SPHINX

SPHINX (fab. hist.), a monster which had the head and breasts of a woman, the body of a dog, the tail of a serpent, the wings of a bird, the paws of a lion, and an human voice. It sprang from the union of Orthos with

Sphinx. with the Chimera, or of Typhon with Echidna. The Sphinx had been sent into the neighbourhood of Thebes by Juno, who wished to punish the family of Cadmus, which she persecuted with immortal hatred, and it laid this part of Bœotia under continual alarms, by proposing enigmas, and devouring the inhabitants if unable to explain them. In the midst of their consecration the Thebans were told by the oracle, that the sphinx would destroy herself as soon as one of the enigmas she proposed was explained. In this enigma she wished to know what animal walked on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening. Upon this Creon king of Thebes promised his crown and his sister Jocasta in marriage to him who could deliver his country from the monster by a successful explanation of the enigma. It was at last happily explained by Ædipus, who observed, that man walked on his hands and feet when young, or in the morning of life, at the noon of life he walked erect, and in the evening of his days he supported his infirmities upon a stick. (Vid. Oedipus). The sphinx no sooner heard this explanation than she dashed her head against a rock, and immediately expired. Some mythologists wish to unriddle the fabulous traditions about the sphinx by the supposition that one of the daughters of Cadmus, or Laus, infested the country of Thebes by her continual deprecations, because she had been refused a part of her father's possessions. The lion's paw expressed, as they observe, her cruelty, the body of the dog her lasciviousness, her enigmas the snares she laid for strangers and travellers, and her wings the dispatch she used in her expeditions.

Among the Egyptians the sphinx was the symbol of religion, by reason of the obscurity of its mysteries; and on the same account the Romans placed a sphinx in the pronaos or porch of their temples. Sphinxes were used by the Egyptians to show the beginning of the water's rising in the Nile: with this view, as it had the head of a woman and body of a lion, it signified that the Nile began to swell in the months of July and August, when the sun passes through the signs of Leo and Virgo. There are several of these still to be seen; one in particular, near the pyramids, much spoken of by the ancients; being of a prodigious size, and cut out of the rock; the head and neck appear only at present, the rest of the body being hid in the sand. This, according to Thevenot, is 26 feet high, and 15 feet from the ear to the chin; but Pliny assures us, the head was no less than 102 feet in circumference, and 62 feet high from the belly, and that the body was 143 feet long, and was thought to be the sepulchre of king Amasis.

The learned Mr. Bryant⁸ observes, that the sphinx seems to have been originally a vast rock of different strata; which, from a shapeless mass, the Egyptians fashioned into an object of beauty and veneration. The Egyptians used this figure in their building; from them the Greeks derived it, and afterwards improved it into an elegant ornament. It is also frequently used in modern architecture.

It is proper to observe, that the sphinx of the Egyptians is said in the Asiatic Researches^† to have been found in India. Colonel Pearce was told by Murari Pandit, a man of learning among the Hindoos, that the sphinx there called sngh is to appear at the end of the

world, and as soon as he is born will prey on an elephant: he is therefore figured seizing an elephant in his claws; and the elephant is made small, to show that the sngh, even a moment after his birth, will be very large in proportion to it. But in opposition to this account given by Murari Pandit, the late Sir William Jones, the learned and illustrious president of the Asiatic Society, was assured by several Brahmins, that the figure taken for a sphinx was a representation of a lion seizing a young elephant. This point therefore requires farther investigation.

Sphinx, Hawk-Moth. in natural history; a genus of insects belonging to the order of lepidoptera. The antennæ are shaped somewhat like a prism, and are more slender at each end than at the middle. The tongue is generally thrust out: the two palpi are bent back, and the wings deflexed. There are about 165 species already discovered, of which 10 are found in Great Britain and Ireland.

brown. The trunk is spiral: the wings are short and entire: the body is thick, brown, and hairy. First wings are brown, waved; 2d, red-brown. It resembles a large bee. Caterpillar smooth, with a posterior blue horn, tipped with red. It lives on gallium. 9. Tipuliformis, small bee moth. The thorax is yellow beneath: the wings are short, with black veins. The abdomen black, bearded, yellow at the extremity. Caterpillar on the lonicera. 10. Fishpondula, burnet moth. The antennæ, legs, and body, are black. Second wings red, with a greenish border. First wings bluish green, with six red spots, in pairs. Length eight lines. Caterpillar yellow, with black spots. It lives on grass.

The name Sphinx is given to this genus on account of the singular attitudes of their caterpillars, who apply the hinder part of their body to a branch of a tree, holding the rest of it erect, like the fabulous sphinx. Most of them spin their cod under ground, making them up with small parcels of earth and grains of corn interwoven with threads. The sphinges fly either early in the morning, or after sunset in the evening. They fly heavily and sluggishly, often emitting a kind of sound.