Cox, George - Aryan Mythology Vol 2.pdf

44 MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS.
BOOK by the hand of his child, as the night must give place to the
- .*— clay.
Section IV.—THE THEBAN MYTH.
he The close affinity of the Theban Sphinx with the Ahi, the
throttling snake, is manifest from its name, which belongs
to the same root with the verb aiyyay, to bind tight, to
squeeze, and so to choke. In the Hesiodic Theogony this
word is given under the form Phix, and points to the con-
nexion between the words atyiyyco, ir^yvvfii, and the Latin
figo, to fix or fasten. If the Thebans derived this name
from the mount Phikion, their mistake was but a repetition
of the process which traced the surnames of Phoibos to the
island of Delos and the country of Lykia. The Sphinx, then,
like Vritra and the Panis, is a being who imprisons the rain
in hidden dungeons. Like them, she takes her seat on a
rock, and there she utters her dark sayings, and destroys the
men who cannot expound them. In Hesiod, she is a daughter
of Orthros and Chimaira, who with her mother Echidna ex-
hibits the same composite form which reappears in the
Sphinx. In the Sphinx the head of a woman is combined
with the body of a beast, having like Typhon the claws
of the lion, the wings of the bird, and the serpent's tail
and in Apollodoros Typhon is himself her father. 1
It is, of
course, possible that the so-called Egyptian Sphinx may be
an expression for the same idea which has given birth to
Ahi, Vritra, the Panis, and the kindred beings of Greek
mythology ; but neither the name nor the figures of the
Hellenic Sphinx have been borrowed from Egypt. The
an Aryan d never appears in Greek as I, into \ as unheard of in Greek, must, in
Professor Miiller replies by saying that Professor Miiller's opinion, be speaking
the instances in support of his own of classical Greek, and not of the Greek
position were supplied by Ahrens, ' De dialects, ' which are nevertheless of the
Dialecto Dorica,,' who cites \d