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71-414: The griffin , griffon , or gryphon ( Ancient Greek : γρύψ , romanized :  grýps ; Classical Latin : grȳps or grȳpus ; Late and Medieval Latin : gryphes , grypho etc.; Old French : griffon ) is a legendary creature with the body, tail, and back legs of a lion , and the head and wings of an eagle with its talons on the front legs. Because the lion was traditionally considered

142-543: A pitch accent . In Modern Greek, all vowels and consonants are short. Many vowels and diphthongs once pronounced distinctly are pronounced as /i/ ( iotacism ). Some of the stops and glides in diphthongs have become fricatives , and the pitch accent has changed to a stress accent . Many of the changes took place in the Koine Greek period. The writing system of Modern Greek, however, does not reflect all pronunciation changes. The examples below represent Attic Greek in

213-477: A lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period. They have the same general outline but differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period is Mycenaean Greek , but its relationship to the historical dialects and

284-419: A lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek , spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either a fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Regarding the speech of the ancient Macedonians diverse theories have been put forward, but the epigraphic activity and the archaeological discoveries in

355-550: A prefix /e-/, called the augment . This was probably originally a separate word, meaning something like "then", added because tenses in PIE had primarily aspectual meaning. The augment is added to the indicative of the aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect, but not to any of the other forms of the aorist (no other forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist). The two kinds of augment in Greek are syllabic and quantitative. The syllabic augment

426-431: A red chest and white wings". Aelian was the last source on the griffin to add fresh information on the griffin, and late writers (into medieval times) merely rehashed existing material on griffins, with the exception of the lore about their "agate eggs" which emerged at some indistinct time later on (cf. infra). The griffin has been associated with various deities (Apollo, Dionysus, Nemesis), in Greek mythography but here,

497-412: A region of very rich soil but quite uninhabitable because griffins, a savage and tenacious breed of wild beasts, love.. the gold that is mined from deep within the earth there, and because they guard it with an amazing hostility to those who set foot there. The aforementioned Aelian ( Claudius Aelianus , d. 235 AD) added certain other embellishments, such as its reputation of "black plumage on its back with

568-608: A separate historical stage, though its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek , and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek . There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek; Attic Greek developed into Koine. Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language , divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic , Aeolic , Arcadocypriot , and Doric , many of them with several subdivisions. Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms in literature , while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms. Homeric Greek

639-630: A standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance . This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period ( c.  300 BC ), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek , which is regarded as

710-510: A vowel or /n s r/ ; final stops were lost, as in γάλα "milk", compared with γάλακτος "of milk" (genitive). Ancient Greek of the classical period also differed in both the inventory and distribution of original PIE phonemes due to numerous sound changes, notably the following: The pronunciation of Ancient Greek was very different from that of Modern Greek . Ancient Greek had long and short vowels ; many diphthongs ; double and single consonants; voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops ; and

781-570: Is a literary form of Archaic Greek (derived primarily from Ionic and Aeolic) used in the epic poems , the Iliad and the Odyssey , and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects. The origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of

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852-418: Is added to stems beginning with consonants, and simply prefixes e (stems beginning with r , however, add er ). The quantitative augment is added to stems beginning with vowels, and involves lengthening the vowel: Some verbs augment irregularly; the most common variation is e → ei . The irregularity can be explained diachronically by the loss of s between vowels, or that of the letter w , which affected

923-666: Is called 'East Greek'. Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian Greek had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, as exemplified in the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar who wrote in Doric with a small Aeolic admixture. Thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to

994-448: Is considered by some linguists to have been closely related to Greek . Among Indo-European branches with living descendants, Greek is often argued to have the closest genetic ties with Armenian (see also Graeco-Armenian ) and Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ). Ancient Greek differs from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and other Indo-European languages in certain ways. In phonotactics , ancient Greek words could end only in

1065-532: Is described as having a " visor " (i.e., beaks) made by Urartian craftsmen, similar to what is found on Greek protomes. Representations of griffin-like hybrids with four legs and a beaked head appeared in Ancient Egyptian art dating back to before 3000 BC. The oldest known depiction of a griffin-like animal in Egypt appears as a relief carving on slate on the cosmetic palette from Hierakonpolis ,

1136-457: Is not uniquely applied to the griffin beast, and tštš ( Teš-teš ) has also been used to denote the god Osiris elsewhere. Most statuary representations of griffins depict them with bird-like forelegs and talons , although in some older illustrations griffins have a lion's forelegs (see bronze figure, right); they generally have a lion's hindquarters. Its eagle's head is conventionally given prominent ears ; these are sometimes described as

1207-551: The Achaemenian Persian Empire . Russian jewelry historian Elena Neva maintained that the Achaemenids considered the griffin "a protector from evil, witchcraft, and secret slander", but no writings exist from Achaemenid Persia to support her claim. R.L. Fox (1973) remarks that a "lion-griffin" attacks a stag in a pebble mosaic at Pella , from the 4th century BC, perhaps serving as an emblem of

1278-759: The Greek region of Macedonia during the last decades has brought to light documents, among which the first texts written in Macedonian , such as the Pella curse tablet , as Hatzopoulos and other scholars note. Based on the conclusions drawn by several studies and findings such as Pella curse tablet , Emilio Crespo and other scholars suggest that ancient Macedonian was a Northwest Doric dialect , which shares isoglosses with its neighboring Thessalian dialects spoken in northeastern Thessaly . Some have also suggested an Aeolic Greek classification. The Lesbian dialect

1349-511: The Lamassu , an Assyrian protective deity, often depicted with a bull or lion's body, eagle's wings, and human's head. Sumerian and Akkadian mythology feature the demon Anzu , half man and half bird, associated with the chief sky god Enlil . This was a divine storm-bird linked with the southern wind and the thunder clouds. Jewish mythology speaks of the Ziz , which resembles Anzu, as well as

1420-912: The Two Dog Palette dated to the Early Dynastic Period , c.  3300–3100  BC. Griffin-type creatures combining raptor heads and mammalian bodies were depicted in the Levant , Syria , and Anatolia during the Middle Bronze Age , dated at about 1950–1550 BC. Griffin-type animals appeared in the art of ancient Crete in the MM III Period (1650–1600 BC) in Minoan chronology , found on sealings from Zakro and miniature frescos dated to this period. One early example of griffin-types in Minoan art occurs in

1491-640: The University of Hamburg in 1957. His dissertation, Vedisch vratá und awestisch urvāta (1958), systematically compared the Indo-Iranian term for "vow" in the Vedas and the Avesta . A research fellow at Deccan College , Poona from 1959 to 1961, Schmidt taught at the University of Saugor from 1961 to 1964. From 1965 to 1967 he was an assistant professor at the University of Tübingen . In 1965, Schmidt

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1562-501: The present , future , and imperfect are imperfective in aspect; the aorist , present perfect , pluperfect and future perfect are perfective in aspect. Most tenses display all four moods and three voices, although there is no future subjunctive or imperative. Also, there is no imperfect subjunctive, optative or imperative. The infinitives and participles correspond to the finite combinations of tense, aspect, and voice. The indicative of past tenses adds (conceptually, at least)

1633-590: The 15th century BC frescoes of the Throne Room of the Bronze Age Palace of Knossos , as restored by Sir Arthur Evans . The griffin-like hybrid became a fixture of Aegean culture since the Late Bronze Age , but the animal called the gryps, gryphon, or griffin in Greek writings did not appear in Greek art until about 700 BC, or rather, it was "rediscovered" as artistic motif in

1704-719: The 4th millennium B.C., and is a unique example of a griffin-like animal with a male lion's mane . However, this monster then ceased to continue to be expressed after the Elamite culture. What the Sumerians of the Early Dynastic period portrayed instead were winged lions, and the lion-headed eagle ( Imdugud ). In the Akkadian Empire that succeeded Sumer, early examples (from early 3rd millennium BC) of lions with bird heads appeared on cylinder seals, shown pulling

1775-1031: The 5th century BC. Ancient pronunciation cannot be reconstructed with certainty, but Greek from the period is well documented, and there is little disagreement among linguists as to the general nature of the sounds that the letters represent. /oː/ raised to [uː] , probably by the 4th century BC. Greek, like all of the older Indo-European languages , is highly inflected. It is highly archaic in its preservation of Proto-Indo-European forms. In ancient Greek, nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases ( nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , and vocative ), three genders ( masculine , feminine , and neuter ), and three numbers (singular, dual , and plural ). Verbs have four moods ( indicative , imperative , subjunctive , and optative ) and three voices (active, middle, and passive ), as well as three persons (first, second, and third) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated through seven combinations of tenses and aspect (generally simply called "tenses"):

1846-620: The 8th to 7th centuries BC, adapting the style of griffin current in Neo-Hittite art. It became quite popular in the 6th and 5th centuries BC, when the Greeks first began to record accounts of the "gryps" creature from travelers to Asia, such as Aristeas of Proconnesus. A number of bronze griffin protomes on cauldrons have been unearthed in Greece (on Samos , and at Olympia , etc., cf. fig. right). Early Greek and early Etruscan (e.g.

1917-495: The Archaic period of ancient Greek (see Homeric Greek for more details): Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ' ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι· Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή· ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς. The beginning of Apology by Plato exemplifies Attic Greek from

1988-533: The Barberini) examples of cauldron-griffins may have been of Syric-Urartian make, based on evidence (the "tendrils" or "tresses" motif was already touched upon, above), but "Vannic (Urartian) originals" have yet to be found (in the Orient). It has thus been controversially argued (by Ulf Jantzen  [ de ] ) that these attachments had always since the earliest times been crafted by Greek workshops, added to

2059-677: The Classical period of ancient Greek. (The second line is the IPA , the third is transliterated into the Latin alphabet using a modern version of the Erasmian scheme .) Ὅτι [hóti Hóti μὲν men mèn ὑμεῖς, hyːmêːs hūmeîs,   Hanns-Peter Schmidt Hanns-Peter Schmidt was born in Berlin , Germany in 1930. He studied at the University of Hamburg under the direction of Indologist Ludwig Alsdorf  [ de ] , who

2130-767: The Mesopotamian lion-griffin. There is also the Armenian term Paskuč ( Armenian : պասկուչ ) that had been used to translate Greek gryp 'griffin' in the Septuagint , which H. P. Schmidt characterized as the counterpart of the simurgh. However, the cognate term Baškuč (glossed as 'griffin') also occurs in Middle Persian, attested in the Zoroastrian cosmological text Bundahishn XXIV (supposedly distinguishable from Sēnmurw which also appears in

2201-685: The ancient Greek Phoenix . The Bible mentions the Ziz in Psalms 50:11. This is also similar to a cherub . The cherub, or sphinx, was very popular in Phoenician iconography. In ancient Crete, griffins became very popular, and were portrayed in various media. A similar creature is the Minoan Genius . In the Hindu religion, Garuda is a large bird-like creature that serves as a mount ( vahana ) of

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2272-456: The ant into his description of griffins. Later, Pliny the Elder became the first to explicitly state the griffins as having wings and long ears. In one of the two passages, Pliny also located the "griffons" in Æthiopia . According to Adrienne Mayor , Pliny also wrote, "griffins were said to lay eggs in burrows on the ground and these nests contained gold nuggets ". Apollonius of Tyana , who

2343-550: The aorist. Following Homer 's practice, the augment is sometimes not made in poetry , especially epic poetry. The augment sometimes substitutes for reduplication; see below. Almost all forms of the perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect reduplicate the initial syllable of the verb stem. (A few irregular forms of perfect do not reduplicate, whereas a handful of irregular aorists reduplicate.) The three types of reduplication are: Irregular duplication can be understood diachronically. For example, lambanō (root lab ) has

2414-419: The augment when it was word-initial. In verbs with a preposition as a prefix, the augment is placed not at the start of the word, but between the preposition and the original verb. For example, προσ(-)βάλλω (I attack) goes to προσ έ βαλoν in the aorist. However compound verbs consisting of a prefix that is not a preposition retain the augment at the start of the word: αὐτο(-)μολῶ goes to ηὐ τομόλησα in

2485-587: The bumps (furrows) on a lion's snout. Another view regards the wart as deriving from the bumpy cockscomb on a rooster or other such fowls. Griffin-like animals were depicted on cylinder seals in Mesopotamia c. 3000 BC, perhaps as early as the Uruk period (4000–3100BC) and subsequent Proto-Elamite ( Jemdet Nasr ) period. An example of a winged lion with beaks, unearthed in Susa (cf. fig. right) dates to

2556-420: The cauldron Griffins. Benson's emphasis is that the Greeks attached a stylized "anorganic" topknot or an "inorganic" plug on the griffin's head (due to lack of information), while in contrast, a known oriental example (stone protomes from Nimrud ) is simple but more "plausible" (naturalistic), resembling a forelock. A cluster of "warts" between the eyes are also mentioned. One conjecture is that these derive from

2627-438: The center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for the dialects is: West vs. non-West Greek is the strongest-marked and earliest division, with non-West in subsets of Ionic-Attic (or Attic-Ionic) and Aeolic vs. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Often non-West

2698-524: The chariots for its rider, the weather god. The "lion-griffin" on Akkadian seals are also shown as fire-belching, and shaggy (at the neck) in particular examples. The bronzeworks of Luristan , the North and North West region of Iran in the Iron Age , include examples of Achaemenid art depicting both the "bird-griffin" and "lion-griffin" designs, such as are found on horse-bits . Bernard Goldman maintains

2769-473: The deity Vishnu . It is also the name for the constellation Aquila . Local lore on the gryps or griffin was gathered by Aristeas of Proconnesus, a Greek who traveled to the Altai region between Mongolia and NW China in the 7th century BC. Although Aristeas's original poem was lost, the gryps lore preserved in secondhand accounts by the playwright Aeschylus (ca. 460 BC), and later his contemporary, Herodotus

2840-615: The dialect of Sparta ), and Northern Peloponnesus Doric (including Corinthian ). All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, and these colonies generally developed local characteristics, often under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BC, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed, largely based on Attic Greek , but with influence from other dialects. This dialect slowly replaced most of

2911-673: The forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek ( c.  1400–1200 BC ), Dark Ages ( c.  1200–800 BC ), the Archaic or Epic period ( c.  800–500 BC ), and the Classical period ( c.  500–300 BC ). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers . It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been

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2982-513: The god Apollo due to "syncretism between the two gods". At the Temple of Hera at Samos , a griffin-themed bronze "wine-cup" or "cauldron" had been installed, according to Herodotus. The vessel was attached griffin heads around the rim (like the protomes , described above): it was an Argolic or Argive krater , according to the text, standing on a tripod shaped like colossal figures. The notion that griffins lay stones or agate instead of eggs

3053-477: The griffin's neck, carven on some of the Greek protomes. The tendril motif emerged at the beginning of the first millennium, BC., in various parts of the Orient. The "double spiral of hair running downwards from the base of the ear" is said to be a hallmark of Iranian (Uratrian) art. The Etruscan cauldron-griffins (e.g., from Barberini tomb  [ it ] , figure right) also bear the "curled tresses" that are

3124-516: The griffins collected from various areas in the periphery (presumably including the Armaspi's territorial stream, the stream of Pluto "rolling with gold"). The equestrian Arimaspi would ride off with the loot, and the griffins would give pursuit. Aeschylus likened the gryps to "silent hounds of Zeus" That they are called dogs or hounds here has led to the conjecture that Aeschylus considered them wingless or flightless. Whereas Ctesias , had located

3195-580: The griffins in India, and more explicitly classed them as beaked, four-legged birds. Herodotus also mentions elsewhere that there are gold-collecting ants in Kashmir , India, and this has been interpreted by modern scholars as "doublets or garbled versions" of the lore of gold-hoarding griffins. It appears that the accounts of griffins given by Pliny had been admixed with the lore of these gold-guarding ants of India, and later Aelian also inserted attributes of

3266-524: The historian. Herodotus explains (via Aristeas) that the gold-guarding griffin supposedly dwelled further north from the one-eyed Arimaspi people who robbed the gold from the fabulous creatures. Aristeas is said to have been informed through the Issedones people neighboring region to the Arimaspi, in the northern extremes (of Central Asia). Aeschylus also concurs that the Arimaspi robbed the gold which

3337-561: The historical Dorians . The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with the Dorians. The Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people – Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians (including Athenians), each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, and Cypriot, far from

3408-476: The historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups already existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed not later than 1120 BC, at the time of the Dorian invasions —and that their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BC. The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to

3479-534: The identifiable attested "accounts" presented in scholarship are largely not literary, but artistic, or numismatic . The griffin was naturally linked to Apollo, given the existence of the cultus of Hyperborean Apollo , with a cult center at the Greek colony of Olbia on the Black Sea . And even the main Temple of Apollo at Delphi featured a statue of the god flanked by griffins, or so it can be presumed based on

3550-401: The image of a griffin attacking a horse. Other Scythian artifacts show griffins attacking horses, stags, and goats. Griffins are typically shown attacking horses, deer, and humans in Greek art. Nomads were said to steal griffin-guarded gold according to Scythian oral traditions reported by Greek and Roman travelers. Several ancient mythological creatures are similar to the griffin. These include

3621-558: The king of the beasts, and the eagle the king of the birds, by the Middle Ages, the griffin was thought to be an especially powerful and majestic creature. Since classical antiquity, griffins were known for guarding treasures and priceless possessions. In Greek and Roman texts, griffins and Arimaspians were associated with gold deposits of Central Asia. The earliest classical writings derive from Aristeas (7th cent. BC), preserved by Herodotus and Aeschylus (mid 5th century BC), but

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3692-520: The kingdom of Macedon or a personal emblem of Antipater , one of Alexander 's successors. A golden frontal half of a griffin-like animal from the Ziwiye hoard (near Saqqez city) in Kurdistan Province , Iran resembles the western protomes in style. They were of Urartian workmanship (neither Assyrian or Scythian), though the hoard itself may have represented a Scythian burial. The animal

3763-500: The later lore that griffins deposited agate stone among the eggs in their nest. Pliny placed the griffins in Æthiopia , and Ctesias (5th century BC) in greater India . Scholars have observed that legends about the gold-digging ants of India may have contaminated griffin lore. In the Christian era, Isidore of Seville (7th century AD) wrote that griffins were a great enemy of horses. This notion may have readily developed from

3834-558: The lion's ears, but are often elongated (more like a horse 's), and are sometimes feathered. The griffin of Greece, as depicted in cast bronze cauldron protomes (cf. below), has a squat face with short beaks that are open agape as if screaming, with the tongue showing. There is also a "top-knob" on its head or between the brows. There may also be so-called "tendrils", or curled "spiral-locks" depicted, presumably representing either hair/mane or feather/crest locks dangling down. Single- or double-streaked tendrils hang down both sides and behind

3905-474: The modern Persian language , the griffin has come to be called šērdāl ( Persian : شیردال ), meaning 'lion-eagle'. However, the practice of referring to ancient Iranian griffin objects or monuments as sherdal , is not followed by other current archaeological scholarship (e.g., here). Possible Old or Middle Iranian names for the creature have been discussed. Middle Persian Sēnmurw in Sasanian culture

3976-508: The older dialects, although the Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language , which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek . By about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosed into Medieval Greek . Phrygian is an extinct Indo-European language of West and Central Anatolia , which

4047-487: The perfect stem eilēpha (not * lelēpha ) because it was originally slambanō , with perfect seslēpha , becoming eilēpha through compensatory lengthening. Reduplication is also visible in the present tense stems of certain verbs. These stems add a syllable consisting of the root's initial consonant followed by i . A nasal stop appears after the reduplication in some verbs. The earliest extant examples of ancient Greek writing ( c.  1450 BC ) are in

4118-560: The physical descriptions are not very explicit. Thus even though they are sharp-beaked, their being likened to "unbarking hounds of Zeus" has led to the speculation they were seen as wingless. Pliny the Elder (1st century) was the first to explicitly state that griffins were winged and long eared. But Apollonius of Tyana wrote that griffins did not have true bird wings, but only membranous webbed feet that only gave them capability of short-distanced flight. Writers after Aelian (3rd century AD) did not add new material to griffin lore, except for

4189-723: The plain cauldrons imported from the Near East. Detractors (notably K. R. Maxwell-Hyslop ) believe that (early examples of) the griffin-ornamented cauldron, in its entirely, were crafted in the East, though excavated finds from the Orient are scarce. In Central Asia , the griffin image was included in Scythian "animal style" artifacts of the 6th–4th centuries BC, but no writings explain their meaning. The Golden Pectoral from Tovsta Mohyla , interred in Scythian king's burial site, perhaps commissioned to Greek goldsmiths , who engraved

4260-441: The position that Luristan examples must be counted as developments of the "lion-griffin" type, even when it exhibits "stylization .. approaching the beak of a bird". The Luristan griffin-like creatures resemble and perhaps are descended from Assyrian creatures, possibly influenced by Mitannian animals, or perhaps there had been parallel development in both Assyrian and Elamite cultures. Bird-headed mammal images appeared in art of

4331-399: The representation struck on the tetradrachm coinage of Attica. Apollo rode a griffin to Hyperboria each winter, leaving Delphi, or so it was believed. Apollo riding griffin is known from multiple examples of red-figure pottery . And Apollo hitched griffins to his chariot according to Claudian . Dionysus was also depicted on a griffin-chariot or mounting griffin; the motif was borrowed from

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4402-566: The same text). Middle Persian Paškuč is also attested in Manichaean magical texts (Manichaean Middle Persian: pškwc ), and this must have meant a "griffin or a monster like a griffin" according to W. B. Henning . The griffin was given names which were descriptive epithets, such as tštš or tesh-tesh meaning "Tearer[-in-pieces]" inscribed on a griffin image found in a tomb at Deir El Bersha ; and sfr / srf "fiery one", attested at Beni Hasan . The descriptive epithet "Tearer"

4473-551: The signature of Uratrian workmanship. Even the ornate crests on Minoan griffins (such as the fresco of the Throne Room, figure top of page) may be a development of these curled tresses. One prominent characteristic of the cauldron griffins is the "top-knob between the brows" (seemingly situated at the top of the head). The top-knob feature has clear oriental origins. Jack Leonard Benson says these appendages were "topknots" subsequently rendered as "knobs" in later development of

4544-517: The syllabic script Linear B . Beginning in the 8th century BC, however, the Greek alphabet became standard, albeit with some variation among dialects. Early texts are written in boustrophedon style, but left-to-right became standard during the classic period. Modern editions of ancient Greek texts are usually written with accents and breathing marks , interword spacing , modern punctuation , and sometimes mixed case , but these were all introduced later. The beginning of Homer 's Iliad exemplifies

4615-466: The tradition that horseback-riding Arimaspians raided the griffin gold. The derivation of this word remains uncertain. It could be related to the Greek word γρυπός (grypos), meaning 'curved', or 'hooked'. Greek γρύφ (gryph) from γρύφ 'hook-nosed' is suggested. It could also have been an Anatolian loan word derived from a Semitic language; compare the Hebrew word for cherub כרוב kərúv . In

4686-480: Was Aeolic. For example, fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos are in Aeolian. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric (including Cretan Doric ), Southern Peloponnesus Doric (including Laconian ,

4757-573: Was a close associate of many prominent scholars, including Christian Bartholomae , Heinrich Zimmer and Heinrich Lüders . Schmidt also studied Middle Iranian with Olaf Hansen (1902–69), and took courses with Franz Altheim . It was however his friend and teacher Wolfgang Lentz , Professor of Iranian at the University of Hamburg, who was to have the greatest influence on him. Schmidt received his PhD in Indo-Iranian Studies in at

4828-443: Was a fabulous composite creature, and Russian archaeologist Boris A. Litvinskij  [ ru ] argued for the possibility that the application of this term may extend to the griffin. The term Sēnmurw is recognized as the etymological ancestor of simurgh , which is generally regarded as a mythological bird (rather than a composite) in later medieval Persian literature, though some argue that this bird may have originated from

4899-560: Was appointed Professor of Indo-Iranian Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He was a visiting professor in Sanskrit and Old Iranian and Middle Iranian at the University of Leiden from 1974 to 1976. Schmidt retired as Professor Emeritus from UCLA in 2000. Schmidt specialized in the study of the Vedas and the Gathas of Zoroaster , as well as Vedic mythology and

4970-400: Was introduced "at some in the evolution of griffin lore". Albertus Magnus (d. 1280) attributes to other writers the claim that "this bird places an ' eagle-stone ' ( echytem ) or agate ( gagatem ) among its eggs" to change the ambient temperature and enhance reproduction. Ancient Greek language Ancient Greek ( Ἑλληνῐκή , Hellēnikḗ ; [hellɛːnikɛ́ː] ) includes

5041-533: Was nearly coeval with Pliny, gave a somewhat unique account of the griffin, claiming them to be lion-sized, and having no true wings, and instead had paws "webbed with red membranes", that gave them ability to makes leaps of flight of only a short distance. Pomponius Mela (fl. AD 43) wrote in his Book ii. 6: In Europe, constantly falling snow makes those places contiguous with the Riphaean Mountains .. so impassable that, in addition, they prevent those who deliberately travel here from seeing anything. After that comes

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