Postcard from Saint Petersburg, Russia

The University Embankment in Saint Petersburg. Sphinx at the landing pier near the Academy of Arts.

A sphinx is a zoomorphic mythological figure which is depicted as a recumbent lion with a human head. It has its origins in sculpted figures of Old Kingdom Egypt, to which the ancient Greeks applied their own name for a female monster, the "strangler", an archaic figure of Greek mythology. Similar creatures appear throughout South and South-East Asia, and the sphinx enjoyed a major revival in European decorative art from the Renaissance onwards.

Sphynx was brought to Saint-Petersburg by A. N. Muravyov who made a pilgrimage to Sacred lands in 1830. He didn't found a ship to Syria in Constantinople so he used ship to Egypt in spite of that travel to Egypt was not in his shedule. Muravyov found the first Sphynx just fetched from the Nile river waters and brought for the selling in Alexandria.

Info Wikipedia