"Greco-Bactrians and the Indo-Greeks. Sphinx of Naxos The Sphinx of Naxos, also Sphinx of the Naxians, now in the Archaeological Museum of Delphi, is a colossal 2.22 meter tall marble statue of a sphinx, a mythical creature with the head of a woman, the chest and wings composed of the impressive feathers of a prey bird turned upward, and the body of a lioness. The Sphinx stood on a 10 meters column that culminated in one of the first Ionic capitals, and was erected next to the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, the religious center of Ancient Greece, in 560"
"Great Sphinx of Giza The Great Sphinx of Giza (, , ; literally: Father of Dread), commonly referred to as the Sphinx of Giza or just the Sphinx, is a limestone statue of a reclining sphinx, a mythical creature with the body of a lion and the head of a human. Facing directly from West to East, it stands on the Giza Plateau on the west bank of the Nile in Giza, Egypt. The face of the Sphinx is generally believed to represent the Pharaoh Khafre. Cut from the bedrock, the original shape of the Sphinx has been restored with"
"(mostly caused by wind and windblown sand), leading to the uneven degradation apparent in the Sphinx's body. The lowest part of the body, including the legs, is solid rock. The body of the lion up to its neck is fashioned from softer layers that have suffered considerable disintegration. The layer in which the head was sculpted is much harder. The Great Sphinx is one of the world's largest and oldest statues, but basic facts about it are still subject to debate, such as when it was built, by whom and for what purpose. It is impossible to identify what name"
"Sphinx A sphinx ( , Boeotian: , plural sphinxes or sphinges) is a mythical creature with the head of a human and the body of a lion. In Greek tradition, it has the head of a human, the haunches of a lion, and sometimes the wings of a bird. It is mythicised as treacherous and merciless. Those who cannot answer its riddle suffer a fate typical in such mythological stories, as they are killed and eaten by this ravenous monster. This deadly version of a sphinx appears in the myth and drama of Oedipus. Unlike the Greek sphinx, which was"
"on 14 December 2000. Andrew Collins and Rodney Hale have proposed an 'alternative correlation theory' using three bright stars in the Cygnus constellation. They argued that not only did the groundplan fit the sky but also the stars can be observed setting down on the corresponding pyramids. Their proposal has also been contested. The Great Sphinx is a colossal statue with the face of a man and the body of a lion. Carved out of the surrounding limestone bedrock, it is long, wide, and has a height of , making it the largest single-stone statue in the world. The Great"
"a lion's body, a woman's head and the wings of an eagle (although, like most Egyptian sphinxes, the Great Sphinx has a man's head and no wings). The English word ""sphinx"" comes from the ancient Greek Σφίγξ ( ) apparently from the verb σφίγγω ( / ), after the Greek sphinx who strangled anyone who failed to answer her riddle. The name may alternatively be a linguistic corruption of the phonetically different ancient Egyptian word ""Ssp-anx"" (in Manuel de Codage). This name is given to royal statues of the Fourth dynasty of ancient Egypt (2575–2467 BC) and later in the"
"lies the ""West Cemetery"", where the highest officials and priests were interred. A possible part of the necropolis of Khufu is the famous Great Sphinx of Giza. It's a large limestone statue in the shape of a recumbent lion with the head of a human, decorated with a royal ""Nemes"" headdress. The Sphinx was directly hewn out of the plateau of Giza and originally painted with red, ocher, green and black. To this day it is passionately disputed as to who exactly gave the order to build it: the most probable candidates are Khufu, his elder son Djedefra and his"
"Sphinx (Marc Quinn sculpture) In 2006, Sphinx, a sculpture of the British fashion model Kate Moss in a complicated yoga position was unveiled by the controversial British sculptor Marc Quinn. The life-size sculpture is made of cast bronze, with a white-painted finish, and shows Moss wearing a leotard with her feet and hands behind her head. The pose itself was modelled by a more experienced woman yoga practitioner, though the body, hands, and feet are based on Moss' exact measurements and earlier lifecastings. Quinn's representation of Moss is meant to show ""a mirror of ourselves, a knotted Venus of our"
"age."" The British Museum commissioned Marc Quinn in 2008 to make a life-size sculpture of the model Kate Moss, made entirely of cast gold. The resulting work, also in the yoga position of ""Sphinx"" and modeled from ""Sphinx"", was named ""Siren"". It was placed in a show in the museum's Nereid Gallery near the statue of the bathing Aphrodite. While some say the statue is the largest gold sculpture created since the ancient Egyptian era the claim cannot be verified. Sphinx (Marc Quinn sculpture) In 2006, Sphinx, a sculpture of the British fashion model Kate Moss in a complicated yoga"
"Sphinx is one of the world's largest and oldest statues, yet basic facts about it such as the real-life model for the face, when and why it was built, and by whom, are debated. These questions have collectively earned the title ""Riddle of the Sphinx"", a nod to its Greek namesake, although this phrase should not be confused with the original Greek legend. The Great Sphinx is commonly accepted by Egyptologists to represent the likeness of King Khafra (also known by the Hellenised version of his name, ""Chephren"") who is often credited as the builder as well. This would place"
"moved to the cemetery of the nearby Cathedral where it stayed until 1824, when it was moved to the University. The stone is currently in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. The monolith is made of basalt and measures 93 cm tall with a diameter of 2.65 meters and a circumference of 8.31 meters. The lateral side of the stone depicts 15 separate scenes of a repeated scene of a costumed warrior having their hair grabbed by another warrior. Presumably the first figure, the warrior with the largest headress is identified by the glyph of Tizoc and wears"
"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, Memphis, Egypt, 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 sphinxes with ram heads, representing Amon, were built in Thebes, where his cult was strongest. The Great Sphinx"
"the Sphinx has the face, neck and breast of a woman. Examples included Johannes Helferich (1579), George Sandys (1615), Johann Michael Vansleb (1677), Benoît de Maillet (1735) and Elliot Warburton (1844). Most early Western images were book illustrations in print form, elaborated by a professional engraver from either previous images available or some original drawing or sketch supplied by an author, and usually now lost. Seven years after visiting Giza, André Thévet (""Cosmographie de Levant"", 1556) described the Sphinx as ""the head of a colossus, caused to be made by Isis, daughter of Inachus, then so beloved of Jupiter"". He,"
"especially likely to be offensive to Muslims, as the statue is the classic form for idols, and a fear of any hint of idolatry is the basis of Islamic prohibitions. Islamic art has almost always avoided large sculptures of any subject, especially free-standing ones; only a few animals are known, mostly fountain-heads, like those in the Lion Court of the Alhambra; the Pisa Griffin is perhaps the largest. In 1997, the Council on American–Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy group in the United States, wrote to United States Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist requesting that the sculpted representation of Muhammad"
"layers of blocks. It measures long from paw to tail, high from the base to the top of the head and wide at its rear haunches. It is the oldest known monumental sculpture in Egypt and is commonly believed to have been built by ancient Egyptians of the Old Kingdom during the reign of the Pharaoh Khafre (). The Sphinx is a monolith carved into the bedrock of the plateau, which also served as the quarry for the pyramids and other monuments in the area. The nummulitic limestone of the area consists of layers which offer differing resistance to erosion"
"have represented an individual suffering from prognathism which may have been a reflection of a disease suffered by the sculpture’s human inspiration. Furthermore as the Sphinx represented a lion, the same person may have suffered from leontiasis ossea. Leontiasis ossea Leontiasis ossea, also known as leontiasis, lion face or Lion Face Syndrome, is a rare medical condition, characterized by an overgrowth of the facial and cranial bones. It is not a disease in itself, but a symptom of other diseases, including Paget's disease, fibrous dysplasia, hyperparathyroidism and renal osteodystrophy. The common form is that in which one or other maxilla"
"with the body of a lion and the head of a human being is present in the traditions, mythology and art of South and Southeast Asia. Variously known as ""purushamriga"" (Sanskrit, ""man-beast""), ""purushamirugam"" (Tamil, ""man-beast""), ""naravirala"" (Sanskrit, ""man-cat"") in India, or as ""nara-simha"" (Sanskrit, ""man-lion"") in Sri Lanka, ""manusiha"" or ""manuthiha"" (Pali, ""man-lion"") in Myanmar, and ""norasingh"" (from Pali, ""man-lion"", a variation of the Sanskrit ""nara-simha"") or ""thep norasingh"" (""man-lion deity""), or ""nora nair"" in Thailand. In contrast to the sphinxes in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece, of which the traditions largely have been lost due to the discontinuity of the"
"and is said to be the second largest concrete monolithic statue in the world (after ""Christ the Redeemer"" in Rio de Janeiro). It wears a long blanket and stares across the river with folded arms. With the help of John G. Prasuhn, the young sculptor of the Chicago Art Institute, Lorado Taft created a figure almost 50 feet tall, including a six-foot base. Reinforced with iron rods, the hollow statue is eight inches to three feet thick. The interior is accessible through a door at the base, although visitors are currently not allowed inside the statue. The outer surface composed"
"described as both a god and a goddess. Rather than signal hermaphroditism or androgyny, archaeologist Leonardo Lopez Lujan suggests that these varying embodiments are a testament to the deity's importance in the Mexica pantheon. In 2006, a massive monolith of Tlaltecuhtli was discovered in an excavation at the Templo Mayor in Tenochtitlan (modern-day Mexico City). The sculpture measures approximately 13.1 x 11.8 feet (4 x 3.6 meters) and weighs nearly 12 tons, making it one of the largest Aztec monoliths ever discovered—larger even than the Calendar Stone. The sculpture, carved in a block of pink andesite, presents the goddess in"
"Museum), Pisa. The griffin has the head of an eagle; but it has ears like those of a horse as well as the wattles of a rooster, wings, and the body of a lion, or other mammal(s), with toes. Its dimensions are: height 107 cm; length 87 cm; width 43 cm. It is made of cast bronze (i.e. copper alloy) with the wings cast separately and held in place by rivets; it is largely hollow inside. There is an engraved decoration, including an Arabic inscription in Kufic letters round the beast's chest and flanks saying: ""Perfect benediction, complete wellbeing, perfect"
"the Sphinx was originally that of a lion and recarved sometime later in the likeness of a pharaoh. Zahi Hawass, former Egyptian minister of state for antiquities affairs and secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, was asked in an interview on the PBS series NOVA if it was possible that a more ancient civilization might have sculpted the Sphinx. Hawass replied: ""Of course it is not possible for one reason …. No single artifact, no single inscription, or pottery, or anything has been found until now, in any place to predate the Egyptian civilization more than 5,000 years ago."""
"6 feet tall and was depicted as a blood-spattered skeleton or a person wearing a toothy skull. Although his head was typically a skull, his eye sockets did contain eyeballs. His headdress was shown decorated with owl feathers and paper banners and he wore a necklace of human eyeballs, while his earspools were made from human bones. He was not the only Aztec god to be depicted in this fashion, as numerous other deities had skulls for heads or else wore clothing or decorations that incorporated bones and skulls. In the Aztec world, skeletal imagery was a symbol of fertility,"
"the Pyxis of the Classical world. It was found without its lid. There is a lotus decorating the bottom. The casket features hellenistic representations of the Buddha (contrapposto pose, Greek himation, bundled hairstyle, wearing a moustache, realistic execution), surrounded by the Indian deities Brahma and Śakra, inside arched niches (called ""homme arcade"", or ""caitya"") of Greco-Roman architecture. There are altogether eight figures in high-relief (two identical groups of Brahman-Buddha-Indra, and two devotees or Bodhisattvas in-between) and two rows of rubies from Badakhshan. Owing to their necklace, bracelets, and armbands, and halo, the two devotees are most probably representations of Bodhisattvas."
"as the Egyptologist Henry Fischer put it, ""a lion-headed goddess is a lion-goddess in human form, while a royal sphinx, conversely, is a man who has assumed the form of a lion."" Divine headdresses, which range from the same types of crowns used by human kings to large hieroglyphs worn on gods' heads, are another important indicator. In contrast, the objects held in gods' hands tend to be generic. Male deities hold ""was"" staffs, goddesses hold stalks of papyrus, and both sexes carry ""ankh"" signs, representing the Egyptian word for ""life"", to symbolize their life-giving power. The forms in which"
"Manticore The manticore (Early Middle Persian ""Merthykhuwar""; Modern Persian ""Mardykhor"") is a Persian legendary creature similar to the Egyptian sphinx that proliferated in western European medieval art as well. It has the head of a human, body of a lion and a tail of venomous spines similar to porcupine quills, while other depictions have it with the tail of a scorpion. There are some accounts that the spines can be shot like arrows, thus making the manticore a lethal predator. It eats its victims whole, using its triple rows of teeth, and leaves no bones behind. The mantyger is a"
"exterior are two adjacent shrines, one containing the largest monolithic Shiva Linga and the other with the largest monolithic Yoga-[[Narasimha]] avatar of [[Vishnu]] in Hampi. The Shiva Linga stands in water in a cubical chamber and has three eyes sketched on its top. South of this is the shrine for a -high Narasimha—the man-lion avatar of Vishnu—seated in a yoga position. The Narasimha monolith originally had goddess Lakshmi with him, but it shows signs of extensive damage and a carbon-stained floor—evidence of attempts to burn the shrine down. The statue has been cleaned and parts of the shrine have been"
"show that the Indian nations also have their heroes. The Native Americans consider Thunderhead Mountain, where the monument is being carved, to be sacred ground. Thunderhead Mountain is situated between Custer and Hill City. Upon completion, the head of Crazy Horse will be the world’s largest sculpture of the human head, measuring approximately tall, more than 27 feet taller than the 60-foot faces of the U.S. Presidents depicted on Mount Rushmore, and the Crazy Horse Memorial as a whole will be the largest sculpture in the world. The memorial is funded entirely by private donations, with no assistance from the"
"to other cultural traditions. Sphinxes depictions are generally associated with architectural structures such as royal tombs or religious temples. The oldest known sphinx was found near Gobekli Tepe at another site, Nevali Çori, or possibly 195 kilometres (120 mi) to the east at Kortik Tepe, Turkey, and was dated to 9,500 B.C. The largest and most famous sphinx is the Great Sphinx of Giza, situated on the Giza Plateau adjacent to the Great Pyramids of Giza on the west bank of the Nile River and facing east (). The sphinx is located southeast of the pyramids. Although the date of"
"not including the Al-Ḥawāmidiyah kism separated by Giza markiz. Its unclear that the 9 urban kisms represent a single entity; the structure may be similar to that of 23 wards of Tokyo in that all local units are simply subordinate to the Governorate without any intermediate municipal structure. Giza's most famous land form and archaeological site, the Giza Plateau, holds some major monuments of Egyptian history, and is home to the Great Sphinx. Once thriving with the Nile that flowed right into the Giza Plateau, the pyramids of Giza were built overlooking the ancient Egyptian capital city of Memphis, across"
"by high, making it the largest known head. This massive sculpture is estimated to weigh 40 tons. It is stylistically distinct from the other examples, and Beatriz de la Fuente placed it late in the Olmec time frame. The characteristics of the sculpture have led to some investigators suggesting that it represents a deceased person. Norman Hammond argues that the apparent stylistic differences of the monument stem from its unfinished state rather than its late production. The eyes of the monument are closed, the nose is flattened and lacks nostrils and the mouth was not sculpted in a realistic manner."
"by the British Museum in 1867. This enormous head is made from Parian marble and was once part of a twice life-size cult statue of the ancient Greek god of medicine and healing Asclepius (or Asklepios). It was made from three pieces, only two of which are extant. Around the head are drill holes and lead pegs for a (now missing) gold wreath that once crowned the statue. The serene expression on the deity's face is typical of Hellenistic sculpture from this period. Asclepius would probably have been shown standing semi-nude, clasping a staff on one side with a serpent"
"Chatsworth Head The Chatsworth Head is a slightly over-life-size bronze head dating to around 460 BCE which is now in the British Museum. The head was originally part of a complete statue, probably (judging by the shoulder-length curly hair) one of Apollo, made up of various sections (e.g. head, arms, legs, some of the locks of hair) produced separately by lost-wax casting then joined into one whole - a leg from the same sculpture is in the Louvre (Br 69). Its eyes probably originally held glass, marble or ivory inlays, which were held in with surviving bronze plates, which curl"
"were excavated from the sanctuary of the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, in 1860. The remainder was found in 1893. It was originally set up on a stele around 560 BC as an offering to the Temple of Apollo by Naxos, one of the richest Cycladic islands at the time. The overall height of the statue, the column and its base topped 12.5 meters. The Greek sphinx, a lion with the face of a human female, was considered as having ferocious strength, and was thought of as a guardian, often flanking the entrances to temples. Sphinxes depictions are generally associated"