COLOSSAL HEAD FROM A ROYAL SPHINX

As the sphinx is presented in popular culture today, she is a fearsome riddle master who spells death for those who cannot solve her puzzles. However, this interpretation of the sphinx is purely Greek. While the Greek Sphinx was female, Egyptian sphinxes were related and modeled off of men. The sphinx represented the pharaohs’ divine descent from the gods Re and Horus. The sphinx would take on the facial features of the pharaoh ruling at the time it was made, and this one presents qualities of the Ptolemaic dynasty. He represents a wise and serene figure. He is not smirking as if he possesses secret knowledge, nor is he poised to attack. How, then, did this regal figure turn into the monster it was made it be by the Greeks?

Turning the sphinx into a monster could have been an attempt by the Greeks to “other” the Egyptians. Othering is the idea of making a distinction between one body or culture and another. This had the effect of dismissing the othered group. Here, the Greeks took an image related to the pharaohs and Egyptian religion and turned it into a notorious beast. Even the act of changing the gender of the sphinx from “he” to “she” in myth is an act of othering. The male subject was always of greater concern for the Greeks. It was a male who ruled the state and who ruled the family. To make the sphinx a “she” would be to remove her power. This act of othering is emphasized by giving the sphinx her riddles, almost as if she spoke a language no one else understood.