The white sphinx is a motif throughout the book. It represents the riddle of the future that the Time Traveller finds himself in, and his attempts to understand and make sense of the society he encounters. While he has unraveled the mystery of time travel, a further riddle awaits: the theft of his machine, and the terrible truth about the Eloi society.
The sphinx, an ancient symbol of mystery and riddles, represents the unknown and the unknowable nature of the future:
I saw the white figure more distinctly [...] It was of white marble, in shape something like a winged sphinx, but the wings, instead of being carried vertically at the sides, were spread so that it seemed to hover. It chanced that the face was towards me; the sightless eyes seemed to watch me; there was the faint shadow of a smile on the lips. It was greatly weather-worn, and that imparted an unpleasant suggestion of disease.
The image of the sphinx is the first object that the Traveller encounters. With its enigmatic expression and hybrid nature, the sphinx suggests that the future is a place of both peril and possibility.
As the sphinx looms over the place where the Traveller first leaves his time machine, its visage also comes to represent the riddle of how his time machine vanishes, and who has taken it—a puzzle that the Traveller has to solve in order to escape the future and return to his life in the present.
The sphinx represents the passage of time and the cyclical nature of history. Similarly, the Traveller's reference to "disease" signals the depravity that lies at the heart of the Eloi-Morlock relationship. The Time Traveller observes that the sphinx is partially buried in the sand, with only its head visible, suggesting that the past is buried and forgotten, but still influences the present and future. The sphinx represents the enigma and obscurity of the future, and the narrator's desire to understand it.
