Inv. Scu 33

The Sphinx, carved from a single block of red granite of Assuan, is depicted crouched with its front paws extended and its rear paws under its body. It is wearing the nemes which originally was combined with an uraeus, now lost. The empty sockets must have contained eyes of another material. The sphinx wears the necklace known as usekh.

The statue has been dated to the end of the Ptolemaic period; however, it has been suggested that the face may have been reworked in the early imperial period in order to adapt it to the features of the emperor Domitian who was responsible for the refurbishing of the sanctuary of the Iseum in Rome.

The sphinx was found in 1858 in Via di Sant’Ignazio (now Via del Beato Angelico), beneath the house of Pietro Tranquilli, near the apse of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, the area of the Iseum in the Campus Martius. The statue, set on an irregularly shaped plinth, was probably part of a series placed along the sides of the access road to the Iseum. The irregular shape of the plinth suggests that the sculpture was inserted into a base, probably in a outstanding position in the sanctuary.