Happy Lunar New Year 2007!

Here's a very-very simple greeting from my sketches on
'Journey to the West'. Gong Xi Fa Chai!
This is the year of the golden pig!

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Harpy

Harpy - Monstropedia Eternia

A Research / Study from The Free Dictionary

A medieval depiction of a Harpy.

In Greek mythology, the Harpies (snatchers[1] ) were mainly winged death-spirits (Harrison 1903, p 176ff), best known for constantly stealing all food from Phineas. The literal meaning of the word seems to be "whirlwinds". The Harpy could also bring life. A Harpy was the mother by the West Wind Zephyros of the horses of Achilles (Iliad xvi. 160). In this context Jane Harrison adduced the notion in Virgil's Georgics that mares became gravid by the wind alone, marvelous to say (iii.274). Though Hesiod (Theogony) calls them two "lovely-haired" creatures, Harpies as beautiful winged bird-women are a late development, in parallel with the transformation of the "Siren, a creature malign though seductive in Homer, but gradually softened by the Athenian imagination into a sorrowful death angel" (Harrison p 177).. On a vase in the Berlin Museum (Harrison, fig 19), a harpy has a small figure of a hero in each claw, but her head is recognizably a Gorgon, with goggling eyes, protruding tongue and fangs.

Mythology

The Harpies were sisters of Iris, daughters of Typhon and Echidna. Phineas, a king of Thrace, had the gift of prophesy. Zeus, angry that Phineas revealed too much, punished him by putting him on an island with a buffet of food which he could never eat. The Harpies always arrived and stole the food out of his hands right before he could satisfy his hunger, and befouled the remains. This continued until the arrival of Jason and the Argonauts. The Boreads, sons of Boreas, the North Wind, who also could fly, succeeded in driving the Harpies away but did not kill them, as a request from Iris, who promised that Phineas would not be bothered by the Harpies again, and "the dogs of great Zeus" returned to their "cave in Minoan Crete". Thankful for their help, Phineas told the Argonauts how to pass the Symplegades. (Argonautica, book II; Ovid XIII, 710; Virgil III, 211, 245). In this form they were agents of punishment who abducted people and tortured them on their way to Tartarus. They were vicious, cruel and violent. They lived on Strophades. They were usually seen as the personifications of the destructive nature of wind. The Harpies in this tradition, now thought of as three sisters instead of the original two, were: Aello ("storm swift"), Celaeno ("the dark") — also known as Podarge ("fleet-foot") — and Ocypete ("the swift wing"). Aeneas encountered Harpies on the Strophades as they repeatedly made off with the feast the Trojans were setting. Celaeno cursed them, saying the Trojans will be so hungry they will eat their tables before they reach the end of their journey. The Trojans fled in fear.
HeraldryIn the Middle Ages, the harpy, often called the "virgin eagle", became a popular charge in heraldry, particularly in East Frisia, seen on, among others, the coats-of-arms of Reitburg, Liechtenstein, and the Cirksenas.
Theories of originR.D. Barnett suggests in "Ancient Oriental Influences on Archaic Greece" — an essay in The Aegean and the Near East, Saul S. Weinberg, ed. (Locust Valley, N.Y.,1956) — that the Harpies were originally adapted from the ornaments on bronze caldrons from Urartu:
These made such an impression in Greece that they seem to have given rise to the siren type in archaic Greek art, and as they appeared to flutter at the rim of such noble cooking vessels, apparently gave rise to the familiar Greek legend of Phineus and the Harpies, who are thus depicted in Greek art. The very name of Phineus, the victim of their persecutions, may be nothing but a corruption of the name of a king of Urartu, Ishpuinish or Ushpina (ca. 820 B.C.), who was perhaps associated by the Greek merchants with these vessels [2].Other scholars point out that this theory is based upon the idea that the Harpies were bird monsters with human heads, which was not true in the original myths. In their winged human form, the Harpies are no different from a large number of Greek divinities and as such would not need a special explanation for how they came to be. The later bird composite form is considered by most authors to have been a confusion with an early depiction of the Sirens as bird women.
Harpies in fictionThe familiar figures of harpies, with their composite form and violent nature, are much employed in video games and other products of market-directed culture. Harpies appear in Dante's Divine Comedy, in Canto XIII of the Inferno, where they hound suicides. They also appear, clearly in reference to Dante, in The Amber Spyglass, the third book of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, when Lyra and Will journey to the land of the dead to rescue Lyra's friend Roger. The harpies have their traditional Greek role of escorting the spirits of the dead in Pullman's book, and Lyra persuades them to help guide the dead out of limbo/hell to peace. In William Shakespeare's "The Tempest", the spirit Ariel disguises himself as a harpy to deliver the message of his master Prospero. In the film The Last Unicorn, a captured Harpy is featured looking like a giant 3 breasted vulture. Harpy is Monster in My Pocket #21. In the video game, they appear in threes at the stage 4 construction site. In Warcraft 3, the expansion and World of Warcraft the harpies are a fierce and barbarous race living in tribes. See also Harpies at the Warcraft race page. In the MMOG EVE Online, the Harpy is a so-called Assault Frigate for the Caldari race, designed as a very powerful railgun platform with strong defenses. In the popular Yu-Gi-Oh! trading card game, there is a set of attractive harpy monsters known as "Harpie Lady", which originated from Mai Valentine's deck in the manga and anime. They were originally sex themed in the Japanese uncut versions. In God of War, the Harpies are a small, frequently encountered enemy, and servants of Ares. In Tiberian Sun, the Harpy is a light helicopter used by NOD. In the PC game, Guild Wars Nightfall, the Skree are race of bird-people based off Harpies.
References
1. ^ The unelided form arepuia is inscribed on a black-figured vessel in Berlin illustrated in Jane Ellen Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 1903, fig.18. The major painted decor of the vase is the slaying of the Gorgon.2. ^ Greek Mythology - Myths Concerning Aia
See also
Sirens (for comparable dire bird-women in Greek mythology)
Tantalus (for another Greek character punished with never being allowed to quench his hunger or thirst)

Tiamat

Tiamat is a monster/goddess in Babylonian and Sumerian mythology, and a central figure in the Enûma Elish creation epic.
Etymology of the nameJohn C. L. Gibson, in the Ugaritic glossary of Canaanite Myths and Legends, notes that "tehom" appears in the Ugaritic texts, c. 1400-1200 BC, simply meaning the "depths of the sea". Such a depersonalized Tiamat (the -at ending makes her feminine) is "The Deep" (Hebrew tehom), present at the beginning of the book of Genesis. Her name seems ultimately to have been a Sumerian one as in that language Ti = Life, and Ama = Mother, suggesting her original name may have been "the mother of all life" (Thorkild Jacobsen, (1968) "The Battle between Marduk and Tiamat" Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 88, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar.), pp. 104-108.) This title was given to the divinised 1st King of the 3rd Dynasty of Kish, Kubau, who reappears in Hurrian mythology as Kheba (identified with the "mother of the Gods" — Hannahannah) and with the Hebrew cognate Havva (Eve), also called "the mother of all living" in Genesis). ("Adam and Eve in Babylonian Literature". American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literature Vol 15 (1899), pp.193-214)
Tiamat's appearanceThough Tiamat is most often described by modern authors as a sea serpent or dragon, no ancient texts exist in which there is a clear association with those kind of creatures. Within the Enûma Elish her physical description includes, a tail, a thigh, "lower parts" (which shake together), a belly, an udder, ribs, a neck, a head, a skull, eyes, nostrils, a mouth, and lips. She has insides, a heart, arteries, and blood. The depiction of Tiamat as a multi-headed dragon was popularized in the 1970s as a fixture of the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game thanks to earlier sources associating Tiamat with later mythological characters such as Lotan and others.[citation needed] Though the Enûma Elish specifically states that Tiamat did give birth to dragons and serpents, they are included among a larger and more general list of monsters including scorpion men and merpeople, none of which imply that any of the children look like the mother or are even limited to aquatic creatures.
MythologyApsu (or Abzu, from Sumerian Ab = water, Zu = far) fathered upon Tiamat the Elder gods Lahmu and Lahamu (the "muddy"), a title given to the gatekeepers at the Enki Abzu temple in Eridu. Lahmu and Lahamu, in turn, were the parents of the axis or pivot of the heavens (Anshar, from An = heaven, Shar = axle or pivot) and the earth (Kishar), and Anshar and Kishar were considered to meet on the horizon, becoming thereby the parents of Anu and Ki. Tiamat was the "shining" goddess of salt water who roared and smote in the chaos of original creation. She and Apsu filled the cosmic abyss with the primeval waters. She is "Ummu-Hubur who formed all things". The god Enki (later Ea) believed correctly that Apsu, upset with the chaos they created, was planning to murder the younger gods; and so slew him. This angered Kingu, their son, who reported the event to Tiamat, whereupon she fashioned monsters to battle the gods. These were her own offspring: giant sea serpents, storm demons, fish-men, scorpion-men and many others. Tiamat possessed the Tablets of Destiny, and in the primordial battle she gave them to Kingu, the god she had chosen as her lover and the leader of her host. The Gods gathered in terror, but Anu, (replaced later first by Enlil and after the 1st Dynasty of Babylon, by Marduk, the son of Ea, in the late version that has survived), first extracting a promise that he would be revered as "king of the Gods", overcame her, armed with the arrows of the winds, a net, a club, and an invincible spear.
And the lord stood upon Tiamat's hinder parts,
And with his merciless club he smashed her skull.
He cut through the channels of her blood,
And he made the North wind bear it away into secret places.Slicing Tiamat in half, he made from her ribs the vault of heaven and earth. Her weeping eyes became the source of the Tigris and the Euphrates. With the approval of the elder gods, he took from Kingu the Tablets of Destiny, installing himself as the head of the Babylonian pantheon. Kingu was captured and was later slain with his red blood mixed with the red clay of the Earth to make the body of humankind, created to act as the servant of the younger Igigi Gods.
External links
Enuma Elish
The Babylonian creation story