Echidna means ‘viper’ in Greek and is the name of the half woman, half serpent mother of all monsters from Greek mythology. It’s hard to know when people first started talking about Echidna, I’d say she has been around a long time, but the first written records date from Hesiod’s Theogony, around 7th or 8th… Continue reading Story Prompt Sunday #5: E is for Echidna
Be they fire breathing, winged monsters, flightless wyrms, personification of evil, or venomous giant lizards, dragons feature in legends worldwide. I’m most interested in dragons as animals, whether real or imaginary. Real life reports of dragons sound very similar to the Komodo dragon, or giant snakes, and describe typical reptile traits such as continuing to… Continue reading Story Prompt Sunday #4: D is for Dragon
The Chimera seems to have been around long before Bellerophon rode Pegasus to kill the lioness with the head of a fire breathing goat and the tail of a serpent. Depictions of Chimera existed in cultures older than the Greeks. The Neo-Hittite Chimera, dated 850-750 BC, was a lioness with wings and a human head.… Continue reading Story Prompt Sunday #3: C is for Chimera
I wanted to draw a Basilisk, the fearsome creature of myth that can kill with a look, but I realized I didn’t know what it looked like. Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, written around 79 A.D, offers one of the earliest descriptions of the Basilisk. It is… not more than twelve fingers in length. It… Continue reading Story Prompt Sunday #2: B is for Basilisk
Iseult Murphy 