Chimaera
This document was created in March 1997, last revision, January 2004. Copyright by Ugo Bardi
Ancient myths often tell of beings made out of several creatures joined together in a single one: a
human head on a lion body makes a sphinx, on a bird's torso a siren, and on that of a fish a mermaid.
Some of these beings are true races, as the centaurs (half man and half horse), the harpies (another
kind of woman/bird mixture), and the satyrs (men with goat's legs). Others come as one of a kind, as
the Minotaur (half man and half bull), Echidna (half woman and half snake), and the Chimaera (or
Chimera), this time a mixture of lion, goat, and snake.
For us, the richness of this ancient Pantheon is - at most - a matter of curiosity, out of which it is
hard to make much sense. The myth of the Chimaera seems to be a particularly baffling one. Surely,
it is a spectacular story of the battle of a flying hero against a fire breathing monster, but can it be
that all this sound and fury signifies nothing but the slaying of an ugly beast? We can say that this is
one of the first versions (perhaps the first) of the story of the hero and the dragon, a story pervasively
embedded in western thought, repeated over and over in thousands of versions. But, in itself, the
story of the Chimaera can hardly be the ultimate origin of the myth of the Dragon. It is, rather, a
version of some much more ancient myth, one that found its way in the stories told by Homer and
Hesiod, and as such it was commented upon, illustrated in paintings and sculptures, and finally
transmitted to us. But this story, as most ancient myths, is clearly a mixture of other stories and
ideas, older myths, some perhaps going far backward, to when humankind still could not record
thoughts in any other way than in story telling. Making sense of this mixture and finding the true
origins of the myth of the Chimaera is not an easy task, but we can try.
Let's first review what we know. The literary sources are practically only two: Homer and
Hesiod, back to - probably - 9th century BC, with later authors only adding minor details. According
to Homer, the Chimaera was "in the fore part a lion, in the hinder a serpent, and in the middle a
goat". Hesiod says almost identical words, although he specifies that the creature had three heads.
Both also say that it was capable of breathing fire. All authors describe the Chimaera as female, and
that may be something related to her name, that in ancient Greek means "young she-goat". Despite
this rather humble name, she was of divine origin. Her father was the giant Typhon and her mother
the half-serpent Echidna. She had as brothers Cerberus (the hound of Hell), Hydra (the nine-headed
water snake) and Orthrus (another multi-headed dog).
The Chimaera was slain by Bellerophon, the hero.
He was of divine origin, too, and in order to succeed
in his task he first tamed the winged horse Pegasus
(some say it was given to him by Poseidon, his
father). Then he flew over the monster to avoid its
fiery breath. Some say that the breath of the beast
was so hot that it melted the hero's arrowheads.
Others say that he placed a block of lead on the tip
of his spear, that he thrust into the creature's throat.
The flaming breath caused the lead to melt and
hence to seal the Chimaera's guts, killing her. Of
Bellerophon's career after this feat, we know that it
wasn't easy and that the hero seems to have had a
certain tendency to clash with female creatures, for instance he fought and defeated the Amazons.
Eventually, Bellerophon's destiny was not a brilliant one, as he ended his life blind, lame and
accursed, always avoiding the paths of men.
Just as the ancient reports about the Chimaera are all about the same, so are the images. We have
several of them on vases, mirrors, and coins, as well as one large and well preserved statue, the
Chimaera of Arezzo. It seems that the artists of that time were proud of being faithful to the accepted
model, just as storytellers were proud of telling their stories using the same words used by their
teachers of old. So, all these images are remarkably similar. The three heads are clearly
recognizable, with the goat's one sprouting out of the middle of the back. Even the posture of the
creature is always the same, with the body arched up and the front legs rigidly extended forward.
The lion's head is often pointing upwards with the mouth open and in several cases there are hints of
flames coming out of it. These images roughly correspond to the literary version of the myth,
although they also show details which do not appear in Homer and Hesiod.
This is, more or less, what we know. Now, what can we make out of it? What is the myth really
about? Ancient authors of classical times asked themselves this question, too. The best known
"rational" answer of ancient times is that of Servius Honoratus, writing in 4th century AD. According
to him, the fire breathing creature was just the naïve representation of a volcano, a mountain named
"Chimaera" located somewhere in ancient Lycia. Bellerophon was simply a settler who managed to
establish himself there first. Other authors, such as Plutarch, said that Chimaera was the name of a
ship, and others that she was a female warlord. In modern times, Servius' volcano has proven
popular in mythology textbooks even though it seems unlikely that our ancestors - naïve as they may
have been - could not tell a volcano from a goat when they saw one.
The Italian Inghirami, writing in 19th century (Monumenti Etruschi, 1824), was one of the first to
go beyond the traditional interpretations, developing a complex zodiacal symbology where
Bellerophon drives the chariot of the sun and where the
Chimaera is identified with the constellation of the lion,
something that explains the "flaming breath" as a symbol of
summer. Closer to our times, Robert Graves, in his Greek
Myths (1955), came to a related astronomical interpretation
when he suggested that the three parts of the creature were
an allegory of the three seasons of the year, as it was
subdivided in extremely ancient times. Graves also suggests
that the Chimaera may be a representation of the prehistoric
passage from a matriarchal society dominated by the Moon
goddess to another one, dominated by sun kings. Nobody so
far seems to have noted the possible relation of the myth
with metal working, as it would be suggested by the detail
of lead melting in the creature's throat. Just as we can see in
Homer's "Trojan horse" a corrupted report about an ancient
siege engine, we could see the Chimaera as a
misrepresentation of an ancient furnace.
There is, certainly, something in each one of these
ideas. Yet, it seems that no single one of them and perhaps
not even all of them together, is really satisfactory. More
likely, there is something deeper here, something that we cannot just explain away with volcanoes or
blasting furnaces. To get there, we should rather free ourselves of these layers of interpretation that
have accumulated over the centuries. So, first of all, let's say that the Chimaera, as a monster, doesn't
make much sense. Maybe one could be scared by a lion, or by a snake as well. But by a goat? What
is there so special about goats to have a monster made out - in part at least - of one? Anyway, the
Chimaera would probably be a better monster without the useless goat head, that would have a hard
time in harming anyone from the position in which it finds itself. The first to have reasoned that the
goat head is not a head, after all, seems to have been Anne Roes in a paper of 1934 (JHS, LIV " The
origins of the Chimaera" in festschrift Robinson 1155-64). The position and the shape of the head, it
seems, is just a misrepresentation if what was - originally - a wing, actually a pair of wings.
To understand how a wing could became a goat, suppose you have never heard of the Chimaera,
suppose you had just seen once the image of a winged lion or suppose you had seen it long ago and
you are trying to remember what exactly it was. What would you say? Most likely, you would see or remember - just a lion, a lion
with something on its back,
maybe someone riding it. We can't
really do such a test on ourselves,
but a situation not unlike the one
we are describing took place in
1553, when an ancient statue of
the chimaera was unearthed near
Arezzo, in Italy. The people of the
time were much impressed by it,
but the chroniclers initially just
called it a "lion". It took a long
time - maybe a year - for the
chancellor of the city of Arezzo to
realize, and write down, that the
statue was really a Chimerae
Bellerofontis simulacrum.
So, the origin of the myth may have been a winged lion. Lions lived as far north as in Greece and
in Italy in very ancient times, but really they were best known in North Africa and in Mesopotamia.
We have beautiful images of kings hunting and killing lions all over Egypt and Babylon. And we do
have images of winged lions. So, We'll look first at images taken from the Babylonian tradition
which started to be dominant in Mesopotamia from approximately the end of the 3rd millennium
BC. We have here a drawing made from a bas-relief of the palace of Ninurta at Nimrud as
reproduced in H. McCall: Mesopotamian myths, 1990. This image may perhaps go back to the Old
Babylonian period, that is early 2nd millennium BC. The winged lion here bears a clear resemblance
to the classic Chimaera. Blurring the image a bit, the wings of this lion could become a goat's head.
Then, think of turning the image on its left side, and you have the same body posture of the
Chimaera as we are used to, with the rigidly extended legs and the head angrily turned backwards.
And the divine or semi-divine hero is a version of Bellerophon, although here not riding a flying
horse but rather provided with wings himself (since the monster is flying, too, we have a fair fight).
The hero is holding spiked or forked objects, some kind of weapons, perhaps lightning bolts. The
image vividly suggests the movement of the clash, a battle of divine beings, high in the sky among
thunder and lightning.
These images never come with captions, and we
can only tentatively identify the creatures depicted. In
this case, the hero is most likely the war-god Ninurta.
As for the winged lion, we are probably seeing an
image of Anzu, or Zu. Anzu is often described as a
"bird" and it appears in several stories of the
Babylonian mythology. Anzu's battle with Ninurta is
described in a set of Akkadian tablets that go back to
the 7th century BC. It is said that Anzu had stolen the
"Tablet of Destinies" of Ellil, king of the Gods.
Consequently, Ninurta is dispatched to recover it.
After a terrible battle of course the hero slays the
wicked creature, and we have yet another version of
the hero vs. dragon story.
Now, of course it will be always impossible to prove that the first, unknown artist who painted a
Chimaera as a lion with a goat's head on its back got the idea from this specific image. But the battle
of a hero against a winged creature is not an uncommon theme in Babylonian art. Here is another
version (again from H. McCall: Mesopotamian myths, 1990). The posture of the protagonists and the
general setting are the same as in the image seen before, the main differences here are that the
monster is more bird-like and the hero is armed with a regular bow rather than with lightning bolts.
However, the arrow is of a rather peculiar shape: with three tips, just like Ninurta's bolts. Also the
bow has "balls" on the outer surface which may make it, perhaps, a magical bow. All these are
pictorial elements surely meaning something for the ancient, but difficult for us to interpret.
Anyway, the fact that the hero is aiming at the open mouth of the beast is a common theme of both
literary documents and pictorial scenes. It is a detail that shows how the creature is killed by
shooting or throwing something into the open mouth, just like what happens to the Chimaera, killed
by molten lead thrust in by Bellerophon. This point is clearly described in another epic battle of
Babylonian mythology, that of Marduk against Tiamat, sea dragoness. In the battle, Marduk forces
Tiamat to swallow a terrible wind that causes her to stretch her mouth wide, where he shoots an
arrow that penetrates inside her body and
kills
her.
How did these images and the related
myth evolve over time? We have here a
complex story, mostly unknown to us. In
general turmoil of the early centuries of the
millennium BC many ancient traditions
were lost and the cuneiform writing which
accompanied Mesopotamian civilizations
at least three millennia disappeared as a
generally used way of communication. The
myth of the winged lion was not lost, but
with the decline of the Akkadic civilization
which had created it (or, rather, inherited
the
first
had
for
fro
m
the earlier Sumerian civilization) it became
confused, and so did the images representing it. In
an image from 8th-7th century BC, coming from a
world now dominated by the Persian civilization,
we have evidence of how the symbols have
changed and of how part of the meaning has been
maintained. (Taken from "The hero" by John Lash,
1995). Here we have several of the elements we
had seen before, with a hero killing a lion. Many
details, however, have changed. The hero is not
winged anymore, even though the feathered dress
does suggest wings (much later, the Romans
would call pterugias, wings, the leather stripes of
the gowns of their legionnaires). The hero is
hitting the beast with a regular lance, and he is
aiming at the neck rather than at the open mouth.
But the position of the animal is very similar to
that of the Anzu creature, and what is most
revealing the relation is the position of one of the legs, unnaturally placed upwards and with the
fingers drawn out in a sort of fan. Lions do not have legs like that, the only way we can make any
sense out of this image is by assuming that the artist knew that the lion had to have "something" on
his back but didn't quite know what. This kind of corruption of images is not unknown in ancient
times.
The "raised leg" image of hunted lions above is not unique. Here is another one still from Persian
times, ca. 6th century BC (J. Lash, ibid.). Here we have a king hunting lions, one of them is being
trampled under the chariot, with a left leg raised up to attempt a last defense (but we would not be
able to recognize the fanned paw for what it is weren't we able to compare it with the previous
image). In the sky, we see a bird with a human head and face that we can recognize as a symbol of
Ahura-Mazdah, the supreme God according to Zarathustra or Zoroaster
(the author is grateful to Reza Sharif for having pointed out this detail to
him). The presence of the supreme God witnessing the triumph of a
Persian king over an enemy is a common theme in Persian art and what
we are seeing here is a version of the more ancient myth of Anzu, where
the king/Ahura-Mazdah plays the role of Marduk and where the defeated
lion is at the same time Chimera and Angra-Manyu, the evil spirit of
Zoroastrism. In a later image from 4th century BC, however, the
symbolism is lost and all what we see is a king butchering ordinary lions
(J. Lash, ibid.)
So, it seems that with the collapse of Babylonia many of the ancient myths were lost, and the new
civilizations which appeared did their best to find a meaning for ancient stories and old images, but
did not really succeed in getting all the pieces back together. The best they could do to explain the
"something" on the back of the lion was that it could be a raised leg. In Bayley's 1912 book "the lost
language of Symbolism" we find another interpretation of this "something": a bent tail. These
creatures are described as "The
incomprehensible one furnished with
innumerable eyes whom all nature
longeth after in different ways". Bayley
says that the twisted and tufted tail may
have originated the Fleur de Lys symbol
and maintains that the feline creatures
are related to Jesus Christ who had been
called sometimes "son of the Panther".
As it seems clear, the symbol of the lion with something on the back gave rise to a rich
network of myths. It may well be that at the same times when the Persian transformed wings into a
raised leg, someone in the central or western Mediterranean areas came to think that the
protuberance was actually a goat's head. However, creative as our ancestors could have been, myths
do not originate by chance. We have to think what it meant to them to transform wings into a goat's
head. Why a goat head and not, say, a bird, or a fish, or whatever else? What is the meaning of a
goat head? Why a female goat? And why is the goat so important to give the name to the whole
three-headed creature?
So, to have a glimpse of what the myth was about, we must go backwards in time and try to find
the remote origins of the winged lion. Before the Babylonian and Assyrian times, to the origins of
their culture which is with the Sumerian civilization which started as early as in mid 5th millennium
BC. Among the images that came to us from that time we do not find kings hunting winged lions,
but we do find suggestive images nevertheless. This one is from on a clay Sumerian cylinder seal,
going back, perhaps, to the first half of
the third millennium BC (from Sumer by
A. Parrot, 1960, p. 189). Here, we have
our winged lion and a Godlike figure
holding three-pronged objects. Yet, the
setting and the atmosphere have
radically changed. The whole image, as
many Sumerian ones, transpires an air of
cosmic peace, of hieratic order. There is
no monster here, and no armor-clad
Bellerophon ready to choke it with
molten lead. Rather, we have a naked
goddess holding objects which may still
be lightning bolts, but which are not
necessarily weapons. The winged lion is
a tamed animal, pulling a cart and
sprouting something downwards. The
lines out of the beast's mouth might be fire - as we'd expect from an ancestor of the Chimaera - but it
would be hard to think that the beast is flaming down something destructive. Otherwise, how to
explain the figure to the left offering water (or some other kind of drink) to the incoming divine
cortege? If the lion is breathing out flames, these can only be - at most - the lightning bolts that
accompany a storm. This lion is a thunder beast, the embodiment of a storm. The whole image seems
to symbolize the fertilization of the land, with the sun chariot coming after the storm beast. And it is
curious how the myth was turned around in all its aspects going to the Sumerian to the later
Babylonian version. The female Goddess became a male God, the benign creature an evil one. Even
the "lines", that in this image clearly go out of the mouth of the beast as fertilizing water, in later
times became arrows or bolts going into the mouth of the creature as killing weapons.
Again, there is no caption to this image, but we may nevertheless try to give names to the
characters on the basis of what we know of the Sumerian cosmogony. So, the Sun God's name is
known as Utu, and the sky Goddess should be named Inanna, the most loved and best known of the
Sumerian deities. About the winged lion, it may have been named Imdugud ("The Sumerians", S.N.
Kramer, 1963, p. 198). The scene shown above may actually be described in a series of tablets from
the Akkadian dynasty (ca. 2500 BC). This text seems to have an author, Enkheduanna, priestess and
daughter of king Sargon of Akkad (from the translation of J. van Dijk and W.W. Hallo, The
exaltation of Inanna, New Haven 1968)
As a dragon you poured venom over the country
when you roar towards earth like thunder there is no vegetation that can resist
Flood coming from the mountains
oh sublime, you are Inanna of the sky and of the earth
A burning fire filling the country
she who received as gifts the me's from An, the lady riding a beast
We see that Inanna was no frail lady. As many of the ancient goddesses she had a dark side: she
was mother and loving partner but she could als be a destructive power, huntress or dragon or
lioness. Indeed it is reported that in the city of Ur Inanna herself was referred to as Labbatu,
"Lioness". The description above could apply to one or several of these versions of the deity, and it
could apply to the classic Chimaera as well. It is not
known how exactly it came that Inanna tamed a winged
lion. But this image shows her dominating a lion albeit not a winged one - (From "Inanna", by D.
Wolkstein and S.N. Kramer, 1983 p. 92). Note how
similar is the Goddess figure here to that of Ninurta in
the Babylonian relief that we showed earlier on. Both
are winged, both carry three-pronged or spiked objects
that may be lightning bolts. But here - again - the
atmosphere is much different, and far gentler. A hint of
what is happening may perhaps be found in the words
told by Gilgamesh to Ishtar (the Babylonian name of
Inanna) in a later saga (early 2nd millennium BC). Here,
Gilgamesh describes how the Goddess enslaved or
killed her previous lovers, including the lion (probably
intended as someone strong as a lion) for whom she dug "seven and seven pits". Another possible
reference is in the Huluppu tree story, where Inanna's garden is invaded by three creatures, one of
whom is the Imdugud bird.
With these stories and images we have reached as far back as the sources permit us. In the myths
of these remote ages there are no certainties about what we have been searching, only hints. Yet, the
material we have is highly suggestive and may be sufficient to get us close to an interpretation. So,
the main point here seems to be that turning moment in human history when, as pointed out - for
instance - by Campbell (" The masks of God") a whole set of cosmic beliefs turned from a Goddessruled system to a male dominated system, where the main God is a father figure. In this cosmic
revolution, ancient myths and histories changed their meaning as well. The winged lion, the storm
beast of Sumerian times, ceased to be a symbol of fertilization and became an evil monster. The
goddess, she who rode the lion and at times she herself a lioness, became, too, an evil creature just as
her lion pet. At this point, the center stage was stolen by the male hero, Ninurta or Marduk, who was
there to slain her and to affirm his male superiority. It is interesting to note that in Babylonian stories
the winged lion Anzu is not characterized as male or female, but in the parallel myth of Tiamat we
are clearly told that she is female, just like in the later myth of the Chimaera. Tiamat was the mother
of the gods, and - once - queen of heaven. She was slain in a most gruesome manner by her own son,
Marduk. So Tiamat, the Chimaera, perhaps Anzu, too, could be grotesquely deformed images of the
ancient mother goddess, the one called at times Inanna in Sumer, Ishtar in Babylonia, Astarte in
Phoenicia, Sekhmet or Isis in Egypt, Cybele in Anatolia, Durga or Kali in India (she who rides the
tiger....). A goddess once benign (albeit occasionally cruel) whom time and bad press have
transformed into a monster ("all evil is rotten good" - a quote from Poul Anderson).
So, the Chimaera is in the end a grotesque and deformed image of the mother goddess and it
embodies all the evil that men can think about women. In classical times and middle ages, this
concept was sometimes explicitly expressed. In the "Malleus Maleficarum" (15th century) Kramer
and Sprenger, in a most politically incorrect series of statements, pile up injury after injury on
women, culminating with the report of this passage by Valerius (1st Century AD), an author much
fashionable throughout the middle ages. "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". The
comment of Kramer and Sprenger is that Valerius "means that a woman is beautiful to look upon,
contaminating to the touch, and deadly to keep".
So, why were the wings of the lion transformed into a goat's head? Now we can try to explain
that, too. First, the concept of "female goat" may derive from a verbal confusion. We said that the
winged lion was a storm beast in the Sumerian-Babylonian mythology. Now, "storm" is "Cheimon"
in ancient Greek, and this may explain the transformation into "young goat", Chimaera But the most
important point relates to the goat (and specifically the female goat) as a symbol in European
mythology. Goats, male or female, are not common as monsters, but in the Christian myth of the
devil, as well as in the Greek one of the Satyrs, the goat element seems to be meant to evidence the
"unclean" nature of the creature. This uncleanliness seems to be the main reason of the appearance
on the Chimaera's back of the goat together with the snake, another malignant creature in most
mythologies. Having piled up all sorts of ugly attributes on it, the creature had lost all the noble
aspects which may pertain to a lion and a Goddess and was thoroughly transformed in an evil
monster, ready to fight its last battle and to be slain by some radiant hero.
In this interpretation there are many details that are just reasonable guesses, and - actually everything might even be wrong. However, the very fact that we can make these considerations
illustrates the richness of the myth. The Chimaera is no mere monster. It is a reflection of
unbelievably ancient stories, stories that involve some of the most powerful symbols and concepts
that act on the human mind: the snake, the dragon, the mother, fertility, the thunder, the hero's quest,
the slaying of the evil one. All this is concentrated and distilled in the Chimaera, a beast of many
forms and of many meanings.