The idea was not derived from
Egypt, but the Greeks, on finding Egyptian figures resembling
their conception of the Sphinx, called them by the same name.
The omniscient Sun comprehends the sense of her dark
mutterings, and destroys her, as Indra slays Vritra, bringing
down rain upon the parched earth. The Erinyes, who bring to
light the crimes of Oidipous, have been explained, in a
previous paper, as the personification of daylight, which
reveals the evil deeds done under the cover of night. The
grove of the Erinyes, like the garden of the Hyperboreans,
represents "the fairy network of clouds, which are the first
to receive and the last to lose the light of the sun in the
morning and in the evening; hence, although Oidipous dies in a
thunder-storm, yet the Eumenides are kind to him, and his last
hour is one of deep peace and tranquillity."[108] To the last
remains with him his daughter Antigone, "she who is born
opposite," the pale light which springs up opposite to the
setting sun.
[106] The Persian Cyrus is an historical personage; but the
story of his perils in infancy belongs to solar mythology as
much as the stories of the magic sleep of Charlemagne and
Barbarossa. His grandfather, Astyages, is purely a mythical
creation, his name being identical with that of the
night-demon, Azidahaka, who appears in the Shah-Nameh as the
biting serpent Zohak.
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