"A vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,"(from) The Second Coming W. B. Yeats
Basic Information
The sphinx (also sphynx) is a class of composite monster found in Greek and Egyptian mythology, consisting of the body of a winged lion with a human head. Creatures with the same body, but the heads of other species are occasionally depicted in statuary and other art and may be considered sphinxes by analogy … other animal bodies with human heads need to seek their own classification. The manticore, however, despite being a lion (or other big cat) body with a human face is not generally considered a sphinx. There are also the occasional fringe cases - typically unique creatures like Amnit the Devourer that are sphinx like but not sphinxes.
To the Greeks, the sphinx had a woman's head and was a predatory creature that forced travellers to answer a riddle and killed those that answered wrongly (the name, out of interest, is related to the Greek word sphingo meaning "to tighten" or, in context, "to strangle"), making her most famous appearance in the play Oedipus Rex. The Egyptian sphinx, by contrast, takes its prototype from the Great Sphinx of Giza and is a taciturn guardian of sacred places with a male face. Both could easily be the same species and presumably, the Greek Sphinx's habit of disputing a public highway could be seen as a deviant form of guarding behaviour. The Greek sphinx was also a unique monster, whereas the Egyptians depicted rows on rows of the things as doorway statues and along processional ways. Herodotus noted ram-headed sphinxes (which he called Criosphinxes) and hawk-headed ones he called Hieracosphinxes, but these, as above, appear to be art rather than legend - the two mythic originals are referred to as gynosphinx (the female) and androsphinx (the male).
The Cthulhu mythos tends to associate the sphinx, and many other Egyptian entities, with Nyarlothotep, of whom the less is said the better. The sphinx, as commonly depicted, was also suggested to be merely an extremity of something much larger and less appealing.
Sources
Game and Story Use
- Said to be better off avoiding the camel at certain times of year.
- "That RPG" has had endless fun making sphinxes with the heads of all sorts of things.
- Drifting out of sphinx territory, but switching up the lion for another big cat might be interesting - perhaps including mayincatec versions with human head on the body of a jaguar with garish parrot wings?
- Guarding and riddling may be normal sphinx behaviour - but you may want to think of more than one riddle, and to make the sphinx a serious threat if the PCs get it wrong, argue or try to cut the knot from the beginning.
- The sphinx as taciturn guardian might make them excellent keepers of esoteric libraries.