Sphinx

From Wikireedia
Jump to: navigation, search

Greek for Strangler. A monster with the body of a lion, wings of an eagle and face of a woman

File:Sphinx.jpg

The Sphinx as a creature can be seen as early as the mid-3rd millennium BC in Egypt and Mesopotamia, yet the Sphinx seems to have been, in these cultures, to be a religious figure rather than a monster as is the case in the Greek tradition. It has been theorised that the Sphinx is associated with Thebes due to a war between the Minyans and the Cadmeans and that the Sphinx was acting on behalf of the Minyans by preventing the Cadmeans from leaving Thebes. Although the riddle the Sphinx asked is not specified in any early Greek texts, late tradition states that the question she asked was: 'What has four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon and three legs in the evening?' When Oedipus gave her the answer 'man' (for as a baby, man crawls on all fours, as a grown man he walks erect on two legs and in old age he walks with the aid of a stick), she was bested and thus her reign of terror over Thebes was put to an end.


See Sophokles' Oidipous Rex


File:Sphinx2.jpg

Facts about SphinxRDF feed
DescriptionGreek for Strangler. A monster with the body of a lion, wings of an eagle and face of a woman
Personal tools
Namespaces

Variants
Actions
Navigation
Toolbox