Of the representations which Egyptian Antiquity presents us with, one figure must be especially noticed, viz. the Sphinx — in itself a riddle — an ambiguous form, half brute, half human. The Sphinx may be regarded as a symbol of the Egyptian Spirit. The human head looking out from the brute body, exhibits Spirit as it begins to emerge from the merely Natural — to tear itself loose therefrom and already to look more freely around it…
-Hegel, The Philosophy of History
