In Greek tradition , the sphinx has the head of a woman, the haunches of a lion, and the wings of a bird. She is mythicized as treacherous and merciless, and will kill and eat those who cannot answer her riddle. In addition, the Egyptian sphinx was viewed as benevolent but having a ferocious strength similar to the malevolent Greek version. Both were thought of as guardians and often flank the entrances to temples. In European decorative art, the sphinx enjoyed a major revival during the Renaissance.
Later, the sphinx image, initially very similar to the original Ancient Egyptian concept, was exported into many other cultures, albeit they are often interpreted quite differently due to translations of descriptions of the originals, and through the evolution of the concept in relation to other cultural traditions.
Sphinx depictions are generally associated with architectural structures such as royal tombs or religious temples. However, the historian Susan Wise Bauer suggests that the word "sphinx" was instead a Greek corruption of the Egyptian name "shesepankh", which meant "living image", and referred rather to the statue of the sphinx, which was carved out of "living rock" rock that was present at the construction site, not harvested and brought from another location , than to the beast itself.
The sphinx is located southeast of the pyramids. While the date of its construction is not known for certain, the general consensus among Egyptologists is that the head of the Great Sphinx bears the likeness of the pharaoh Khafre , dating it to between and BC.
However, a fringe minority of late 20th century geologists have claimed evidence of water erosion in and around the Sphinx enclosure which would prove that the Sphinx predates Khafre, at around 10, to BC, a claim that is sometimes referred to as the Sphinx water erosion hypothesis but which has little support among Egyptologists and contradicts other evidence.
