Edited by Richard Walker, Sunday, 15 Oct 2017, 22:37
This unhappy-looking animal
is a manticore.
It's probably unhappy because it doesn't exist, and never did. Or perhaps because, if it had existed, it might feel miserable about this exotic but unflattering description.
The face of a man, the mouth open to the ears with a treble row of teeth beneath and above; long neck, whose greatness, roughness, body and feet are like a Lyon: of a red colour, his tail like the tail of a Scorpion of the Earth, the end armed with a sting, casting forth sharp pointed quills.
This is taken from Randle Holme, The Academy of Armorie and Blazon, 1688. But manticores were mentioned by ancient writers; such as Aristotle, who had his information in turn from Ctesias.
Ctesias, writing ca. 400 BCE, spent time at the royal court in Persia, and the name of the beast is from Persian, and means "man eater".
So Ctesias got this story from the Persian court, and it was still being repeated 2000 years later. A long-lived bit of fake news.
Image: Museum Meermanno, MMW, 10 B 25, Folio 13r. Manticore
New blog post
This unhappy-looking animal
is a manticore.
It's probably unhappy because it doesn't exist, and never did. Or perhaps because, if it had existed, it might feel miserable about this exotic but unflattering description.
The face of a man, the mouth open to the ears with a treble row of teeth beneath and above; long neck, whose greatness, roughness, body and feet are like a Lyon: of a red colour, his tail like the tail of a Scorpion of the Earth, the end armed with a sting, casting forth sharp pointed quills.
This is taken from Randle Holme, The Academy of Armorie and Blazon, 1688. But manticores were mentioned by ancient writers; such as Aristotle, who had his information in turn from Ctesias.
Ctesias, writing ca. 400 BCE, spent time at the royal court in Persia, and the name of the beast is from Persian, and means "man eater".
So Ctesias got this story from the Persian court, and it was still being repeated 2000 years later. A long-lived bit of fake news.
Image: Museum Meermanno, MMW, 10 B 25, Folio 13r. Manticore