The Wisdom of Egypt: Jewish, Early Christian, and Gnostic Essays in Honour of Gerard P. Luttikhuizen by Anthony Hilhorst

Author:Anthony Hilhorst [Hilhorst, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789004144255
Goodreads: 2389600
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

the sphinx as a theological symbol

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THE SPHINX: SCULPTURE AS A THEOLOGICAL

SYMBOL IN PLUTARCH AND CLEMENT

OF ALEXANDRIA

John Herrmann and Annewies van den Hoek

Introduction

One of the peculiarities of human nature is our identification with and even affection for savage beasts—when kept at a certain physical and/or imaginative distance. In the dangerous world of antiquity, it must have been the desire to stay at the top of the food chain that led to the frequent use of pitiless predators such as the lion or the eagle as personal and civic emblems. In real life, humans have always had a strong instinct to exterminate such nuisance creatures. In modern times a more sentimental spirit has led to a fondness for dangerous animals inadvertently blessed with plump, rotund proportions, such as the bear and the hippopotamus. Perhaps because of the shared Nilotic habitat of the hippo and the Nag Hammadi manuscripts, this creature has notoriously been a favorite of our honorand. We would like to explore another ferocious monster connected both with ancient Egypt and with Greco-Roman culture: the sphinx. This creature has the disadvantage of being imaginary as well as reputedly lethal, yet she too has had a durable popularity. While not rotund and cuddly, she is often soft and feminine. When you add to that her special mysterious charm, it is small wonder that she was a great favorite in times of classicism (fig. 1).1 There is a further, more contemporary reason to propose the sphinx as a subject of meditation for our honorand; in spite of a number of recent admirable studies on the sphinx in ancient art and literature, this mysterious creature remains somewhat misunderstood. Moreover, a theologian from Egypt, Clement of Alexandria, unexpectedly provides considerable insight into her nature.

Two recent publications have brought together research on both texts 1 On the sphinxes of Wertheim Park in Amsterdam, see the website of Amsterdam’s Bureau of Monumenten en Archeologie, http://www.bmz.amsterdam.nl/adam/nl/

meubilair/wertheim.html.

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