HERODOTUS AND THE MISSING SPHINX

Abstract

In this paper I address a problem in the text and narrative of Herodotus’ Histories, namely, a possible reason why the historian makes no mention of the sphinx at Giza in Book 2, while he is concerned to note a minor edifice at the complex containing the three great pyramids. I suggest that, whereas Herodotus devotes detail to the supposed history of one of the three small pyramids that stands beside the pyramid of Mycerinus, a story that contains similar topical elements to the story of the murder of the Lydian king Candaules by Gyges in Book 1, the argument that a description of the Egyptian sphinx was omitted because it was not visible probably holds no substance. Moreover, sphinxes elsewhere were a constant topic of interest, especially in various dramatic versions produced at Athens during the fifth century, and, depending on the date of the composition of Herodotus’ Book 2, any audience of his history would have been familiar with the sphinx which features in the story of Oedipus, mythical king of Thebes. It is therefore argued here that had Herodotus composed Book 2 of his Histories at a time when Sophocles’ play Oedipus tyrannus was produced in Athens, between 428 B.C.E. and 425 B.C.E., the sphinx at Giza would almost certainly have received a mention. But if Herodotus wrote this part of his Histories as early as 440 B.C.E., as suggested here, when the Theban sphinx was not an object of curiosity, then the Egyptian sphinx was omitted from the text simply because of the historian’s understandable lack of interest in this form of statuary at that particular time.