What happens when you combine the fiercest animal of the sky with the proudest of the land?
You get the Griffin.
This half-lion, half-eagle creature adorns royal crests or perched menacingly atop buildings.
Stories of this beast predate written language.
Artifacts from cultures like the Ancient Egyptians,
Assyrians, Myceneans,
Babylonians, Syrians, Persians, and Greeks bear evidence of the majestic griffin.
I have a soft spot for these monsters, they are part bird after all.
But their avian majesty is only part of their allure.
Powerful, vigilant, a symbol of royalty, and companion to gods, the griffin’s grandeur
is only seconded by its omnipresence in ancient civilizations.
Yet we’ve largely let this monster fade into antiquity.
Why did ancient peoples believe that these
creatures actually roamed the earth protecting gold?
I'm Dr. Emily Zarka, and this is Monstrum.
The Griffin has talon feet, a long tail, an eagle-like beak, and usually wings.
Known by many names across the globe, the griffin is a bit unusual
as monster mythology goes; it doesn’t have an origin story.
There are no tales connecting its creation
to any deity, or heroes battling it in some epic quest.
Griffins were just animals; something people believed they might happen across one day.
That doesn’t mean they didn’t have a place in folkloric traditions though.
The griffin was said to cohabitate with others of its kind, roaming in pairs or packs, hunting
large mammals like horses and deer—
and as monsters tend to do, the occasional human.
Griffins lay eggs in nests on the ground and
primarily get around on four legs, despite the wings.
Since the earliest versions of griffins have no written record, it’s hard to draw any
definitive conclusions about why they started appearing in the first place.
Nevertheless, we begin to see the Griffin
appear in cultural artifacts thousands of years ago.
First, in the late fourth millennium BCE in
Egypt and Elam, and in the second millennium in Syria.
The hybrid creatures appear on seals, amulets, and tomb decorations and likely evoked protection.
Think about it: if the lion is seen as “king” of land
animals for its ferocity and beauty, and the
“eagle” as aerial nobility for the same reasons,
a lion-eagle combo animal logically would
be the king of the beasts - a majestic and powerful being.
Who wouldn’t want to adopt some of that same power?
During the Bronze Age Egyptian iconography
played up the duality of the monster even more overtly -
adding crests, neck curls meant to evoke the lion’s mane, and raised wings.
Griffins begin to appear in Egyptian funerary
imagery in royal tombs as far back as the Fifth Dynasty.
And by the Eighteenth Dynasty, the often male griffin, overwhelmingly symbolized the protection
and authority of the pharaohs - alongside the female sphinx.
Griffin lore enters written history sometime
between the 8th and 6th century BCE in Greek literature.
The Greeks even gave the griffin their name.
The Greek word for curved or hooked became the Latin grȳps, which forms the base of
the French and Italian words.
Griffin is also linked to giriften, the Persian word for “grip” or “seize.”
This etymology points to the creature’s curved beak and talons—its most powerful weapons.
The Greek stories were originally adapted from tales told by the Scythians, a nomadic,
culturally advanced people with a rich oral tradition, who traveled a large swathe of
territory between Southeastern Europe, Central Asia, and Mongolia.
We see the griffin depicted in Scythian art, the creatures immortalized in gold alongside
horses, stags, and eagles.
They even appear as tattoos on mummified remains of the fiercely admired Scythian warriors,
indicating their cultural importance.
One early example of the griffin appearing in a written narrative comes from Aristeas
a Greek traveler who wrote an epic poem about the Scythian nomads.
In his story, the Scythians fight off lion - sized creatures with curved, eagle-like
beaks as they prospect for gold.
We’ve lost the complete poem to time, but from the fragments, we get one of the griffin’s
defining characteristics - their connection to gold, more specifically, to guarding gold
deposits in Central Asia.
Now we’re getting somewhere—no longer just an impressive, exotic animal, the griffin
was linked to an important cultural resource, a precious metal tied to religion, art, currency,
and social power.
Ancient history, nomadic tribes, gold…it all made for great stories to the Greeks.
In 430 BCE, Greek historian Herodotus wrote of “griffins that guard gold” in the mountains
beyond the Issedones, located in Central Asia, which the Greeks would have perceived as a
far-away, nearly mythical place.
In the 5th century BCE, Ctesias’ Indica gives us the first detailed written account
of the griffin’s appearance.
He describes large gold deposits in the mountains of India inhabited by “a race of four-footed
birds, about as large as wolves, having legs and claws like those of the lion, and covered
all over the body with black feathers except only on the breast where they are red.”
In the 3rd century CE, Greek author Aelian gives another detailed account of griffins.
Like Ctesaias’s earlier description, they
have black and red feathers, but their wings are white.
They will attack those who approach their mountain nests, but not in defense of the
luminous metal but their young - making them more vigilant and
dedicated parents rather than treasure-mongers.
These are only a few examples, as the Greeks and Romans circulated these Scythian griffin
stories the creature’s appearance in their art increased as well.
Vases, mosaics, bronze busts, bowls—the griffin was a popular adornment.
In Greek mythology, the sun-god Apollo’s chariot was driven by griffins and Dionysus
had one to help pull his chariot as well.
Zeus kept one as a companion, the helmet of Athena is sometimes depicted adorned with
griffins, and Nemesis, goddess of divine retribution,
used these defenders to punish treasure-stealers.
So, the griffin already had quite the reputation, to say the least,
even before they even made it to the Middle Ages,
when illustrated bestiaries became a bit of a fad.
Just look at all these sweet griffins.
Given their popularity and their acceptance as real animals, it’s not super surprising
that beginning in the 11th to 13th centuries, the time of the Crusades,
the griffin appeared in European heraldry.
I mean—the whole protector of the young aka the vulnerable, the features of an effective
hunter, and the whole gold thing was pretty appealing.
The griffin went on to grace countless seals, shields, and armor of wealthy and noble European
families across countries like Germany, France, Great Britain, and Norway.
Money, power, a position as guardians…you probably won’t be surprised to hear that
Christianity also adopted the griffin in their art and literature.
Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies from the
6th century painted the griffin as a symbol of Christ.
In Dante’s Divine Comedy, a griffin appears
often, receiving praise for avoiding the temptation
of eating the forbidden fruit and pulling a divine chariot that symbolizes the Church.
Dante’s griffin, Christ-like, even ascends into heaven.
The hippogriff, a horse-lion-eagle creature, is the offspring of a mare and a griffin.
Interestingly, the hippogriff is also a symbol for Christ -
believed to evoke the union of the divine and the natural.
Outside of religion, stories of the griffin’s real existence continued into the 14th century
when Sir John Mandeville, who may or may not have been an actual person, published what
he claimed to be an accurate travel memoir.
Mandeville writes of a country called ‘Bacharia,’ located somewhere in “The East,”
that had more griffins than any other country.
These griffins “hath the body greater and
is more strong than eight lions” and a “hundred eagles.”
They can carry off a horse or two oxen at once.
Their claws are so large, men can “make cups of them” and their ribs and wing bones
can be used to make bows.
In the 17th century, scholars began proposing that the griffin was an imaginary creature—
pure symbolic fantasy - the result of overactive imaginations and nothing more.
That’s not to say everyone was convinced griffins were entirely fictional.
A Scottish minister, Andrew Ross, for instance, wrote that there are “many such ‘mixt
and dubious’ animals in the world” so it’s possible that griffins could also exist.
In the 21st century, it’s been hypothesized
that griffins were in a way inspired by living animals.
Ones that happened to be dead for millions of years.
Remember the Scythians?
It’s extremely likely that across their desert routes in what is now the Gobi desert,
they encountered bones—bones of the humans and animals that perished in the sands,
and also fossilized prehistoric bones.
Unfamiliar bones of unusual size.
Shifting sands and frequent dust could reveal these bones, the white standing out against
the red sand, suddenly and unexpectedly.
What can also be exposed by high winds?
Mineral deposits—like gold, likely linking the valuable resource
to the monster from the very beginning.
The migratory routes of the Scythians in what is now Mongolia and north-Western China have
proven to be a mecca for well-preserved fossil
skeletons, particularly those of the Protoceratops.
Folklorist and historian Adrienne Mayor was the first to present the theory that the griffin
was born out of the discovery of these dinosaur
bones, and while some paleontologists aren’t so sure,
it’s a compelling hypothesis.
From Egyptian art to ancient nomadic warriors, Greek myths to the heraldry of kings,
and pretty much everything in between, the griffin
has been a part of human lore for a very, very long time.
And while they’ve largely faded out of modern popular culture
there is no escaping the fact that these creatures
will always be part of our human history.
You underestimate me . . . Cherry-ot
She clearly is a master of pronunciation.
Did I say "allure" wrong?
A - lure
A-lurr
A-lewer
Allure
Aww