A Christmas Riddle

I received the above image as a Christmas card a number of years ago, and have felt a mysterious pull to it ever since. What does it mean? At first, I simply thought it was a sugary 19th-century representation, probably French, of Mary and the infant Jesus resting on the flight to Egypt recorded in Matthew (2:13-23). Sphinxes = Egypt. Right? Free associating, I thought of the 'riddle of the Sphinx': "What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?" But that riddle turns out not to have been Egyptian at all. It had to do rather with the GREEK sphinx, which was an omen of destruction and bad luck. And that riddle was solved by Oedipus, according to Sophocles. (For a more detailed discussion, see 'The Classics Pages' here.) Besides, the picture does not project a sense of destruction. Rather, it seems to project an exhausted Mary, asleep in the crook of the Sphinx's leg, with the infant Jesus resting on her lap. The French were totally fascinated by things Egyptian from the early part of the 19th century on, and the presumed French artist may have known something which has been lost to those of us from a later age, something about Egyptian iconography. The Egyptian sphinx -- there were three varieties, this being an 'androsphinx', with the head of a man and the body of a lion -- was viewed beneficently as a GUARDIAN of the paths to important or sacred premises. So the artist may have intended to convey the thought that the ancient culture of Egypt provided not only refuge, but guardianship, to the infant Jesus. And perhaps that is the explanation of the image's mysterious pull. -- Dan Damon