Digimon of the Week: Ancientsphinxmon

Riddle me this; There are two sisters: one gives birth to the other and she, in turn, gives birth to the first. Who are the two sisters?

The Digimon franchise has a love of making groups and organizations to clump together some of the creatures in and today we are going to be looking at one of those with Ancientsphinxmon. Now this guy is a member of the Ten Legendary Warriors which those that remember Frontier, whether you want to or not, know that those were the brave heroes who in the past fought and freed the digital world from Lucemon. In general canon that seems to be the same basic premise of what they did. All ten are at the mega level and have the prefix "Ancient" in their name. Sometimes it is because they are an alternate version of another type and sometimes they aren't. Ancientsphinxmon is the latter as there is not just Sphinxmon in the canon.

Ancientsphinxmon represents the element of darkness and one of his only on screen appearances is when he acts as a finishing move in Battle Spirit 2 and a couple of the DS games... which were never localized and most likely never will be.

totally not bitter about that

The design of Ancientsphinxmon itself is good if not giving much to talk about. It keeps the lion theme of all the darkness spirit Digimon do and I've always liked black and gold in combination. That and it looks like what it was named after even having the little pharaoh beard made of gold. 

So with that over and done let's go into the disconnected learning segment of the week.

Anyways when you first hear the word sphinx you most likely with think of the one in Egypt.

No one knows who exactly built this statue in Giza though it is said the head would be of a pharaoh, most likely the pharaoh Khafra, and that would place construction around 2500 BC. The Egyptian variation was mostly male and was a benevolent source but with fierce power. The missing nose also spawned the popular myth that it was shot off by soldiers in the army of Napoleon.

If it isn't about me it can go fuck itself

But yet there is another to talk about before we are done here. The Sphinx of Greek myth from Oedipus the King.

The Spinx in myth was a female beast that was part lion, bird, and human. The beast plagued the town of Thebes holding it in terror and every traveler that would try to come to the city it would ask a riddle and if you got it wrong she would eat you. This riddle was the classic "legs... time... the answers man yadda yadda" that probably everyone knows. Though in some cases it would also ask the riddle this article started with (the answer to that I'll leave you to figure out). Anyways the story goes that eventually up struts Oedipus who when given the riddle is able to answer it correctly. In response the Sphinx fell into great distress and killed itself by casting off a mountainside. I'm serious it was like someone blew their brains out with a revolver over losing on Who Wants to be a Millionare or that time Optimus Prime let himself be blown up over losing a video game. 

This actually happened

In the end it is easy to see which version Ancientsphinxmon is based off of but it is nice to have an excuse to mention a creature that kills itself over the fact it gives out an easy riddle as a challenge.

So that was Ancientsphinxmon the dark warrior cat Egyptian and with that I hope to see you all next week.