I agree – all excellent points. And the question is how likely are we, as humans, to produce the same abstract form for something? That’s another reason I have trouble with the octopus interpretation – you can argue that the protruding gorgon tongue is really the octopus’ siphon, but would you really expect all cultures to abstract the siphon in that same way? It’s even less likely that everyone would derives the gorgon face from “stormclouds” or “nightmares” (both of which have been suggested as the origin for the gorgon’s face)
Agreed. It could also have been abstracted from a corpse’s face though. That certainly would be common to all cultures. Bulging eyes, protruding tongue, teeth bared in a rictus. The fangs could be an abstracted spirit, fume, or blood flow. Considering that nearly all cultures have tales of evil spirits that consume the living, adding the teeth, or having transmuted from something earlier wouldn’t be too much of a stretch.
Awwww…
Well I’ve either fallen into a common logic trap and disappointed you, or I’ve ruined my reading. 
But Medusa isn’t immune to her own curse - so, while the snakes could be immune, that’s not a good argument for it.
Perhaps there are little snake-icles - and when a snake dies for whatever reason, a new one grows in.
Joe
Since when? Perseus used his mirrored shield so he could see where he was striking without being turned to stone himself, not to turn the Medusa to stone with her own gaze.
There’s no canonical answer to this. Recently, several interpretations have Medusa being turned to stone by seeing her own reflection (see the movie Metamorphoses, AKA Winds of Change, for an example. And also how liberal my definition of “recently” is).
OTOH, the oldest representations don’t show or hint at a mirror or a shield at all. Perseus is simply loking away as he cuts off Medusa’s head:
http://www.theoi.com/Gallery/R47.1.html
http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Mythology/PerseusMedusaLouvreCA795.html
So which came first, the use of the design as an emblem on shields, or the myth of Perseus using his shield as a mirror?
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal is waaaay ahead of you…
My opinion – the use of the design in various places – most notably on shields and antefixes. Faces extremely similar to the Gorgon have been used elsewhere in the world – most strikingly among the Classical Maya and by the Iatmul who live along the Sepik River in New Guinea. I don’t know of any myths associated with those images, but they may well have existed. The Mayan shields, in particular, look so much like Greek shields with gorgoneia that it’s scary.
I suspect that the features of the myth developed to explain why the Gorgon face is on the shield. In Apollodorus, it’s explicitly stated that Perseus gave Athena the Gorgon head to put on her shield or her aegis. (And, interestingly, the gorgon head is so inextricably part of her shield and/or aegis that I have seen artworks in which Athena is shown with the Gorgon head on her shield as perseus is running from the freshly-decapitated Medusa, holding her head. There’s a black-figure pot here in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts that shows that.
On the other hand, I have a suspicion that there is another, more "mystical? explanation for the Gorgon’s head being on the shield that has been captured in the myth alongside this more literal, straightforward one. I think that the idea of Perseus cutting of the Gorgon’s head while looking at it in the mirror might be the magical action that traps it in the shield – Perseus looks at it in the shield, then separates it from the body while still looking at it in the shield, so it’s “pinned” there, m the way Peter Pan’s shadow gets captured by Wendy Darling.
in any event, it seems much more likely to me that the myth grew up to explain why the gorgon head was painted on the shield than that there was a myth about a gorgon head that impelled people to paint it on their shields.
As for what the head was doing on those shields, and why the practice was so widespread, see my book.
Which answers my question as to where I had heard this suggestion.
Great book - Highly recommended.
Refer to “Body Bags” 1993 Part 6 (YouTube) to see how a vain attempt at hair regrowth can go horribly wrong if the hair is not what you expect.
As a fictional entity, nothing regarding Medusa is true. She’s make believe, and as such their is nothing correct or incorrect about her. Your daughter is on a search for Truth about herself and about her creator. She is on a quest to find the true beauty and perfection of God Almighty. She asks questions because she believes you know Truth.
But there is no Truth in the darkness of random, mindless diversion.
Feeding young probing minds irrelevant, amoral garbage produces pagan savages who adopt the minimum legal requirement as the ideal standard of human conduct.
Train young minds with the beauty of classic art, roman catholic mass, gregorian chant, ancient roman poetry, gothic cathedrals, and the virtues of charity, kindness, obedience, self discipline, manners, civilized conduct, proper morals, faith, hope, thrift, prayer, devotion, chastity and love for God, and they will not deviate from Truth during their teen years.
They will be happy.
I’m kind of hoping this is a whoosh.
He only signed up today, so that’s unlikely. I’ve already reported it. Although, I am amused by the idea that Baboon’s daughter “is on a quest to find… true beauty” and that lead her to Medusa.
Random, mindless diversion is pretty much our stock-in-trade here at the SDMB. You never can tell when it’ll come in handy. And Medusa’s in a lot of Classical Art.
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twickster, Cafe Society moderator
Chuch!
Preach it, twickster.
I mean . . . ooops.
So how did an optics physics guy come to be an expert on one particular slice of ancient mythology, anyway?
Years of dedication.
Seriously.
After I read Jerome Lettvin’s article The Gorgon’s Eye in Technology review back in 1978 I started seeking out and collecting literature on the subject. Eventually I amassed a library of binders collected from journals and books. There wasn’t a decent index for journals like the American Journal of Archaeology, so I sat in a library with the collected volumes and went through them one by one. Every time I found a good reference, I followed up all its references, then looked at the references from those references. I haunted the Andover Theological Library at Harvard, and visited Medical libraries around Boston. I used the library at the American Association of Variable Stars.
I’ve done the same thing with some other myths that I’m writing up now. As i sit here typing this, I have a bookcase full of 3-ring binders filled with photocopied articles that has spilled over onto the floor. Not to mention many books. I have a bookcase devoted to mythology in the basement that’s also overflowing. very time I come across a fact that might be relevant, I docket it. I contact experts in various fields and correspond with them.
In a way, I’ve come to be what I have previously said i despise – an armchair expert. I don’t do fieldwork. But, boy, it’s an active armchair. I build up theories and look for evidence to buttress or disprobe my ideas. I go to meetings of the Classical Asociation of New England, the Organization of Independent Scholars, the Arunah Hill Conference, and the American Association of Variable Stars and bounce these ideas off people. That isn’t easy – finding experts to listen to you is a pain in the neck. It’s an imposition, and they have their own problems. But I keep on doing it.