A pair of English plaster relief plaques of opposed Sphinx,
cast from a mid-eighteenth century original by Peter Hone,
the winged lioness mythical beasts with human heads,
£140 the pair
The Sphinx (“The Strangler”) was portrayed in ancient Egypt as a lion with a human head. But it was in Ancient Greece that the beast was portrayed with a woman’s head and breasts and sometimes wings – as here. And this was the form of Sphinx that Oedipus confronted.
The Sphinx riddle was: “What goes on four feet, on two and three – but the more feet it goes on the weaker it be?”. Those who could not answer correctly , unlike Oedipus, were throttled.
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