Typhon

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about Typhon, also known as Tiffon, in Greek mythology, for other uses
see Typhon (disambiguation)

Zeus hurling his lightning at Typhon, Chalcidian black
Staatliche Antikensammlungen
Typhon ( /'tatfon/; Ancient Greek
(, Tupheus), Typhaon
the last son of Gaia, fathered by
mythology. He was known as the "Father of all monsters"; his wife
likewise the "Mother of All Monsters."
Typhon was described in pseudo
fearsome of all creatures. His human upper half reached as high as the stars. His hands
reached east and west and, instead of a human head, he had a hundred dragon heads;
some however depict him as having a human head a
to his hands instead of fingers. He was feared even by the mighty gods. 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
eyes.
Typhon attempts to destroy
Titans. Typhon overcomes Zeus in their first battle, and tears out Zeus' sinews.
However, Hermes recovers the sinews and restores them to Zeus. Typhon
defeated by Zeus, who traps him underneath




From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about Typhon, also known as Tiffon, in Greek mythology, for other uses
(disambiguation).

hurling his lightning at Typhon, Chalcidian black-figured hydria, ca.
Staatliche Antikensammlungen (Inv. 596)
Ancient Greek: , Tuphn, [typ' :n]), also Typho
Typhaon (, Tuphan) or Typhos (,
, fathered by Tartarus, and the most deadly monster of
. He was known as the "Father of all monsters"; his wife Echidna
likewise the "Mother of All Monsters."
Typhon was described in pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheke, as the largest and most
fearsome of all creatures. His human upper half reached as high as the stars. His hands
reached east and west and, instead of a human head, he had a hundred dragon heads;
some however depict him as having a human head and the dragon heads being attached
to his hands instead of fingers. He was feared even by the mighty gods. 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
Typhon attempts to destroy Zeus at the will of Gaia, because Zeus had imprisoned the
. Typhon overcomes Zeus in their first battle, and tears out Zeus' sinews.
recovers the sinews and restores them to Zeus. Typhon
defeated by Zeus, who traps him underneath Mount Etna.
This article is about Typhon, also known as Tiffon, in Greek mythology, for other uses
, ca. 550 BC,
Typhoeus
(, Tuphs) was
, and the most deadly monster of Greek
Echidna was
, as the largest and most
fearsome of all creatures. His human upper half reached as high as the stars. His hands
reached east and west and, instead of a human head, he had a hundred dragon heads;
nd the dragon heads being attached
to his hands instead of fingers. He was feared even by the mighty gods. His bottom half
was gigantic viper coils that could reach the top of his head when stretched out and
in wings, and fire flashed from his
at the will of Gaia, because Zeus had imprisoned the
. Typhon overcomes Zeus in their first battle, and tears out Zeus' sinews.
recovers the sinews and restores them to Zeus. Typhon is finally
Contents
1 Accounts
2 Offspring
3 Battle with Zeus
4 Origin of name
5 Related concepts and myths
6 Popular culture
7 Notes
8 References
9 External links
Accounts
Hesiod narrates Typhon's birth in this poem:
But when Zeus had driven the Titans from Olympus,
mother Earth bare her youngest child Typhoeus of the love of
Tartarus, by the aid of golden Aphrodite.
Hesiod, Theogony 820822.
In the alternative account of the origin of Typhon (Typhoeus), the Homeric Hymn to
Apollo makes the monster Typhaon at Delphi a son of archaic Hera in her Minoan form,
produced out of herself, like a monstrous version of Hephaestus or Mars, and whelped
in a cave in Cilicia and confined there in the enigmatic Arima, or land of the Arimoi, en
Arimois (Iliad, ii. 781783). 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 in which Zeus suffers temporary eclipse as if in the Land of the Dead.
The region of Cilicia in southeastern Anatolia had many opportunities for coastal
Hellenes' connection with the Hittites to the north. From its first reappearance, the
Hittite myth of Illuyankas has been seen as a prototype of the battle of Zeus and
Typhon.
[1]
Walter Burkert and Calvert Watkins 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 poetic formula
that underlies myth, epic and magical charm texts of the lashing and binding of Typhon.
Typhon was known to be a large humanoid beast. Typhon was the last child of Gaia.
After the defeat of his brothers, the Gigantes, Gaia urged him to avenge them, as well as
his other brothers, the Titans.


Offspring
Typhon fathered several children by his niece, Echidna, daughter of Phorcys and Ceto:
Orthrus, a fearsome two-headed hound. Theogony, 306ff.
[2]
Orthrus, and his
master, Eurytion, son of Ares and the Hesperid Erytheia, guarded the fabulous
red cattle of Geryon. Both were slain, along with Geryon, when Heracles stole
the red cattle.
The Sphinx was sent by Hera to plague the city of Thebes. She was the most
brilliant of Typhon's children, and would slay anyone who could not answer her
riddles (possibly by strangling them). When Oedipus finally answered her
riddle, she threw herself into the ocean in a fit of fury and drowned.
The Nemean Lion was a gigantic lion with impenetrable skin. Selene, the moon
goddess, adored the beast. Heracles was commanded to slay the Lion as the first
of his Twelve Labors. First, he attempted to shoot arrows at it, then he used his
great club, and was eventually forced to strangle the beast. He would then use
the Lion's own claws to skin it, whereupon he wore its invulnerable hide as
armor.
Cerberus, another one of Typhon's sons was a three-headed dog that was
employed by Hades as the guardian of the passage way to and from the
Underworld. According to Hesiod, he was the son of Orthrus and Echidna.
Ladon was a serpentine dragon, known as a drakon. According to Hesiod, Ladon
was the son of Phorcys and Ceto, instead of Typhon and Echidna. Regardless of
his parentage, Ladon entwined himself around the tree in the Garden of the
Hesperides at the behest of Hera, who appointed him the garden's guardian. He
was eventually killed by Heracles.
The Lernaean Hydra, another one of Typhon's daughters, terrorized a spring at
the lake of Lerna, near Argos, slaying anyone and anything that approached her
lair with her noxious venom, save for a monstrous crab that was her companion.
She was originally thought to have nine heads, and any neck, if severed,would
give rise to two more heads, her ninth head was immortal. She and her crab were
slain by Heracles as the second of his Twelve Labors - he cut off her heads and
burnt the neck so that she could not regenerate,and crushed her ninth head under
a rock, (the crab being accidentally crushed underneath Heracles' heel).
Typhon's last child was his daughter, Chimera. Chimera resembled a
tremendous, fire-breathing lioness with a goat's head emerging from the middle
of her back, and had a snake for a tail. She roamed the ancient kingdom of
Lycia, particularly around Mount Chimaera (possibly near Yanarta), bringing
bad omens and destruction in her wake, until she was slain by Bellerophon and
Pegasus at the behest of Iobates.

Battle with Zeus
Typhon started destroying cities and hurling mountains in a fit of rage. All of the gods
of Olympus fled to their home. Only Zeus stood firm, and the battle raged, ending when
Zeus threw Mount Etna on top of Typhon, trapping him.
The inveterate enemy of the Olympian gods is described in detail by Hesiod
[3]
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 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.
[4]
Once conquered by
Zeus' thunderbolts, Typhon was cast into Tartarus, the common destiny of many such
archaic adversaries, or he was confined beneath Mount Aetna (Pindar, Pythian Ode
1.1920; Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 370), where "his bed scratches and goads the
whole length of his back stretched out against it", or in other volcanic regions, where he
is the cause of eruptions. Typhon is thus the chthonic figuration of volcanic forces, as
Hephaestus (Roman Vulcan) is their "civilized" Olympian manifestation.
Typhon is also the father of hot dangerous storm winds which issue forth from the
stormy pit of Tartarus, according to Hesiod. Likewise, the rumblings of Typhon emitted
from deepest Tartarus could be clearly heard within the underground torrent near
Seleuceia, now in Turkey, until his presence was neutralized by the building of a
Byzantine church nearby.
[5]

Origin of name
Typhon may be derived from the Greek (typhein), to smoke, hence it is
considered to be a possible etymology for the word typhoon, supposedly borrowed by
the Persians (as Tufn) and Arabs to describe the cyclonic storms of the Indian
Ocean.
[citation needed]
The Greeks also frequently represented him as a storm-demon,
especially in the version where he stole Zeus's thunderbolts and wrecked the earth with
storms (cf. Hesiod, Theogony; Nonnus, Dionysiaca).
[citation needed]

Related concepts and myths
See also: Proto-Indo-European religion#Mythology
Since Herodotus, Typhon has been identified by some scholars with the Egyptian Set. In
the Orphic tradition, Typhon leads the Titans when they attack and kill Dionysus, just as
Set is responsible for the murder of Osiris. Furthermore, the slaying of Typhon by Zeus
bears similarities to the killing of Vritra by Indra
[6]
(a deity also associated with
lightning and storms), and possibly the two stories are ultimately derived from a
common Indo-European source.
[citation needed]
Similarities can be found in the battle
between Thor and Jormungand from Norse myths, as well as (perhaps) an incident in
the Irish Metrical Dindsenchas in which the Dagda fights a giant octopus.
[7]
Mythologist
Joseph Campbell also makes parallels to the slaying of Leviathan by YHWH, about
which YHWH boasts to Job.
[8]

Comparisons can also be drawn with the Mesopotamian monster Tiamat and its slaying
by Babylonian chief god Marduk. The similarities between the Greek myth and its
earlier Mesopotamian counterpart do not seem to be merely accidental. A number of
west Semitic (Ras Shamra) and Hittite sources appear to corroborate the theory of a
genetic relationship between the two myths.
[9]

Popular culture
Typhon was referenced in Dante Alighieri's Inferno. He is mentioned to be
among the biblical and mythological giants that are frozen onto the rings outside
of Hell's Circle of Treachery. Dante and Virgil threatened to go to Tityos and
Typhon if Antaeus doesn't lower them into the Circle of Treachery.
Typhon was featured in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys portrayed by Glenn
Shadix. He is portrayed as a giant who was trapped in a rock by Hera so that she
can use Echidna's children in her plots. Hercules managed to free Typhon and
reunite him with Echidna.
Typhon appeared in "The Last Olympian" by Rick Riordan. He exploded out of
the mountain and mortals thought he was a freak storm. Eventually he was
subdued, with the help of Poseidon and an army of Cyclopes. He was captured
before he had the chance to make it to Olympus, saving the gods from
destruction.
Typhon is the final boss in the hack-and-slash game Titan Quest.
Typhon is one of the gods or superhumans in Roger Zelazny's Creatures of Light
and Darkness, where he appears with and is related to various Egyptian deities.
Typhon is the final boss in the greek levels in the game Age of Empires:
Mythologies for the Nintendo DS
Typhon appeared in Hercules: The Animated Series, where he was voiced by
Regis Philbin. He is freed of his imprisonment in the midst of a battle between
Hercules and Echidna during Titan Smashing Day, a holiday commemorating
his defeat by Zeus. It is revealed Zeus had Hera's help in the battle and it is
Hera's intervention once again that leads the two monsters to retreat.
Notes
1. ^ W. Porzig, "Illuyankas und Typhon", Kleinasiatische Forschung I.3 (1930) pp 37986
2. ^ Iliad ix.664
3. ^ Theogony 820868
4. ^ "The whole earth seethed, and sky and sea: and the long waves raged along the beaches round
and about, at the rush of the deathless gods: and there arose an endless shaking." (Hesiod,
Theogony.)
5. ^ Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, p.41
6. ^ Let me now sing the heroic deeds of Indra, the first that the thunderbolt-wielder performed. He
killed the dragon and pierced an opening for the waters; he split open the bellies of mountains.
(Rig Veda 1.32.1)
7. ^ http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/T106500D/text099.html
8. ^ The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology, Joseph Campbell; P.22.
9. ^ Jean-Pierre Vernant, The Origins of Greek Thought. Cornell University Press, 1982.
http://books.google.fr/books?id=KktoPGN4JaoC

References
Walter Burkert, Greek Religion 1985
Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, (1955) 1960, 36.13
Karl Kerenyi, The Gods of the Greeks 1951
Calvert Watkins, How to Kill a Dragon 1995, 448459
External links
Typhoeus at Theoi compiled sources of myth in classical literature
[1]
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