There is a Special Note at the end of the Description.
The Sphynx is a mythical creature with the body of a lion and the head of a human. In the mythology of Egypt, the Sphynx's human portion is its male head. A fairly benign ... even benevolent creature, it seems he is meant to convey a sense of royal power ... controlled strength.
This morphed somewhat in the influence of Greek culture. Here, the Sphynx's image took on a female human likeness along with its lion's body, as well as birds' wings ... and a nastier disposition. (Don't blame me girls .. it was them Geeks ... oops, GREEKS ... what did it!) Often associated with riddles and death, the story goes that the Sphynx met its match when Oedipus gave the correct response to a riddle nobody else had answered.
I was aware of the Great Sphynx on the Giza plateau in Egypt before I knew about the pyramids ... possibly the result of a family outing when I was an impressionable 7-year-old to the Sphynx Memorial (off Bobbin Head Rd in Nth Turramurra ... photo above, & Virtual Cache GC7B9DZ) ... the creation of a returned WW1 soldier in memory of fallen comrades.
A modern observer might get the impression that, like the pyramids, the Sphynx was constructed by assembling blocks of stone and overlaying these with smaller stones, or tiles, to fill out the shape. In fact, its creation was much more akin to the Australian counterpart of my childhood. The Sphynx was sculpted from the natural limestone of the Giza plateau. The tiled outer layer now visible especially around the sphynx's hindquarters, but also present elsewhere, is the result of several attempts to repair or protect it down the centuries. In all probability though, its best protection has come from natural events, not human intervention. For significant parts of the past few thousand years it has been covered by the shifting desert sands, and this has protected it from constant exposure to the elements.
Just as its Greek counterpart was known for its riddles, this famous Egyptian Sphynx has a few mysteries of its own. Though most Egyptologists date the Sphynx’s age at about 4,500 years, the time of the pharaoh Khafre ... (whose tomb was the second-largest pyramid at Giza i.e. the "Almost but Not-Quite” Great Pyramid), and assume that the head on this statue is actually that of Khafre ... a couple of observations throw doubt on the simplicity of that. For a start, the head on this statue is disproportionately small when compared to its body. This is not characteristic of ancient Egyptian statuary (and we have plenty of examples of that). And that's led a number of people to suggest the statue is actually much older, and originally had a different sort of head ... maybe that of a lion. But at some early stage (and 4th Dynasty Khafre is as good as anyone to blame here) the pharaoh of the day decided to re-purpose the thing for a worthy cause ... himself ... by giving it a total facelift, and using his own mug* as the model. And he had to be on a good thing. Anybody else trying the same trick after Khafre had done his number on Mr Sphynx (not related to a cartoon character on ‘Huckleberry Hound’) would end up with a joke statue ... a pimple-on-a-pumpkin replica of himself. And where's the glory in that? Interestingly, although made of limestone, and knocked about a bit, the head of the Sphynx shows nowhere near as much damage from weathering as the rest of its body, even though it is the part of the statue that has been exposed to the elements more than any other over the past few thousand years.
The other (and even more curious) observation made by geologists is that the weathering patterns, especially on the vertically-cut sides of the recess that the Sphynx sits in, are characteristic of water-erosion. But that takes large volumes ... inundations ... & this over time. And it's been about 10,000 years since the area where the Sphynx sits has had that sort of water-exposure. Curiouser and curiouser. Rocks and riddles.
I'm not doing an Oedipus, ... oh, and if you've read this far you really deserve a bonus. Think ‘low but not under’ ... and producing a Sphynx-defying solution to this puzzle. Just letting the great minds of the wider Geocaching community in on the puzzle's existence. Not a Mystery Cache, but a mystery in a cache!
* old-guy slang for “face”, usually of another male. Often preceded by the word “ugly”, making it a useful insult.
Special Note ...
There is now a BONUS CACHE for this series. The information you need will be on the log sheets of selected caches from the Oran Park side of Camden Valley Way ... 6 in all. This is a late decision. If you have already found a selected cache in this section (ie that has had the information ADDED since your find) you will have been contacted about this and provided with that information. If you have had no contact from me about this (on or around the weekend of March 6th-8th 2026), you haven’t missed out on any. Good hunting!
Not new to the finder’s list, but a first for FTF-ing a Quiffle cache. Streakers Snoopy1976 & Dave 8153 make it look easy. Congratulations.