The Egyptian Sphinx predates the Greek. The giant Sphinx at the pyramid of Giza is a majestic figure, its haunches feline and face regal and masculine.
The Greek Sphinx, however, is a frightening female monster of disparate parts: the body and tale of a lion (or serpent), wings of an eagle, a woman’s beautiful face and sometimes breasts. Because of its colossal size and proximity to pyramids, the Egyptian figure seems to be a guardian and protector. The Egyptians have other composite monsters as well—Ammit, the Griffin, Serpopard—but none are specifically female.
We know more about the Greek Sphinx than the Egyptian because of her role in Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex, where she brings Hera’s curse to Thebes. Her powerful wings carry her to the city walls from Mount Phicium, or in some versions of the myth, Ethiopia, bearing a curse from Hera, queen of the Olympian gods. There she poses her famous riddle, and when the man fails to solve it (she never questions a woman), Sphinx flings him to his death, decimating the male population. Thebes’ future depends on a brave, clever man vanquishing her with the correct answer. He who does so will marry widowed queen Jocasta and become the Thebes’ king.
Hera’s curse comes later to Thebes, which was cursed almost from its founding. Soon after Cadmus arrived in Boetia, Ares cursed it because Cadmus’ men slew his sacred dragon. The city was founded by the Spartoi, or Sown Men, and its curse may well have come from the Great Mother herself for violation of Earth. After Cadmus sowed the teeth of the dragon, armed men sprouted from the earth, fighting to the death. Those who survived became the nobility of the Cadmeia, the palace hill of Thebes. Hera’s curse begins with Laius before he inherited Thebes’ crown and ruled with Queen Jocasta. Their marriage is befouled in advance by a crime he’d committed, hidden but not from the goddess. Laius abducted the young son of King Pelops and took him to his bed. Not long after, the boy Chrysippus died–said to be an accident, but more more likely by his own hand. Pelops cursed Laius, and Hera heard him. The gods can take their time enacting their punishments, but then Lauis compounds his crimes by committing one against the Mother as well. In fear of a prophecy that his son will kill him, Laius exposes Jocasta’s newborn on a barren hillside. Years later Sphinx arrives to plague the city.
The Spinx’ riddle: what walks on four legs then, two legs then three legs and speaks with a single voice? Oedipus, who seems to be a passing stranger, replies Man, and Spinx hurls herself from the high wall into the chasm beneath. Oedipus is duly crowned king, but paradoxically, his saving the city brings a further curse on Thebes. Not because he excluded Woman from his answer, though in matriarchal times that could be a fatal mistake, but according Sophocles’ play and other sources, because he had unknowingly committed the primal crime of patricide.