History of Monsters

[lordmongrove]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/wh...ns-and-one-eyed-giants-a-history-of-monsters/

Review in the Torygraph.

 

[ramonmercado]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/wh...ns-and-one-eyed-giants-a-history-of-monsters/

Review in the Torygraph.

You could have given a tad more info.

Monsters: A Bestiary of the Bizarre by Christopher Dell (Thames & Hudson, £12.95).

In ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, monsters were a fact of life. The three great monotheistic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – were more reluctant to discuss them. The Old Testament generally excludes monsters, although it does mention the giant land and sea monsters Behemoth and Leviathan. In the New Testament, the Revelation of St John contains the famous description of the Seven-Headed Beast. But the bulk of Christianity’s monsters appear in later stories: St George jousting with the dragon, or the ferocious Tarasque tamed by St Martha.

In the pagan world of ancient Greece and Rome, everything had a far more fluid form – where else could a woman infatuated with a bull give birth to a creature half man, half bull? The story of Durga in Hindu legend tells of something similar (although it is a man who falls in love with a cow).

The Hindu gods, like those of the ancient Egyptians, are often depicted as alterations of the human form. Some have extra limbs, one has an elephant’s head. Hindu demons, too, are plentiful and potent. This pattern is repeated on the other side of the globe, in the Olmec culture of the Americas. Here, priests would temporarily take on monstrous characteristics by dressing up. Folk stories tell of trolls and giants, mermaids and mermen, fairies and leprechauns, werewolves and vampires ...