In the myth, all travelers on the road to Thebes must solve a riddle posed by the Sphinx, or die.When the monster asked him: "What is it that has a voice and walks on four legs in the morning, on two at noon, and on three in the evening?"

Oedipus answered that it was man, who as a child crawls on all fours, as an adult walks on two legs, and in old age uses a stick as a third leg.…The theme of [Ingres's] work is the triumph of intelligence and of human beauty.

The young Corsican, seated on his horse, is gazing in meditation upon the enormous enigmatic face of stone, that strange memorial of titanic ambitions, of forgotten sovereigns, of a vanished race. ...

Gérôme's friend Frédéric Masson, who had travelled with him in Egypt and who became a respected biographer of Napoleon, described this painting, noting the hot breath of the wind...the heat and the burning sand which blinds the officers of his staff...the golden mist raised by the Khamsinn...the frightful lassitude which takes possession of the best trained men save those who have compelled the body to be the docile slave of the mind.…[Napoleon] hesitates between the two halves of the world which he holds in his hands; he ponders upon the fate of Alexander, of Caesar....unconscious of suffering, his dream embraces the universe!

The 1897 sculpture of the young Bonaparte making his 1798 entry into Cairo was the first in a series of historical equestrian figures Gérôme produced during the late 1890s, including Washington, Frederick the Great, Caesar, and Tamerlane.

The original Salon version was bought by the French state for the Luxembourg and, unusually for a purchased unique work, was subsequently reproduced in three sizes by Siot-Decauville.