The Sphinx is, as far as I know, a creature of aprox. human intelligence, with the body of a lion, and the face of a woman. My knowledge is limited on the subject, that's why I'm posting this. Where did they come from, could they have been real (my thoughts are no, not real), and when did they first become a part of human history and/or mythology?

my theory ..
- sphinx is not introduced into human history. it introducing itself,and people started to worshipp it
- some nut pharaoh put human head on his lion pet, creating new god .

Sphinx

Those were rather quick replies!

I don't aprove of Wiki. It is a rather haphazard site. More later.

Donmar, ever heard of a search engine? sphinx

Haha. Yes, I have, I just like to hear what others have to say about a subject. I like to have lots of input, and I try to read all of it. I hadn't gotten around to searching the info out yet. I will, and I will put any info that is relevent into this thread.
I said that I'd get back on the wiki thing. It is an unorganized system, and requires vigilent moderators. But it doesn't have them, or enough of them.

I've found 'most' of the information on Wiki to be correct, though sometimes there is 'unverified' content, which I won't use...

Generally Wikipedia is fine as, although it is accessed easily by the public to be altered, it is also moderated by the public. Usually experts will pick up on new alterations and edit them fairly quickly.



As far as I know, the Sphynx features in quite a few mythologies; even Greek. Here it was a nasty piece of work where it would ask a riddle (something like What walks on 4 legs in the morning, 2 in the afternoon and 3 at night; and is weakest upon the most legs?). Legend tells of the Greek hero Oedipus who beat the Sphynx by successfully answering the riddle. She commited suicide out of shame.

Oh, thanks! I didn't know that, though I have read a lot of Greek Mythology. Quite exciting.

I know the answer to the riddle, too. The answer is: A Human. Baby has four legs, adult has two, and the cane makes three in old age. (Dragonology, Riddle of the Sphinx)

As far as I can tell, Sphinx came from Babylonia. The god Marduk was described to be almost Sphinx-like, albeit how DC said that Marduk might look like a dragon. And in almost every ancient civilization, either, Persian, Indian, Arabs, Greek, even China and Japan, they have almost similar animal. They are; Gryphons, Manticore, and Kirin, nowadays, we have a different view of the original beasts, but I bet these creatures was common and poplular in ancient days art and sculptures, much like today's Aliens vs Predators, heck, maybe even dinosaurs...

Exactly, Capo. I always reckon that we don't give our ancestors credit for their imaginations. It seems to be that our ancestors were "primitive" and of course couldn't imagine nasty monsters, but HAD to have seen them. And yet people like H. R. Giger, what's his excuse? Sure as eggs is eggs the "biomechanoid" Alien came from the dark corners of his imagination! Just as I'm sure our ancient ancestors maybe indulged in a bit of artistic licence...




Well done It is indeed man; the baby is of course the weakest, crawling on hands and knees, the young adult strongest on two legs.

Well, you know, the words "herbal" was very common back then. And the word "legalized" wasn't even come to ideas yet. I believe you know what I'm talking about !

was there a second sphinx?

i think i read somewhere that there was another one and that they are older than the pyramids.

God knows what strange creatures the shamans and medicine men might have seen when they were.. well.. you know