"This makes you think about beauty and especially female beauty as being both enchanting and dangerous."
Curator Kiki Karaglou on a Greek sphinx that served as a grave marker and was thought to be a guardian of the dead.
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Throughout 2013, The Met invited curators from across the Museum to each talk about one artwork that changed the way they see the world. Each episode is interpreted by a Museum photographer.
Photography by Katherine Dahab
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Why is the sphinx considered a guardian figure?
"This makes you think about beauty and especially female beauty as being both enchanting and dangerous."
Kiki Karoglou
Contributors
Kiki Karoglou
Assistant Curator, Department of Greek and Roman Art
Assistant Curator, Department of Greek and Roman Art
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Greek, Attic
ca. 530 BCE