Explore Belus, son of Poseidon and king linked with Egypt and Phoenicia, whose twin descendants Aegyptus and Danaus began the bloody tragedy of the Danaids. Previous Greek Next > Belus Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Βῆλος (Bêlos) Pronunciation BEE-lus Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Belos, The Libyan Zeus, King of Egypt, Father of the Danaids, Son of Poseidon Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Egyptian / Phoenician Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Greek Region Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Legendary Gender Male Time Period Heroic Age; first attested in Hesiod (8th century BCE) Symbol Flowing Jar, River & Reeds Tags greek, egyptian, phoenician, egypt, danaus, aegyptus, danaids, poseidon, libya, agenor, baal Introduction - Overview Belus is the king who gave Greece its two most famous feuding twins, the ruler of Egypt whose fifty grandsons were murdered by his fifty granddaughters on their wedding night. He is the son of Poseidon, the god of the sea, and Libya, the princess whose name became the land itself, and the twin brother of Agenor, the Phoenician king whose daughter Europa was carried away by Zeus in the form of a white bull. He is the husband of Achiroe, the daughter of the river god Nilus, by whom he fathered Aegyptus and Danaus, the brothers whose rivalry would drive the Danaids across the sea to Argos and stain Greek myth with the most notorious mass murder of bridegrooms ever told. He is the ancestor from whom the Greeks traced their claim to Egypt, the name they gave to a line of kings that stretched back through Memphis and Epaphus to the wandering Io. And he is the echo of Baal, the Canaanite storm-god whose title meant simply "lord," a name that travelled from Phoenician temples to Babylonian ziggurats and finally into the genealogies of the greatest families in Greece. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Belus Belus was born from the union of Poseidon, the earth-shaking god of the sea, and Libya, the daughter of Epaphus and Memphis. Epaphus was himself the son of Io, the priestess of Hera whom Zeus had loved and transformed into a heifer, sending her wandering across Europe and Asia until she reached Egypt and gave birth to a son by the Nile. That son, Epaphus, married Memphis, a nymph of the river, and their daughter Libya gave her name to the whole northern coast of Africa. Poseidon saw Libya and desired her, and from their union came twin sons: Agenor and Belus. The brothers were destined to rule the two halves of the Mediterranean world. Agenor departed for Phoenicia, where he founded the cities of Tyre and Sidon and became the father of Europa, Cadmus, Cilix, and Phoenix. Belus remained in Africa, inheriting the kingdom of his grandfather Epaphus, and ruled as king over Egypt and the lands that bore his mother's name. Belus married Achiroe, whom some call Anchinoe, a daughter of Nilus, the river god whose waters made Egypt the gift of the Nile. By her he fathered at least two sons, and in some accounts many more. The most famous were Aegyptus and Danaus, twin brothers who would become the protagonists of one of Greek mythology's darkest stories. Aegyptus was given Arabia to rule, and Danaus was given Libya. But Aegyptus was not satisfied. He conquered the land of the Melampods, a territory that probably lay within Danaus' own kingdom, and named the conquered country after himself. From that day, the land was called Egypt, and Aegyptus ruled it as his own. Danaus, seeing his brother's power grow, grew fearful. The rivalry between the twins festered until it became intolerable. Aegyptus fathered fifty sons. Danaus fathered fifty daughters, the Danaids. Aegyptus decided that his fifty sons would marry his brother's fifty daughters, binding the two houses together in a union that would end the feud. Danaus saw the proposal for what it was: a plot to absorb his line into his brother's and eliminate his independence. He refused. Aegyptus pressed the matter, and Danaus, in desperation, fled. He built a ship - the first vessel ever constructed, according to some traditions - and sailed with his fifty daughters across the Mediterranean to Argos in Greece. There he claimed the throne from the descendants of Io, his own great-great-grandmother, and established himself as king. But Aegyptus' sons were not deterred. They pursued their cousins across the sea, landed in Argos, and demanded the marriages that their father had arranged. Danaus, unable to refuse outright without starting a war he could not win, agreed. On the wedding night, however, he gave each of his daughters a dagger and commanded them to kill their bridegrooms. Forty-nine of the Danaids obeyed. Only Hypermnestra, the eldest, spared her husband Lynceus, because he had respected her virginity. The forty-nine heads were buried, and the forty-nine murderesses were condemned in the underworld to carry water in leaky jars for eternity. Belus, the grandfather of all hundred children, had set in motion a tragedy that would stain his name forever. But Belus was more than a genealogical node. His very name carried divine resonance. In the ancient Near East, the title Baal meant "lord," and it was applied to storm-gods across Canaan, Phoenicia, and Syria. The Greeks heard this name and incorporated it into their own mythic geography, making Belus a king who stood at the crossroads of Egypt and Phoenicia, of the Nile and the Mediterranean. The late epic poet Nonnus, writing in the fifth century CE, called him "the Libyan Zeus," a title that suggests the Greeks saw in him not merely a mortal king but a local manifestation of the thunder-god himself. Diodorus Siculus, the historian who wrote in the first century BCE, claimed that Belus founded a colony on the river Euphrates and appointed the Chaldean priests-astrologers whom the Babylonians revered, making him a bridge between Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilisation. Pausanias, the Greek traveller, recorded that Belus founded a temple of Heracles in Babylon, a claim that links the Greek hero-cult to the ancient East. The family of Belus extended far beyond the Danaids. According to Pherecydes of Athens, an early Greek mythographer, Belus had a daughter named Damno who married her uncle Agenor and bore him Phoenix and two daughters, Isaie and Melia, who in turn married their cousins Aegyptus and Danaus. The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women made Belus the father of a daughter named Thronia, on whom Hermes fathered Arabus, the eponym of Arabia. Some sources made him the father of Lamia, the Libyan queen who became a child-eating demon after Hera killed her children. Antoninus Liberalis named him as the father of Thias, who in turn fathered Smyrna, the woman who conceived a passion for her own father and was transformed into a myrrh tree. Euripides added Cepheus and Phineus to the list of Belus' sons, and Nonnus gave him five: Phineus, Phoenix, Agenor, Aegyptus, and Danaus, though Nonnus elsewhere confused the generations and made Phineus a brother of Cadmus. The ancient sources disagree on almost every detail of Belus' family, but they agree on one thing: he was the root from which the royal houses of Egypt, Phoenicia, and Greece all claimed descent. Summary Belus stands as the great genealogical junction of the eastern Mediterranean, the king whose children and grandchildren linked Egypt to Greece, Phoenicia to Argos, and the Nile to the Aegean. From the twin sons who divided Africa and Arabia to the fifty granddaughters who murdered their fifty cousins, from the name that echoed the Canaanite storm-god to the temple of Heracles in Babylon, his story is woven into every claim of divine descent that the Greeks made upon the ancient East. Every dynasty that traces its blood to a god, every mass wedding that ends in blood, every title that makes a mortal king into a local Zeus carries something of Belus in it. He reminds us that in Greek myth, the boundary between king and god was often no thicker than a name. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Belus From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Poseidon Deity Poseidon Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Hesiod, Catalogue of Women, fragment 137 (trans. Most) (8th century BCE) - Belus as father of Thronia and Arabus - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2.1.4 (1st-2nd century CE) - genealogy of Belus and Agenor as twin sons of Poseidon and Libya - Pausanias, Description of Greece 4.23.10 (c. 150 CE) - Libya as daughter of Epaphus and mother of Belus and Agenor - Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 1.28.1, 20.41.3-6 (1st century BCE) - Belus as founder of Babylonian colony and Chaldean priests - Pherecydes of Athens, fragment 21 Fowler (5th century BCE, preserved in scholia) - Damno, daughter of Belus, and her marriage to Agenor - Hyginus, Fabulae 124, 157, 168, 273, 274 (2nd century CE) - the family of Belus, the Danaids, and the fifty sons of Aegyptus - Nonnus, Dionysiaca 3.287 ff., 2.686 (c. 450-470 CE) - Belus as "the Libyan Zeus" and father of five sons - Aeschylus, Suppliants 318-319 (c. 463 BCE) - the Danaids claim descent from Belus through Epaphus and Io - Gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (1993) - Volume 1, pp. 207-210, the Egyptian genealogies and the Danaid tradition - West, M.L., The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (Oxford, 1985) - pp. 84-86, fragment 137 and the Arabus lineage - Fowler, R.L., Early Greek Mythography, Volume 2: Commentary (Oxford, 2013) - pp. 289-290, Pherecydes on Belus and Damno Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Horus, the Egyptian falcon god who avenged Osiris, defeated Set, and became the divine model for every pharaoh. - Mythopouch Previous Egyptian Next > Horus Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s ḥr (Egyptian) Pronunciation HOR-us Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Heru, Horus the Elder, Horus the Younger, Harpocrates, Horus of Edfu, Horus the Avenger, the Falcon of the Sky, the Uniter of the Two Lands, Lord of the Horizon Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Ancient Egypt Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Egyptian Region Category Deity Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Mythological Gender Male Time Period c. 6000 BCE (predynastic worship) - Roman period Symbol The falcon, the wedjat eye, the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, the winged sun disk Tags egyptian, horus, falcon, osiris, isis, set, edfu, wedjat-eye Introduction - Overview Horus is the falcon-headed god of the sky who avenged his father's murder and claimed the throne of Egypt, the divine prototype of every pharaoh who ever ruled. He is the son of Isis, the great enchantress who gathered the scattered fragments of her murdered husband, and Osiris, the green-skinned lord of the afterlife who judged the dead. He is the lord of Edfu, the temple city where his granite sanctuary still stands as one of the best-preserved monuments of the ancient world. He is the god who battled Set, the crimson-haired storm-lord of the desert, for eighty years in the most famous lawsuit ever heard by the divine tribunal. He is the falcon whose right eye was the sun and whose left eye was the moon, the healer whose restored eye became the most powerful protective symbol in Egypt. And he is the eternal king, the living Horus in whom every pharaoh was incarnated, the divine right that made Egypt the longest-lived civilisation on earth. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Horus Horus was ancient before the first dynasty, worshipped in the predynastic period around 6000 BCE when the falcon was already the sacred bird of the Nile valley. In the earliest form he was Horus the Elder, a sky god whose eyes were the sun and the moon, born from the union of Geb, the green earth god, and Nut, the star-spangled sky goddess whose arched body was the canopy of heaven. But the Horus who would dominate Egyptian religion for four millennia was Horus the Younger, the son of Osiris and Isis. When Set, the god of chaos and desert storms, murdered Osiris and usurped the throne, Isis fled to the reed-beds of the northern Delta to hide her unborn child. She gave birth in secret and raised Horus among the papyrus thickets, protecting him from Set's assassins with magic and cunning. The boy grew to manhood in the marshes, and when he was old enough he set out to claim the inheritance that Set had stolen. The central drama of Horus's life was the Contendings of Horus and Set, the eighty-year lawsuit that the gods heard before the divine tribunal. Horus claimed the throne as the son of Osiris, arguing that legitimacy passed through the bloodline. Set claimed it as the brother of Osiris, arguing that strength and seniority were the rightful measures of kingship. The gods met in the Hall of the Ennead, where the nine great gods of Heliopolis sat in judgment, and the debate raged for decades. Set challenged Horus to a series of contests, from hippopotamus hunts to stone boat races, each designed to destroy the younger god. In one episode, Set tore out Horus's left eye, the lunar eye, and tore it into pieces. But Thoth, the ibis-headed scribe who kept the sacred records of the gods, gathered the fragments and restored the eye with his magic, creating the wedjat, the sound eye that became the most powerful amulet in Egypt. The climax of the conflict came when the gods finally ruled in Horus's favour. Set, enraged, transformed into a red hippopotamus and hid in the waters of the Nile. Horus harpooned him, and the battle raged for days. Isis intervened and bound Set with her magic, but Horus, furious that his mother had shown mercy to his father's murderer, struck off her head in a moment of rage. Thoth restored her with a cow's head, and the tribunal finally awarded the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt to Horus. Set was cast out into the desert, condemned to be the thunderstorm that raged beyond the fertile valley, while Horus was crowned king in the great temple at Heliopolis, the city of the sun. The ceremony was the template for every royal coronation that followed, and the pharaoh who sat on the throne was called the Living Horus, the god incarnate. Horus's power was not confined to myth. Every pharaoh from Narmer, the first king of a unified Egypt, to Cleopatra VII, the last pharaoh, identified himself with Horus in life and with Osiris in death. The king wore the double crown that Horus had won, the white crown of Upper Egypt and the red crown of Lower Egypt combined into one. The temple of Edfu, built between 237 and 57 BCE, was the greatest monument to Horus in Egypt, a granite fortress-temple whose walls tell the entire story of his battle with Set in carved reliefs that still glow in the desert light. The winged sun disk, the image of Horus as a falcon with outstretched wings and a solar orb upon his head, was carved above the doorways of every temple as a protective emblem. In the afterlife, Horus led the deceased to Osiris and offered the restored wedjat eye as a symbol of wholeness and health. Horus did not die in the Egyptian tradition. He was eternal, the living king who passed the throne to his son and then ascended to the sky. But his human incarnation, the pharaoh, did die, and at that moment the king became Osiris while his son became the new Horus. This cycle of father and son, death and rebirth, was the engine of Egyptian civilisation for three thousand years. The Greeks called the child Horus Harpocrates, and they carried his image to the farthest corners of their empire. In modern times, the wedjat eye is worn as a protective charm across the world, and the falcon remains the symbol of sovereign vision. Horus endures as the eternal prototype of legitimate kingship, the son who avenged his father and restored order to a world that chaos had nearly destroyed. Summary Horus endures as the supreme image of divine kingship and filial vengeance, the falcon-headed god whose eighty-year struggle against Set defined the moral order of Egypt. From the reed-beds of the Delta where Isis hid him to the granite halls of Edfu where his temple still stands, from the restored wedjat eye to the double crown of every pharaoh, he spans six millennia as the living king. Every royal coronation, every protective amulet, every winged sun disk carries the mark of his ancient falcon head. In the human imagination, Horus remains the eternal avenger, the proof that legitimacy outlasts violence and that the son's duty to his father is older than the state itself. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Horus From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Eye of Horus (Wedjat) Artifact/Object/Weapon Eye of Horus (Wedjat) Thoth Deity Thoth Set Deity Set Isis Deity Isis Osiris Deity Osiris Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Pyramid Texts (5th-6th Dynasty, c. 2345-2181 BCE) - earliest references to Horus as divine king and son of Osiris - Coffin Texts, Spell 148 (Middle Kingdom, c. 2055-1650 BCE) - Horus's protection of the deceased and the wedjat eye - Contendings of Horus and Set, papyrus Chester Beatty I (20th Dynasty, c. 1186-1077 BCE) - the eighty-year lawsuit and the divine tribunal - Book of the Dead, Spell 17 (New Kingdom, c. 1550-1070 BCE) - Horus as the son of Osiris and avenger of his father - Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride (c. 100 CE) - the murder of Osiris, Horus's upbringing, and the battle with Set - Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt (Thames & Hudson, 2003) - Horus's iconography, cult, and role as divine king - Geraldine Pinch, Egyptian Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Goddesses, and Traditions of Ancient Egypt (Oxford UP, 2002) - the Contendings and the Edfu temple - David P. Silverman, "The Nature of Kingship in Ancient Egypt" in Ancient Egyptian Kingship (Brill, 1995) - Horus as the theological basis of pharaonic authority Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Explore Ganymede, the Trojan prince taken by Zeus to Olympus, made immortal as cupbearer of the gods and placed among the stars as Aquarius the Water Bearer. Previous Greek Next > Ganymede Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Γανυμήδης (Ganumēdēs) Pronunciation GAN-ih-meed Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Catamitus, The Cupbearer of the Gods, The Most Beautiful Mortal, The Trojan Prince, The Eagle's Prey Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Greek Region Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Legendary Gender Male Time Period 8th century BCE (earliest attested in Homer's Iliad) Symbol Cup & Eagle Tags greek, zeus, troy, cupbearer, eagle, aquarius, olympus, immortality Introduction - Overview Ganymede is the Trojan prince whose beauty was so surpassing that Zeus, the king of the gods who rules from Olympus, descended from the sky in the form of an eagle and snatched him away to serve as cupbearer to the immortals. He is the son of Tros, the king of Troy who gave his name to the city and the Trojans, and Callirhoe, the daughter of Scamander, the great river that flows through the plain of Troy. He is the youth who replaced Hebe, the daughter of Hera and Zeus, as the server of nectar and ambrosia at the divine feasts, and who was granted eternal youth and immortality as a gift for his service. He is the figure whose abduction became one of the most painted scenes in Western art, from the red-figure vases of Athens to the ceilings of the Vatican, and whose name would echo across centuries into the English language as the origin of the word catamite. And he is the constellation Aquarius, the Water-Bearer, whose jar pours the winter rains upon the earth every January and February. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Ganymede Ganymede was born to Tros, the king of Troy and the eponym of the Trojans, and Callirhoe, the daughter of Scamander, the river-god whose waters flowed through the plain where the city stood. From his earliest youth, he was renowned as the most beautiful of all mortals, a beauty so radiant that it drew the eye of Zeus himself. Homer, the poet of the Iliad, says that the gods caught him up because of his beauty, so that he might dwell among the immortals and pour wine for them at their eternal feasts. He was hunting on the slopes of Mount Ida when the eagle came. The defining moment of Ganymede's life came on a day like any other. The youth was among his companions on Mount Ida, perhaps hunting with his hounds or exercising his father's horses, when a great eagle descended from the clouds. Some said it was Zeus himself in the form of the bird, his golden wings blotting out the sun; others said it was the eagle Aquila, sent by the god to fetch the boy. The bird seized Ganymede in its talons and bore him up through the sky to the high throne-room of Olympus. His companions cried out and searched the mountain for him, but the eagle had already vanished into the realm of the gods, and Ganymede was gone from the earth forever. On Olympus, Ganymede was given a new role. Hebe, the daughter of Zeus and Hera, the queen of the gods, had served as the cupbearer of the immortals, pouring nectar and ambrosia at the divine banquets. Ganymede took her place, standing beside the golden throne of Zeus and filling the cups of the gods with the wine of immortality. He was granted eternal youth and a place among the stars as the constellation Aquarius, the Water-Bearer, whose jar pours the winter rains upon the earth. Homer says that the gods rejoiced in him, and that Zeus was so pleased with his service that he gave Tros, the boy's father, a pair of divine horses as compensation for the loss of his son. Not all the gods welcomed the new cupbearer. Hera, the wife of Zeus, was said to resent the beautiful Trojan youth who had displaced her daughter Hebe from her honoured position. Some later poets hinted at darker tensions on Olympus, suggesting that Ganymede's presence was a constant reminder of Zeus's wandering eye. Yet in the earliest Greek tradition, the abduction was not portrayed as a tragedy but as an elevation, a mortal raised to the divine sphere by the supreme god's favour. The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite mentions Ganymede as one of the few mortals whom the gods loved so dearly that they granted him immortality, placing him alongside Tithonus in the select company of those who escaped death. In later ages, the image of Ganymede and the eagle became one of the most enduring motifs in Western art. The Greeks painted it on hundreds of vases, showing the eagle descending or the youth riding upon its back. The Romans adopted the scene with enthusiasm, and in the Renaissance it was painted by Michelangelo, Correggio, and Rubens, each interpreting the abduction as a moment of divine rapture or earthly violence. The name Ganymede passed into Latin as Catamitus, which became the English word catamite, carrying the memory of the Trojan prince into modern discourse. The largest moon of Jupiter, discovered by Galileo in 1610, bears his name, a fitting tribute to the youth who served the king of the gods. Summary Ganymede endures as the archetype of beauty that transcends mortality, the Trojan prince whose face was so radiant that it earned him a place among the stars. From the slopes of Mount Ida to the golden feasting-hall of Olympus, from the divine horses given to his grieving father to the winter rains that pour from his constellation, his story binds together desire and transcendence. Every painting of an eagle carrying a youth, every mention of the Water-Bearer in the zodiac, and every word derived from his Latin name carries his memory. He is the reminder that beauty can be a passport to the divine, and that the gods do not always ask permission before they take what they desire. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Ganymede From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Hera Deity Hera Zeus Deity Zeus Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Homer, Iliad, Book 5, lines 265-267 (8th century BCE) - Ganymede as the most beautiful mortal, seized by the gods - Homer, Iliad, Book 20, lines 231-235 (8th century BCE) - the lineage of Ganymede as son of Tros - Homeric Hymn 5 to Aphrodite, lines 202-217 (7th-6th century BCE) - Ganymede granted immortality by Zeus - Pindar, Olympian Ode 1.40-45 (476 BCE) - the abduction and the gift of horses to Tros - Euripides, Trojan Women (415 BCE) - reference to Ganymede's abduction and its effect on Troy - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 3.12.2 (c. 100-200 CE) - the full myth of Ganymede's abduction by Zeus in eagle-form - Ovid, Metamorphoses 10.155-161 (c. 8 CE) - the transformation and the granting of eternal youth - Virgil, Aeneid 1.28 (19 BCE) - reference to the rape of Ganymede as a cause of divine anger - Sergent, Bernard, Homosexuality in Greek Myth (1986), Beacon Press - scholarly analysis of the Ganymede myth and its cultural context - DeVries, Keith, "Ganymede" in LIMC IV (1988), Artemis Verlag, pp. 154-165 - comprehensive iconographic study of Ganymede in ancient art Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Hermes: Olympian messenger god of travellers, merchants and thieves, psychopomp who guided souls to the underworld, inventor of the lyre | Mythopouch Previous Greek Next > Hermes Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s (Ἑρμῆς) Pronunciation HER-meez Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Argeiphontes, Psychopompos, Trickster, Mercury (Roman) Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Greek Region Category Deity Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Mythological Gender Male Time Period Mythological Age Symbol Caduceus Tags greek, god, travel, messenger, commerce Introduction - Overview Hermes stands among the most multifaceted and widely venerated deities of the Greek pantheon. As messenger of the gods, guide of souls, patron of travellers and merchants, and divine patron of thieves, athletes, and orators, his domains span nearly every aspect of human activity. Unlike many Olympians whose spheres are narrowly defined, Hermes moves fluidly between Olympus, the mortal world, and the realm of the dead, embodying the crossing of boundaries in all their forms. From his first day of existence, when he invented the lyre and stole Apollo's cattle, Hermes demonstrated the cunning and versatility that would define his character throughout Greek mythology. Gallery Hermes Olympian messenger god and depictions of the caduceus. Main Article - Who or What was... Hermes Hermes was the son of Zeus and Maia, one of the seven Pleiades and daughter of the Titan Atlas. According to the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, the oldest and most detailed account of his origins, Maia bore him in a deep cave on Mount Cyllene in Arcadia, concealed from both gods and mortals. Unlike other divine infants, Hermes displayed extraordinary precocity from the moment of his birth. On his very first day, he slipped from his cradle, wandered forth, and encountered a tortoise. Recognizing its potential, he slew the creature, hollowed out its shell, and stretched seven strings of sheep gut across it, thereby inventing the lyre, the first stringed instrument. That same day, driven by a mischievous impulse, the infant god set out for Pieria, where the cattle of Apollo grazed. Selecting fifty of the finest cows, he drove them backward toward his cave so their hoofprints would confuse any pursuer, and he himself fashioned sandals from woven myrtle branches, wearing them reversed to further obscure his tracks. He also invented fire-sticks during this adventure, kindling a fire and sacrificing two of the cows to the Olympian gods, reserving twelve equal portions for each deity. When Apollo discovered the theft and traced the deception, he confronted the infant Hermes at the cave on Cyllene. The young god initially denied everything with such eloquent trickery that Zeus himself was amused, but Zeus ordered Hermes to return the cattle. In reconciliation, Hermes presented Apollo with the lyre he had crafted, and the music so enchanted the sun god that he forgave the theft entirely. In exchange, Apollo gave Hermes the golden staff of divination, which would become the caduceus, and taught him prophecy. Zeus, impressed by the infant's cleverness, appointed Hermes his official messenger among the gods. Hermes is most readily identified by his distinctive attributes. The talaria were winged sandals granting him swift passage between Olympus, earth, and the underworld. The petasos was a broad traveller's cap, also winged, which shielded him on his journeys. Most iconic was the caduceus, a herald's staff entwined with two serpents, symbolising his authority as divine messenger and his power to induce sleep and awaken the dead. He frequently carried a leather pouch. One of Hermes' most solemn and far-reaching roles was that of psychopomp, the guide of souls. As Hermes Psychopompos, he escorted the souls of the newly deceased from the upper world to the banks of the River Styx in the underworld, where Charon would ferry them across to the realm of Hades. In Book 24 of Homer's Odyssey, Hermes is described leading the suitors slain by Odysseus down to the underworld, holding his shining wand before them. This role made him a deity uniquely comfortable in all three realms of the cosmos. Hermes earned the epithet Argeiphontes, meaning "slayer of Argus," through one of his most famous exploits. When Zeus fell in love with Io, the priestess of Hera, and transformed her into a white heifer to conceal her from his jealous wife, Hera was not deceived. She set the hundred-eyed giant Argus Panoptes to watch over the transformed Io, preventing Zeus from approaching her. Since Argus never closed all his eyes at once, he was the perfect sentinel. Zeus dispatched Hermes to free Io. Disguised as a shepherd, Hermes approached Argus and, using his famous eloquence, told the giant endless stories and played music on his reed pipes until, one by one, Argus' eyes closed in sleep. Once all were shut, Hermes slew the giant with his harpe sword, earning his epithet and freeing Io to continue her wandering. During the Trojan War, Hermes served as the gods' intermediary on numerous occasions. His most poignant intervention came near the war's end, when Priam, king of Troy, resolved to ransom the body of his slain son Hector from Achilles. Hermes appeared to the aged king disguised as a young Achaean nobleman and guided him safely through the enemy camp, past the sentries, and to Achilles' tent. There he ensured Priam's safety, demonstrating both his protective role toward travellers and his capacity for compassion, standing witness as Achilles returned Hector's body for proper burial rites. Hermes features prominently in several of Greek mythology's most celebrated hero narratives. When Perseus was tasked with slaying the Gorgon Medusa, Hermes provided him with the curved harpe sword needed to sever her head, and Athena gave him the mirrored shield. Hermes also accompanied Perseus part of the way on his quest. In Homer's Odyssey, when Odysseus prepared to confront the sorceress Circe, Hermes appeared to him and gave him the herb moly, a plant with a black root and white flower that rendered Odysseus immune to Circe's transformative magic. Following the abduction of Persephone by Hades, Hermes descended to the underworld to retrieve her and later guided her on her annual returns to her mother Demeter, establishing the seasonal cycle. He also escorted Heracles during his descent to capture Cerberus and freed Ares from the bronze jar in which the Aloadae had imprisoned him. Hermes fathered numerous offspring with goddesses and mortal women, many of whom inherited aspects of his character. With Aphrodite, he fathered Hermaphroditus, whose union with the nymph Salmacis produced the androgynous being after whom physical hermaphroditism is named. With the Arcadian nymph Dryope, he fathered Pan, the rustic god of the wild, though some accounts attribute Pan's parentage to other couplings. His son Autolycus, born to Chione, became the master thief whose cunning rivalled his father's own, and who in turn was the grandfather of Odysseus, accounting for that hero's renowned cleverness. Hermes also fathered Eudoros, one of the commanders of the Myrmidons under Achilles in the Trojan War, and Abderus, the beloved companion of Heracles who was devoured by the mares of Diomedes. Ancient tradition credited Hermes with a remarkable array of inventions. Beyond the lyre, he invented the reed pipe known as the syrinx. The Homeric Hymn to Hermes records his invention of fire-sticks. Later authors credited him with inventing the alphabet, though Palamedes was sometimes named as a co-inventor. He was also associated with astronomy, music theory, weights and measures, boxing, and gymnastics. This inventive spirit complemented his role as patron of commerce and skilled speech, both of which require ingenuity and the ability to create and manipulate systems of value. Worship of Hermes was widespread throughout the Greek world. His festivals, known as the Hermaea, were celebrated in many cities and often featured athletic competitions, reflecting his patronage of sport and gymnastics. The most distinctive physical manifestation of his cult was the herm, a square stone pillar topped with a sculpted head of Hermes and bearing carved genitals. These markers were placed at boundaries, crossroads, doorways, and public spaces throughout Greece, serving as protective talismans and markers of territorial limits. The mutilation of the herms in Athens in 415 BCE demonstrated how deeply these symbols were embedded in Greek civic and religious life. Hermes was also honoured at every crossroads, where small heaps of stones called hermaia were erected by travellers. Summary Hermes occupies a singular position in Greek mythology as the god who binds together the disparate realms of existence through communication, commerce, and the passage of souls. From his miraculous infancy, when he demonstrated the cunning and creative ingenuity that would define his character, to his mature role as the indispensable messenger and intermediary of the Olympian order, he embodies the intelligence and adaptability required to navigate a world of shifting boundaries and competing powers. His attributes, the winged sandals, the winged cap, and the serpent-entwined caduceus, remain among the most recognisable symbols of classical antiquity. Whether guiding a king through enemy lines, escorting the dead to their final rest, equipping a hero for an impossible quest, or protecting the humble traveller at a crossroads, Hermes represents the divine force that makes connection and transition possible. The Romans identified him with Mercury, preserving his essential character and ensuring that the messenger god's legacy endured long after the close of the classical age. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Hermes From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Caduceus Artifact/Object/Weapon Caduceus Pan Deity Pan Maia Deity Maia Apollo Deity Apollo Zeus Deity Zeus Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Homer, Iliad - Homer, Odyssey - Hesiod, Theogony - Homeric Hymn to Hermes - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca - Pausanias, Description of Greece - Ovid, Metamorphoses - Hyginus, Fabulae - Sophocles, various works - Euripides, various works Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Explore Gillomanius, the Irish king who defended the Giant's Dance, lost its stones to Merlin and later fell beside Pascentius while fighting Uther at Menevia. Previous Arthurian Next > Gillomanius Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Gilloman (variant), Gillomen (variant), Guillomer (variant), Gillomanius (Latin) Pronunciation gil-oh-MAY-nee-us Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The King of Ireland, the Defender of the Giant's Dance, the Ally of Pascentius, the Enemy of the Britons, the Man Who Lost His Stones Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details British / Irish Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Arthurian Region Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Legendary Gender Male Time Period 5th century CE (mythic period); literary tradition c. 1138 CE Symbol The stones of Killaraus, the fleet that sailed to Menevia, the broken alliance with Pascentius Tags arthurian, gillomanius, person, ireland, stonehenge, uther-pendragon, pascentius, mount-killaraus Introduction - Overview Gillomanius is the King of Ireland who lost his sacred stones to Merlin and his kingdom to Uther Pendragon, the Irish monarch whose two defeats bookend the brief reign of Aurelius Ambrosius and paved the way for the age of Arthur. He is the ruler who defended the Giant's Dance on Mount Killaraus, the circle of enormous stones that giants had brought from Africa and that Merlin declared possessed medicinal virtues beyond any other monument in the world. He is the king who marched against Uther Pendragon with a large army when the Britons came to steal those stones for a memorial to the victims of the Treachery of the Long Knives, and who was defeated and driven from the field while Merlin uprooted the megaliths with arts that no mortal craftsman could match. He is the ally who received Pascentius, the surviving son of the traitor Vortigern, after Pascentius's first invasion of Britain ended in disaster, and who joined his fleet to the Saxon's in a second attempt while Aurelius lay dying at Winchester. And he is the man who died on the battlefield before Menevia, killed by the very Britons he had tried to keep from his stones, his death confirming Merlin's prophecy that Uther would be king of all Britain. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Gillomanius Gillomanius was the King of Ireland in the age before Arthur, when the island of Britain was still divided between Britons, Saxons, and Picts, and when Ireland itself was a land of rival kingdoms and ancient sacred sites. His realm included Mount Killaraus, a mountain in Ireland where a stone circle called the Giant's Dance stood, a monument of such antiquity that Merlin the prophet claimed giants had transported the stones from the remotest confines of Africa and erected them for the healing of their sick. The stones were enormous, beyond the strength of any mortal to move, and they possessed medicinal properties that made them sacred to the Irish people. When Aurelius Ambrosius, the last Roman king of Britain, sought to build a memorial to the four hundred and sixty British nobles who had been treacherously slain by Hengist at the Treachery of the Long Knives, he turned to Merlin for advice. Merlin told him that no stones in Britain would suffice. Only the Giant's Dance on Mount Killaraus in Ireland would stand forever as a fitting monument, and only Merlin possessed the knowledge and art to move them. Aurelius sent his younger brother Uther Pendragon with fifteen thousand men to fetch the stones. When Gillomanius heard that the Britons had arrived in Ireland with the intention of taking the Giant's Dance, he gathered his army and marched against them. The battle was fierce, for the Irish king was determined to defend a monument that his people had held sacred for generations. But Uther was a warrior of exceptional skill, and the Britons were fighting not merely for stones but for the honour of their dead. Gillomanius was defeated. His army broke and fled, and the Britons advanced to Mount Killaraus. There Merlin worked his magic, dismantling the stone circle with an ease that made the labour of fifteen thousand men seem like child's play. The stones were loaded onto ships, transported across the Irish Sea, and raised at Amesbury around the burial mound of the murdered nobles. The monument became Stonehenge, and Gillomanius was left with an empty mountain and a burning grievance. That grievance would find its expression in the person of Pascentius, the third and last surviving son of Vortigern, the British king who had invited the Saxons into Britain and who had been burned alive in his tower by Aurelius Ambrosius. Pascentius had fled to Germany after his first invasion ended in defeat, but he could not return there in shame. Instead he sailed to Ireland, where Gillomanius received him with sympathy and a shared hatred of the Britons. The Irish king listened to Pascentius's tale of woe, and the two men saw in each other's grievances the makings of an alliance. Pascentius wanted to avenge his father and reclaim the throne of Britain. Gillomanius wanted to punish the Britons for the theft of his stones and the humiliation of his defeat. They fitted out a fleet, gathered their armies, and sailed for Menevia, the city that would one day be called Swansea, on the western coast of Wales. The timing could not have been more favourable to their cause. Aurelius Ambrosius lay seriously ill at Winchester, struck down by a sickness that had weakened him at the very moment his enemies were gathering. The news that the Irish king and the Saxon prince had landed with a powerful army spread through Britain like wildfire. Uther, the king's younger brother, took it upon himself to defend the realm. He gathered the army of the Britons and marched into Cambria to meet the invaders, taking Merlin with him as adviser. Pascentius and Gillomanius rejoiced when they heard that Aurelius was incapacitated, believing that the sickness of the British king would make their conquest all but certain. The two armies met on the field before Menevia, and the battle that followed was bloody and fierce. Both sides fought without quarter, the Irish and the Saxons desperate to avenge old wrongs, the Britons determined to defend their land and their dying king. As the day wore on, the advantage shifted to the Britons. Uther fought with the fury of a man who knew that his brother's life and his kingdom's future hung in the balance. Towards the close of the day, the Britons broke through the enemy lines. Gillomanius fell, struck down on the field where he had hoped to win back his honour. Pascentius fell beside him, the last son of Vortigern dying as his father had died, by British hands. With the deaths of their leaders, the Irish and Saxon army broke and scattered. The Britons pursued them to their ships, killing all who were caught, and the invasion was ended. Uther rested and savoured his victory, but before the sun had set on that day of triumph, a messenger arrived from Winchester with grievous news. Aurelius Ambrosius was dead, poisoned by the false physician Eopa while Uther had been fighting on the western coast. The bishops of the land had buried the king with royal magnificence inside the Giant's Dance, the very monument that Gillomanius had tried to defend. Uther was crowned king in his brother's place, taking the name Pendragon after a dragon-shaped comet that had appeared in the sky before the battle, a sign that Merlin had interpreted as the passing of one king and the rise of another. From Uther Pendragon would come Arthur, the greatest king Britain would ever know. And the road to that kingship had been cleared, in part, by the defeat and death of the Irish king who had tried to keep his stones and lost everything in the attempt. Gillomanius disappears from the chronicles after Menevia, his name never spoken again in the histories of Britain. He is not a villain of the stature of Hengist, who butchered nobles at a peace feast, nor of Mordred, who betrayed a kingdom. He is something more poignant: a king who defended what was his, who lost it to magic and superior force, and who threw his lot in with a desperate Saxon prince rather than accept the humiliation of defeat. His legacy lies in the stones themselves, in the monument that still stands on Salisbury Plain, and in the modern archaeological discovery that the bluestones of Stonehenge did indeed come from the west, from the Preseli Hills in Wales, a finding that gives a strange grain of truth to the legend that Merlin told. The Irish king who tried to keep his stones may have been defending something more real than Geoffrey of Monmouth knew. Summary Gillomanius endures as the Irish king who lost his sacred stones to Merlin and his life to Uther Pendragon, the monarch whose two defeats frame the transition from Aurelius Ambrosius to the age of Arthur. From the slopes of Mount Killaraus to the battlefield before Menevia, from the defence of the Giant's Dance to the alliance with Pascentius that ended in death, his story is the story of a ruler who could not accept loss and who kept fighting until there was nothing left to fight for. He is the reminder that in the chronicles of Britain, even the defeated king may leave a legacy in stone, and that the monument the victors raise may outlast the memory of the battle that won it. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Gillomanius From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Stonehenge Location Stonehenge Uther Pendragon Person Uther Pendragon Merlin Person Merlin Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britanniae, Book VIII, Chapters X-XII and XIV-XVI, c. 1138 - primary source; the defence of the Giant's Dance on Mount Killaraus, the battle against Uther, the alliance with Pascentius, the invasion of Menevia, and the death of Gillomanius in battle - Wace, Roman de Brut, c. 1155 - primary source; the Anglo-Norman verse adaptation of Geoffrey's account of the Irish episodes and the theft of the stones - Layamon, Brut, late 12th to mid-13th century - primary source; the Middle English poetic adaptation preserving the Gillomanius narrative in the English tradition - Nennius, Historia Brittonum, c. 829 CE - primary source; the earlier tradition of Irish-British conflicts and the background to Geoffrey's Irish episodes - Thorpe, Lewis (trans.), Geoffrey of Monmouth: The History of the Kings of Britain, Penguin Classics, 1966 - scholarly translation with introduction and notes on the Stonehenge episode and the role of Gillomanius - Tatlock, J.S.P., The Legendary History of Britain, University of California Press, 1950 - scholarly study of Geoffrey's sources and the literary construction of the Irish episodes in the Historia - Higham, N.J., King Arthur: Myth-Making and History, Routledge, 2002 - scholarly analysis of Geoffrey's political messaging and the function of Irish antagonists in the pseudo-historical narrative - Parker Pearson, Mike, "Archaeology and legend: investigating Stonehenge," Archaeology International, Vol. 24, 2021 - scholarly analysis of the archaeological evidence linking Stonehenge's bluestones to west Wales and the "grain of truth" in Geoffrey's legend - Piggott, Stuart, "The sources of Geoffrey of Monmouth: II. The Stonehenge story," Antiquity, Vol. 15, 1941 - scholarly examination of Geoffrey's sources for the Stonehenge origin legend and the Irish king's role - Wright, Neil (ed.), The Historia Regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth, D.S. Brewer, 1985 - scholarly textual analysis of Book VIII and the Gillomanius narrative in the context of Geoffrey's historiographical methods Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Meet Queen Margawse, half-sister of Arthur, wife of King Lot, and mother of Gawain and Mordred, slain by her own son. | Mythopouch Previous Arthurian Next > Margawse (Queen) Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Morgause (modern spelling), Anna (Latin, in Geoffrey of Monmouth), Gwyar (Welsh, mother of Gwalchmai), Morcades (Spanish variant) Pronunciation mar-GAWZ Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Queen of Orkney, Queen of Lothian, the Mother of the Orkney Brothers, the Mother of Gawain, the Mother of Mordred, the Sister of Morgan le Fay, the Cornish Rose, the Widow of King Lot Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details British/Scottish Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Arthurian Region Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Legendary Gender Female Time Period 5th-6th centuries CE (mythic Arthurian period); literary tradition 12th-15th centuries CE Symbol A crown of the northern isles shadowed by five sons, four radiant and one born to burn the kingdom down Tags arthurian, margawse, morgause, queen, orkney, mordred, gawain, lamorak Introduction - Overview Queen Margawse is the most fateful mother in Arthurian legend, the woman whose five sons include the flower of chivalry and the man who destroyed it. She is the daughter of Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall, and the lovely Igraine, born at Tintagel before Uther Pendragon's deception made her the half-sister of a king she would never know as kin. She is the wife of King Lot of Orkney and Lothian, and the mother of his four splendid sons: Gawain, whose strength waxes with the sun; Agravain the Proud; Gaheris; and Gareth, the kitchen knight beloved of all. She is the queen who lay with her own half-brother Arthur without either knowing their blood, and who bore from that night Mordred, the child fated to strike his father down at Camlann. She is the indirect cause of the May Day massacre, when Arthur cast every noble newborn to the sea to kill the one he feared. And she is the queen beheaded in her own bed by her son Gaheris for the lover she took, a death that set the Orkney clan hunting blood until the Round Table bled with it. Gallery Other depictions of Queen Margawse Main Article - Who or What was... Margawse (Queen) Margawse begins as a child of Tintagel, the sea-beaten castle of Cornwall where her father Duke Gorlois keeps her mother Igraine, the fairest lady in Britain. She is one of three daughters of that house, sister to Elaine and to Morgan le Fay, the enchantress who will haunt Arthur's reign. When King Uther Pendragon takes Igraine by Merlin's trick of disguise and Gorlois dies in the war, the daughters of Tintagel are married away to seal the new peace: Elaine to King Nentres of Garlot, and Margawse to King Lot of Orkney and Lothian, the proud ruler of Scotland's northern isles. In Geoffrey of Monmouth's chronicle she is simply Anna, Arthur's sister; in the older Welsh tradition the mother of Gawain is a lady named Gwyar, a name that means blood, as if the language itself knew how her story would end. From Orkney she watches her husband lead the eleven rebel kings against the boy Arthur, and when the rebels are broken and reconciled, she rides south to the young king's court, some say as her husband's eyes and ears. What happens at that court is the secret wound of the whole legend. Arthur, in the first flush of his kingship, takes the beautiful northern queen to his bed. Neither of them knows she is his half-sister, daughter of his own mother Igraine, and from that unknowing night Margawse conceives Mordred. The prophet Merlin later tells the king that a child born on May Day will be his destruction, and Arthur does the one deed that stains his youth: he orders every noble child born that May Day to be set in a ship and cast out to sea. The ship founders on the rocks, the infants drown, and one boy is thrown up alive by the waves - Mordred, carried back to Orkney and raised among his mother's sons. Margawse never tells her husband the truth of the child's blood, and Lot raises as his own son the boy who will one day bury the king. Widowhood finds her soon enough. King Lot is struck through the helm by King Pellinore in the press of battle, and Margawse sends her sons one by one to Arthur's court, where Gawain rises to be the first knight of the Round Table and the Orkney clan becomes its proudest house. But the queen does not fade into a dowager's quiet. In the French prose romances that Malory drew upon, she takes for her lover Sir Lamorak, the son of the very Pellinore who slew her husband, a knight counted among the three best in the world. The affair is treason within treason: a queen bedding the house her sons have sworn to destroy. Her son Gaheris, riding to her castle, finds the two in her bed. He drags his mother naked from the sheets and strikes off her head with his sword, sparing Lamorak only because no knight may slay a naked man, and sends the lover away with his mother's blood on him. The killing of Margawse detonates the feud her sons had tried to bank. King Arthur himself is shamed and enraged that a queen of his blood should die unjudged, and the Orkney brothers close ranks: Gawain, Agravain, and Gaheris later catch Lamorak at a tournament and hack him down together, while young Gareth refuses to stain his hands. The house of Lot, founded on her marriage and poisoned by her secrets, spends the rest of the legend tearing at the Round Table from within, until her hidden son Mordred finishes the work her hidden night began. In T. H. White's modern retelling she is the pale enchantress of the cold northern castle, teaching her neglected sons witchcraft over a boiling cauldron, a mother whose love curdled into the doom of her line. Summary Queen Margawse endures as the dark mother of the Arthurian world, the woman whose marriage built the Orkney clan and whose secrets unbuilt the kingdom. The Welsh knew Gawain's mother as Gwyar, a name meaning gore or blood, and her story lives up to it from first to last. From the child of Tintagel to the queen of the northern isles, from the May Day massacre to the bed where her own son's sword found her, she remains the proof that in this legend the deadliest enemies of Camelot were born, not made, and born of its own blood. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Margawse (Queen) From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Gaheris Person Gaheris Mordred Person Mordred Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britanniae, c. 1136 - primary source; Anna, the sister of Arthur married to King Lot - Trioedd Ynys Prydein (The Welsh Triads), compiled 11th-14th centuries - primary source; Gwyar, the Welsh mother of Gwalchmai (Gawain) - The Post-Vulgate Suite du Merlin, 13th century - primary source; the conception of Mordred, the May Day massacre, and Margawse's affair with Lamorak - Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur, 1469-1470 - primary source; Margawse at Arthur's court, her death at Gaheris' hand, and the Orkney feud - White, T. H., The Queen of Air and Darkness, 1939 - modern retelling of Morgause and her sons in the cold northern castle - Larrington, Carolyne, King Arthur's Enchantresses: Morgan and Her Sisters in Arthurian Tradition (I. B. Tauris, 2006) - scholarly study of Margawse, Morgan le Fay, and the women of the legend - Barron, W. R. J. (ed.), The Arthur of the English: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval English Life and Literature (University of Wales Press, 1999) - scholarly survey of the English Arthurian tradition - Norris, Ralph, Malory's Library: The Sources of the Morte Darthur (D. S. Brewer, 2008) - scholarly study of Malory's sources for the Orkney clan Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Hera: Queen of Olympus and goddess of marriage, wife of Zeus, known for jealousy and vengeance against his mortal lovers and children | Mythopouch Previous Greek Next > Hera Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s (Ἥρα) Pronunciation HEER-uh Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Teleia, Boopis (cow-eyed), Argive Hera, Juno (Roman) Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Greek Region Category Deity Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Mythological Gender Female Time Period Mythological Age Symbol Flower Tags greek, god, marriage, family, queen Introduction - Overview Hera is the queen of the Olympian gods, the wife of Zeus who rules from the throne beside him but wages a private war against his endless infidelities. She is the goddess of marriage, childbirth, and the sacred bond between husband and wife, a protector of women in labor who could ease their pain or multiply it. She is the relentless pursuer of Zeus's illegitimate children, the illegitimate offspring of her husband's affairs with mortal women and nymphs, whom she hounded across the earth with curses and monsters. She is the mother of Ares, the god of war, and Hephaestus, the crippled smith whom she cast from heaven in shame. She is the deity who drove Heracles, the greatest Greek hero, to murder his own family in a fit of madness, and who made the Trojan War far bloodier than it needed to be. She is the peacock goddess, whose sacred bird carries the eyes of her hundred-eyed watchman Argus in its tail feathers, and whose temples at Argos and Samos were among the most magnificent in the ancient world. Every wedding vow and every jealous quarrel echoes her name. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Hera Hera was born to Cronus and Rhea, the Titan rulers who had swallowed their own children to prevent a prophecy that one of them would overthrow the father. Zeus, her youngest brother, was hidden away on the island of Crete and grew to adulthood in secret. When he returned to challenge Cronus, he forced the Titan to vomit up his swallowed children: Hestia, the goddess of the hearth; Demeter, the goddess of grain; Hera herself; Hades, the grim lord of the dead; and Poseidon, the god of the sea. The siblings united against their father in a war called the Titanomachy, the war between the old Titans and the young Olympian gods, and after ten years of battle they cast Cronus down and divided the world among themselves. Zeus took the sky, Poseidon the sea, Hades the underworld, and Hera became the queen of Olympus, the bride of Zeus in a marriage that would define the politics of heaven for eternity. The wedding of Zeus and Hera was celebrated with a feast that lasted three hundred years, and the earth itself blossomed in joy. But the joy did not last. Zeus was incapable of fidelity. He pursued mortal women, nymphs, goddesses, and even other men's wives with relentless appetite. Hera, whose very domain was the sanctity of marriage, could not tolerate this. She did not weep or plead. She struck back. When Zeus fell in love with the mortal woman Alcmene, Hera delayed the birth of her son Heracles so that a rival heir would be born first, and then sent serpents to kill the infant in his cradle. When the boy grew to manhood and became a hero, Hera drove him mad. In his frenzy, Heracles murdered his own wife Megara and their children, a crime that would haunt him for the rest of his life and force him to complete twelve impossible labors as penance. Every labor was made harder by Hera's interference. She sent monsters against him, raised storms, and turned allies against him. Her hatred was not personal against Heracles as a man; it was absolute against him as the living proof of Zeus's betrayal. In the Trojan War, a conflict that began when Paris, a Trojan prince, awarded a golden apple to Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, rather than to Hera or Athena, the goddess of wisdom and war, Hera's vengeance knew no bounds. She hated Troy with a ferocity that shocked even the other gods. She bribed Sleep, the personification of slumber, to put Zeus into a deep unconsciousness so she could manipulate the battle without his interference. She seduced him with charms borrowed from Aphrodite herself, then while he slept she turned the tide of war against the Trojans. She armed the Greeks, inspired their warriors, and even descended to the battlefield in disguise to rally the troops. When Zeus woke and discovered what she had done, he raged and threatened to hang her from Olympus by golden chains, but she did not flinch. She had been queen too long to fear his temper. The war dragged on for ten years, and Hera made sure that every Trojan death was a payment for the insult of Paris's choice. Hera's cruelty was not indiscriminate. She was a protector of married women and a guardian of legitimate children. Women in labor prayed to her, and cities that honored marriage and family built her temples with special devotion. The island of Samos was sacred to her, and her temple there was one of the largest in the Greek world. At Argos, her ancient sanctuary was served by a priestess who held the office for life and wielded political influence that rivaled kings. The peacock became her sacred bird after the death of Argus, the hundred-eyed giant whom she had set to watch over the maiden Io, one of Zeus's lovers whom the king of gods had transformed into a white heifer to hide her from his wife's wrath. Hera knew the trick. She sent Argus to watch the cow, and his hundred eyes never all closed at once. Zeus sent Hermes, the messenger god who moved between worlds, to kill Argus, and Hermes lulled the giant to sleep with music before striking him down. In grief and honor, Hera took Argus's hundred eyes and placed them upon the tail of the peacock, where they remain to this day, watching still. Hera bore Zeus several children: Ares, the god of war, whom even his parents found brutal and unpleasant; Hebe, the goddess of youth who served nectar to the gods; Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth; and Hephaestus, the crippled smith whom she cast from Olympus in disgust at his deformity. Some say she conceived Hephaestus alone, without Zeus, in retaliation for his birthing of Athena from his own head. The story of her rejection of Hephaestus would return to wound her when the grown god trapped her in a golden throne, and she was forced to swallow her pride to beg for release. In the Roman world, the Greeks identified her with Juno, the queen of the Roman gods and the protector of the Roman state. The month of June is named for her, and weddings in that month still carry her ancient blessing. She remains the most complex of the Olympians: a goddess of loyalty who was betrayed, of marriage who was mocked, of power who was constrained by the very throne she shared. Every quarrel between husband and wife, every legitimate child born in wedlock, every jealous glance across a crowded room, belongs to her domain. Summary Hera stands as the eternal queen of Olympus, the goddess of marriage who turned the pain of betrayal into an instrument of divine vengeance. From the war against the Titans to the ten years of Troy, from the serpents sent against infant Heracles to the peacock's hundred watching eyes, her story is one of power exercised through patience and fury. She is the most human of the great gods, driven by emotions that mortals understand all too well: jealousy, pride, loyalty, and the desperate need to be honored. Every temple raised to her, every wedding sworn in her name, and every peacock that spreads its tail carries her memory across the centuries. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Hera From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Ares Deity Ares Io Person Io Hephaestus Deity Hephaestus Zeus Deity Zeus Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Homer, Iliad, Book 1 (lines 533-611) - Hera's quarrel with Zeus and her scheming - Homer, Iliad, Book 14 (lines 153-351) - Hera seduces Zeus to aid the Greeks - Hesiod, Theogony (lines 453-506, 921-929) - Hera's birth and children - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, Book 2 (chapters 4-7) - Hera's persecution of Heracles and Io - Pindar, Nemean Ode 1 (lines 33-72) - Heracles' birth and Hera's interference - Burkert, Walter, Greek Religion (1985) - Chapter 3: "The Olympian Gods," pp. 131-135 - Krenkel, Werner, "Hera und Io" in Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Universitat Rostock (1960) - Seaford, Richard, "The Tragic Wedding" in Journal of Hellenic Studies (1987), pp. 106-130 Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Atum, the self-created god of Heliopolis who rose from Nun, fathered the Ennead and embodied the setting sun and renewal in ancient Egyptian mythology. Previous Egyptian Next > Atum Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s jtm(w) or tm(w) Pronunciation AH-toom Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Atem, Temu, Tem, Ra-Atum, Atum-Ra, the Complete One, the Finisher, Lord of Heliopolis, Father of the Gods, He Who Came into Being by Himself Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Egyptian Region Category Deity Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Mythological Gender Male Time Period c. 3100 BCE - Roman period Symbol Double Crown Tags egyptian, atum, creator-god, heliopolis, ennead, ra, benben, primordial Introduction - Overview Atum is the primordial creator god who made himself from nothing, the first being to emerge from the dark waters of chaos and stand upon the first dry land at Heliopolis. He is the father of the Ennead, the nine gods of Heliopolis, who created Shu, the god of air, and Tefnut, the goddess of moisture, from his own body to begin the population of the cosmos. He is the setting sun, the aged god who sails through the underworld each night in his night-bark, merging with Ra to become Atum-Ra, the complete cycle of solar power from dawn to dusk. He is the weeping creator whose tears of joy fell upon the primordial mound and became the first human beings. He is the finisher of the world, the god who promised Osiris that one day he would destroy everything he made and return the universe to the watery darkness of Nun, existing thereafter as serpents with the lord of the dead. And he is the eternal patron of kings, the deity who lifted the souls of pharaohs from their pyramids to the imperishable stars, a power that outlasted every dynasty. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Atum Before the world existed, there was only Nun, a dark and endless ocean of chaos without form, without light, and without time. No land, no sky, no gods, no men - only the infinite waters stretching in every direction. From this nothingness, Atum created himself through sheer will, rising upon a mound of earth called the benben that broke the surface of Nun like the first island in a flooded world. He stood alone upon that primordial hill at Heliopolis, the city that would become the greatest religious centre in Egypt, and looked out over the waters that still surrounded him on every side. He was the Complete One, the accomplished god who contained within himself all that would ever be, and he knew that he must create order from the chaos that pressed against his island. Atum looked upon the empty cosmos and realised that he was alone. In the earliest tellings, he created the first divine pair from his own body, spitting forth Shu, the god of dry air and breath, and Tefnut, the goddess of moisture and order. In other versions he brought them into being through an act of self-creation, using his own hand as the female principle within himself, or mating with his own shadow upon the benben. Shu and Tefnut were the first differentiation, the first breath and the first drop of water in a universe that had known neither, and they represented the emergence of space itself amid the formless waters. But the two young gods wandered away from their father into the darkness beyond the mound, and Atum, left alone again, tore out his own eye and sent it searching for them across the wastes of Nun. The eye found the twins and brought them back, and when Atum embraced his children again, he wept tears of such joy that they fell upon the benben and became the first human beings, born from the sorrow and happiness of the creator himself. Shu and Tefnut grew and joined together, giving birth to Geb, the god of the earth, and Nut, the goddess of the sky. Geb and Nut fell in love and clung to one another so tightly that there was no space between them for anything to live, and Atum saw that the world could not flourish while the earth and sky were locked in this eternal embrace. He commanded Shu to stand between them, and the air god raised his arms and lifted Nut high above Geb, creating the space in which the sun could sail and mortals could walk. But Atum had acted too late to prevent the union entirely, and Nut was already pregnant. She gave birth to four children: Osiris, the god of fertility and resurrection; Isis, the goddess of magic and motherhood; Set, the red-haired god of chaos and desert storms; and Nephthys, the goddess of protection and mourning. Atum looked upon these four and saw that Osiris was the wisest and fairest, and he granted him dominion over the earth, completing the Ennead of Heliopolis, the nine gods who governed the cosmos. As the centuries passed, Atum became inseparable from Ra, the great sun god whose cult rose to dominate Egypt. The two merged into Atum-Ra, a single deity who embodied the complete journey of the sun across the sky. Ra was the morning and midday sun, the blazing disk at the height of his power, while Atum was the evening sun, the aged god who entered the western horizon and sailed through the underworld in his night-bark. In this form he was an old man leaning upon his staff, travelling through the twelve hours of darkness and battling the serpent Apep, the demon of chaos who attacked the sun boat each night, threatening to swallow the light and return the world to the darkness of Nun. Atum-Ra stood in the prow of the bark with his divine protectors, and each dawn he was reborn as Khepri, the scarab god of the rising sun, completing the eternal cycle. In the Coffin Texts, a collection of spells carved upon the coffins of the Middle Kingdom, Atum speaks to Osiris of the end of all things. He tells the lord of the dead that after millions of years he will destroy everything he created, submerging the world beneath the formless waters of Nun once more. Only Atum and Osiris will survive, existing in that watery darkness as serpents, coiled and waiting until the moment comes to begin creation anew. This was not a threat but a promise, the natural conclusion of a cycle that began with emergence and must end with return. Pharaohs across three thousand years claimed Atum as their divine father, calling themselves the Son of Atum, and the god placed the double crown upon their heads in temple ceremonies that bound the king to the creator. The last surviving remnant of his temple at Heliopolis is an obelisk erected by Senusret I of the Twelfth Dynasty, still standing in modern Al-Matariyyah, a stone witness to the god who made himself from nothing. Summary Atum endures as the supreme architect of existence, the self-created god who stood upon the first mound and breathed order into chaos. From the Pyramid Texts of the Old Kingdom to the Coffin Texts of the Middle Kingdom, from the benben stone of Heliopolis to the obelisk that still rises above modern Cairo, his presence spans the entire history of Egyptian civilisation as both origin and end. Every sunrise re-enacts his first emergence, every sunset his return to the depths, and every pharaoh who ever ruled claimed descent from his divine power. In the human imagination, Atum remains the eternal question and its only answer - the being who needed no parent, no cause, and no permission to exist, and who proved that even from absolute nothingness, something extraordinary can arise. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Atum From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Khepri Deity Khepri Ra Deity Ra Shu Deity Shu Tefnut Deity Tefnut Osiris Deity Osiris Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Pyramid Texts, Pyramid of Unas (c. 2345 BCE, 5th Dynasty) - Atum as creator and lifter of the king's soul to the stars - Pyramid Texts, Pyramid of Teti (c. 2323 BCE, 6th Dynasty) - Atum's role in royal resurrection and the Ennead - Coffin Texts Spell 1130 (Middle Kingdom, c. 2055-1650 BCE) - Atum's conversation with Osiris on the end of the world and return to Nun - Book of the Dead, Chapter 17 (New Kingdom, c. 1550-1070 BCE) - Atum ascending from chaos-waters as a serpent - Bremner-Rhind Papyrus, The Book of Knowing the Creations of Ra (c. 310 BCE) - Heliopolitan creation myth and the birth of Shu and Tefnut - James P. Allen, Genesis in Egypt: The Philosophy of Ancient Egyptian Creation Accounts (Yale Egyptological Seminar, 1988) - analysis of Heliopolitan cosmogony and Atum's self-creation - Mark Smith, Following Osiris: Perspectives on the Osirian Afterlife from Four Millennia (Oxford UP, 2017) - Atum's relationship with Osiris and eschatology - Geraldine Pinch, Egyptian Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Goddesses, and Traditions of Ancient Egypt (Oxford UP, 2002) - Atum's cult and role in the Ennead - Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt (Thames & Hudson, 2003) - iconography and worship of Atum across dynasties Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Explore the mastaba, the bench-shaped tomb of ancient Egypt that housed the ka of the dead and grew, step by step, into the pyramid. - Mythopouch Previous Egyptian Next > Mastaba Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s per-djet (Egyptian: house of eternity), hwt-ka (house of the ka), mastaba (Arabic: bench) Pronunciation MASS-tuh-buh Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Mastabat, the House of Eternity, the House of the Ka, the Bench of Eternity, the Palace-Facade Tomb Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Egyptian Region Category Location Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Historical Gender N/A Time Period c. 3100 BCE (First Dynasty) - Middle Kingdom Symbol Mastaba Tags egyptian, mastaba, tomb, saqqara, giza, ka, false-door, afterlife Introduction - Overview The mastaba is the bench of eternity, the flat-topped, slope-sided tomb that housed Egypt's dead for a thousand years before the first pyramid rose, and then gave birth to the pyramid itself. It is the house of the ka, the vital force that outlived the body, built with a false door of stone through which the dead could come and go to take their offerings. It is the tomb with the sealed statue chamber, the serdab, where lifelike figures of the dead sat in the dark with crystal eyes, waiting. It is the ancestor of the Step Pyramid, for the vizier Imhotep raised the first pyramid by stacking one mastaba upon another into a stairway of six giant steps. It is the building block of the first planned cemeteries on earth, the streets of identical tombs that spread around the Great Pyramid at Giza like a city of the dead. Its walls carry the richest picture-book of daily life ever left by the ancient world, from herdsmen singing crocodiles away to harvests, games, and feasts. And it bears the only Arabic word in the vocabulary of Egyptology, for the villagers who named it after the humble mud bench outside their own doors gave eternity a working-class name, and the name stuck. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Mastaba The word is modern and almost comically humble. Mastaba is Arabic for bench, the long low seat of mudbrick that stands outside Egyptian village houses, and when nineteenth-century excavators asked the local workmen what to call the flat-topped, slope-sided mounds they were digging, the men shrugged and named them after the bench. The Egyptians themselves had grander words: the tomb was the per-djet, the house of eternity, and the hwt-ka, the house of the ka, the vital force that survived death and needed food, drink, and a place to live. A mastaba was two buildings in one. Above ground stood the bench, a rectangular block of mudbrick or stone containing a chapel for the offerings and rooms for the rites. Beneath it, reached by a deep vertical shaft, lay the burial chamber with its sarcophagus, sealed after the funeral by a massive portcullis slab of granite. The idea was simple and eternal: a house above for the soul's business, a bedroom below for the body's rest, and between them a shaft that the living hoped robbers would never find. The form grew from the oldest graves of Egypt, simple pits in the desert sand whose heat dried the bodies into leather, the first accidental mummies. As tombs grew grander, the pit gained a lining, then a roof, then a mound of bricks above it, and by the First Dynasty, around 3000 BCE, the great officials were buried at North Saqqara, the cemetery above Memphis, the ancient capital, in mastabas with niched and panelled walls that copied the painted facades of the royal palace, so that the dead man dwelt forever in a palace of eternity. Some of these earliest tombs were ringed with the graves of servants sent to attend their masters beyond the grave. Then, around 2670 BCE, came the moment that changed architecture forever. King Djoser of the Third Dynasty began a mastaba at Saqqara, and his vizier Imhotep, the architect later worshipped as a god of wisdom, enlarged it, then enlarged it again, then set a smaller mastaba on top, and another, and another, until six giant steps rose against the sky: the Step Pyramid, the first monumental stone building in human history. The pyramid, the very symbol of Egypt, is a stack of mastabas that forgot to stop. Every part of the mastaba served the traffic between living and dead. The chapel stood on the eastern side, toward the land of the living and the sunrise, and there the family and the priests brought bread, beer, and incense, reciting the formula of a thousand of bread, a thousand of beer, a thousand of oxen and fowl. In the chapel's western wall, the wall that faced the dead, was set the false door, a stone doorframe carved with the owner's name and figure, through which his ka could pass to take the essence of the offerings while the substance stayed behind for the priests. Hidden somewhere in the bench was the serdab, the cellar, a sealed room holding a statue of the dead man, a spare body in case the mummy failed, with only a pair of slits for eyes to see and nostrils to smell the incense. In 1871, in a mastaba at Meidum, diggers broke into such a chamber by torchlight and found themselves face to face with Prince Rahotep and his wife Nofret, painted limestone figures with inlaid crystal eyes so lifelike that the workmen dropped their tools and fled into the night. The statues sit in Cairo today, and their eyes have lost nothing. At Giza, beside the Great Pyramid of Khufu, the pharaoh for whom the largest pyramid was built, the cemetery of the court was laid out like a planned town, streets of uniform mastabas in neat blocks, the first designed city of the dead, and the largest of them belonged to Hemiunu, the vizier who oversaw the building of the pyramid itself. At Saqqara the nobles of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties turned their chapels into libraries of life. The mastaba of Ti, a royal estate overseer, shows cattle fording a canal while a herdsman chants a charm against the crocodile waiting in the reeds, poultry yards crammed with geese, boys wrestling, boatmen jousting with poles. The mastaba of Mereruka, vizier of King Teti, runs to thirty-two rooms of carved and painted estates, goldsmiths, scribes, musicians, and games. None of it was decoration. In Egyptian belief the carved word and the painted image had power: the herds, the bread, and the music would rise from the walls for the owner whenever the offerings failed. The mastaba was not a monument to a life ended but an insurance policy for a life that had to go on. Kings abandoned the mastaba the moment Imhotep stacked it into steps, and after the Old Kingdom the nobles drifted away too, first to rock-cut tombs in the cliffs of the provinces, then, in the New Kingdom, to temple-tombs in the Theban hills, and the bench of eternity ceased to be the fashion. But it never vanished. Its niched facade lived on in the walls of Djoser's enclosure and on the golden shrine of Tutankhamun, the boy king of the famous tomb; its false door was carved for three thousand years; and its essential idea, the house above and the chamber below, survived in every Egyptian tomb that followed. Thousands of mastabas still stand at Saqqara, Giza, Meidum, and Dahshur, sunburnt and half-buried, and visitors still peer through the serdab slits at the statues waiting inside. The humble mud bench gave its name to the house of eternity, and the house of eternity grew into the mountain of stone that defines Egypt, which is not a bad lineage for a bench. Summary The mastaba endures as the foundation stone of Egyptian eternity, the bench beneath every pyramid and the blueprint of every tomb. Its strangest secret is a shelf of limestone faces: in the burial chambers of a few Giza mastabas lay the reserve heads, idealised sculpted portraits set near the coffin, whose purpose three thousand years of scholarship has still not settled. Every false door, every offering table, every statue gazing through its slit carries the mark of its design. In the human imagination, the mastaba remains the eternal address, the proof that the dead, given bread, a door, and a spare body, might live as long as stone. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Mastaba From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Djoser Person Djoser Imhotep Person Imhotep Khufu Person Khufu Tutankhamun Person Tutankhamun Mummy Creature/Monster/Animal Mummy Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Mastaba M17 of Rahotep and Nofret, Meidum (4th Dynasty, c. 2600 BCE, Egyptian Museum, Cairo) - the serdab statues with the crystal eyes - North Saqqara mastabas, 1st Dynasty (c. 3000 BCE) - the palace-facade tombs of the first officials - Step Pyramid complex of Djoser, Saqqara (3rd Dynasty, c. 2670 BCE) - the mastaba stacked into the first pyramid - Mastaba of Hemiunu, Giza G 4000 (4th Dynasty, c. 2570 BCE) - the tomb of the vizier who oversaw the Great Pyramid - Mastaba of Mereruka, Saqqara (6th Dynasty, c. 2340 BCE) - the thirty-two rooms of daily-life reliefs - A. J. Spencer, Death in Ancient Egypt (Penguin, 1982) - the development of the Egyptian tomb - Salima Ikram, Death and Burial in Ancient Egypt (Pearson, 2003) - the architecture and rituals of the house of eternity - Aidan Dodson, The Royal Tombs of Ancient Egypt (Amberley, 2016) - the royal and noble tomb from mastaba to pyramid Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Hellawes, the Arthurian sorceress who created the Chapel Perilous to trap Lancelot and died of sorrow after he rejected her deadly enchanted kiss. Previous Arthurian Next > Hellawes Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Helaes, Helaes of the Perilous Forest, Helaes the Beautiful, Lady Helaes Pronunciation HELL-ah-wez Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Sorceress of the Chapel Perilous, the Lady of Castle Nygurmous, the Necromancer of Nigramous, the Lover of Lancelot, the Mistress of the Dead Knight, the Embalmer of Desire Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details British Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Arthurian Region Category Spirit Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Mythological Gender Female Time Period 5th-6th centuries CE (mythic period); literary tradition c. 1215-1485 CE Symbol Bloody Sword Tags arthurian, hellawes, spirit, sorceress, chapel-perilous, lancelot, necromancy, gawain, meliot-de-logres, castle-nygurmous Introduction - Overview Hellawes is the sorceress of Castle Nygurmous, the Lady of Necromancy, who built the Chapel Perilous as a charade of terror to trap the knight she had loved for seven years, Sir Lancelot, the greatest warrior in Christendom, hoping that if she could not have him alive she would embalm his dead body and kiss it daily for the rest of her life. She is the widow of Sir Gylbert the Bastard, the knight slain by Sir Meliot de Logres, and she cursed Meliot with a spell that no leech could heal, so that his wounds would bleed forever unless some knight braved the Chapel Perilous and retrieved the dead man's sword and a piece of the bloody silk that wrapped his corpse. She is the enchantress whose thirty black knights, each a foot taller than mortal men, grinned and gnashed their teeth at Lancelot but scattered like dead leaves before his courage, revealing themselves as illusions conjured by her art. She is the woman who begged Lancelot for a single kiss, knowing that if he consented his life days would be done, and who confessed that she had prepared the chapel for him and for Gawain, despairing of ever possessing a living lover. And she is the sorceress who died within a fortnight of pure sorrow when Lancelot refused her, a necromancer whose magic could summon the dead and terrify the living but could not compel the heart of the one man she loved beyond reason. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Hellawes Hellawes first appears in the Prose Lancelot, the vast romance that forms part of the 13th-century Vulgate Cycle, where she is called Lady Helaes of the Perilous Forest, Helaes the Beautiful, a one-night lover of Sir Gawain in an earlier adventure. The name may echo Héloïse, the famous lover of the medieval philosopher Abelard, suggesting that the romance writers saw in her a figure of tragic and forbidden passion. But it was Sir Thomas Malory who gave her the name Hellawes and made her the central figure of one of the most chilling episodes in Le Morte d'Arthur. In Malory's version, composed in the 15th century, she is the widow of Sir Gylbert the Bastard, a knight who had been slain in fair combat by Sir Meliot de Logres, a fellow knight of the Round Table. Gylbert's death was not the end of the affair, for Hellawes was a sorceress of terrible power, and she wrought a charm upon Meliot so that his wounds would never heal, bleeding ceaselessly until some knight dared enter the Chapel Perilous and retrieve the very sword that had killed Gylbert and a piece of the bloody silk cloth that wrapped his corpse in the chapel. Only then could Meliot's wounds be staunched and his life saved. Lancelot came upon the sickly Meliot and promised to help him. He rode into a deep forest, following a black brachet, a small hound, that was tracking a trail of blood. The hound led him over an old and feeble bridge into a manor house, where he found the body of Sir Gylbert the Bastard lying in state, with his wife weeping beside him. Lancelot saluted the grieving woman and rode on, and soon he met a damsel who knew him well. She told him that her brother, Sir Meliot de Logres, lay near by dying from wounds that would not heal, and that only the sword and cloth from the Chapel Perilous could save him. Lancelot, who feared no peril, rode straight to the chapel. He tied his horse to a little gate and entered the churchyard. On the front of the chapel he saw many fair and rich shields hanging upside-down, shields he recognised from knights he had seen before. Then he saw thirty great knights standing before him, each more than a yard taller than any man he had ever seen, all clad in black harness, grinning and gnashing their teeth with demon-like countenances. Lancelot put his shield before him and took his sword in hand, ready for battle. But when he advanced resolutely upon them, they scattered on every side like dead leaves before the wind, giving him passage. The illusion had been tested and found wanting. Inside the chapel, Lancelot saw no light but a dim lamp burning. He was aware of a corpse covered with a cloth of silk, and he knew at once that it was Sir Gylbert. He stooped down and cut a piece away from the cloth, and as he did so the earth seemed to quake beneath him, a tremor of supernatural power that would have sent a lesser man fleeing. But Lancelot was the greatest knight in the world, and he feared no enchantment. He saw a fair sword lying by the dead knight, seized it, and hurried out of the chapel. In the chapel yard the thirty black knights spoke to him with grim voices, demanding that he lay down the sword or die. Lancelot replied that whether he lived or died, no great words would make him yield it, and they scattered again before his courage. Beyond the chapel yard, on the highway, a fair damsel met him. She warned him to leave the sword behind or he would die for it, but Lancelot refused. Then she tried a different temptation: she begged him to kiss her but once. Lancelot refused again, saying that God forbade it, and that he saved his kisses for his love alone. Then the damsel revealed herself as Hellawes the sorceress, Lady of Castle Nygurmous, and the truth of the chapel was laid bare. She confessed that the entire Chapel Perilous was an elaborate charade created for his sake and for Gawain's. She had loved Lancelot for seven years, but she knew that no woman could ever have his love except Queen Guinevere. Despairing of possessing him alive, she had hoped to possess him dead. If he had yielded the sword or kissed her, his life would have ended, and she would have taken his body, embalmed it, preserved it, and kept it with her for the rest of her days, kissing him and clipping him daily in despite of Guinevere and every other woman living. Lancelot replied only that Jesus preserve him from her subtle crafts, mounted his horse, and departed. Hellawes was left alone on the road, her magic broken, her love unrequited, and her hope of possessing even a corpse denied. The chronicles say that she died within a fortnight, not from any spell or wound but from pure sorrow, a necromancer who could command the dead but could not survive the death of her own desire. The Chapel Perilous itself was an older motif than Hellawes. It first appears in the early 13th-century romance Perlesvaus, where the knight Perceval had to brave the horrors of a haunted cemetery and chapel to retrieve the shroud that had covered Jesus Christ. In the Vulgate Queste del Saint Graal, Gawain and Hector de Maris encountered a perilous chapel during the Grail Quest, seeing visions that portended the completion of the quest by Galahad, Percival, and Bors, and signifying their own unworthiness. The motif of the perilous chapel or perilous cemetery appears in various continuations of Chrétien de Troyes's Perceval, in Wauchier's and Manessier's versions, and in the romance Le Chevalier à deux Espées. But Malory's Hellawes is unique. She is not merely a guardian of a sacred place or a tester of knightly virtue. She is a woman of obsessive and unrequited love, a necromancer whose desire has twisted into something darker than seduction: the desire to possess the beloved even in death. Her name, Hellawes, echoes with the sound of hell and hawes, and her castle, Nygurmous, is the castle of necromancy, the black art of communing with the dead. She stands as one of the most disturbing figures in Arthurian legend, a reminder that the greatest perils are not always monsters or dragons but the human heart turned to darkness by love that cannot be returned. Summary Hellawes endures as the most chilling sorceress in Arthurian legend, the necromancer whose love for Lancelot was so absolute that she built an entire chapel of illusions to trap him, and so despairing that she would rather have his embalmed corpse than live without him. From the thirty black knights who scattered before his courage to the silk cloth that quaked the earth, from the kiss that would have killed him to the confession that revealed her darkest desire, her story is the tragedy of a woman whose magic was limitless but whose love was unrequited. She is the reminder that the Chapel Perilous is not a place of stone and shadow but a state of the heart, and that the most dangerous enchantments are those we cast upon ourselves. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Hellawes From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Anonymous, Prose Lancelot (Vulgate Lancelot), c. 1215-1235 - primary source; the earliest appearance of Lady Helaes of the Perilous Forest, Helaes the Beautiful, and her connection to Gawain - Anonymous, Perlesvaus, early 13th century - primary source; the original perilous chapel and cemetery episode featuring Perceval and the retrieval of the shroud of Christ - Anonymous, Vulgate Queste del Saint Graal, c. 1215-1235 - primary source; Gawain and Hector de Maris at the perilous chapel during the Grail Quest, with visions of Galahad, Percival, and Bors - Anonymous, Continuations of Chrétien de Troyes's Perceval (Wauchier and Manessier), 13th century - primary source; the perilous cemetery and chapel episodes in the Grail continuations - Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur, 1469-1470 - primary source; the full Hellawes episode, the Chapel Perilous, the curse upon Meliot de Logres, the thirty black knights, the confession of necrophiliac desire, and Hellawes's death from sorrow - Jessie L. Weston, From Ritual to Romance (Cambridge University Press, 1920) - scholarly source; the analysis of the Chapel Perilous motif in Arthurian romance and its ritual significance - Lacy, Norris J. (ed.), Lancelot-Grail: The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate in Translation (Garland Publishing, 1993-1996) - scholarly translation and analysis of the Helaes tradition and the evolution of the perilous chapel motif - Bruce, Christopher W., The Arthurian Name Dictionary (Garland Publishing, 1999) - scholarly reference; the variant names of Hellawes (Helaes, Helaes the Beautiful) and the possible echo of Héloïse in her name - Lupack, Alan, The Oxford Guide to Arthurian Literature and Legend (Oxford University Press, 2005) - scholarly analysis of the Chapel Perilous tradition and Malory's unique development of the Hellawes character - Vinaver, Eugène (ed.), The Works of Sir Thomas Malory (Oxford University Press, 1947; revised 1990) - scholarly critical edition and textual analysis of Malory's Hellawes episode and its sources in the French prose cycles Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Acrisius, king of Argos who imprisoned Danae to escape an oracle, only to be killed when his grandson Perseus threw a discus during games in Larissa. Previous Greek Next > Acrisius Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Ἀκρίσιος (Akrisios) Pronunciation uh-KRISS-ee-us Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles Akrisios, King of the Argives, Son of Abas, Father of Danae, The Bronze-Chambered King Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Greek Region Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Legendary Gender Male Time Period Heroic Age; first attested in Hesiod (8th century BCE) Symbol Chest in the Sea Tags greek, argos, perseus, danae, prophecy, delphi, discus, bronze-chamber, twin-feud, larissa Introduction - Overview Acrisius is the king of Argos who locked his own daughter in a bronze chamber beneath the earth because an oracle had sworn that her son would one day kill him. He is the father of Danae, the princess whom Zeus, king of the gods, visited as a shower of golden light that streamed through the ceiling and into her lap. He is the man who could not bring himself to murder his daughter and her infant son outright, so he sealed them in a wooden chest and cast them into the sea, trusting the waves to do what his own hands would not. He is the refugee king who fled his own city to escape the grandson he had tried to drown, only to meet that same grandson years later at the funeral games of Larissa. And he is the victim of the most inescapable prophecy in Greek myth, killed not by sword or spear but by a discus thrown wild at an athletic contest, a death so accidental that even fate seemed to be laughing at him. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Acrisius Acrisius was born to King Abas of Argos and his wife Aglaea, though some call her Ocalea. He had a twin brother named Proetus, and the two were said to have quarrelled even in their mother's womb. When Abas died, the brothers waged war for the kingdom, and in the course of that war they were said to be the first mortals ever to invent shields, bucklers of bronze and leather that turned aside spear-thrusts and changed the face of battle forever. Acrisius won the war and drove Proetus into exile. His brother fled to Lycia, the kingdom on the southern coast of Asia Minor, where he married Stheneboea, the daughter of King Iobates. With an army of Lycians at his back, Proetus returned to Argos, but neither brother could defeat the other. They divided the kingdom instead. Acrisius kept Argos and the western lands, while Proetus took Tiryns and the coast, a city the Cyclopes were said to have fortified with blocks of stone so huge that no mortal could lift them. Acrisius married Eurydice, the daughter of Lacedaemon, though some call his wife Aganippe. She bore him at least one daughter, Danae, a princess of legendary beauty, and possibly a second daughter named Evarete. But Acrisius had no sons, and in his anxiety about the succession he travelled to Delphi, the most famous oracle in Greece, where the priestess of Apollo spoke from a tripod in a temple built over a chasm in the earth. The oracle gave him a chilling answer: not that he would have no heir, but that the son of his daughter Danae would grow up to kill him. Acrisius returned to Argos in terror. He did not dare to kill Danae, for the murder of kin was the most terrible crime in Greek eyes and would summon the Erinyes, the avenging spirits of blood-guilt, to torment him without rest. Instead he built a bronze chamber beneath the earth, a room of metal sunk into the ground, and locked his daughter inside it with guards at the only door. No man would ever see her. No suitor would ever approach. The prophecy would die in the dark. But Zeus, the king of the gods, whose power no bronze door could withstand, desired Danae. He transformed himself into a shower of gold that streamed through the roof of the bronze chamber, fell upon the sleeping princess, and filled her womb with a child. Nine months later Danae gave birth to a son she named Perseus. When Acrisius heard the sound of a baby crying from within the sealed room, he broke down the door and found his daughter nursing an infant. He refused to believe that a god was the father. Some say he suspected his own exiled brother Proetus of seducing her, which would explain the old hatred between the twins. But whatever he believed, the child was alive and the prophecy stood. Acrisius still could not bring himself to kill them. Instead he fashioned a wooden chest large enough for a woman and a baby, placed Danae and Perseus inside it, and carried it to the shore. He cast the chest into the sea and watched it drift away on the tide. If the waves killed them, he told himself, his own hands were clean. The chest did not sink. Zeus guided it across the Aegean to the island of Seriphos, where a humble fisherman named Dictys found it washed up on the beach. He broke the lid open and discovered Danae alive, clutching her son. Dictys took them to his brother Polydectes, the king of Seriphos, and the two were given shelter. Perseus grew to manhood on that island, strong and proud, until Polydectes fell in love with Danae and sent Perseus on a quest to fetch the head of Medusa, the Gorgon whose face turned all who looked upon it to stone, hoping the hero would never return. But Perseus, aided by Athena and Hermes, succeeded. He beheaded Medusa, saved the Ethiopian princess Andromeda from a sea monster, and returned to Seriphos to turn Polydectes and his entire court to stone with the Gorgon's severed head. When Perseus set out for Argos to claim his grandfather's kingdom, Acrisius heard that the son of Danae was coming. The old king, still terrified of the oracle, abandoned his city and fled to Larissa in Thessaly, where he sought refuge with King Teutamides. But fate does not need an invitation. Perseus, travelling through Thessaly, heard that funeral games were being held in Larissa for the father of Teutamides, or in some tellings for a king named Amyntor. He entered the contests as any young hero might, eager to prove his strength. In the discus throw, Perseus hurled the heavy bronze disc with all the force of his divine blood. It flew true at first, then caught a gust of wind, veered sideways, and struck an old man sitting in the crowd. The man was Acrisius. He died where he sat, his skull shattered by his own grandson's hand, and the prophecy was fulfilled not in battle but in sport, not by design but by the whim of a breeze. Perseus was ashamed. He had not meant to kill the king of Argos, yet the blood was on his hands. He refused to take the throne of the man he had slain. Instead he travelled to Tiryns and exchanged kingdoms with his cousin Megapenthes, the son of Proetus. Perseus became king of Tiryns and went on to found the great city of Mycenae, while Megapenthes ruled over Argos. In another version of the tale, told by the Roman poet Ovid, Perseus visited the court of Polydectes with the Gorgon's head and turned his uncle Proetus to stone as well, though this contradicts the older Greek tradition in which Proetus died long before. Either way, Acrisius was dead, his bronze chamber and his wooden chest and his flight across Greece all undone by a single discus at a funeral game. Summary Acrisius stands as the quintessential tragic figure of Greek heroic myth, a king destroyed not by hubris or cruelty but by the very caution with which he tried to outwit fate. From the womb-war with his twin brother Proetus to the bronze chamber beneath Argos, from the chest cast upon the sea to the discus that found him in a Thessalian crowd, his life traces the path of a man who could neither kill nor save those he loved. Every prophecy that cannot be escaped, every attempt to cheat destiny that only hastens it, carries something of Acrisius in it. His story reminds us that the gods do not need swords to punish mortals; a gust of wind and a bronze disc are enough. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Acrisius From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Danae Person Danae Proetus Person Proetus Perseus Person Perseus Zeus Deity Zeus Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Hesiod, Catalogue of Women, fragment 135 (trans. Most) (8th century BCE) - genealogy of Acrisius and the Argive royal house - Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2.2.1, 2.4.1-4 (1st-2nd century CE) - the feud with Proetus, the oracle, the chest, and the death at Larissa - Pausanias, Description of Greece 2.16.2, 2.25.6 (c. 150 CE) - Argive traditions and the tomb of Acrisius - Hyginus, Fabulae 63 (trans. Grant) (2nd century CE) - the bronze chamber, the golden shower, and the chest at sea - Aeschylus, fragment 125 Radt from The Net-Draggers (5th century BCE) - lost tragedy on Danae and the chest - Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.607-611, 5.242-243 (c. 8 CE) - variant in which Proetus is turned to stone by Perseus - Gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (1993) - Volume 1, pp. 300-304, 306-307 - Burkert, Walter, Greek Religion (1985) - Chapter 3, oracles and the fear of divine prophecy in Argive cult - Dowden, Ken, The Uses of Greek Mythology (1992) - Chapter 4, the logic of oracles and the inevitability of fate - Hall, Edith, Greek Tragedy: Suffering under the Sun (2010) - pp. 89-92, the Danae myth and its dramatic treatments Previous --- End of Record --- Next >

Discover Efnysien, the Welsh anti-hero who mutilated Matholwch's horses, ignited war and sacrificed his life to shatter the Cauldron of Rebirth in Ireland. Previous Arthurian Next > Efnysien Name in Non-English, or Alternative Name/s Efnisien (Welsh), Evnissyen (Welsh variant), Efnissien (Welsh variant) Pronunciation ev-NIS-ee-en Arthurian List Egyptian List Greek List Also known as, and/or Titles and Roles The Mutilator of Horses, the Destroyer of the Cauldron, the Anti-Hero of the Second Branch, the Son of Euroswydd, the Troublemaker of Harlech, the Martyr of the Pair Dadeni Mythopouch artistic interpretation Details Welsh / British / Celtic Regional Information Additional (if applicable) Arthurian Region Category Person Historicity (actuality or factual truth of persons, events, and claims) Mythological Gender Male Time Period Mythic period; literary tradition c. 1100 CE (preserved in 14th-century manuscripts) Symbol The mutilated horse, the Pair Dadeni cauldron broken into four pieces, the starling's message Tags arthurian, welsh, efnysien, person, mabinogion, branwen, bendigeidfran, pair-dadeni, anti-hero Introduction - Overview Efnysien is the most destructive figure in Welsh mythology, the half-brother whose single act of rage set in motion a war that annihilated two kingdoms. He is the son of Euroswydd and Penarddun, the twin brother of Nisien, the peacemaker who could calm two armies at their most incensed, and the half-brother of Bendigeidfran, the giant king of Britain whose body was so vast that no house could contain him. He is the man who mutilated the horses of Matholwch, the king of Ireland, slicing their lips back to their teeth, their ears back to their heads, and their tails to their backs in a frenzy of calculated cruelty because he had not been consulted about his sister Branwen's marriage. He is the villain who threw his own nephew Gwern into a fire during a feast meant to end the war, and the unexpected hero who sacrificed his own life to destroy the Pair Dadeni, the magical cauldron of rebirth that the Irish were using to resurrect their dead soldiers. And he is the catalyst of the greatest tragedy in the Mabinogion, the man whose name means "hostile enemy" and whose actions proved that a single wounded ego can burn down the world. Gallery Main Article - Who or What was... Efnysien Efnysien was born to Penarddun, the daughter of Beli son of Mynogan, and her second husband Euroswydd. His twin brother was Nisien, a young man of such gentle nature that he could make peace between two hosts even when they were at their most incensed. Efnysien was the opposite in every way. Where Nisien brought harmony, Efnysien would provoke conflict between two brothers even while they were at their most amicable. The Welsh Triads, ancient mnemonic poems that catalogue the great figures of Welsh tradition, record that Llyr, the father of Bendigeidfran, Branwen, and Manawydan, was once one of the Three Exalted Prisoners of Britain, held captive by Euroswydd. This lost tradition hints at a dark origin for Efnysien and Nisien, born as they were from a union forged in captivity and division. The defining catastrophe of Efnysien's life began on an afternoon at Harlech, where Bendigeidfran sat with his court above the ocean. Thirteen ships approached from Ireland, bearing Matholwch, the king of that island, who sought Branwen's hand in marriage. Bendigeidfran agreed, seeing in the match a chance for lasting peace between Britain and Ireland. A great feast was held at Aberffraw, with Bendigeidfran seated between Manawydan and Matholwch, and Branwen beside the Irish king. They feasted in pavilions because Bendigeidfran was a giant who had never been contained within a house. The marriage was sealed, and Matholwch slept with Branwen that night. Then Efnysien arrived. He came across the billets where Matholwch's horses were stabled and asked whose they were. When told they belonged to the king of Ireland, who had just married Branwen without Efnysien's consent, something in him snapped. He began striking the horses with a blade, slicing their lips back to their teeth, their ears back to their heads, and their tails to their backs. Wherever he could grip their eyelids, he cut them back to the bone. The animals were ruined beyond use, and the insult was so profound that Matholwch, when he learned what had been done to his horses, prepared to leave at once. Bendigeidfran pacified him with new horses, a gold plate, a silver rod, and finally the Pair Dadeni, a magical cauldron that could bring the dead back to life, though those it restored would be deaf and mute. Matholwch accepted the gifts and took Branwen to Ireland, but the wound of the mutilation festered in his heart. In Ireland, Branwen gave birth to a son named Gwern, but the memory of the horses proved stronger than the child. The Irish nobles persuaded Matholwch that he had been insufficiently compensated for the humiliation, and Branwen was banished to the kitchens of the castle, where she slept and worked each day and was beaten by the bloody hands of the butcher. She trained a starling, tied a letter to its leg, and sent it across the Irish Sea to Wales. When Bendigeidfran read his sister's message, he gathered an army and marched on Ireland. The giant king was so tall that he waded across the sea while his ships sailed by his shoulder. When the Irish destroyed a bridge to stop him, Bendigeidfran lay across the river himself and said, "He that would be a chief, let him be a bridge." His men walked over him to the other side. Matholwch, seeing that he could not defeat the giant by force, tried treachery. He built a great house with a hundred pillars to host a feast of reconciliation, and in each pillar he hid an armed warrior inside a bag of flour. Efnysien, suspicious as ever, discovered the plot. He went from bag to bag, crushing the skulls of the hidden Irishmen with his bare hands, killing two hundred men before the feast even began. The peace offering was ruined, but Matholwch tried once more. He agreed to make Gwern, Branwen's son, the king of Ireland, and a coronation feast was held. At the height of the celebration, Efnysien seized the boy and cast him headlong into the fire. Gwern burned, and any hope of peace burned with him. War erupted. The Irish, armed with the Pair Dadeni, had the upper hand because every soldier who fell was thrown into the cauldron and rose again, deaf and mute but ready to fight. The British army was being ground down until Efnysien saw what must be done. He hid himself beneath the bodies of dead Irish warriors and allowed himself to be thrown into the cauldron. Once inside, he stretched out his living body against the sides of the vessel and pushed with all his strength. The cauldron shattered into four pieces, and Efnysien's heart burst with the strain. He died, but the cauldron was destroyed, and the Irish could no longer revive their dead. The British won the battle, but the cost was absolute. Only seven men survived from Bendigeidfran's army, including Manawydan and Pryderi. Bendigeidfran himself was mortally wounded by a poisoned spear in his foot. Branwen died of a broken heart on the shore of the sea that had carried the message of her suffering. And Efnysien, the man who had caused it all, became the man who ended it, dying inside the very cauldron he had helped put into Irish hands. Summary Efnysien endures as the most complex villain in Welsh mythology, the figure who embodies both the cruelty that destroys kingdoms and the sacrifice that can redeem a single act of heroism. From the mutilated horses of Harlech to the shattered cauldron of rebirth, from the burning of Gwern to the broken heart of Branwen, his story is the story of a man whose rage was so vast that it could only be extinguished by his own death. He is the reminder that the most dangerous force in any world is not the enemy without but the wounded pride within, and that even the most destructive soul may, in its final moment, choose annihilation over further ruin. Now enter the Mythopouch World! You’ve discovered: Efnysien From Myth to Game Join to access FREE real-world mythology "Learn Quests" and "Courses". Sign up to the newsletter for new releases, game updates, insider news, and more as Mythopouch brings real mythology to life. EARN the right to purchase an offline board game by completing FREE modules. JOIN THE NEWSLETTER! Email* Join Our Mailing List I want to subscribe to your mailing list. It's FREE to join as a MEMBER! Log In Not ready to join? Get the newsletter instead below Related Entries Branwen Person Branwen Looking for others? Click into the field below to search, or click the icon to go to full page search function! Search References Validation References: - Anonymous, Branwen uerch Lyr (Second Branch of the Mabinogi), c. 1100, preserved in White Book of Rhydderch c. 1325 and Red Book of Hergest c. 1400 - primary source; the mutilation of Matholwch's horses, the feast at Aberffraw, the hidden warriors in the house of a hundred pillars, the burning of Gwern, and the destruction of the Pair Dadeni - Thomson, Derick S. (ed.), Branwen Uerch Lyr, Medieval and Modern Welsh Series, Vol. 2, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1961 - primary scholarly edition; the standard critical text of the Second Branch with detailed notes on Efnysien's role - Williams, Ifor (ed.), Pedeir Keinc y Mabinogi, University of Wales Press, 1930 - primary scholarly edition; the foundational critical edition of all four branches of the Mabinogi - Mac Cana, Proinsias, Branwen, Daughter of Llŷr: A Study of the Irish Affinities and of the Composition of the Second Branch of the Mabinogi, University of Wales Press, 1958 - scholarly analysis of the Second Branch's structure and Efnysien's function as the narrative catalyst - Parker, Will, "Branwen ferch Llyr: Notes," mabinogi.net, 2006 - scholarly commentary; the characterisation of Efnisien as "a study in the psychopathic personality" and "an embodiment of the forces of anti-social disruption" - Koepping, Klaus-Peter, "Absurdity and Hidden Truths: Cunning Intelligence and Grotesque Body Images as Manifestations of the Trickster," History of Religions, Vol. 24, No. 3, 1985 - scholarly analysis of Efnysien as a trickster figure and the magical significance of his cauldron destruction - Lloyd, E.J., "The Mabinogion as Literature," The Celtic Review, Vol. 7, 1911 - scholarly literary analysis of the Second Branch and Efnysien's role in the tragic narrative arc - Rees, Brinley, Ceinciau'r Mabinogi, Sili-wen, 1975 - scholarly Welsh-language study of the four branches with detailed examination of Efnysien's characterisation - McKenna, Catherine, "The Colonization of Myth in Branwen Ferch Lŷr," in Joseph Nagy (ed.), CSANA Yearbook 6: Myth in Celtic Literatures, Four Courts Press, 2007 - scholarly analysis of Efnysien's actions within the broader context of Welsh mythological narrative patterns - Meulder, Marcel, "Nisien et Efnisien: Couple Odinique ou Dioscurique?" Nuntius Antiquus, Vol. 1, 2008 - scholarly comparative study of the Efnysien-Nisien twin dynamic and its Indo-European parallels Previous --- End of Record --- Next >