![]() The bird legs seem to be included to make sure the viewer knows these figures are something weird.īy the 4 th century AD, Christianity discouraged belief in the old gods and goddesses. While they hold instruments, they’re hardly alluring. In the mosaic pictured, from the 2 nd century AD, the sirens are winged human women with bird legs and feet. When Rome conquered Egypt, she was merged with Aphrodite. She appears as both a mourner and a protector of the dead, a guide for the dead to the afterlife, and a promise of rebirth. First mentioned in the Old Kingdom texts, about 2600 BC, her cult later flourished and spread. ![]() The Egyptian goddess Isis (pictured with wings, from a carving on a pharaoh’s sarcophagus) was associated with both death and rebirth, including the annual flooding of the Nile. The human-headed figure shown represented the “ba” or soul of the deceased. This idea probably came from the Near East, especially what are today Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, where the winged goddesses Inanna, Astarte, and Ishtar were worshipped (Note the wings and bird feet on the image of Astarte, pictured), and before that from ancient Egypt, where mixed human/animal representations of spirits, including female/bird figures, were common. The Egyptian “ba,” the winged goddess Astarte, and a carving of Isis on Ramses III’s sarcophagus The last two on the bottom row refer specifically to the Ulysses story.įigures like these have often been found in burials, and the sirens have generally been interpreted as protective guides leading the dead into the afterlife. Sirens – statues and vases dating from 550 BC to 100 BC. When the story was young, listeners would have pictured a creature with the body of a bird and the head of a human female. Homer did not give the sirens any specific physical description, probably because his audience was already familiar with the concept. It’s inspired some great parodies, though, including a Saturday Night Live sketch,, and a Simpsons’ “Island of Sirens” song, sung to the tune of Barry Manilow’s “Copacabana.” The two sirens, named Patty and Selma (shown), sing “On the island, island of sirens, our hot sex will leave you perspirin’.”Īs it turns out, though, that sexy siren/mermaid image isn’t just goofy. Paintings like this one by Herbert James Draper (1909) follow the standard pattern.īut seeing Ulysses tied to the mast so he can avoid the lure of the girls in this painting seems sort of ridiculous to me. Most people I asked thought of sirens as beautiful young women (sometimes mermaids) tempting the sailors, seductive creatures who wait for their next victim, combing back their long hair and singing an irresistible song. This scene, with the sirens enticing sailors to their doom with their beautiful song, has inspired artists for centuries, with wildly different results, reflecting the beliefs of their times. And he does beg when he hears the sirens’ beautiful song promising him “ripe wisdom and a quickening of the spirit,” but the men ignore his pleas, tightening the bonds holding him to the mast instead. Heeding Circe’s warning, Ulysses orders his men to plug their ears with wax so they won’t hear the wondrous song, but he wants to hear it, so he has himself tied to the mast and orders his men not to release him no matter how hard he begs. There is a great heap of dead men’s bones lying all around, with the flesh still rotting off them. ![]() “If any one unwarily draws in too close and hears the singing of the Sirens,” Circe warns, “his wife and children will never welcome him home again, for the sirens sit in a green field and warble him to death with the sweetness of their song. Their song is so enchanting that sailors forget everything else when they hear it, so their ships crash on the rocks. The sorceress Circe tells Ulysses that the sirens will pose a deadly threat. One famous scene concerns Ulysses (Odysseus to the Greeks) and the Sirens. ![]() No wonder it’s been popular for over two thousand years. It involves monsters, gods, terrible storms, trickery, sex, murder, drugs, drinking, and feasting. It describes Ulysses’ long, difficult voyage home after the Trojan War ended. The Odyssey, written by the Greek poet Homer in the 8 th century BC, is one of the world’s best- known epic tales.
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