- (in ancient Egypt)
- a figure of an imaginary creature having the head of a man or an animal and the body of a lion.
- the colossal recumbent stone figure of this kind near the pyramids of Giza.
- a monster, usually represented as having the head and breast of a woman, the body of a lion, and the wings of an eagle. Seated on a rock outside of Thebes, she proposed a riddle to travelers, killing them when they answered incorrectly, as all did before Oedipus. When he answered her riddle correctly the Sphinx killed herself.
- any similar monster.
- a mysterious, inscrutable person or thing, especially one given to enigmatic questions or answers.
- any of a number of huge stone statues built by the ancient Egyptians, having the body of a lion and the head of a man
- an inscrutable person
- a monster with a woman's head and a lion's body. She lay outside Thebes, asking travellers a riddle and killing them when they failed to answer it. Oedipus answered the riddle and the Sphinx then killed herself
- the huge statue of a sphinx near the pyramids at El Gîza in Egypt, of which the head is a carved portrait of the fourth-dynasty Pharaoh, Chephrēn
