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The Chimera has three heads—a lion’s head in the front, a goat’s head rising from its back, and a serpent’s head at the tip of its tail. But what if it didn’t start out that way? Ugo Bardi hypothesizes in Chimera: the origins of the myth that this monster may have originally been a winged lion and got twisted along the way.
The Original Chimera
To find the remote origins of the winged lion, Bardi reaches back to the Sumerian civilization, which started as early as the mid-5th millennium BC. Take a look at the clay Sumerian cylinder seal below. The scene includes two weather gods—”a goddess holding bundles of rain and a god in a chariot, brandishing a whip, who brings to mind thunder and lightning. A parallel exists for the goddess standing on a lion-griffin that draws the god’s chariot.” 1
This winged lion spews out lightning bolts, while the Chimera breathes fire. Over time, the wings of the lion become the goat head of the Chimera. It’s possible, Bardi says, that the emergence of a goat head was “just a misrepresentation of what it was – originally – a wing, actually a pair of wings.”
To show how this may have evolved, he mentions a 1934 essay entitled, “The Origins of the Chimaera,” by Anne Roes. Here are two examples of Etruscan art she presents showing lions’ wings that turn into goat heads. The one on the left is an Etruscan gold brooch which she says shows that “a wing instead of a neck was meant.”
The one on the right is an early Corinthian vase. If you look at the left side of the vase, you can see two lines curving from the shoulder of the lion toward a small goat’s head.
While the Etruscans generally kept to the winged type, Roes says the Greeks changed the wing into a neck. As for the head of the serpent, she notes that while it is mentioned both by Homer and Hesiod, it is “a detail that is often omitted altogether by Greek as well as by Etruscan artists.” For her, the real mystery was the goat’s head.
Inanna and the Winged Lion
Bardi and others believe that the goddess who rides the lion in the Sumerian seal is Inanna, “the most loved and best known of the Sumerian deities.”
In the hymnal prayer, “The Adoration of Innana of Ur,” written by Enheduanna, the priestess and daughter of King Sargon of Akkad, Inanna rides the beast, most likely a lion (line 14):
And Theodore J. Lewis, Blum-Iwry Professor of Near Eastern Studies, writes: “Inanna/Ishtar is the deity most frequently associated with the lion. Labbatu, “lioness” occurs as her epithet alone.” 2
Anzu Breaks Bad
In the earlier Sumerian myth, the winged lion is normal size and works with or is tamed by the weather gods. But over time, the winged lion or lion-headed eagle becomes Imdugud in Sumerian myth and then Anzu (the wise one of heaven) in Akkadian myth. Anzu somehow grows into a large, male, lion-faced dragon.
Christian W. Hess, lecturer at Freie Universität Berlin, writes that Anzu’s role gradually became demonic. “In an Akkadian myth, after the ‘wicked Anzu’ has stolen the tablet of destinies and gained supremacy over the universe, the war god Ninurta is sent to vanquish him.” 3
These Assyrian reliefs show thunder-wielding Ninurta pursuing Anzu. “Anzu stole the ‘Tablet of Destinies’ (believed to contain details of the future) which was retrieved only once Ninurta killed the monster.” 4
Originally written in cuneiform on clay tablets, The Myth of Anzu tells how Anzu threatened to rule the gods. Filled with arrogance, he proclaims that he will take the gods’ Tablet of Destinies for himself, “control the orders for the gods, and shall possess the throne and be the master of the rites!” 5 Unsurprisingly, the warrior Ninurta slays Anzu and regains the gods´ Tablet of Destinies. 6
The End Result
By the time the myth lands in ancient Greece, Imdugud/Anzu is the Chimera, which means “young she-goat” in ancient Greek. The Chimera, Bardi says, is “a grotesque and deformed image of the mother goddess and it embodies all the evil that men can think about women.”
This degradation is clear in the medieval era, as exemplified by this quote in the Malleus Maleficarum, a treatise against witches that endorses their extermination: “You do not know that woman is the Chimaera, but it is good that you should know it; for that monster was of three forms. Its face was that of a radiant and noble lion, it had the filthy belly of a goat, and it was armed with the virulent tail of a viper. A woman is beautiful to look upon, contaminating to the touch, and deadly to keep.” 7
Coming Full Circle
Patriarchal society took powerful goddesses and married them (Hera to Zeus), divided them (Inanna into Aphrodite and Athena), and made them wicked (Hekate), ugly (Medusa), or meddling and crazy (Gaia). And while the rain god Zeus works alone, the gods and goddesses in the Sumerian seal work together.
Bardi’s blog post inspired me to write a story in which the Chimera returns to her original form, empowering the goddesses to challenge the patriarchal archetype. If myth and history are intertwined, the devaluation of the goddess set the stage for the devaluation of women and the deterioration of our natural world. I wanted to give them a second act to rewrite mythical history.
Images
1. Terracotta relief plaque (‘Melian relief’) with Bellerophon and the Chimaera in the form of a lioness with a snake for a tail and the forepart of a goat emerging from the middle of her back. 525-500 B.C.E., Cyclades, Melos. British Museum, Greek & Roman Antiquities
2. Worshiper pouring libation before goddess standing on lion-griffin that draws chariot driven by weather god [cylinder seal], 2340-2150 B.C.E., Pierpont Morgan Library Dept. of Seals and Tablets
3. Chlorite Vessel inscribed “Inanna and the Serpent.” (2600-2400 B.C.E.) peggyfirestone.com; originally Hansen, Donald P., and George F. Dales. “The Temple of Inanna, Queen of Heaven at Nippur.” Archaeology.15 (1962) pp.75-84.
4. Gypsum wall panel relief: showing the monster Anzu facing left. The panel is part of a group as follows: gypsum wall panel reliefs showing god and monster. With a thunderbolt in each hand, the chief god Ninurta of the city of Nimrud pursues the monster Anzu. The panel is inscribed with a cuneiform script. 865-860 B.C.E., Palace of Ashurbanipal, King of Assyria, 885-860 B.C., at Nimrûd. British Museum, Nimrûd Gallery, Nos. 28 and 29.
Bibliography
- Edith Porada, Corpus of Ancient Near Eastern Seals in North American Collections (1948), p. 28.
- Lewis, Theodore J. “CT 13.33-34 and Ezekiel 32: Lion-Dragon Myths.” Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 116, no. 1, 1996, pp. 28–47. JSTOR
- Christian Hess, “Anzu (Imdugud),” 2013
- @BritishMuseum tweet, January 20, 2018
- The Myth of Anzu, Tablet I
- The Myth of Anzu, Tablet III
- Michele A. Paludi, J. Harold Ellens, Feminism and Religion: How Faiths View Women and Their Rights: How Faiths View Women and Their Rights, 2016, p. 67
Very interesting post — thanks for your interest in my blog and on Chimeras and goddesses!