Fittingly enough, the most famous sphinx legend comes from Greece. In Apollodorus 3.5.8 it is told that there was a sphinx monster at Thebes who devoured all those who could not solve its riddle, which meant pretty much anyone who was unfortunate enough to have encountered the monster. The riddle was: 'What walks on four feet in the morning, on two at noon, and on three in the evening?' After many were killed, Oedipus finally solved it by answering 'Man crawls on all fours as a baby, walks upright in the prime of life, and uses a staff in old age'. The correct answer destroyed the sphinx.

A little cryptic, but I found the legend reenacted in Mission To Mars - in effect acknowledging the connection between the Face/Mars and the Sphinx. The sphinx's wrath in the film comes in the form of a twister emerging from the Martian Face.

The circular nature of the whirlwind relates to the fact that the Athenean Face was ostensibly a sculpture from the ancient Cycladic civilization, the name 'Cyclades' coming from the Greek term 'cyclos' meaning 'circle' (as in 'cyclone'). This will prove important later on.

In any case the twister in the movie appears to be in a murderous rage and terrifies the human explores. But they later discover a coded signal transmitted by the Face/twister containing DNA information, which is almost but not quite human. Why? This is the 'riddle of the sphinx'. The humans eventually figure out that it's a test and that the solution is to make the DNA perfectly human and transmit it back to the Face. In other words, the 'answer' turns out to be 'man', just as is the case in the Greek sphinx legend.

Satisfied with the 'answer', the Martian Face/Sphinx opens up and lets the humans enter the structure. And once inside they are shown the history of Mars and Earth, i.e. the interplanetary seeding process of Panspermia.

This is a pattern closely mimicked by the Athens Face breaking up into pieces being followed by a theatric simulation of the entire history of human civilization, ending with the messianic' DNA projection of 'MM'.

Notice that the DNA double-helix is also a genetic 'twister'. In Greek mythology, furthermore, a 'whirlwind' is personified by a giant monster called Typhon, from which comes the term 'typhoon'. Typhon was the father of the sphinx and just as Typhon was a serpentine monster the name 'sphinx' meant 'strangler'/'throttle' evoking a serpentine wrath. The implication being that the wrath of the twister/typhoon/Typhon in M2M does signify that of the legendary sphinx.

And then there was Hurricane Charley...

A real 'twister' arrived in Florida on Aug 13 to almost overshadow the opening of the Olympics. Perhaps just coincidence, but consider the following: 1) Florida is the 'Sunshine State' and relatable to sun-god Horus embodied by the Sphinx/Mars/Face, 2) the Cycladic islands, from which had come the sculpture represented by the Athenean Face, were believe by the ancients to circle the sacred island of Delos, the birthplace of Apollo, the Greek sun-god, and 3) the name 'Charley' means 'man', i.e. the very answer to the sphinx riddle!

In addition, the general path taken by Charley to get to Florida (and by the subsequent hurricanes) was from the direction of Cuba (or the West Indies). This brings to mind one particular scene from Athens, coming near the beginning of the show (see picture right).

Remember the Elian Gonzales saga from '99-'00? Here is what 'garfield' astutely pointed out in the Etemenanki forum: