|
The griffin (also spelled gryphon, griffon or gryphin) is
a legendary creature with the body of a lion, the head of an eagle and the ears of a horse or a donkey. The female has the wings of an eagle. The male
(known as a keythong) has projecting spikes instead of wings and is less frequently depicted. The griffin is
generally represented with four legs, wings and a beak, with eagle-like talons in place
of a lion's forelegs and equine ears jutting from its skull. Some writers describe the tail as a serpent. See the entry European dragon for a 19th century painting of
St George and the dragon, showing a dragon very like a classically-conceived
griffin.
It was said to build a nest, like an eagle. Instead of eggs, it lays agates. The animal was supposed to watch over gold mines and hidden treasures, and to be the enemy of the horse. It was consecrated to the Sun; and ancient painters represented the
chariot of the Sun as drawn by griffins. The griffin was a common feature of "animal style" Scythian gold; it was said to inhabit
the Scythia steppes that reached from the modern Ukraine to central Asia; there gold and precious stones were abundant; and when strangers approached to gather the
stones, the creatures would leap on them and tear them to pieces. The Scythians used giant petrified bones found in this area as proof of the existence of griffins and to keep outsiders away from the
gold and precious stones. It has recently been suggested that these "griffin bones" were actually dinosaur fossils, which are common in this part of the world.
A modernist, Egyptianized guardian griffin, Washington D.C.
Adrienne Mayor, has made tentative connections, in Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times, between the
rich fossil beds around the Mediterranean and across the steppes to the
Gobi Desert and the myths of griffins, centaurs and archaic giants originating in the classical world. Mayor, a classical folklorist, draws upon striking similarities that exist between the Protoceratops skulls of the steppes
leading to the Gobi Desert, and the legends of the gold-hoarding griffin told by nomadic Scythians of the region; among the
artistic evidence, the 6th century Greek vase on the book's cover is
incontrovertible.
The griffin is often seen as a charge in heraldry; and in architectural decoration is usually
represented as a four-footed beast with wings and the head of a leopard or tiger with horns, or with the head and beak of an eagle.
The City of London marks its borough boundaries with griffins carrying
their coat of arms. The griffin is the symbol of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and you can see bronze castings of them perched on each corner of museum's roof, protecting its collection.
Some large species of Old World vultures are called gryphons,
including the griffon vulture (Gyps fulvus), as are some
breeds of dog.
External links
|