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white ground lekythos depicting Oedipus and the sphinx
£40.00
In the scene depicted here, Oedipus ponders the riddle of the sphinx, which was: 'What walks on four legs at dawn, two at noon and three at dusk?' (Man) Oedipus solved the riddle and the sphinx, in despair at being outwitted, hurled herself from a rock to her death. The image is based on an original from an amphora by the Achilles Painter dating to ca 440-430 BC, which is now in the Staatliche Antikensammlungen in Munich. Height: 14cm
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about this pottery collection
This pottery collection is produced in Greece in the workshop of the Lioulias family, with whom It's All Greek is proud to have been working since 2004.
the significance of the sphinx
The hybrid mythical enigmatic sphinx, with the face of a woman, the body of a lion and the wings of a bird of prey, has an interesting duality in ancient Greek art and literature.
The male sphinx of ancient Egypt, benevolent guardian of pharoahs and of sacred places, was integrated into archaic Greek culture, but with a significant difference, namely that she was now a female hybrid. The Greek sphinx retained - at first - the role of silent guardian, as seen in archaic pottery and in many apotropaic funerary markers, to watch over the dead, and to ward off evil. (If you have been to the museum in Delphi, you'll have seen the monumental sphinx dedicated by the people of Naxos to Apollo's panhellenic sanctuary.)
Gradually, during the archaic and the early Classical periods, there is a distinct shift in the representations of the sphinx in both Greek art and literature. Hesiod set the tone for this change by rewriting the sphinx' genealogy... she was now the offspring of terrifying, primeval Greek monsters Typhon and Echidna. Smaller sphinx statues were now placed on top of gravestones as boundary markers between the living and the dead, and the sphinx became intimately linked to mortal grief, death, and the terrifying transition to Hades. By the time Sophocles wrote Oedipus Tyrannos (ca 429 BCE), the silent stone guardian had been reimagined as a speaking, riddling, destructive devourer of any who failed to solve her cryptic riddle. The point at which, outwitted by Oedipus, this symbol of mystery and ruin hurls herself to death from a steep cliff, in some ways represents a transition from primeval chaos to civilised reason.