In this video [2:40] Met curator Kiki Karoglou on dangerous beauty in Marble capital and finial in the form of a sphinx dating from the Attic period of ancient Greece, ca. 530 B.C.E. This capital and sphinx originally crowned the tall grave marker of a youth and a little girl on view in this gallery. The sphinx, a mythological creature with a lion's body and a human head, was known in various forms throughout the eastern Mediterranean region from the Bronze Age onward.