Corinthian terracotta sculpture and the Temple of Apollo

Excavations around the Archaic Temple of Apollo in Corinth in the 1960s and 1970s uncovered forty-eight fragments of large-scale terracotta sphinxes. Possibly from acroteria of the temple roof, the fragments date from the 6th to at least the mid-5th century B.C. The publication of these pieces provides an opportunity to review the corpus of sphinxes, together with their stylistic development, and to discuss how they were made. The latest and best preserved statue shows that this tradition did not end in the Archaic period. A small appendix of fragments from earlier excavations of Corinth completes the picture of Corinth's productivity in terracotta sphinxes.