Greek city of Gergis in Troas (Asia Minor )
Bronze 12mm (1.89 grams) Struck circa 350-250 B.C.
Reference: Sear 4099; B.M.C. 17.55,5-8
Laureate head of the Sibyl Herophile three-quarter face to right, wearing necklace.
ΓEP before Sphinx seated right.

The site of this town is not certainly known, but was probably on the rocky heights of Bali-Dagh, a few miles south of Ilion.

     The Sibyl played an important role in antiquity. The first recorded use of the name Sibyl was in the fifth century BC. Originally Sibyl was the name given to a single prophetic woman. However the name became generic, and Sibyl was used to identify a woman who could  prophesize. The Sibyls were most commonly associated with Apollo, who provided them with divine insight into the future. They were highly revered, and there work was accumulated in a corpus called the Sibyline books. This collection was housed in the Capitoline Temple of Jupiter., where they could only be consulted by the senate. The interest in sibyls throughout the Mediterranean world most likely stemmed from their close connection with Rome and the Sibyline corpus. The Sibyle Herophile was one of the ten Sibyls commonly known. She was a daughter of a nymph and a mortal. Herophile was meant to have been born near Gergis, at Marpessus, and her tomb was in the temple of Apollo at Gergis. Gergis was one of the three cities known to commemorate Sibyls on their coins. Her appearance on coins from Gergis would be a way of paying tribute to Herophile as well as indicating the important location of Gergis in terms of its proximity to the resting place of divine Sibyl. Herophile was said to have predicted the fall of Troy. She gave her prophecies in verse, and she delivered them standing on a stone which she always carried with her.

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The word Sibyl (in English , / əlsɪbˈ/) comes (via Latin ) from the Greek word σίβυλλα sibylla, meaning prophetess . The earliest oracular seeresses known as the sibyls of antiquity, "who admittedly are known only through legend"prophesied at certain holy sites, under the divine influence of a deity, originally— at Delphi and Pessinos — one of the chthonic deities. Later in antiquity, sibyls wandered from place to place.

History

Homer seems to have been unaware of a Sibyl. The first known Greek writer to mention a sibyl is Heraclitus , in the 5th century BC:

The Sibyl, with frenzied mouth uttering things not to be laughed at, unadorned and unperfumed, yet reaches to a thousand years with her voice by aid of the god.'

Walter Burkert observes that "Frenzied women from whose lips the god speaks" are recorded very much earlier in the Near East, as in Mari in the second millennium and in Assyria in the first millennium".

Until the literary elaborations of Roman writers, sibyls were not identified by a personal name, but by names that refer to the location of their temenos , or shrine.

In Pausanias , Description of Greece , the first Sibyl at Delphi mentioned ("the former" [earlier]) was of great antiquity, and was thought, according to Pausanias, to have been given the name "sibyl" by the Libyans.Sir James Frazer calls the text defective. The second Sibyl referred to by Pausanias, and named "Herophile", seems to have been based ultimately in Samos , but visited other shrines, at Clarus . Delos and Delphi and sang there, but that at the same time, Delphi had its own sibyl.

James Frazer writes, in his translation and commentary on Pausanias, that only two of the Greek Sibyls were historical: Herophile of Erythrae , who is thought to have lived in the 8th century BC, and Phyto of Samos who lived somewhat later. He observes that the Greeks at first seemed to have known only one Sibyl, and instances Heraclides Ponticus ^[6] as the first ancient writer to distinguish several Sibyls: Heraclitus names at least three Sibyls, the Phrygian , the Erythraean , and the Hellespontine . The scholar David S. Potter writes, "In the late fifth century BC it does appear that 'Sibylla' was the name given to a single inspired prophetess".^[8]

Number of Sibyls

Like Heraclitus, Plato speaks of only one Sibyl, but in course of time the number increased to nine, with a tenth, the Tiburtine Sibyl , probably Etruscan in origin, added by the Romans. According to Lactantius ' Divine Institutions (i.6, 4th century AD, quoting from a lost work of Varro , 1st century BC) these ten sibyls were those in the following list. Of them, the three most famous sibyls throughout their long career were the Delphic, the Erythraean and the Cumaean. Not all the following Sibyls were securely identified with an oracular shrine, and in the vague and shifting Christian picture there is some overlap.

Persian Sibyl

The Persian Sibyl was said to be prophetic priestess presiding over the Apollonian Oracle ; though her location remained vague enough so that she might be called the "Babylonian Sibyl", the Persian Sibyl is said to have foretold the exploits of Alexander the Great .^{[citation needed]} The Persian Sibyl, by name Sambethe, was reported to be of the family of Noah.^[9] The 2nd-century AD traveller Pausanias , pausing at Delphi to enumerate four sibyls, mentions the "Palestinian Sibyl" who was:

"brought up in Palestine named Sabbe, whose father was Berosus and her mother Erymanthe. Some say she was a Babylonian, while others call her an Egyptian Sibyl."^[10][11][12]

The medieval Byzantine encyclopedia, the Suda, credits the Hebrew Sibyl as author of the Sibylline oracles .

Libyan Sibyl

Michelangelo 's Libyan Sibyl, Sistine Chapel

The so-called Libyan Sibyl was identified with prophetic priestess presiding over the ancient Zeus Amon (Zeus represented with the horns of Amon) oracle at the Siwa Oasis in the Western Desert of Egypt (incorrectly placed in the map). The oracle here was consulted by Alexander after his conquest of Egypt. The mother of the Libyan Sibyl was Lamia , meaning "devourer". Euripides mentions the Libyan Sibyl in the prologue to his tragedy Lamia.

Delphic Sibyl

Michelangelo 's Delphic Sibyl, Sistine Chapel

The Delphic Sibyl was a legendary figure who gave prophecies in the sacred precinct of Apollo at Delphi , located on the slopes of Mount Parnassus . Pausanias claimed that the Sibyl was "born between man and goddess, daughter of sea monsters and an immortal nymph ". Others said she was sister or daughter to Apollo . Still others claimed the Sibyl received her powers from Gaia originally, who passed the oracle to Themis , who passed it to Phoebe . The Delphic Sibyl has sometimes been confused with the Pythia , the priestess of Apollo who gave prophecies at the Delphic Oracle.^[13] The two are not identical, and should be treated as separate figures.^[14]

Cimmerian Sibyl

Naevius names the Cimmerian Sibyl in his books of the Punic War and Piso in his annals.

The Sibyl's son Evander founded in Rome the shrine of Pan which is called the Lupercal .

Erythraean Sibyl

The Erythraean Sibyl was sited at Erythrae , a town in Ionia opposite Chios .

Apollodorus of Erythrae affirms the Erythraean Sibyl to have been his own countrywoman and to have predicted the Trojan War and prophesised to the Greeks who were moving against Ilium both that Troy would be destroyed and that Homer would write falsehoods.

The word acrostic was first applied to the prophecies of the Erythraean Sibyl, which were written on leaves and arranged so that the initial letters of the leaves always formed a word.

Samian Sibyl

The Samian sibyl's oracular site was at Samos .

Cumaean Sibyl

The sibyl who most concerned the Romans was the Cumaean Sibyl , located near the Greek city of Naples , whom Virgil 's Aeneas consults before his descent to the lower world (Aeneid book VI: 10). Burkert notes (1985, p 117) that the conquest of Cumae by the Oscans in the 5th century destroyed the tradition, but provides a terminus ante quem for a Cumaean sibyl. It was she who supposedly sold to Tarquinius Superbus , the last king of Rome, the original Sibylline books (q.v.). Christians were especially impressed with the Cumaean Sibyl, for in Virgil's Fourth Eclogue she foretells the coming of a savior - possibly a flattering reference to the poet's patron - whom Christians identified as Jesus.^[15][16][17]

Hellespontine Sibyl

The Hellespontine, or Trojan Sibyl presided over the Apollonian oracle at Dardania .

The Hellespontian Sibyl was born in the village of Marpessus near the small town of Gergitha , during the lifetimes of Solon and Cyrus the Great . Marpessus, according to Heraclides of Pontus , was formerly within the boundaries of the Troad . The sibylline collection at Gergis was attributed to the Hellespontine Sibyl and was preserved in the temple of Apollo at Gergis. Thence it passed to Erythrae , where it became famous.

Phrygian Sibyl

The Phrygian Sibyl appears to be a doublet of the Hellespontine Sibyl.

Tiburtine Sibyl

To the classical sibyls of the Greeks, the Romans added a tenth, the Tiburtine Sibyl, whose seat was the ancient Sabino -Latin town of Tibur (modern Tivoli ). The mythic meeting of Augustus with the Sibyl, of whom he inquired whether he should be worshiped as a god, was a favored motif of Christian artists. Whether the sibyl in question was the Etruscan Sibyl of Tibur or the Greek Sibyl of Cumae is not always clear. The Christian author Lactantius had no hesitation in identifying the sibyl in question as the Tiburtine sibyl, nevertheless. He gave a circumstantial account of the pagan sibyls that is useful mostly as a guide to their identifications, as seen by 4th century Christians:

The Tiburtine Sibyl, by name Albunea, is worshiped at Tibur as a goddess, near the banks of the Anio , in which stream her image is said to have been found, holding a book in her hand. Her oracular responses the Senate transferred into the capitol. (Divine Institutes I.vi)

An apocalyptic pseudo-prophecy exists, attributed to the Tiburtine Sibyl, written c. 380 CE, but with revisions and interpolations added at later dates.^[18] It purports to prophesy the advent of a final Emperor named Constans, vanquishing the foes of Christianity, bringing about a period of great wealth and peace, ending paganism and converting the Jews. After vanquishing Gog and Magog , the Emperor is said to resign his crown to God. This would give way to the Antichrist . Ippolito d'Este rebuilt the Villa d'Este at Tibur, the modern Tivoli , from 1550 onward, and commissioned elaborate fresco murals in the Villa that celebrate the Tiburtine Sibyl, as prophesying the birth of Christ to the classical world.

Later Sibyls

The medieval, Christianized role for these augmented Sibyls was as precursors, prophets of the New Dispensation, Christian allies in a Hellenistic world:

Dies irae , dies illa

Solvet saeclum in favilla

Teste David cum Sibylla.

("Day of wrath, that day / will loose the age in ash / by the witness David with the Sibyl.")

In the Middle Ages the number of Sibyls was canonized as twelve, a symbolic number . See, for example, the Apennine Sibyl , though sometimes, e.g. for François Rabelais , ten was still the proverbial number: “How know we but that she may be an eleventh Sibyl or a second Cassandra?� Gargantua and Pantagruel , iii. 16, noted in Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1897.^[19] Late Gothic Sibyls, each with her emblem and a single line of prophecy, lettered on a fluttering banderole , were fixtures of Late Gothic illuminations, in 14th and 15th-century France and Germany.^[20]

From the early Renaissance, the Sibyls were also represented in publicly available art. Michelangelo fixed our image of the sibyls forever, in his powerful representations of them, seated, both aged and ageless, beyond mere femininity, in the frescos of the Sistine Chapel . Five sibyls were painted on the Sistine Chapel ceiling by Michelangelo ; the Delphic Sibyl, Libyan Sibyl, Persian Sibyl, Cumaean Sibyl and the Erythraean Sibyl. The library of Pope Julius II in the Vatican has images of sibyls and they are in the pavement of the Siena Cathedral. The Basilica of Santa Maria in Aracoeli crowning the Campidoglio , Rome, is particularly associated with the Sibyl, because a medieval tradition referred the origin of its name to an otherwise unattested altar, ARA PRIMOGENITI DEI said to have been raised to the "firstborn of God" by the emperor Augustus, who had been warned of his advent by the sibylline books: in the church the figures of Augustus and of the Tiburtine sibyl are painted on either side of the arch above the high altar. In the 19th century Rodolfo Lanciani recalled that at Christmas time the presepio included a carved and painted figure of the sibyl pointing out to Augustus the Virgin and Child, who appeared in the sky in a halo of light. "The two figures, carved in wood, have now [1896] disappeared; they were given away or sold thirty years ago, when a new set of images was offered to the Presepio by prince Alexander Torlonia." (Lanciani, 1896 ch 1) Like prophets, Renaissance sibyls forecasting the advent of Christ appear in monuments: modelled by Giacomo della Porta in the Santa Casa at Loreto , painted by Raphael in Santa Maria della Pace , by Pinturicchio in the Borgia apartments of the Vatican, engraved by Baccio Baldini, a contemporary of Botticelli, and graffites by Matteo di Giovanni in the pavement of the Duomo of Siena.

The 19th century French historian Jules Michelet attributed the origins of European witchcraft to the religion of the sibyls. In his introduction to La Sorcière (1862), Michelet wrote:

A powerful, tenacious religion, as Greek paganism was, begins with the sibyl, ends with the witch. The former, a beautiful virgin, in the full light of day, rocked its cradle, gave it its charm and glory. Later, fallen, ill, in the darkness of the Middle Ages, on heaths and in forests, it was hidden by the witch...^[21]

A sphinx is a mythical creature with, as a minimum, the body of a lion and the head of a human or a cat.

In Greek tradition, it has the haunches of a lion, the wings of a great bird, and the face of a woman. She is mythicised as treacherous and merciless. Those who cannot answer her riddle suffer a fate typical in such mythological stories, as they are killed and eaten by this ravenous monster.^[1] Unlike the Greek sphinx which was a woman, the Egyptian sphinx is typically shown as a man (an androsphinx). In addition, the Egyptian sphinx was viewed as benevolent in contrast to the malevolent Greek version and was thought of as a guardian often flanking the entrances to temples.

In European decorative art, the sphinx enjoyed a major revival during the Renaissance . Later, the sphinx image, something very similar to the original Ancient Egyptian concept, was exported into many other cultures, albeit often interpreted quite differently due to translations of descriptions of the originals and the evolution of the concept in relation to other cultural traditions.

Generally the role of sphinxes is associated with architectural structures such as royal tombs or religious temples. The oldest known sphinx was found near Gobekli Tepe at another site, Nevali Çori,^[2] or possibly 120 miles to the east at Kortik Tepe, Turkey and was dated to 9,500 BC.

Egyptian sphinxes

The sphinx is located in the north and below the pyramids. What names their builders gave to these statues is not known. At the Great Sphinx site, the inscription on a stele by Thutmose IV in 1400 BCE , lists the names of three aspects of the local sun deity of that period, Khepera –Rê–Atum. The inclusion of these figures in tomb and temple complexes quickly became traditional and many pharaohs had their heads carved atop the guardian statues for their tombs to show their close relationship with the powerful solar deity, Sekhmet , a lioness. Other famous Egyptian sphinxes include one bearing the head of the pharaoh Hatshepsut , with her likeness carved in granite , which is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the alabaster sphinx of Memphis , Memphis, Egypt , currently located within the open-air museum at that site. The theme was expanded to form great avenues of guardian sphinxes lining the approaches to tombs and temples as well as serving as details atop the posts of flights of stairs to very grand complexes. Nine hundred with ram heads, representing Amon , were built in Thebes , where his cult was strongest.

Perhaps the first sphinx in Egypt was one depicting Queen Hetepheres II , of the fourth dynasty that lasted from 2723 to 2563 BC . She was one of the longest-lived members of the royal family of that dynasty.

The largest and most famous is the Great Sphinx of Giza , sited at the Giza Plateau on the west bank of the Nile River and facing due east (29°58′31″N 31°08′15″E). It is also from the same dynasty. Although the date of its construction is uncertain, the head of the Great Sphinx now is believed to be that of the pharaoh Khafra .

The Great Sphinx has become an emblem of Egypt, frequently appearing on its stamps, coins, and official documents.^[4]

Greek traditions

From the Bronze Age , the Hellenes had trade and cultural contacts with Egypt. Before the time that Alexander the Great occupied Egypt, the Greek name, sphinx, was already applied to these statues. The historians and geographers of Greece wrote extensively about Egyptian culture. Heredotus called the ram-headed sphinxes, criosphinges, and the hawk-headed ones, hieracosphinges .

The word sphinx comes from the Greek Σφίγξ, apparently from the verb σφίγγω (sphíng�), meaning "to squeeze", "to tighten up".^[5][6] This name may be derived from the fact that the hunters for a pride of lions are the lionesses, and kill their prey by strangulation, biting the throat of prey and holding them down until they die. The word sphincter derives from the same root. However, the historian Susan Wise Bauer suggests that the word "sphinx" was instead, a Greek corruption of the Egyptian name "shesepankh," which meant "living image," and referred rather to the statue of the sphinx, which was carved out of "living rock" (rock that was present at the construction site, not harvested and brought from another location), than to the beast itself.^[7]

There was a single sphinx in Greek mythology, a unique demon of destruction and bad luck. According to Hesiod , she was a daughter of Orthus ^[8] and either Echidna or the Chimera , or perhaps even Ceto;^[9] according to others, she was a daughter of Echidna and Typhon . All of these are chthonic figures from the earliest of Greek myths, before the Olympians ruled the Greek pantheon . The Sphinx is called Phix (Φίξ) by Hesiod in line 326 of the Theogony , the proper name for the Sphinx noted by Pierre Grimal 's The Penguin Dictionary of Classical Mythology.

In Greek mythology , a sphinx is represented as a monster with a head of a woman, the body of a lioness, the wings of an eagle , and a serpent headed tail.

The sphinx was the emblem of the ancient city-state of Chios , and appeared on seals and the obverse side of coins from the 6th century BC until the 3rd century AD.

Athena appears in the middle of the upper-half of the middle of a sarcophagus found in the middle pyramid of Giza, with two sphinxes at her side.

Assyrian Lamassu dated 721 BC Institute Museum, University of Chicago.

The Riddle of the Sphinx

The Sphinx is said to have guarded the entrance to the Greek city of Thebes, and to have asked a riddle of travellers to allow them passage. The exact riddle asked by the Sphinx was not specified by early tellers of the stories, and was not standardized as the one given below until late in Greek history.^[10]

It was said in late lore that Hera or Ares sent the Sphinx from her Ethiopian homeland (the Greeks always remembered the foreign origin of the Sphinx) to Thebes in Greece where she asks all passersby the most famous riddle in history: "Which creature walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening?" She strangled and devoured anyone unable to answer. Oedipus solved the riddle by answering: Man—who crawls on all fours as a baby, then walks on two feet as an adult, and then walks with a cane in old age. By some accounts^[11] (but much more rarely), there was a second riddle: "There are two sisters: one gives birth to the other and she, in turn, gives birth to the first. Who are the two sisters?" The answer is "day and night" (both words are feminine in Greek).

Bested at last, the tale continues, the Sphinx then threw herself from her high rock and died. An alternative version tells that she devoured herself. Thus Oedipus can be recognized as a "liminal" or threshold figure, helping effect the transition between the old religious practices, represented by the death of the Sphinx, and the rise of the new, Olympian gods.

In Jean Cocteau 's retelling of the Oedipus legend, The Infernal Machine , the Sphinx tells Oedipus the answer to the riddle, to kill herself so that she did not have to kill anymore, and also to make him love her. He leaves without ever thanking her for giving him the answer to the riddle. The scene ends when the Sphinx and Anubis , who is there to kill the victims who cannot answer the riddle, ascend back to the heavens.

There are mythic, anthropological, psychoanalytic, and parodic interpretations of the Riddle of the Sphinx, and of Oedipus's answer to it. Numerous riddle books use the Sphinx in their title or illustrations.^[12]

The word sibyl probably comes (via Latin ) from the Greek word sibylla, meaning prophetess . The earliest oracular seeresses known as the sibyls of antiquity, "who admittedly are known only through legend" prophesied at certain holy sites, under the divine influence of a deity, originally— at Delphi and Pessinos — one of the chthonic earth-goddesses. Later in antiquity, sibyls wandered from place to place.

The oldest collection of written Sibylline Books appears to have been made about the time of Solon and Cyrus at Gergis on Mount Ida in the Troad . The sibyl, who was born near there, at Marpessus , and whose tomb was later marked by the temple of Apollo built upon the archaic site, appears on the coins of Gergis, ca 400–350 BCE. (cf. Phlegon, quoted in the 5th century geographical dictionary of Stephanus of Byzantium , under 'Gergis'). Other places claimed to have been her home. The sibylline collection at Gergis was attributed to the Hellespontine Sibyl and was preserved in the temple of Apollo at Gergis. Thence it passed to Erythrae , where it became famous. It was this very collection, it would appear, which found its way to Cumae and from Cumae to Rome. Gergis, a city of Dardania in the Troad, a settlement of the ancient Teucri , and, consequently, a town of very great antiquity (Herodotus iv: 122). Gergis, according to Xenophon , was a place of much strength. It had a temple sacred to Apollo Gergithius , and was said to have given birth to the Sibyl, who is sometimes called Erythraea , from Erythrae, a small place on Mount Ida (Dionysius of Halicarnassus i. 55), and at others Gergithia ('of Gergis').

The Hellespontine Sibyl was the priestess presiding over the Apollonian oracle at Dardania . The Sibyl is sometimes referred to as the Trojan Sibyl.

The word Sibyl comes (via Latin ) from the ancient Latin word sibylla, meaning prophetess . There were many Sibyls in the ancient world but this Sibyl is known for her prediction of the Crucifixion , and is usually shown standing beside a Cross .

The Hellespontian Sibyl was born in the village of Marpessus near the small town of Gergitha , during the lifetimes of Solon and Cyrus the Great . Marpessus, according to Heraclides of Pontus , was formerly within the boundaries of the Troad .

The sibylline collection at Gergis was attributed to the Hellespontine Sibyl and was preserved in the temple of Apollo at Gergis. Thence it passed to Erythrae , where it became famous.

Dardania (Greek: Δα�δανία) in Greek mythology is the name of a city founded on Mount Ida by Dardanus from which also the region and the people took their name. It lay on the Hellespont , and is the source of the strait's modern name, the Dardanelles .

From Dardanus' grandson Tros the people gained the additional name of Trojans and the region gained the additional name Troad . Tros' son Ilus subsequently founded a further city called Ilion (in Latin Ilium ) down on the plain, the city now more commonly called Troy, and the kingdom was split between Ilium and Dardania.

Dardania has also been defined as "a district of the Troad, lying along the Hellespont, southwest of Abydos , and adjacent to the territory of Ilium. Its people (Dardani) appear in the Trojan War under Aeneas , in close alliance with the Trojans, with whose name their own is often interchanged, especially by the Roman poets."