Record #131
Sphinx
A hybrid guardian whose riddles test knowledge and destiny.
Original Text
The Sphinx of Egyptian monuments (called by Herodotus androsphinx, or man-sphinx, in order to distinguish it from the Greek Sphinx) is a lion having the head of a man and lying at rest; it stood watch by temples and tombs, and is said to have represented royal authority. In the halls of Karnak, other Sphinxes have the head of a ram, the sacred animal of Amon. The Sphinx of Assyrian monuments is a winged bull with a man’s bearded and crowned head; this image is common on Persian gems. Pliny in his list of Ethiopian animals includes the Sphinx, of which he details no other features than ‘brown hair and two mammae on the breast’ .
The Greek Sphinx has a woman’s head and breasts, the wings of a bird, and the body and feet of a lion. Some give it the body of a dog and a snake’s tail. It is told that it depopulated the Theban countryside asking riddles (for it had a human voice) and making a meal of any man who could not give the answer. Of Oedipus, the son of Jocasta, the Sphinx asked, ‘What has four legs, two legs, and three legs, and the more legs it has the weaker it is?’ (So runs what seems to be the oldest version. In time the metaphor was introduced which makes of man’s life a single day. Nowadays the question goes, ‘Which animal walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three in the evening?’) Oedipus answered that it was a man who as an infant crawls on all fours, when he grows up walks on two legs, and in old age leans on a staff. The riddle solved, the Sphinx threw herself from a precipice.
De Quincey, around I849, suggested a second interpretation, which complements the traditional one. The subject of the riddle according to him is not so much man in general as it is Oedipus in particular, orphaned and helpless at birth, alone in his manhood, and supported by Antigone in his blind and hopeless old age.
The Greek Sphinx has a woman’s head and breasts, the wings of a bird, and the body and feet of a lion. Some give it the body of a dog and a snake’s tail. It is told that it depopulated the Theban countryside asking riddles (for it had a human voice) and making a meal of any man who could not give the answer. Of Oedipus, the son of Jocasta, the Sphinx asked, ‘What has four legs, two legs, and three legs, and the more legs it has the weaker it is?’ (So runs what seems to be the oldest version. In time the metaphor was introduced which makes of man’s life a single day. Nowadays the question goes, ‘Which animal walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three in the evening?’) Oedipus answered that it was a man who as an infant crawls on all fours, when he grows up walks on two legs, and in old age leans on a staff. The riddle solved, the Sphinx threw herself from a precipice.
De Quincey, around I849, suggested a second interpretation, which complements the traditional one. The subject of the riddle according to him is not so much man in general as it is Oedipus in particular, orphaned and helpless at birth, alone in his manhood, and supported by Antigone in his blind and hopeless old age.