The lion statue with a human head was called the androsphinx, with a ram's head the crio-sphinx. With the Greeks the sphinx was only represented in feminine form with wings and typified the pestilential heat of summer.
Among the ancients one cult identified the spirit of life with a Bull and another with a Lion. Winged human-headed lions and bulls guarded the portals of Assyrian temples.
The Bull symbolised the power residing in the sun. It was also a symbol of the humid side of nature and was thus given to Osiris, who besides being a sun-god, was god of the Nile and of everything that was moist, beneficent and generative in nature.
Apis, the bull god of the Egyptians, was believed to be an incarnation of Osiris, and an offspring of Ptah the" architect and builder of the material world." As symbolising creative force and reproductive powers, the bull-god Apis played an enormous part in the early religious worship of the Egyptians.
