I took this quote out of URL above, because it might interest others as it did me, to learn etymology of word "sphinx" I had also forgotten there was more than one sphinx
The sphinx terrorized Thebes before the arrival of Oedipus (see Oedipal Complex). She was a hybrid
creature with the head of a woman, body of a lion, wings of an eagle, and the tail of a serpent. She
punished those who failed to answer her riddle with strangulation (the Greek verb sphingein means to
strangle). At some point the Greek sphinx became associated with Egyptian iconography, in which the
sphinx had a lion's body and a hawk's or man's head. When we liken someone to a sphinx, we have in
mind the great riddler of the Greeks and not the Egyptian conception. A sphinx is an inscrutable person,
given to enigmatic utterances (the Greek word ainigma means a riddle).
