A book previously reviewed in Magonia (1) suggested that the image of this mythical beast was created in Greece and the ancient Near East as a result of travellers finding the fossil remains of prehistoric creatures, particularly the protoceratops. These bones were often found on or near the surface in the areas to the north of the Caspian Sea, and the story of the griffin was built around them.
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McClanan vigorously challenges this thesis, most succinctly by presenting a wealth evidence for the creature's appearance centuries before they were described in Classical Greece, and in many cultures across Asia and North Africa. Winged lions appear in Mesopotamia 3000 years BC, depicted on cylinder seals. The combination of an eagle and a lion, the two 'ace predators' of air and land is such a basic archetype that there seems to be no need to any specific physical prototype.
Although the griffin's ferocity makes it a perfect image as both a protective and an aggressive figure, it was also connected with a number of divinities, including Nemesis, where it symbolised divine retribution. Rather more surprisingly the creature was associated with the wine god Dionysus. Its image is found on drinking vessels, an example from Greece, 350 BC shows Dionysus in a griffin-drawn chariot, flying above a satyr filling his jug of wine from an urn.
The 'griffin's claw' became a part of the iconography of drinking, and mediaeval examples show images of griffins carved onto drinking horns. One such - the 'pinte de Saint-Denis', actually nearly 1.5 litres – was used in a ceremony in the French town where on Ascension Day four priests would take the 'griffin's claws' around to calibrate the measures in local taverns.
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15th Century German 'Griffin Claw' Drinking Horn |
More typically the griffin is part of the imagery of weapons and the heraldry of war, from Iron Age belts and weapons to the helmets of Roman gladiators; from Central Asian clan symbols to the decoration of modern fighter aircraft. The origins of heraldry were on the fields of battle, and it is the heraldic depiction of the creature which is most familiar today. The Tractatus de armis, a fourteenth century manual of heraldry states “To bere a gryffyn in armys is a tokyn of a grete man and a strong fighter”
The author examines the moral messages behind the depiction of the griffin, and finds many contradictory indicators. Although it is often shown as a fierce and brave fighter, with its legendary role as a guardian of treasure it was often used to symbolise 'avarice and duplicity'. But also it could be depicted as a guardian. The Bird's Head Haggadah, a Jewish manuscript probably written in Main c. 1300, griffins are depicted as defenders of the community during a period of antisemitic massacres.
This book tracks the images and legends of the griffin from the art and myth of ancient Mesopotamia to the images and stories of Hollywood and J K Rowling and Alice in Wonderland. Lewis Carroll's artist John Tenniel codified the image of the griffin for a century or more with his classic illustrations, but McClanan shows us that Carroll's own interpretation was a far stranger creature.
This is a many-layered history which demonstrates that the griffin is so often the mirror of the age that contemplates it. Although complex, it is a fascinating story that the author presents clearly, helped by a treasury of well chosen illustrations, many in colour. We have come to expect very high production standards from Reaktion Books and this volume is another fine example.
- Richard Samuels
1. Adrienne Mayor. The First Fossil Hunters; Dinosaurs Mammoths and Myth in Greek and Roman Times. Princeton University Press. 2022.
Mayor does not claim that all images of bird-headed quadrupeds, later called "griffins" originated from observations of beaked dinosaurs in Asia. McClanan misrepresents Mayor's hypthosis and ignores the question she tried to answer plausibly. Mayor clearly looks at Greek and Roman written accounts about griffins as a real animal of Asia and related artworks illustrating those accounts from a specific time period: ca 5th century BC to ca 4th century AD. The earlier artistic images of bird-mammal hybrids have no related writings and simply serve to show that imaginary cross-species composites were common in early antiquity. If people were familiar with the earlier bird-headed mammal motifs and later observed fossils of strange creatures that combined bird & mammal the fossils would seem to confirm the older images.
ReplyDeleteYou might take a look at the fuller discussion in Griffinology, it addresses many of these concerns. The Ancient Near Eastern and Ancient Egyptian images of griffins (both of which have textual accounts by the way) were adopted by Greeks through imported luxury goods. A routine trope in classical texts is to ascribe mythical animals to far-off lands and write about them as real, but the Greeks (eg Herodotus) also liked to write about griffins as motifs on art, the way they'd entered their society. Interesting stuff!
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