A statue combining a human head with a lion’s body, symbolizing the combination of intelligence and strength. Though the model may well have been of earlier date, the arch-type of the sphix was carved 4500 years ago out of a knoll of natural rock close to the causeway leading to the great pyramid of Khafra (Chephren) at Giza. The features of the great sphinx were a likeness of the pharaoh. Later sphinxes were re-garded as images of the god Horus in the horizon. The sphinx continued to be used in Egypt to represent the pharaoh, and was sometimes carved to show the forepaws trampling on the pharaoh’s enemies. In the new kingdom, however, under influence from the east, the head became female and the body was given wings. This was the form adobted by the Greeks: a woman to the waist, the body of a lion, and the claws and wings of a bird of prey. The posture was sitting-up. In Greek mythology the sphinx was “the strangling one” that terroized Thebes, murdering everyone who could not guess the riddle she propounded: when Oedipus solved the riddle, the sphinx slew herself.