The Great Sphin


x sits in the desert of Egypt, about eight miles from Cairo, guarding the three large pyramids of Giza. It is a monster made of rock, with the head of a man and the body of a crouching lion wIth forepaws extended in front.

     While the body is roughly sculptured, the head is carved with care. The eyes are mysterious and have a look which nobody has quite been able to explain. They gaze out over the desert with a kind of mystical superiority.

     The height of the figure is over 60 feet and it is 189 feet long. It is believed that the sphinx is at least 5,000 years old! Why was it built? One piece of evidence we have comes from a little chapel that is found between the paws of the monster. This chapel has inscriptions put there by two ancient Egyptian kings. They explain that the sphinx represents one of the forms of the sun god Harmachis. And they say that the purpose of the sphinx is to keep away all evil from the cemetery around the pyramids.

      There are many sphinxes in Egypt besides the Great Sphinx of Giza. Their heads represent kings. In the sacred writing of the Egyptians, "sphinx, means "lord. In primitive religions, the king was believed to have the strength and cunning of various beasts. He acquired these powers by putting on their heads or their skins. So the Egyptians sculptured their gods and kings as half-human and half-beast.

     The idea of the sphinx spread from Egypt to other civilizations, such as Assyria and Greece. In these regions,  sphinxes were usually represented with wings. In Assyria they were usually male, but in Greece they had the head of a woman. Our word "'sphinx," by the way, comes from the Greek.

   The Greeks probably thought of the sphinx much the way we think of dragons. We may use the figure of a dragon as a sign of destructive power, but we don't really believe in dragons.

  The Greeks had a legend about the sphinx. She lived on a rock and killed every traveler who couldn't answer this riddle:, "What walks on four legs in the morning, on two legs at noon, on three legs at night?" Oedipus answered that it was a man, who crawled on all fours as a baby, walked erect on two legs as a man, and walked with a cane when he was old. This was the right answer. so the sphinx threw herself from the rock in rage and died.