For a few instances, look at the Wikipedia article on gorgoneion. Note that the only example that shows the gorgon with a headful of snakes dates from the 17th century:
This one is good, too. It’s very nearly the image I used on my cover:
The picture’s mislabeled. It’s not at Athenian shield. It’s pretty obviously a modern copy of the Gorgon face on a piece in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The original is unmistakeable, and is on a small red pottery piece. Interestingly, both the potter and the artist are identified. Note the complete lack of snakes, which is typical.
Although this is not really a shield, the gorgon --generally without snakes – was one of the most common shield devices. we have plenty of examples of such shields on vase paintings and carvings (And one or two actual shields, not to mention some literary descriptions)
Do you think that points to her being related to the Minoan snake goddess?
No. I know that’s popular in a lot of places, but snakes aren’t essential to the gorgon – and are wholly absent from most depictions of the gorgon. In fact, many (like the one in my last post above) very clearly have beards, and aren’t obviously female at all.
Doesn’t the idea that Medusa’s hair was made of snakes date from Ovid? Ovid’s telling of the Medusa story is that she was a priestess of Athena, who was raped by Poseidon, and so to punish her for being raped, Athena turned her hair into snakes and made her so ugly anyone who looked at her turned to stone. That’s a different origin story than the old Greek one.
Quite right. You don’t want to go to Ovid for your canonical versions of myths (and, I forgot – he does mention other statues in Medusa’s region. But he’s the only one, I think). He changed her origin. He also gave the Graeae one tooth as well as one Eye that they held in common. He also has Perseus riding on Pegasus (not in the Metamorphoses, but in one of his erotic poems), which is, I think, its first literary appearance (although ancient artwork hinted at the possibility earlier). In the older versions, Pegasus’ connection was that the winged horse was Medusa’s child (by way of Poseidon), who was born from Medusa’s neck after her decapitation.
While you’re here, Cal, what of the bull-like “Gorgon”? I think I’ve heard that that one originated from medieval bestiary books, but I’m not sure.
Ovid is more fun than the older myths sometimes, though. Ovid also says (regarding Medusa and serpents), in his retelling of the Perseus myth, that some of Medusa’s blood fell on Libya, which is why there are so many poisonous serpents there. But he does repeat the idea that Pegasus and Chryasor are born from Medusa’s blood.
See my book, pp. 89-92. Athenaeas’ 3rd cenbtury novel The Deipnosophists quotes an earlier source (who appears to be real) named Alexander of Myndus on the topic of the Gorgon. Alex says that the Gorgon was a Libyan beast called by the Numideans “the downlooker”. It was calf-like or sheep-like in appearance, and it can kill with its breath or by a glance from its eyes.
It seems that Pliny took his info from Athenaus or Alexander, or possible some common source and included it in his Natural History, calling it catoblepas (which is simply “downward-looker” in Greek). He didn’t say anything about an association with the gorgon. In the third century, though Aelian, writing his own Natural History, disagreed with Pliny, saying that it was as big as an ox and killed with its breath. From Pliny and Aelian the beast made its way (as with so many) to the medieval bestiaries, and was still being cited in Edmund Topsell’s 1607 History of Four-Footed Beasts. Topsell had it as a weird mashup of the classical gorgon and the catoblepas of Pliny and Aelien, with scales, wings(!), swine’s teeth, and between the size of a bull and a calf. And it looked like this:
http://www.eaudrey.com/myth/catoblepas.htm
http://www.monstropedia.org/index.php?title=Catoblepas
Speculation that it’s really a pangolin depends, I suspect, on those scales, which are clearly taken from the description of the Gorgon in The Shield of Heracles and Apollodorus’ Library. So i don’t put much stock in it. If you want to explain it, go back to Alexander’s scale-less description.
As an aside. Those oger-ish depictions of gorgons bear a striking resemblance to indonesian spirits. I’m beginning to wonder if there was not a period of great dispersion in ancient Indo-china. I’ve also seen the same face with slight variations in certain Mayan carvings as well. They also turn up in China, Japan, and the Pacific Northwestern tribes.
This is a big part of my book. See chapters 4 (“Parallels from around the world”), 8 (“The Face on the Shield”), 9 (“Gorgons and Gargoyles”), and 10 {“What the Gorgon Really Was”).
I reject the idea that the Gorgon image is the result of diffusion – the image doesn’t follow the development one would associate with diffusion, where there’s a center where the image originated, and the farther away from that you go, the later the first appearance of the image. When the Aztec Calendar Stone was made, it was millenia after the first appearance of the Greek Gorgon, and by then the Greek Gorgon had ceased to look like that image over a thousand years earlier, and you could neither find a path between Greece and Mexico the image might have traveled along, nor any intermediate places where the image might have been recorded. I think that the Indian, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Chinese, and various American forms were really independent innovations.
I LOVE this thread.
I want those dolls and a copy of Cal Meacham’s book.
I loved D’lauries (spelling is almost certainly wrong) Book Of Greek Myths growing up. I still have my very tattered copy. Would other posters recommend it for teaching the young Baboon mythology?
I would. MilliCal loves her copy.
There are quite a few books on mythology. I grew up on Edith Hamilton’s and Bulfinch’s, myself. but i fell in love with the Paul Hamlyn series on the World’s Mythologies, in no small part because they’re illustrated with artwork by the people involved, so you can see how they pictured the myths. The one on Greek Mythology is by John Pinsent, anf seems to still be in print; or is at least still available:
The real question here, is where ELSE did Medusa have snakes?
If by that you mean *where else in the world did a Gorgon Parallel have snakes on its head? *, the answer is “almost nowhere”.
The parallels I’ve noted often have stylized hair (look at the face in the Aztec Calendar stone, or at Bes or Humbaba or Rangda. They’re hairy, but not snaky. I have found one or two examples that look at if they have snakes for hair, but they’re not in my book, and I haven’t got my research notes here. In any event, they’re pretty non-characteristic cases, not typical of their region.
I have suggested – at the end of the book, and only as a suggestion, since i have little to support it – that one possible inspiration for the S-shaped snakes often drawn around the outside of Gorgoneion might be inspired by the behavior of sawfly larva. When startled, these will move in unison and assume such an S-shape. If you have a number of larva around the edge of a leaf the result looks amazingly like such gorgoneia:
S-shaped snakes around Gorgon Head:
Sawflies “rearing up” in unison:
Uh, I’m pretty sure that yanceylebeef’s question was a double entendre. (But not fork-tongued …)
Anyway, I have another semi-hijack. (Actually, I think that this an attempt at a full-blown hijack.)
Is the interest in Gorgons an interest in:
- the idea of supernatural creatures themselves
- the literature and art of supernatural creatures
or - the society and culture that believed in the creatures?
Of course, it can be any combination of the above, or something else.
Just wondering. I guess because I can understand an interest in #2 and #3, but it seems to me that some people are fascinated by #1, and I don’t understand why. Not that I have to understand everything, or even care about what fascinates other people, but I’m curious.
Yeah, my apologies. I’m rendering some Aftereffects timelines and I’m bored.
Snake pubes. Gross.
Right. I’m too literal-minded.
I’m quite certain that I’ve seen drawings of a Medusa with snaky pubic hairs in some recent comic or webcomic – so even that idea has been tried out. It might have been one of Jim Balent’s Tarot comics. (I’ve seen Medusa with penises in place of snakes quite a few times. And also Medusa with octopoid tentacles in place of snakes – which is pretty interesting in view of the number of times people have suggested that her disembodied head was inspired by an octopus or squid.
I don’t think anyone’s ever drawn her with snakes for underarm hair, though, so that interpretation is free if you want to try it.