Typhon
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In Greek mythology, Typhon (Typhaon, Typhoeus, Typhus) was the final son of Gaia, the Earth, this time by Tartarus, the cavernous void beneath:
- But when Zeus had driven the Titans from heaven,
- huge Earth bare her youngest child Typhoeus of the love of
- Tartarus, by the aid of golden Aphrodite. —Hesiod, Theogony 820-868.
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, and whelped in a cave in Cilicia and confined there in the enigmatic land of the Arimi— en Arimois (Iliad, 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 atron, the Korykian or Corycian Cave. The region of Cilicia in southeastern Anatolia had many opportunities for connection with the Hittites to the north. Walter Burkert and Calvert Watkins note some close agreements with the Hittite myth of Illuyankas.
The inveterate enemy of the Olympian gods is described as a vast grisly monster with a hundred heads and a hundred serpents issuing from his thighs, who was conquered and cast into Tartarus by Zeus, or confined beneath Mount Aetna (Pindar, Pythian Ode 1.19 - 20; 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 Olympian manifestation. Amongst his children by Echidna are Cerberus, the serpent-like Lernaean Hydra, the Chimaera, the hundred-headed dragon Ladon, the half-woman half-lion Sphinx, the two-headed wolf Orthus, Ethon the eagle who tormented Prometheus, and the Nemean Lion.
Typhon is also the father of hot dangerous winds (Greek "typhein" to smoke), hence it is considered to be a possible etymology for the word typhoon, supposedly borrowed by the Persians (as طوفان Tufân) and Arabs to describe the cyclonic storms of the Indian Ocean.
Since Herodotus, Typhon has been identified with the Egyptian Set (interpretatio Graeca). 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 is analogous to the killing of Vritra by Indra (also a lightening deity), and two stories likely are ultimately derived from a common Indo-European myth.
[edit] References
- Walter Burkert, Greek Religion 1985
- Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, 1955, 36.1-3
- Karl Kerenyi, The Gods of the Greeks 1951
- Calvert Watkins, How to Kill a Dragon 1995, 448-459
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