SPHINX
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A sphinxwelcome is a mythological creature that is depicted as a recumbent feline with a human head. It has its origins in sculpted figures of a lionesses with female human head (unless the pharaoh was depicted as the son of the deity) of Old Kingdom Egypt in association with their solar deities, Bast or Sekhmet
.The ancient Greeks adapted this image and applied their own name for a male monster, the "strangler", an archaic figure of Greek mythology. Similar creatures of either gender appear throughout South and South-East Asia. In European decorative art, the sphinx enjoyed a major revival during the Renaissance.
Later, the sphinx image, something very similar to the original Ancient Egyptian concept, was exported into many other cultures, albeit often interpreted quite differently due to translations of descriptions of the originals and the evolution of the concept in relation to other cultural traditions
The largest and most famous is the Great Sphinx of Giza, Arabic: أبو الهول, sited at the Giza Plateau on the west bank of the Nile River and facing due east, is also from the same dynasty Although the date of its construction is uncertain, the head of the Great Sphinx now is believed to be that of the pharaoh Khafra. Other famous Egyptian sphinxes include one bearing the head of the pharaoh Hatshepsut, with her likeness carved in granite, which is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the alabaster sphinx of Memphis, currently located within the open-air museum at that site
The theme was expanded to form great avenues of guardian sphinxes lining the approaches to tombs and temples as well as serving as details atop the posts of flights of stairs to very grand complexes. Nine hundred with ram heads, representing Amon, were built in Thebes, where his cult was strongest