This article is about the greek fabulous giant. For other uses, see Gorgon ( disambiguation ) A Gorgon ( /ˈɡɔːrɡən/ ; plural : Gorgons, Ancient Greek : Γοργών/Γοργώ Gorgṓn/Gorgṓ ) is a creature in Greek mythology. Gorgons occur in the earliest examples of greek literature. While descriptions of Gorgons change, the condition most normally refers to three sisters who are described as having hair made of living, deadly snakes and horrifying visages that turned those who beheld them to stone. traditionally, two of the Gorgons, Stheno and Euryale, were deity, but their sister Medusa was not [ 1 ] and was slain by the daemon and hero Perseus .
etymology [edit ]
The name derives from the Ancient Greek word gorgós ( γοργός ), which means ‘grim or atrocious ‘, and appears to come from the lapp settle as the Sanskrit word garjana ( गर्जन ), which means a croaky phone, like to the grumble of a animal, [ 2 ] therefore possibly originating as an onomatopoeia.
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Depictions [edit ]
Gorgons were a popular persona in Greek mythology, appearing in the earliest of written records of Ancient Greek religious beliefs such as those of Homer, which may date to vitamin a early as 1194–1184 BC. Because of their fabled and mighty gaze that could turn one to stone, images of the Gorgons were put upon objects and buildings for protection. An image of a Gorgon holds the primary coil placement at the pediment of the temple at Corfu, which is the oldest stone pediment in Greece, and is dated to c. 600 BC. A marble statue 1.35 thousand ( 53 inches ) high of a Gorgon, dating from the sixth hundred BC, was found about intact in 1993, in an ancient public construction in Parikia, Paros das kapital, Greece ( Archaeological Museum of Paros no. 1285, see pictures below ). It is thought primitively to have belonged to a temple. The concept of the Gorgon is at least as old in classical Greek mythology as Perseus and Zeus. Gorgoneia ( figures depicting a Gorgon pass, see below ) first appear in greek artwork at the twist of the eighth century BC. One of the earliest representations is on an electrum stater discovered during excavations at Parium. other early eighth-century examples were found at Tiryns. Going even further rear into history, there is a exchangeable trope from the palace of Knossos, datable to the fifteenth hundred BC. Marija Gimbutas even argues that “ the Gorgon extends back to at least 6000 BC, as a ceramic mask from the Sesklo culture … ”. She besides identifies the prototype of the Gorgoneion in Neolithic art motifs, specially in anthropomorphic vases and terracotta masks inlaid with gold. Pausanias ( 5.10.4, 8.47.5, many other places ), a geographer of the second hundred AD, supplies details of where and how Gorgons were represented in Ancient Greek art and architecture. The large Gorgon eyes, equally well as Athena ‘s “ flash ” eyes, are symbols termed “ the divine eyes ” by Gimbutas ( who did not originate the perception ) ; they appear besides in Athena ‘s sacred bird, the little owl. They may be represented by spirals, wheels, concentric circles, swastika, firewheels, and other images. The awkward stance of the gorgon, with arms and legs at angles is closely associated with these symbols a well. Some Gorgons are shown with broad, beat heads, serpentine locks of haircloth, large staring eyes, wide mouths, tongues lolling, the tusks of swine, boastfully projecting tooth, flared nostrils, and sometimes short, coarse beards. ( In some blunt representations, stylized hair or blood flowing under the sever point of the Gorgon suggests a beard or wings. [ 3 ] ) Some reptile attributes such as a swath made of snakes and snakes emanating from the forefront or entwined in the hair’s-breadth, as in the temple of Artemis in Corfu, are symbols probable derived from the guardians close associated with early Greek religious concepts at the centers such as Delphi where the dragon Delphyne lived and the priestess Pythia delivered oracles. The skin of the dragon was said to be made of impenetrable scales .
Origins [edit ]
A count of early classics scholars interpreted the myth of the Medusa as a quasi-historical, or “ sublimated ”, memory of an actual invasion. [ 4 ] [ a ]
The caption of Perseus beheading Medusa means, specifically, that “ the Hellenes overran the goddess ‘s head shrines ” and “ stripped her priestesses of their Gorgon masks ”, the latter being apotropaic faces worn to frighten away the profane.
That is to say, there occurred in the early thirteenth century B.C. an actual historic rupture, a kind of sociological injury, which has been registered in this myth, much as what Freud terms the latent contented of a neurosis is registered in the manifest contentedness of a dream : Registered however hidden, registered in the unconscious however strange or misconstrued by the conscious mind.
— J. Campbell ( 1968 ) [ 6 ] [ b ]
While seeking origins others have suggested examination of some similarities to the babylonian creature, Humbaba, in the Gilgamesh epic. [ 7 ]
classical music tradition [edit ]
Transitions in religious traditions over such long periods of time may make some strange turns. Gorgons are frequently depicted as having wings, audacious claw, the tusks of boars, and scaly skin. The oldest oracles were said to be protected by serpents and a Gorgon image was much associated with those temples. Lionesses or sphinxes are frequently associated with the Gorgon angstrom well. The mighty image of the Gorgon was adopted for the classical images and myths of Athena and Zeus, possibly being worn in continuance of a more ancient religious imagination. In late myths, the Gorgons were said to be the daughters of two sea deities : Keto, the ocean giant, and Phorcys, her brother-husband .
Homer, the author of the oldest sleep together make of european literature, speaks entirely of one Gorgon, whose lead is represented in the Iliad as fixed in the concentrate of the breastplate of Athena :
About her shoulders she flung the tasseled breastplate, fraught with terror … and therein is the oral sex of the fear freak, the Gorgon, fear and terribly …
Its earthly counterpart is a device on the shield of Agamemnon :
… and therein was set as a crown the Gorgon, gloomy of expression, glaring terribly, and about her were Terror and Rout .
In the Odyssey, the Gorgon is a monster of the hell into which the earliest greek deities were cast :
… and pale fear seized me, lest august persephone might send forth upon me from out of the sign of the zodiac of Hades the point of the Gorgon, that atrocious freak …
Around 700 BC, Hesiod, imagines the Gorgons as ocean daemons and increases the issue of them to three – Stheno ( the mighty ), Euryale ( the far-springer, or of the wide ocean ), and Medusa ( the tabby ), and makes them the daughters of the sea deities Keto and Phorcys. Their family is on the farthest english of the western ocean ; according to late authorities, in Libya. Ancient Libya is identified as a possible source of the deity, Neith, who besides was a creation deity in Ancient Egypt and, when the Greeks occupied Egypt, they said that Neith was called Athene in Greece. Of the three Gorgons in classical Greek mythology, merely Medusa is mortal. The Attic tradition, reproduced in Euripides ( Ion ), regarded the Gorgon as a monster, produced by Gaia to aid her children, the Titans, against the new olympian deities. classical interpretations suggest that Gorgon was slain by Athena, who wore her skin thereafter.
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The Bibliotheca provides a good compendious of the Gorgon myth. much later stories claim that each of three Gorgon sisters, Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa, had snakes for haircloth, and that they had the baron to turn anyone who looked at them to stone. According to Ovid, a Roman poet writing in 8 AD, whose most celebrated work was heavily involved in the delineation of greek myths, Medusa alone had serpents in her hair, and he explained that this was due to Athena ( Roman Minerva ) cursing her. Medusa had copulated with Poseidon ( Roman Neptune ) in a temple of Athena after he was aroused by the golden color of Medusa ‘s hair. Athena consequently changed the enticing aureate locks into serpents. Virgil mentions that the Gorgons lived in the entrance of the Underworld. Diodorus and Palaephatus note that the Gorgons lived in the Gorgades, islands in the Aethiopian Sea. The main island was called Cerna. Henry T. Riley suggests these islands may correspond to Cape Verde. According to Pseudo-Hyginus the “ Gorgo Aix ” ( Γοργώ Aιξ ), daughter of Helios, was killed by Zeus during the Titanomachy. From her skin, a goat-like hide rimmed with serpents, he made his celebrated breastplate, and placed her awful countenance upon it. This he gave to Athena. then Aix became the goat Capra ( greek : Aix ), on the exit shoulder of the constellation Auriga. A aboriginal Gorgon was sometimes said to be the father of Medusa and her sister Gorgons by the sea Goddess Ceto. This trope may have been the lapp as Gorgo Aix as the cardinal Gorgon was of an indeterminable gender .
Perseus and Medusa [edit ]
In belated myths, Medusa was the only one of the three Gorgons who was not immortal. [ 8 ] King Polydectes sent Perseus to kill Medusa in hopes of getting him out of the way, while he pursued Perseus ‘s mother, Danae. Some of these myths relate that Perseus was armed with a scythe from Hermes and a mirror ( or a harbor ) from Athena. [ 9 ] Perseus could safely cut off Medusa ‘s question without turning to stone by looking entirely at her reflection in the shield. From the blood that spurted from her neck and falling into the sea, jump Pegasus [ 10 ] and Chrysaor, her sons by Poseidon. other sources say that each drop of blood became a snake. [ 11 ] Perseus is said by some to have given the drumhead, which retained the power of turning into stone all who looked upon it, to Athena. She then placed it on the mirrored shield called Aegis [ 12 ] and she gave it to Zeus. Another source says that Perseus buried the head in the marketplace of Argos. [ 13 ] According to other accounts, either he or Athena used the head to turn Atlas into stone, [ 14 ] transforming him into the Atlas Mountains that held up both eden and land. He besides used the Gorgon against Cetus ( when saving Andromeda ) and a competing suitor, Phineas, Andromeda ‘s cousin. ultimately, he used her against King Polydectes. When Perseus returned to the court of the king, Polydectes asked if he had the head of Medusa. Perseus replied “ here it is ” and held it aloft, turning the solid court to stone. [ 15 ]
protective and healing powers [edit ]
hydria from Archaic ( Etruscan ) fanged goggle-eyed Gorgon flanked by standing winged lionesses or sphinxes on afrom Vulci, 540–530 BC In Ancient Greece a Gorgoneion ( a stone promontory, engraving, or describe of a Gorgon side, much with snakes protruding wildly and the tongue sticking out between her fangs ) frequently was used as an apotropaic symbol and placed on doors, walls, floors, coins, shields, breastplates, and tombstones in the hopes of warding off evil. In this esteem Gorgoneia are similar to the sometimes grotesque faces on chinese soldiers ’ shields, besides used generally as an amulet, a protective covering against the malefic eye. Likewise, in Hindu mythology, Kali is often shown with a protruding tongue and snakes around her head. In some greek myths, blood taken from the right english of a Gorgon could bring the dead back to life, so far blood taken from the left side was an instantaneously fatal poison. [ 16 ] Athena gave a phial of the healing blood to Asclepius, which ultimately brought about his death. Heracles is said to have obtained a interlock of Medusa ’ s hair ( which possessed the lapp powers as the head ) from Athena and to have given it to Sterope, [ 17 ] the daughter of Cepheus, as a protection for the town of Tegea against attack. According to the late idea of Medusa as a beautiful maiden over, whose hair had been changed into snakes by Athena, the promontory was represented in works of art with a wonderfully fine-looking face, wrapped in the calm repose of death .
cultural depictions of Gorgons [edit ]
Gorgons, particularly Medusa, have become a common double and symbol in western culture since their origins in Greek mythology, appearing in artwork, literature, and elsewhere throughout history. In A Tale of Two Cities, for example, Charles Dickens compares the exploitative french nobility to “ the Gorgon ” — He devotes an entire chapter to this extended metaphor. One of the more holocene and celebrated uses of Gorgons comes from the koran serial Percy Jackson and the Olympians, in which we see Medusa in the first bible. Her sisters, Stheno and Euryale, are seen late in the series. Another modern depicting of Gorgons is seen in the movie Clash of the Titans, a movie loosely based on the fib of Perseus .
genealogy [edit ]
See besides [edit ]
Notes [edit ]
- ^[4] that Medusa was once the goddess herself, hiding behind a prophylactic Gorgon mask: A hideous face intended to warn the profane against trespassing on her Mysteries. Perseus beheads Medusa: that is, the Hellenes overran the goddess’s chief shrines, stripped her priestesses of their Gorgon masks, and took possession of the sacred horses – an early representation of the goddess with a Gorgon’s head and a mare’s body has been found in Boeotia. Bellerophon, Perseus’s double, kills the Lycian Chimaera, that is: The Hellenes annulled the ancient Medusan calendar, and replaced it with another.
— R. Graves (1955)[5] A big depart of Greek myth is politico-religious history. Bellerophon masters winged Pegasus and kills the Chimaera. Perseus, in a variant of the like legend, flies through the vent and beheads Pegasus ’ randomness mother, the Gorgon Medusa ; much as Marduk, a babylonian hero, kills the she-monster Tiamat, Goddess of the Seal. Perseus ’ s list should properly be spelled Perseus, ‘ the destroyer ’ ; and he was not, as Professor Kerenyi has suggested, an archetypal Death-figure but, probably, represented the patriarchal Hellenes who invaded Greece and Asia Minor early in the moment millennium BC, and challenged the might of the Triple-goddess. Pegasus had been sacred to her because the horse with its moon-shaped hooves figured in the rain-making ceremonies and the episode of sacred kings ; his wings were emblematic of a celestial nature, rather than accelerate. Jane Harrison has pointed outthat Medusa was once the goddess herself, hiding behind a preventive Gorgon mask : A hideous confront intended to warn the corrupt against trespassing on her Mysteries. Perseus beheads Medusa : that is, the Hellenes overran the goddess ’ south headman shrines, stripped her priestesses of their Gorgon masks, and took possession of the sacred horses – an early representation of the goddess with a Gorgon ’ sulfur headway and a mare ’ south soundbox has been found in Boeotia. Bellerophon, Perseus ’ sulfur double, kills the lycian Chimaera, that is : The Hellenes annulled the ancient Medusan calendar, and replaced it with another.— R. Graves ( 1955 ) - ^c. 1290 B.C., as the founder of a dynasty; and Robert Graves – whose two volumes on The Greek Myths are particularly noteworthy for their suggestive historical applications – proposes that the legend of Perseus beheading Medusa means, specifically, that “the Hellenes overran the goddess’s chief shrines” and “stripped her priestesses of their Gorgon masks”, the latter being apotropaic faces worn to frighten away the profane. That is to say, there occurred in the early thirteenth century B.C. an actual historic rupture, a sort of sociological trauma, which has been registered in this myth, much as what Freud terms the latent content of a neurosis is registered in the manifest content of a dream: Registered yet hidden, registered in the unconscious yet unknown or misconstrued by the conscious mind. And in every such screening myth – in every such mythology (that of the Bible being, as we have just seen, another of the kind) – there enters in an essential duplicity, the consequences of which cannot be disregarded or suppressed.
— J. Campbell (1968)[6] We have already spoken of Medusa and of the powers of her blood to render both life and death. We may now think of the caption of her killer, Perseus, by whom her head was removed and presented to Athene. Professor Hainmond assigns the historical King Perseus of Mycenae to a date1290 B.C., as the founder of a dynasty ; and Robert Graves – whose two volumes onare particularly noteworthy for their indicative diachronic applications – proposes that the legend of Perseus beheading Medusa means, specifically, that “ the Hellenes overran the goddess ‘s foreman shrines ” and “ stripped her priestesses of their Gorgon masks ”, the latter being apotropaic faces worn to frighten away the profane. That is to say, there occurred in the early thirteenth hundred B.C. an actual historic rupture, a sort of sociological injury, which has been registered in this myth, much as what Freud terms the latent content of a neurosis is registered in the manifest content of a dream : Registered yet hidden, registered in the unconscious yet stranger or misconstrued by the conscious beware. And in every such screening myth – in every such mythology ( that of the Bible being, as we have precisely seen, another of the kind ) – there enters in an essential fraudulence, the consequences of which can not be disregarded or suppressed.— J. Campbell ( 1968 ) - ^[18] claims that she was “born” from the foam of the sea after Cronus castrated Uranus, thus making her Uranus’ daughter; but [19] : reserve V has Aphrodite as daughter of Zeus and Dione. According to [20] the two were entirely separate entities: There are two major conflicting stories for Aphrodite ‘s origins : Hesiod claims that she was “ hold ” from the foam of the ocean after Cronus castrated Uranus, therefore making her Uranus ‘ daughter ; but Homer has Aphrodite as daughter of Zeus and Dione. According to Plato the two were entirely separate entities : Aphrodite Ourania and Aphrodite Pandemos
- ^[21]1.70–73 Homer names Thoosa as a daughter of Phorcys, without specifying her mother .
- ^ Most sources identify Medusa as the daughter of Phorcys and Ceto, though the generator Hyginus Fabulae Preface ) makes Medusa the daughter of Gorgon and Ceto .