Glyph Keeper

The protection is the whole design, and it works on a counter, not on evasion: once per turn, the first spell or ability that points at this Sphinx gets countered outright. That makes it a brutal sink for spot removal, because the would-be killer fizzles, and an opponent who wants it gone through targeting has to spend two effects in a single turn to push the second one through. The deliberate gap is that the shield only triggers when something names it: a 5/3 body still dies to combat damage and to anything that resolves without choosing it as a target, so board wipes, edicts, and damage-based sweepers walk right past the ability. It protects the card from interaction it can see coming and offers nothing against the math of blocking or a board reset. Embalm is the second life that complements the first: remove it the slow way and it can return from the graveyard as a white Zombie Sphinx token with the same triggered counter intact, so committing a real answer to the original body still leaves a copy of the same problem waiting. The result is a creature built for attrition, where each piece of point removal it absorbs is a card the opponent will not see again, and the only durable answers are the ones that never have to target it at all.