The Sphinx was one of the strangest and most iconic monsters of Greek mythology, a creature with the body of a lion, the wings of an eagle, and the head and breast of a woman. She was sent by Hera to punish the city of Thebes, and she sat on a rock outside the city, asking a riddle of every traveler who passed. Those who failed to answer were devoured. The Sphinx was finally defeated by Oedipus, who answered her riddle correctly, and the creature threw herself from the rock and died. The Sphinx has been used in modern psychology, in modern architecture, and in countless works of literature and art.
The Sphinx is the riddling beast of Thebes, the creature with the body of a lion, the wings of an eagle, and the head of a woman, who was sent by Hera to punish the city of Thebes for the crime of Laius. The standard ancient source is the Oedipus of Sophocles (especially Oedipus Rex), which is the single most influential Greek tragedy; the standard scholarly treatment of the riddle is in the Bibliotheca of Apollodorus (3.5.8), which gives the standard version of the riddle of the man who walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening. The Egyptian Sphinx of Giza, with which the Greek Sphinx was often confused in the modern reception, is in fact a separate tradition.
The Origins of the Sphinx
The Sphinx has a complex origin, drawing on both Greek and Egyptian traditions. In Greek myth, the Sphinx was the offspring of two of the most fearsome monsters in the Greek imagination: Typhon, the last son of Gaia and Tartarus, who challenged Zeus for the rule of the cosmos; and Echidna, half-woman and half-snake, the “mother of all monsters.” From this union came the Hydra, the Chimera, the Nemean Lion, Cerberus, and the Sphinx.
In Egyptian myth, the Sphinx was a different creature altogether. The Great Sphinx of Giza, the famous limestone statue on the west bank of the Nile, dates to around 2500 BCE, in the reign of the Pharaoh Khafre. It has the body of a lion and the head of a man (in some traditions, a woman), and it was a guardian figure, protecting the pyramids and the temples. The Greek Sphinx may have been influenced by the Egyptian Sphinx, which was already ancient when the Greek myth developed.
The name “Sphinx” is generally thought to come from the Greek sphingein, “to bind” or “to squeeze,” but the etymology is uncertain. The word may also be related to the Egyptian shesep-ankh, “living image,” or to a Phoenician root meaning “to press close.”
The Description of the Sphinx
The Sphinx was a hybrid creature, with the body of a lion, the wings of a bird (often an eagle), and the head and breast of a woman. She was sometimes described as having the tail of a serpent and the claws of a lion. The combination of human and animal features was typical of the hybrid monsters of Greek myth, and it reflected the Greek understanding of monsters as beings that existed at the margins of the ordered cosmos.
In early Greek art, the Sphinx was depicted as a winged lion with a woman’s head, often with prominent breasts. In later Greek art, she was given a more fearsome appearance, with a fierce expression, snaky hair, and prominent claws. The Sphinx was sometimes shown as a guardian of tombs, of temples, and of cities, and she was often associated with death and the underworld.
The Sphinx in Thebes
According to the most familiar version of the myth, the Sphinx was sent by Hera to punish the city of Thebes. The cause was a crime committed by the Theban king Laius, who had kidnapped the young Chrysippus, the son of Pelops, and raped him. The crime brought a curse on the house of Laius, the doom that hangs over the Labdacid line through Oedipus and his children.
To punish Laius, Hera sent the Sphinx to Thebes. The creature sat on a rock outside the city, called the Phicium, and asked a riddle of every traveler who passed. Those who failed to answer were devoured. The Sphinx was said to have eaten a number of Thebans, including, in some versions, the king’s own son Haemon.
The riddle, in its most famous form, was: “What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?” The answer was “man,” who crawls on all fours as a baby, walks upright as an adult, and uses a cane in old age. But there are other versions of the riddle, including the “sibling riddle” about two sisters, one of whom gives birth to the other.
The Defeat by Oedipus
The Sphinx was finally defeated by Oedipus, the prince of Corinth, who was on his way to Thebes to consult the oracle. According to the most familiar version of the myth, Oedipus encountered the Sphinx, who asked him her riddle. Oedipus answered correctly: “Man.” In some versions, he added: “He walks on four legs in the morning, when he is a baby and crawls on all fours; on two at noon, when he is an adult and walks upright; and on three in the evening, when he is old and uses a cane.”
The Sphinx, defeated, threw herself from the rock and died. Some sources say she was so angry that she killed herself, while others say she simply could not bear the shame of being defeated. In some traditions, she was crushed by the rock as she fell.
Oedipus, victorious, was given the kingdom of Thebes as a reward, and he married the queen, Jocasta, the widow of King Laius. The marriage fulfilled the prophecy that Oedipus would kill his father and marry his mother, a prophecy that Oedipus had been trying to escape by leaving Corinth.
The Sphinx in Egyptian Myth
The Great Sphinx of Giza is monuments of ancient Egypt, and it was ancient even by the time of the Greek myths. The statue is 73 meters long and 20 meters high, and it was carved from a single piece of limestone. The face is generally believed to represent the Pharaoh Khafre, who ruled around 2500 BCE.
The Greek Sphinx, while clearly influenced by the Egyptian, was a different creature. The Egyptian Sphinx was a guardian, a protector, and a divine figure. The Greek Sphinx was a monster, a bringer of death, and a symbol of the strangeness and danger of the world outside the city. The two traditions merged in later Western art, where the Sphinx is often shown as a hybrid of the two.
The Sphinx in Greek Art and Literature
The Sphinx was a popular subject in Greek art, particularly in vase paintings, sculpture, and funerary reliefs. The most famous surviving example is the Sphinx of the Naxians, a marble statue dating to around 560 BCE, which stood on a column at Delphi. The statue is now in the Delphi Archaeological Museum.
The Sphinx also appears on coins from various Greek cities, on funerary monuments, and on the famous François Vase, dating to around 570 BCE. In Greek literature, the Sphinx appears in the Oedipus Rex of Sophocles, the most famous of the Greek tragedies, and in the Oedipus at Colonus, a later play by the same author.
The Sphinx in Psychology
The Sphinx has been used in modern psychology, particularly in the work of George Kelly, the founder of personal construct psychology. Kelly used the “Sphinx test” as a way of understanding how people construct their understanding of others. The test involves describing a close friend using twenty pairs of adjectives, and the answers reveal the subject’s personal constructs, the mental models that they use to make sense of other people.
The Sphinx has also been used in literature, particularly by J.R.R. Tolkien in The Hobbit, where Bilbo Baggins encounters a creature called Gollum who asks him riddles in a dark cave. The encounter is clearly modeled on the encounter of Oedipus and the Sphinx, and the riddles are among the most famous in English literature.
The Legacy of the Sphinx
The Sphinx appears in the Percy Jackson series, the God of War franchise, and the Hades video game, and is the namesake of the Sphinx Observatory in the Swiss Alps and the widely used Sphinx personality test in psychology. The Great Sphinx of Giza, which has been the subject of pseudoarchaeology since the 19th century, remains one of the most famous monuments in the world. For the broader modern reception, see our guide to Greek mythology in modern culture.
A Note on Reading This Profile
A note on reading this profile. The Sphinx of the Greek sources is a much more terrible figure than the Sphinx of the modern popular reception, which has been softened by many later retellings. The Oedipus of Sophocles (especially Oedipus Rex) is the standard ancient source, and the riddle is given in the Bibliotheca of Apollodorus (3.5.8) in a slightly different form (the Sphinx’s question is ‘What is it that walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?’). The standard scholarly reading of the riddle is in Burkert’s Greek Religion (1985, chapter 4), which treats the riddle as a kind of cosmological question about the four stages of life.