of New Internationalist magazine from 1976–1979 and East Africa correspondent of The Economist from 1981-1983.

Works[link]

Hancock sees himself as a journalist who asks questions based upon observation and as someone who provides a counterbalance to what he perceives as the "unquestioned" acceptance and support given to orthodox views by the education system, the media, and by society at large.^[3] His books include Lords of Poverty, The Sign and the Seal, Fingerprints of the Gods, Keeper of Genesis (released in the US as Message of the Sphinx), The Mars Mystery, Heaven's Mirror (with wife Santha Faiia), Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization, and Talisman: Sacred Cities, Secret Faith (with co-author Robert Bauval). In 1996 he appeared in The Mysterious Origins of Man.^[4] He also wrote and presented the documentaries Underworld: Flooded Kingdoms of the Ice Age (2002) and Quest for the Lost Civilisation (1998) ^[5] shown on Channel 4. In Hancocks's book Talisman: Sacred Cities, Secret Faith,^[6] co-authored with Robert Bauval, the two put forward "a version of the old Jewish-Masonic plot so beloved by ultra-right-wing conspiracy theorists."^[7] They suggest a connection between the pillars of Solomon's Temple and the Twin Towers, and between the Star of David and The Pentagon.^[8]

Hancock's most recent non-fiction book, Supernatural: Meetings With the Ancient Teachers of Mankind, was published in the UK in October 2005 and in the US in 2006. In it, Hancock examines paleolithic cave art in the light of David Lewis-Williams' neuropsychological model, exploring its relation to the development of the fully modern human mind.

His first novel, Entangled: The Eater of Souls, the first in a fantasy series, was published in the UK in April 2010 and in the US in October 2010. The novel makes use of Hancock's prior research interests and as he has noted, "What was there to lose, I asked myself, when my critics already described my factual books as fiction?"

Although his books have sold more than five million copies worldwide and have been translated into twenty-seven languages, his methods and conclusions have found little support among academics, his work being labelled "pseudoarchaeology".^[1][9][10]

Orion Correlation Theory[link]

Representation of the central tenet of the OCT - the outline of the Giza pyramids superimposed over a photograph of the stars in Orion's Belt. To achieve this concordance the pyramids have been rotated and scaled to suit. The validity of this match has been called into question by Hancock's critics, as noted in the text.

One of the many recurring themes in several of Hancock's works has been an exposition on the "Orion Correlation Theory" (or OCT),^[11][12] first put forward by Belgian writer Robert Bauval and then further expounded in collaborative works with Hancock, as well as in their separate publications.

[edit] BBC Horizon controversy

BBC 2's Horizon TV series broadcast a programme, Atlantis Reborn, on 4 November 1999 that challenged the ideas presented by Hancock. It detailed one of Hancock's claims that the arrangement of an ancient temple complex was designed to mirror astronomical features and attempted to demonstrate that the same thing could be done with perhaps equal justification using famous landmarks in New York. It also alleged that Hancock had selectively moved or ignored the locations of some of the temples to fit his own theories (see below).^[13]

Hancock claimed he was misrepresented by the programme, and he and Robert Bauval made complaints to the Broadcasting Standards Commission against the way Horizon had portrayed them and their work. Eight points were raised by Hancock, two by Bauval (one of which duplicated a complaint of Hancock's).^[14] This included the complaint that:

The programme attempted to create the impression that he [Hancock] was an intellectual fraudster who had put forward half baked theories and ideas in bad faith, and that he was incompetent to defend his own arguments.^[15]

The BSC dismissed all but one of the complaints. Overall, the BSC concluded that "the programme makers acted in good faith in their examination of the theories of Mr Hancock and Mr Bauval".^[16] The complaint which was upheld was that

The programme unfairly omitted one of their arguments in rebuttal of a speaker who criticised the theory of a significant correlation between the Giza pyramids and the belt stars of the constellation Orion (the "correlation theory")

which the Commission did find to be unfair. That speaker was the astronomer Edwin Krupp. Krupp accused Bauval of fudging the maps of Orion and the Pyramids by placing them upside down in order to make the theory work.^[17] In interviews filmed in the later and modified Horizon documentary Atlantis Reborn Again shown on 14 December 2000, Hancock and Bauval provided detailed rebuttals to Krupp and argued that the ancient Egyptians had made the Pyramids correlate in the most obvious and intuitive manner with the three stars of Orion's Belt, that Orion could only be seen at the highest point in the sky by the Egyptians looking in a southward direction and a work of symbolic and religious art. A counter argument was provided on Atlantis Reborn Again to Bauval and Hancock's responses to Krupp's statements.

According to Graham Hancock, Krupp's criticism was rejected by two prominent British astronomers, Dr. Percy Seymour of Plymouth University and Dr. Archie Roy, professor Emeritus at Glasgow University.^[18]

Cultural references[link]

In 2009, Roland Emmerich released his blockbuster disaster movie 2012 citing Fingerprints of the Gods in the credits as an inspiration for the film,^[19] stating: "I always wanted to do a biblical flood movie, but I never felt I had the hook. I first read about the Earth's Crust Displacement Theory in Graham Hancock's Fingerprints of the Gods." ^[20] Also in 2009, author Geoff Stray released his best-selling book "Beyond 2012: Catastrophe or Awakening?" in which he cites Graham Hancock as one of his inspirations and as a guidepost to point others to do their own investigation into the wonder of ancient societies.^[21]

Books[link]

• Hancock, Graham (1985). Ethiopia: The Challenge of Hunger. London: V. Gollancz. ISBN 0-575-03680-X. 
• Hancock, Graham; Enver Carim (1986). AIDS: The Deadly Epidemic. London: V. Gollancz. ISBN 0-575-03837-3. 
• Hancock, Graham (1989). Lords of Poverty: The Power, Prestige, and Corruption of the International Aid Business. Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press. ISBN 0-87113-253-2. 
• Hancock, Graham (1992). The Sign and the Seal: The Quest for the Lost Ark of the Covenant. New York: Crown. ISBN 0-517-57813-1. 
• Hancock, Graham (1995). Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth's Lost Civilization. New York: Crown Publishers. ISBN 0-517-59348-3. 
• Hancock, Graham; Robert Bauval (1996). The Message of the Sphinx: A Quest for the Hidden Legacy of Mankind. New York: Crown Publishers. ISBN 0-517-70503-6.  Published in the United Kingdom as Hancock, Graham; Robert Bauval (1996). Keeper of Genesis: A Quest for the Hidden Legacy of Mankind. London: Heinemann. ISBN 0-434-00302-6. 
• Hancock, Graham (1998). The Mars Mystery: A Tale of the End of Two Worlds. London: Michael Joseph. ISBN 0-7181-4314-0. 
• Hancock, Graham; Santha Faiia (1998). Heaven's Mirror: Quest for the Lost Civilization. New York: Crown Publishers. ISBN 0-517-70811-6. 
• Hancock, Graham; Santha Faiia (2001). Fingerprints of the Gods: The Quest Continues (New Updated Edition). New York: Crown Century. ISBN 0-7126-7906-5. 
• Hancock, Graham (2002). Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization. New York: Crown. ISBN 1-4000-4612-2. 
• Hancock, Graham; Robert Bauval (2004). Talisman: Sacred Cities, Secret Faith. Tisbury: Element Books. ISBN 0-00-719036-0. 
• Hancock, Graham (2005). Supernatural: Meeting with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind. London: Century. ISBN 1-84413-681-7. 
• Hancock, Graham (2010). Entangled: The Eater of Souls. New York: The Disinformation Company. ISBN 978-1-934708-56-9. 

See also[link]

• Archaeoastronomy
• Erich von Däniken
• Mythology
• Zahi Hawass

References[link]