Typhon

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Typhon

In Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Ancient Greece concerning their List of Greek mythological figures#Immortals and Greek hero cult, Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices....
, Typhon (ancient Greek

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic Greece , Classical Greece , and Hellenistic civilization periods of ancient Greece and the classical antiquity....
: , Tuphon), also Typheus/Typhoeus (Tuphoeus), Typhaon (Tuphaon) or Typhos (Tuphos) is the final son of Gaia

Gaia (mythology)

Gaia Gaia is a Greek primordial gods and chthonic deity in the Ancient Greek Pantheon and considered a Mother Goddess or Great Goddess....
, fathered by Tartarus

Tartarus

In classic Roman mythology, below Heaven, Earth, and Pontus is Tartarus, or Tartaros . It is a deep, gloomy place, a pit, or an abyss used as a dungeon of torment and suffering that resides beneath the Hades....
, and is the god of wind. Typhon attempts to replace Zeus

Zeus

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In Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Ancient Greek

Gaia (mythology)

Gaia Gaia is a Greek primordial gods and chthonic deity in the Ancient Greek Pantheon and considered a Mother Goddess or Great Goddess....
, fathered by Tartarus

Tartarus

Zeus

Zeus in Greek mythology is the king of the gods, the ruler of Mount Olympus and the god of the sky father and List of thunder gods. His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull , and oak....
as the king of gods and men. Typhon was described as the largest and most grotesque of all creatures that have ever lived. His top half was man shaped and he reached as high as the stars. His hands reached east and west and had 100 dragon heads on each. His bottom half was gigantic viper coils that could reach the top of his head when stretched out and made a hissing noise. His whole body was covered in wings and fire flashed from his eyes (read: Library, Apollodorus). He was defeated by Zeus who trapped Typhon underneath Mount Etna

Mount Etna

Mount Etna is an active stratovolcano on the east coast of Sicily, close to Messina, Italy and Catania. Its Arabic name was Jebel Utlamat ....
.

Accounts

Hesiod

Hesiod was a Greek language oral poet, his date is uncertain but leading scholars agree that Hesiod lived in the latter half of the Eighth-century BCE....
narrates Typhon's birth:

But when Zeus had driven the Titans
Titan (mythology)

In Greek mythology, the Titans ; were a race of powerful deities that ruled during the legendary golden age. Their role as Elder Gods was overthrown by a race of younger gods, the Twelve Olympians, effected a mythological paradigm shift that the Greeks borrowed from the Ancient Near East....
from Olympus,

mother Earth bare her youngest child Typhoeus of the love of

Tartarus, by the aid of golden Aphrodite
Aphrodite

Aphrodite is the classical Greek mythology goddess of love, sex, and beauty. According to Greek oral poet Hesiod, she was born when Uranus was castrated by his son Cronus....
. —Hesiod, Theogony
Theogony

The Theogony is a poem by Hesiod describing the origins and genealogy of the polytheism of the ancient Greeks, composed circa 700 BC....
820-822.

In the alternative account of the origin of Typhon (Typhoeus), the Homeric Hymn to Apollo

Apollo

In Greek mythology and Roman mythology, Apollo , is one of the most important and many-sided of the Twelve Olympians. The ideal of the kouros , Apollo has been variously recognized as a god of light and the sun; truth and prophecy; archery; medicine and healing; music, poetry, and the arts; and more....
makes the monster Typhaon at Delphi

Delphi

Delphi is an archaeology site and a modern town in Greece on the south-western spur of Mount Parnassus in the valley of Phocis. Delphi was the site of the Pythia, the most important oracle in the classical Greek world, when it was a major site for the worship of the god Apollo after he slew the Python , a deity who lived there and protecte...
a son of archaic Hera

Hera

In the Twelve Olympians of classical Greek Mythology, Hera or Here was the wife and older sister of Zeus. Her chief function was as goddess of women and marriage....
in her Minoan form

Eteocretan language

The Minoan language is a language of ancient Crete. Its relationship to Greek language is unknown and it was spoken before the island's civilization was replaced with that of the Mycenaean Greece....
, produced out of herself, like a monstrous version of Hephaestus

Hephaestus

Hephaestus was a Greek god whose Roman equivalent was Vulcan . He was the god of technology, blacksmiths, craftsmen, artisans, sculpture, metals, metallurgy, Fire and volcanoes....
, and whelped in a cave in Cilicia

Cilicia

In antiquity, Cilicia now known as ?ukurova, was a commonly used name of the south coastal region of the Anatolian peninsula, and a political entity in Roman times....
and confined there in the enigmatic land of the Arimi—

Aram Damascus

Aram Damascus was an Aramaean state around Damascus in Syria, from the late 12th century BCE to 734 BCE.Sources for this state come from texts that can be divided into three categories: Assyrian annals, Aramaean texts, and the Hebrew Bible....
en Arimois (Iliad
ILiad

The iLiad is an electronic handheld device, or e-book device, which can be used for document reading and editing. Like the Sony Reader or Amazon Kindle, the iLiad makes use of an electronic paper display....
, ii. 781-783). It was in Cilicia that Zeus battled with the ancient monster and overcame him, in a more complicated story: It was not an easy battle, and Typhon temporarily overcame Zeus, cut the "sinews" from him and left him in the "leather sack", the korukos that is the etymological origin of the korukion andron, the Korykian or Corycian Cave

Corycian Cave

The Corycian Cave is located on the slopes of Mount Parnassus, in Greece. In the mythology of the area, it is named after the nymph Corycia; however, its name etymologically derives from korykos, "knapsack"....
in which Zeus suffers temporary eclipse as if in the Land of the Dead. The region of Cilicia in southeastern Anatolia

Anatolia

Anatolia or Asia Minor is a region of Western Asia, comprising most of the modern Republic of Turkey. It is a geographic region bounded by the Black Sea to the north, the Caucasus to the northeast, the Aegean Sea to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and the Iranian plateau to the east and southeast....
had many opportunities for coastal Hellenes' connection with the Hittites

Hittites

The Hittites were an ancient Anatolian people who spoke a Hittite language of the Anatolian languages of the Indo-European languages family, and established a kingdom centered at Hattusa in north-central Anatolia ca....
to the north. From the first reappearance of the Hittite myth of Illuyankas, it has been seen as a prototype of the battle of Zeus and Typhon. Walter Burkert

Walter Burkert

Walter Burkert , a scholar of Greek mythology and Cult , is an emeritus professor of classics at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and also has taught in the United Kingdom and the United States....
and Calvert Watkins

Calvert Watkins

Calvert Watkins is a professor Emeritus of linguistics and the classics at Harvard University and professor-in-residence at UCLA.His doctoral dissertation, Indo-European Origins of the Celtic Verb I....
each note the close agreements. Watkins' How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics (Oxford University Press) 1995, reconstructs in disciplined detail the flexible Indo-European

Indo-European languages

The Indo-European languages are a Language family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau , Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent ....
poetic formula that underlies myth, epic and magical charm texts of the lashing and binding of Typhon.

The inveterate enemy of the Olympian gods

Twelve Olympians

The Twelve Olympians or younger gods, also known as the Dodekatheon , in Greek mythology, were the principal Greek Godss of the Greek pantheon , residing atop Mount Olympus, having supplanted the Titan or older gods in the greek mythogical narrative....
is described in detail by Hesiod as a vast grisly monster with a hundred serpent heads "with dark flickering tongues" flashing fire from their eyes and a din of voices and a hundred serpents

Serpent (symbolism)

Serpent is a word of Latin origin that is commonly used in a specifically mythology or religion context, signifying a snake that is to be regarded not as a mundane natural phenomenon nor as an object of scientific zoology, but as the bearer of some symbolic value....
legs, a feature shared by many primal monsters of Greek myth that extend in serpentine or scaly coils from the waist down. The titanic struggle created earthquakes and tsunami

Tsunami

A is a series of ocean surface wave that is created when a large volume of a body of water, such as an ocean, is rapidly displaced. The Japanese term is literally translated into " harbor wave."...
s. Once conquered by Zeus

Zeus

Zeus in Greek mythology is the king of the gods, the ruler of Mount Olympus and the god of the sky father and List of thunder gods. His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull , and oak....
' thunderbolts, Typhon was cast into Tartarus, the common destiny of many such archaic adversaries, or he was confined beneath Mount Aetna, also known as Mount Etna

Mount Etna

Mount Etna is an active stratovolcano on the east coast of Sicily, close to Messina, Italy and Catania. Its Arabic name was Jebel Utlamat ....
, (Pindar

Pindar

Pindar , was an Ancient Greek Lyric poetry poet.Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, Pindar is the one whose work is by far the best preserved, and critics in antiquity tended to regard him as the greatest....
, Pythian Ode 1.19 - 20; Aeschylus

Aeschylus

Aeschylus was an Ancient Greece playwright. He is often recognized as the father or the founder of tragedy, and is the earliest of the three Greek tragedy whose Play survive extant, the others being Sophocles and Euripides....
, Prometheus Bound 370), where "his bed scratches and goads the whole length of his back stretched out against it," or in other volcanic

Volcano

A volcano is an opening, or rupture, in a planet's surface or Crust , which allows hot, molten rock, ash, and gases to escape from below the surface....
regions, where he is the cause of eruptions.

Typhon is thus the chthonic

Chthonic

Chthonic designates, or pertains to, deities or spirits of the underworld, especially in relation to Ancient Greek religion.Greek khthon is one of several words for "earth"; it typically refers to the interior of the soil, rather than the living surface of the Landscape or the land as territory ....
figuration of volcanic forces, as Hephaestus (Roman Vulcan) is their "civilized" Olympian manifestation. Amongst his children by Echidna

Echidna (mythology)

In the most ancient layers of Greek mythology, Echidna was called the "Mother of All Monsters". Echidna was described by Hesiod as a female monster spawned in a cave, who mothered with her mate Typhon every major horrible monster in the Greek myths,...
are Cerberus

Cerberus

Cerberus is the name given to the entity which, in Greek mythology and Roman mythology, is a multi-headed dog which guards the gates of Hades, to prevent those who have crossed the river Styx from ever escaping....
, the serpent-like Lernaean Hydra

Lernaean Hydra

In Greek mythology, the Lernaean Hydra The Hydra was the offspring of Typhon and Echidna , noisome offspring of the earth goddess, Gaia. It was said to be the sibling of the Nemean Lion, the Stymphalian birds, the Chimera ,and Cerberus....
, the Chimera

Chimera (mythology)

This article is about the Greek_Mythology creature. For other uses, see Chimera.In Greek mythology, the Chimera was a monstrous creature of Lycia in Asia Minor, composed of the parts of multiple animals: upon the body of a lioness with a tail that terminated in a snake's head, the head of a goat arose on her back at the center of her...
, the hundred-headed dragon Ladon

Ladon (mythology)

Ladon was the serpent-like dragon that twined round the tree in the Hesperides and guarded the golden apples. He was overcome and slain by Heracles....
, the half-woman half-lion Sphinx

Sphinx

A sphinx is a zoomorphic mythological figure which is depicted as a recumbent lion with a human head. It has its origins in sculpted figures of Old Kingdom Ancient Egypt, to which the ancient Greeks applied their own name for a female monster, the "strangler", an archaic figure of Greek mythology....
, the two-headed wolf Orthrus

Orthrus

In Greek mythology, Orthrus was a multi-headed animal dog and a doublet of Cerberus, both whelped by the chthonic monster Echidna by Typhon....
, and the Nemean Lion

Nemean Lion

The Nemean lion was a vicious monster in Greek mythology that lived in Nemea. He was eventually killed by Heracles. The lion was usually considered the offspring of Typhon and Echidna , but it was also said to have fallen from the moon, offspring of Zeus and Selene....
.

Typhon is also the father of hot dangerous storm winds

Anemoi

In Greek mythology mythology, the Anemoi were wind gods who were each ascribed a cardinal direction, from which their respective winds came, and were each associated with various seasons and weather conditions....
which issue forth from the stormy pit of Tartarus, according to Hesiod.

His name is apparently derived from the Greek

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
t?fe?? (typhein), to smoke, hence it is considered to be a possible etymology

Etymology

Etymology is the study of the roots and history of words; and how their form and meaning have changed over time.In languages with a long detailed history, etymology makes use of philology, the study of how words change from culture to culture over time....
for the word typhoon, supposedly borrowed by the Persians (as ????? Tufân) and Arab

Arab

An Arab is a person who Identity as such on linguistic or cultural grounds. The plural form, Arabs , refers to the Ethnocultural group at large....
s to describe the cyclonic storms

Cyclone

In meteorology, a cyclone refers to an area of closed, circular fluid motion rotating in the same direction as the Earth's rotation. This is usually characterized by inward spiraling winds that rotate counter clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere of the Earth....
of the Indian Ocean

Indian Ocean

The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering about 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by Asia ; on the west by Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and Australia; and on the south by the Southern Ocean ....
. The Greeks also frequently represented him as a storm-daemon, especially in the version where he stole Zeus's thunderbolts and wrecked the earth with storms (cf. Hesiod, Theogony; Nonnus, Dionysiaca).

Since Herodotus

Herodotus

Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a Greeks historian who lived in the 5th century BC and is regarded as the "Father of History" in Western culture....
, Typhon has been identified with the Egyptian Set

Set (mythology)

In Ancient Egyptian religion, Set is an ancient god, who was originally the god of the desert, Storms, Darkness, and Chaos. Because of the developments in the Egyptian language over the 3,000 years that Set was worshipped, by the Greek period, the t in Seth was pronounced so indistinguishably from th that the Greeks spelled it a...
(interpretatio Graeca

Interpretatio graeca

Interpretatio graeca is a Latin term for the common tendency of ancient Greek writers to equate foreign divinities to members of their own pantheon....
). In the Orphic tradition, Typhon leads the Titans when they attack and kill Dionysus

Dionysus

In classical mythology, Dionysus or Dionysos , is the God of wine, the inspirer of ritual madness and ecstasy, and a major figure of Greek mythology, and one of the twelve Olympians, among whom Greek mythology treated Dionysus as a late arrival....
, just as Set

Set (mythology)

Osiris

Osiris was an Egyptian mythology, usually called the god of the Afterlife.Osiris is one of the oldest gods for whom records have been found; one of the oldest known attestations of his name is on the Palermo Stone of around 2500 BC....
. Furthermore, the slaying of Typhon by Zeus bears similarities to the killing of Vritra

Vritra

In the Historical Vedic religion, Vritra "the enveloper", was an Asura and also a naga or dragon, the personification of drought and enemy of Indra....
by Indra

Indra

Indra is the god of War and Weather, also the King of the gods or Deva and Lord of Heaven or Swarga in Hinduism. Mentioned first as the chief deity in the sacred Hindu text of Rig Veda, Indra is bestowed with a heroic and almost brash and amorous character....
(a deity also associated lightning and storms), and possibly the two stories are ultimately derived from a common Indo-European source. Similarities can be found in the battle between Thor

Thor

Thor is the red-haired and bearded god of thunder in Germanic mythology and Germanic paganism, and its subsets: Norse paganism, Anglo-Saxon paganism and Continental Germanic mythology....
and Jormungand from norse myths.

External links

compiled sources of myth in classical literature