Picture the sphinx, but sitting up, and big enough that a highway runs through it.
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Table of Contents:
- Introduction
- Origins
- The Other Openings
- The Observation Eyes
- Location & Layout (Images Begin)
- Lion Head
- The Highway In and Out of It
- Cliff it Rests its Paws Upon
- Interiors
- 2022: Scale-model in Minecraft
- 2023/+
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Introduction:
Based on the Sphinx of Egypt, this up-scaled version stands (sits, rather) a full mile tall.
Unlike the Sphinx of Egypt, its head is not that of a human’s; rather, it is of a lion -whose yawning maw is the opening to an interior corkscrew super-highway channeling traffic from the highest of the two desert plateaus of Inisfree down to the gently rolling green foot-hills of the Castles Neighborhood three quarters of a mile below.
Also unlike its form-sake, this Sphinx is not made of stone capable of being weathered. Instead, like all Inisfreean constructs, it was sung into existence and formed as a single piece of one of the rarest elements, making it remarkably strong and resistant to any damage.
Should any sort of issues occur with its appearance, internal workings, or other aspects, the Grid Mind of Inisfree will simply ‘sing’ into it again, using the city’s equivalent of a nervous system to pass signals and materials in and out of it to perform what the Inisfreeans call ‘biomechanical healing’; the building will literally regrow and reshape itself as needed.
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Options:
Traveling through this gigantic structure are the standard mass-transportation lanes of the Inisfreean Glowing Art Highway (GAH); lanes for personal vehicles, commercial vehicles, mobile-homes (houses with tracks (like military tanks utilize) and Repulsines), the sight-seeing trolleys, and the cavitating bullet-trains.
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The Other Openings:
While the open mouth resting at the edge of the higher desert plateau serves as the most obvious of traffic entry and exit points for this construct, two other traffic openings complete this Titan-Sphinx design; the first of these other two openings is at the end of the tail which extends out toward the Titan-sized Cathedral on the way past the Kathedrom.
The second of these other two openings is at the tip of this statue’s penis (yes, all Inisfreean constructs are anatomically correct), with the lanes curving out and toward the circular base of the Auzdome.
This (the presence of three openings instead of two) means that the Inisfreean Sphinx is so large and tall that it easily contains, with much room on all sides to spare, the Inisfreean 16-lane super-highway vertical-corkscrew which is more than twice the height of the tallest building in the Outlands; the Burj Khalifa which stands at one half of a mile high, and that the Inisfreean Sphinx is large enough to contain the ‘highway clover’ design which regulates merging traffic lanes between all three of these GAH sections.
The lower section of this Sphinx houses a three-way intersection of a 16-lane super-highway.
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The Observation Eyes:
From the Observation Deck, one can look out through gigantic floor-to-ceiling window panels making up the ‘lenses’ of this Sphinx’s eyes. At nearly one quarter of a mile above the adjacent desert plateau, this is a very wonderful spot for observing the air-and-Space traffic of Inisfree’s Military Aerospaceport, including many of Inisfree’s equivalent of Red Flag (a large-scale, simulated combat exercise involving multiple aircraft and units from different branches, providing a more complex and joint-force training environment; an aerial R-CAX) and Top Gun (a focus on individual pilot tactics and skill development as a dedicated school) exercises.
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Location & Layout:
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Lion Head:
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The Highway In and Out of It:
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Cliff it Rests its Paws Upon:
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Interiors:
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2022: Scale-model in Minecraft:
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2023/+:
We call it the Highway Sphinx, not the Highway Mega-lion, because the term sphinx is not defined as meaning “human-headed lion hybrid”, but comes from the Greek Σφίγξ, associated by folk etymology with the verb σφίγγω (sphíngō), meaning “to squeeze”, “to tighten up”.
This name may be derived from the fact that lions kill their prey by strangulation, biting the throat of prey and holding them down until they die. However, the historian Susan Wise Bauer suggests that the word “sphinx” was instead a Greek corruption of the Egyptian name “shesepankh”, which meant “living image”, and referred rather to the statue of the sphinx, which was carved out of “living rock” (rock that was a contiguous part of the stony body of the Earth, shaped, but not cut away from its original source), than to the beast itself. —reference
Here, we use the familiar term… for this similar-looking megastructure.
Being part of Inisfree, it is more literally a living image/rock, as everything in our realm is, in our special way, alive and kept that way forever.
This giant lion-based building faces the corner of our city’s land, looking past the MIL-aero, to symbolize our big and powerful fleet/forces always sitting patiently, wisely using cover, and maintaining a vigil, ready to leap into action from our strong and stable position/fortification here.
It is also here to remind us how quickly we, being as naturally perceptive and smart as we are, get through predators and other threats so quickly and smoothly, and from multiple directions, they unable to close their jaws on us, thus unable to challenge us with riddles. This is evidenced in my many expeditions, during which many wayward humans tried testing me with implied challenges to see if I would pointlessly attempt the impossible out of excessive pride, etc., yet I every time smoothly immediately disregarded their clearly-vibing (giving off the unmistakable vibe as being dishonorable/rigged) tests (scams/tricks), I not concerned at all about earning favor in their lame eyes.
Also, this megastructure is to remind us that before Egypt’s sphinx structure was a sphinx, it was a lion (meaning its head had not been damaged and reshaped into the odd human one it is today), indicating when it was built; it was built millennia ago, during the Age of Leo (~10,001 to 8,000 BC), which its entire body/structure was fashioned to clearly represent.
Also, our own Sphinx here bridges the gap/cliff between two distinct levels, both symbolically, regarding adjacent collective mental-focus eras (the main goal/idea/vision each group of generations stayed aligned to, working to achieve/manifest), and literally/physically, by protecting/housing the GAH-‘corkscrew’ (curved internal highway section) from (which connects the) civilian meadow level to lofty (our higher desert plateau) military/rescue (training) level.
While the original (living) sphinx allegedly challenged humans with a single/repeated riddle, it does not challenge us, nor do any creatures, for we work together; “We are one.”
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2024 November 23 Saturday thought: The intersection of three of our highway ‘lines’/spans inside this sphinx reminded me of the legend that the Egyptian sphinx’s riddle was about “the three ages of man”.
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