Book of the Sphinx
By Willis Goth Regier
Sutton Publishing, 230 pages
Reviewed by Catherine MacLennan
Willis Goth Regier's Book of the Sphinx is a playful introduction to that mysterious creature. Amply illustrated with paintings, engravings, sculptures and numerous sphinx-related artefacts from the enthusiastic author's personal collection, the creature's various manifestations attest to the sphinx's seemingly unending popularity as story and symbol.
Though "sphinx" is the general term for many sphinxes, Great Sphinx of Giza is called "Horemakhet" — Sun on the Horizon (it has also been called Harmarkhis, Son of the Sun; Harmais; Balhouba; and through an error that confused "Per-Hol," place of Horus, with "Hol," the Arabic word for terror, the Sphinx also came to be known as "Abu-Hol," Father of Terror — a name that remains to today).
As mysterious as Phix (the sphinx of Greek myth), Horemakhet, strangely disfigured by zealots, and worn by the sand, was for centuries only partially visible. Many knew it only as a head. One of the fascinating aspects of the Book of the Sphinx is the evidence in the form of engravings and vintage postcards from the 1700s and 1800s that show that the Sphinx had been covered up to its neck in sand for so long. After decades of work trying to dig it out, with finally 250,000 cubic metres of sand removed in 1937, for "the first time since Rome ruled Egypt, the Sphinx was free." And photographs are also included showing the new old Horemakhet, with shoulders, a long body, and two big paws out front. While there is a magisterial quality to the uncovered body, Horemakhet possessed a peculiar kind charm when it was just a big inexpressive head popping out of the sand.
Aside from Horemakhet, Regier examines the sphinx as character, symbol, and myth in all its myriad forms. Befitting such an enigmatic character, the sphinx is described by various people and cultures in completely opposite terms — the sphinx is both: angel and demon; human and animal; male and female; alluring and repulsive; virgin and lust; silent and speaking. Such ambiguity only makes the sphinx more terrifying, puzzling and powerful.
Regier also finds references to the sphinx not only in visual culture, but literature, psychology and philosophy; everyone seems to mention some kind of sphinx: Bob Dylan, Shakespeare, Henry James, Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, Hegel, Wagner, Voltaire, George Bernard Shaw, Baudelaire, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Alexandre Dumas, Freud, Jung, Claude Levi-Strauss, Nietzsche (and many others). Regier notes that Flaubert's companion on his trip to Egypt, Maxime Du Camp, took the first photographs of the Great Sphinx. Though by no means (Regier admits) a reference text on the subject, Book of the Sphinx is more a fun book to pique the reader's interest, and in this it succeeds with its many illustrations as well as with its often humorous commentary.