Why Has the Majestic Griffin Been Forgotten?

What happens when you combine the fiercest animal of the sky with the proudest of the land?

You get the Griffin.

This half-lion, half-eagle creature adorns royal crests or perched menacingly atop buildings.

Stories of this beast predate written language.

Artifacts from cultures  like the Ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Myceneans, Babylonians, Syrians, Persians, and Greeks bear evidence of the majestic griffin.

I have a soft spot for these monsters, they are part bird after all.

But their avian majesty is only part of their allure.

Powerful, vigilant, a symbol of royalty, and companion to gods, the griffin’s grandeur is only seconded by its omnipresence in ancient civilizations.

Yet we’ve largely let this monster fade into antiquity.

Why did ancient peoples believe that these creatures actually roamed  the earth protecting gold?

I'm Dr. Emily Zarka, and this is Monstrum.

The Griffin has talon feet, a long tail,  an eagle-like beak, and usually wings.

Known by many names across the globe, the griffin is a bit unusual as monster mythology goes; it  doesn’t have an origin story.

There are no tales connecting its creation to any deity, or heroes  battling it in some epic quest.

Griffins were just animals; something people believed they might happen across one day.

That doesn’t mean they didn’t have a place in folkloric traditions though.

The griffin was said to cohabitate with others of its kind, roaming in pairs or packs, hunting large mammals like horses and deer— and as monsters tend to do, the occasional human.

Griffins lay eggs in nests on the ground and primarily get around on four  legs, despite the wings.

Since the earliest versions of griffins have no written record, it’s hard to draw any definitive conclusions about why they started appearing in the first place.

Nevertheless, we begin to see the Griffin appear in cultural artifacts  thousands of years ago.

First, in the late fourth millennium BCE in Egypt and Elam, and in the  second millennium in Syria.

The hybrid creatures appear on seals, amulets, and tomb decorations and likely evoked protection.

Think about it: if the lion  is seen as “king” of land animals for its ferocity and beauty, and the “eagle” as aerial nobility for the same reasons, a lion-eagle combo animal logically would be the king of the beasts - a  majestic and powerful being.

Who wouldn’t want to adopt  some of that same power?

During the Bronze Age Egyptian iconography played up the duality of the  monster even more overtly - adding crests, neck curls meant to evoke the lion’s mane, and raised wings.

Griffins begin to appear in Egyptian funerary imagery in royal tombs as far  back as the Fifth Dynasty.

And by the Eighteenth Dynasty, the often male griffin, overwhelmingly symbolized the protection and authority of the pharaohs - alongside the female sphinx.

Griffin lore enters written history sometime between the 8th and 6th century  BCE in Greek literature.

The Greeks even gave the griffin their name.

The Greek word for curved or hooked became the Latin grȳps, which forms the base of the French and Italian words.

Griffin is also linked to giriften, the Persian word for “grip” or “seize.” This etymology points to the creature’s curved beak and talons—its most powerful weapons.

The Greek stories were originally adapted from tales told by the Scythians, a nomadic, culturally advanced people with a rich oral tradition, who traveled a large swathe of territory between Southeastern Europe, Central Asia, and Mongolia.

We see the griffin depicted in Scythian art, the creatures immortalized in gold alongside horses, stags, and eagles.

They even appear as tattoos on mummified remains of the fiercely admired Scythian warriors, indicating their cultural importance.

One early example of the griffin appearing in a written narrative comes from Aristeas a Greek traveler who wrote an epic poem about the Scythian nomads.

In his story, the Scythians fight off lion - sized creatures with curved, eagle-like beaks as they prospect for gold.

We’ve lost the complete poem to time, but from the fragments, we get one of the griffin’s defining characteristics - their connection to gold, more specifically, to guarding gold deposits in Central Asia.

Now we’re getting somewhere—no longer just an impressive, exotic animal, the griffin was linked to an important cultural resource, a precious metal tied to religion, art, currency, and social power.

Ancient history, nomadic tribes, gold…it all made for great stories to the Greeks.

In 430 BCE, Greek historian Herodotus wrote of “griffins that guard gold” in the mountains beyond the Issedones, located in Central Asia, which the Greeks would have perceived as a far-away, nearly mythical place.

In the 5th century BCE, Ctesias’ Indica gives us the first detailed written account of the griffin’s appearance.

He describes large gold deposits in the mountains of India inhabited by “a race of four-footed birds, about as large as wolves, having legs and claws like those of the lion, and covered all over the body with black feathers except only on the breast where they are red.” In the 3rd century CE, Greek author Aelian gives another detailed account of griffins.

Like Ctesaias’s earlier description, they have black and red feathers,  but their wings are white.

They will attack those who approach their mountain nests, but not in defense of the luminous metal but their young - making them more vigilant and dedicated parents rather than treasure-mongers.

These are only a few examples, as the Greeks and Romans circulated these Scythian griffin stories the creature’s appearance in their art increased as well.

Vases, mosaics, bronze busts, bowls—the griffin was a popular adornment.

In Greek mythology, the sun-god Apollo’s chariot was driven by griffins and Dionysus had one to help pull his chariot as well.

Zeus kept one as a companion, the helmet of Athena is sometimes depicted adorned with griffins, and Nemesis,  goddess of divine retribution, used these defenders to punish treasure-stealers.

So, the griffin already had quite the reputation, to say the least, even before they even made it to the Middle Ages, when illustrated bestiaries became a bit of a fad.

Just look at all these sweet griffins.

Given their popularity and their acceptance as real animals, it’s not super surprising that beginning in the 11th to 13th centuries, the time of the Crusades, the griffin appeared in European heraldry.

I mean—the whole protector of the young aka the vulnerable, the features of an effective hunter, and the whole gold  thing was pretty appealing.

The griffin went on to grace countless seals, shields, and armor of wealthy and noble European families across countries like Germany, France, Great Britain, and Norway.

Money, power, a position as guardians…you probably won’t be surprised to hear that Christianity also adopted the griffin in their art and literature.

Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies from the 6th century painted the  griffin as a symbol of Christ.

In Dante’s Divine Comedy, a griffin appears often, receiving praise  for avoiding the temptation of eating the forbidden fruit and pulling a divine chariot that symbolizes the Church.

Dante’s griffin, Christ-like,  even ascends into heaven.

The hippogriff, a horse-lion-eagle creature, is the offspring of a mare and a griffin.

Interestingly, the hippogriff  is also a symbol for Christ - believed to evoke the union  of the divine and the natural.

Outside of religion, stories of the griffin’s real existence continued into the 14th century when Sir John Mandeville, who may or may not have been an actual person, published what he claimed to be an accurate travel memoir.

Mandeville writes of a country called ‘Bacharia,’ located somewhere in “The East,” that had more griffins than any other country.

These griffins “hath the body greater and is more strong than eight  lions” and a “hundred eagles.” They can carry off a horse or two oxen at once.

Their claws are so large, men can “make cups of them” and their ribs and wing bones can be used to make bows.

In the 17th century, scholars began proposing that the griffin was an imaginary creature— pure symbolic fantasy - the result of overactive imaginations and nothing more.

That’s not to say everyone was convinced griffins were entirely fictional.

A Scottish minister, Andrew Ross, for instance, wrote that there are “many such ‘mixt and dubious’ animals in the world” so it’s possible that griffins could also exist.

In the 21st century, it’s been hypothesized that griffins were in a way  inspired by living animals.

Ones that happened to be  dead for millions of years.

Remember the Scythians?

It’s extremely likely that across their desert routes in what is now the Gobi desert, they encountered bones—bones of the humans and animals that perished in the sands, and also fossilized prehistoric bones.

Unfamiliar bones of unusual size.

Shifting sands and frequent dust could reveal these bones, the white standing out against the red sand, suddenly and unexpectedly.

What can also be exposed by high winds?

Mineral deposits—like gold, likely linking the valuable resource to the monster from the very beginning.

The migratory routes of the Scythians in what is now Mongolia and north-Western China have proven to be a mecca for well-preserved fossil skeletons, particularly  those of the Protoceratops.

Folklorist and historian Adrienne Mayor was the first to present the theory that the griffin was born out of the discovery of these dinosaur bones, and while some  paleontologists aren’t so sure, it’s a compelling hypothesis.

From Egyptian art to ancient nomadic warriors, Greek myths to the heraldry of kings, and pretty much everything in between, the griffin has been a part of human lore  for a very, very long time.

And while they’ve largely faded  out of modern popular culture there is no escaping the fact that these creatures will always be part of our human history.