Sphinx

Origin and myth

The sphinx begins in Egypt, where the lion-bodied, human-headed figure was a royal guardian. The Great Sphinx of Giza, carved around 2500 BC, wears the pharaoh's headdress and watches the sunrise; hundreds of smaller sphinxes lined temple avenues at Karnak and Luxor, some with ram heads. The Egyptian sphinx is male, wingless, calm and protective. It has no myth of its own beyond one tale in which a prince sleeps in its shadow and is promised the throne if he clears the sand away.

The Greeks took the image, gave it wings and a woman's head, and made it dangerous. In the myth of Oedipus, written down by the 5th century BC and dramatised by Sophocles, the Sphinx sat on a rock outside Thebes and strangled every traveller who could not answer her riddle: what walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon and three in the evening? Oedipus answered "man", and the Sphinx threw herself from the cliff. Hesiod made her a daughter of the Chimera; other writers made her Echidna's child.

Between Egypt and Greece, the sphinx spread across the Near East: Assyrian and Phoenician art of the 9th to 7th centuries BC shows winged sphinxes on ivories and palace reliefs, and it was from these that the Greek version was borrowed. The word itself is Greek, possibly from "sphingein", to squeeze, in keeping with the strangling of victims.

Appearance

Two designs, and a sculptor should choose one. The Egyptian sphinx lies in a couchant pose, forelegs stretched forward, body of a lion with smooth, stylised musculature. The head is human and male, wearing the striped nemes headcloth, false beard and uraeus cobra on the brow. The expression is serene. There are no wings.

The Greek sphinx sits upright on her haunches like a cat, or crouches ready to spring. The body is a lioness, lithe rather than massive. The head is a woman's, with an archaic Greek face and hair in tight curls or a long braid, sometimes wearing a diadem. Large bird's wings rise from the shoulders, either folded along the back or raised in a high curve behind the head. Some vase paintings add a serpent tail. Colours in Greek art are pale skin, a tawny body and wings banded in red, blue and black in the archaic style.

In modern fantasy

Sphinxes appear in Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder as riddling guardians of tombs and treasure, in the Heroes of Might and Magic and Age of Mythology games, and in countless films set in fantasy Egypt. The riddle motif is nearly always preserved. Both the calm Egyptian guardian and the winged Greek predator are common, and a sculptor is free to use either general form without reproducing any franchise's specific design.

3D printing notes

The Egyptian sphinx is one of the easiest large prints in the bestiary. Its couchant pose is a compact block with almost no overhangs - only the chin and the underside of the headcloth lappets need supports - so it prints beautifully on FDM at any scale from 75 mm upward, and even at 28-32 mm an FDM print can look acceptable if the face is simplified. It is an excellent choice for a large, sandstone-finished centrepiece printed in a single piece at 150-250 mm, hollowed with drain holes.

The Greek sphinx is harder. The wings are the issue: raised wings need supports over their entire underside, and at small scales they are fragile. Print the wings as separate parts, lying flat with the inner face down, and slot them into the shoulders with keys. The head should be printed with the body, oriented so that the supports touch the back of the hair rather than the face. Resin is strongly preferred at 28-32 mm for the face; FDM is fine at 75 mm and above for the body.

Pose ideas: the upright seated Greek sphinx on a rocky outcrop with a road winding below; the Egyptian sphinx on a plinth with hieroglyphic panels printed flat and glued to the sides.

Painting and display

For the Egyptian version, the point is stone. Base in a sandy ochre, wash with a thin burnt umber, dry-brush with a pale cream and add a scattering of darker sand-tone speckles with a stiff brush. Painting the nemes stripes in faded blue and gold, as the original polychrome statues had, adds life without breaking the stone illusion. A base of scattered sand and a broken column drum finishes it.

For the Greek version, paint her as a living creature: a warm skin tone for the face, tawny lion fur, and wings in the archaic banded scheme of white, black, red and blue. A limestone crag base with a small, dusty road below sells the Theban legend. Neither version calls for LEDs, though a low warm light behind an Egyptian sphinx evokes a sunset over the desert.

Related creatures

The Greek sphinx is a daughter of the Chimera and thus a sibling of Cerberus in the monstrous brood of Echidna. Its closest visual cousins are the Manticore, a lion with a human face and none of the sphinx's restraint, and the Griffin, the other winged lion of the ancient Near East.

For a sphinx in either tradition, from a tabletop guardian to a large stone-finished centrepiece, ask Fantasy Lab 3D for a custom print.