Sphinx Statue, Metropolitan Museum, New York. 540-530 B.C.

This sphinx was a part of an Attic grave monument of the middle archaic period that reflected the wealth of Athens at the time. The greek sphinx had a woman's head, lion's body, serpent's tail and eagle's wing. In the Ancient Greek myth, the sphinx was sent by Hera to punish Thebes for displeasing the Goddess. The sphinx settled on Mount Phicium, near the city and asked everyone who passed to answer a riddle she learnt from the three muses: "What being, with only one voice, has sometimes two feet, sometimes three, sometimes four and is weakest when it has the most?" Anyone unable to render the correct answer was immediately slain. One day Oedipus chanced along that road and guessed the answer: "Man, because he crawls on all four as an infant, stands firmly on his two feet in his youth and leans on a staff in his old age." Completely shattered by her defeat, the sphinx threw herself from the mountain, which led to Oedipus becoming king.