Sphinx

Mythological creature with a lion's body and a human's head.

It figures prominently in Egyptian and Greek art and legend. The winged sphinx of Thebes was said to have terrorized people by demanding the answer to a riddle taught to her by the Muses—What is it that has one voice and yet becomes successively four-footed, then two-footed, then three-footed?—and devoured every person who answered incorrectly. When Oedipus correctly answered “man”—who crawls on all fours in infancy, walks on two feet when grown, and leans on a staff in old age—the sphinx killed herself. The earliest and most famous example in art is the Great Sphinx at Giza in Egypt, built &circa; 2500 &BC;. The sphinx appeared in the Greek world &circa; 1600 &BC; and in Mesopotamia &circa; 1500 &BC;.

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