How stands the case with Egypt, where we find sphinxes that represent a combination of man and animal and where we encounter numerous gods composed of human bodies with the heads of animals? The question of foreign influences in the earlier art of Egypt is one that has as yet scarcely been touched, and we are equally at sea as to the possibility of very early connections between the Euphratean culture and that which arose in the valley of the Nile. The fact that the oldest pyramid--that of King Zoser at Sakkarah--is formed of a succession of terraces[228] like the =zikkurats= or stage-towers of Babylonia and moreover is of brick was regarded by Ihering[229] as an evidence of an influence exerted by Babylonia upon Egypt. An isolated phenomenon is too slender a thread on which to hang a weighty theory, and the step pyramid of Zoser can be explained as a transition from a form of the =mastaba= to the genuine pyramid, without recourse to foreign models. All attempts to find a connection between the Egyptian hieroglyphics and the oldest hieroglyphics forms from which the Babylonian cuneiform script developed have likewise ended in negative results and the same is to be said of endeavors to find any direct connection between Babylonian and Egyptian beliefs and rites and myths and despite certain rather striking points of resemblance[230]. And yet it is difficult to suppress the impression one receives that much in Egyptian art and in the Egyptian religion suggests early outside influences. With Babylonia and Egypt in more or less close touch as far back at least as 1700 B. C., and with Asiatic entanglements reverting to a still earlier period, the possibility of some connection between the Egyptian forms of the sphinx--the crouching lion with the human head, the falcon-headed and ram-headed sphinxes--and the combinations of the human face with bulls and lions in Babylonian art to which the Assyrians added the wings, cannot be summarily set aside. The question as to the age of the sphinx at Gizeh--the oldest of all--is still in abeyance. Maspero ascribes it to the early Memphite art[231], Spiegelberg to the middle kingdom[232], while others bring it down to the 18th dynasty. If we accept Spiegelberg's date we will be close to the period when by general consent the Mediterranean culture--including therefore Syria, Palestine and Western Asia in general--exercised a decided influence on Egypt. It is during the time of the new kingdom that the sphinxes become frequent, as it is at this period that the tendency to represent the gods as a combination of the human and animal form becomes prominent and reaches its highest form of expression.