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Friday, August 2, 2019

The Greek or Theban Sphinx, or the Phix

The sphinx of Greek mythology has a long and storied history in both reality and fiction.

In mythology

In ancient Near East cultures, statues of chimerical monsters were used to ward away evil and protect temples, tombs, baths and such. These included the Assyrian lamassu and shedu, the Egyptian sphinx,  the Hebrew cherub, and even the Greek gorgon. This tradition continues even to the present day in the form of gargoyles and grotesques adorning churches. Modern academia refers to these as tutelary deities or tutelaries.

The Egyptians built several different images of sphinx: the androsphinx had the head of a man on the body of a lion, the criosphinx had the head of a ram, and the hieracosphinx had the head of an eagle. These names originate from modern academia, but were adopted into Dungeons & Dungeons.

When the sphinx was adapted by the Greeks, it morphed into a man-eating monstress. I can only hazard the guess that the Greek Sphinx became a man-eater as a result of conflation with her contemporary the lamia. She was a unique monster that terrorized Thebes, eating any travelers that couldn't answer its riddle until Oedipus solved it and drove her to suicide. In the Greeks' elaborate (and inconsistent) family trees, her father was Orthos or Typhon and her mother was Chimera or Echidna.

She was described as having the body of a lion, the head and breasts of a woman, the wings of an eagle, and the tail of a dragon or serpent (the Greek language didn't distinguish) or a tail ending in the head of one. However, her exact appearance varies wildly in historical and modern art. Sometimes she is depicted as a kind of centaur, with the whole torso of a woman replacing the head of a lion.

Oddly enough, Roman bestiaries referred to an "Ethiopian Sphinx" as a half-woman half-lion monster native to sub-Saharan Africa. Although Dungeons & Dungeons monster manuals have a history of multiplying originally singular monsters, this trend may be observed in myths and bestiaries from ancient times.

In the Boeotian dialect of Greek, her name was shortened to Phix. In modern academic settings, this sphinx is referred to as the Greek or Theban Sphinx to distinguish it. Dungeons & Dungeons invented the term gynosphinx, as this was never used in academia to my knowledge.

In popular culture

Most depictions of the sphinx in popular culture are fairly standard. It poses a riddle and eats you if you fail to answer. Most of the time a different riddle is chosen than the classic Theban one. A few variations that stood out to me were:

In the movie MirrorMask, a riddling griffin/sphinx appears and poses the protagonist the same classical riddle. She gives a literal answer (a circus dog that performs tricks on different numbers of legs), then distracts it with an unsolvable riddle and sneaks away.

In the 2005 Hercules miniseries, the Nemean lion was depicted as a sphinx who could change her face. It pretended to be a woman by hiding her body behind a rock to lure travelers before eating them, leading to tales of the lion guarding a damsel in distress.

In Bernard Evslin's Greek Mythology, the sphinx is the daughter of a sandstorm-riding demoness and a griffin. She has many adventures before she meets Oedipus, and is ultimately frozen into the famous statue. She makes a cameo appearance in another story, where she briefly thaws and shares a prophecy with witnesses.

One story in the Shadowchasers series featured a "great sphinx" seer who inflicted a "conundrum curse" upon those who sought her knowledge. The cursed became animate stone puzzles that could only be cured by solving their riddle. (This is a direct reference to an identical monster in Creature Collection II: Dark Menagerie.) Another story in the same series featured a sphinx who cheated: the answer to her riddle was "kill me."

In fantasy gaming

In earlier editions of Dungeons & Dungeons the sphinxes were depicted as a race of monsters with the body of a lion and the head of some other creature. They had variable morality in accordance with their head, and all but the gynosphinx were male. Rather disturbing, a sphinx's head was hereditary and thus most of the males had to reproduce by raping the gynosphinxes. This led one online commentator to coin the phrase "sphinxes in refrigerators."

In Pathfinder, this was changed so that the head of the offspring was determined by the relationship between the parents. The bestiary notes that manticores are interfertile with sphinxes and the offspring are sphinxes with the tail of a manticore, but it isn't clear if they are the same species or not (as manticores are also interfertile with lamias, producing lamia offspring with manticore's tails).

In the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons, the sphinx was changed to a tutelary in accordance with its ancient Near East origins. Although they are described as goodly religious entities, they are typed as monstrosities rather than celestials. Gynosphinxes are noted to pose riddles like in the Greek myth, but now without the threat of being eaten. (The lammasu and shedu appeared in early editions of D&D, but have yet to appear in 5e. For simplicity's sake, I track them as sphinxes.)

In 13th Age, the various anthropocephalic monsters are condensed into the goodly lamassu and vicious manticore. The bestiary states that they are mortal enemies, but only ever subtly implies why this may be. I find this distinction simple and easy to track, so I would adopt it.

As mentioned above, Creature Collection II: Dark Menagerie featured the great sphinx Athentia, a powerful seer who cursed petitioners into "conundrum creatures." The curse turned them into animate stone puzzle that could only be lifted by answering their riddle.

Phix in 5e?

As mentioned above, the 5e sphinx is based on the Middle Eastern sphinxes instead of the Theban sphinx. Even so, I see no reason why you can't have both varieties in the same setting. Although, what is the explanation for the difference? Maybe the man-eaters should be folded into the manticores?

The name gynosphinx is already taken, and would be confusing to recycle now. Thankfully, I can just refer to the Theban sphinx as the phix, her name in the Boeotian dialect. Anyway, I think the easiest way to re-introduce the phix is as a manticore variant. Perhaps, as 13th Age implies, at least some manticores are fallen sphinxes. Thus, the phix may be a fallen gynosphinx who lost her immortality and acquired a hunger for those who fail to answer her riddle.

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