The logo of the Melammu Project

The Melammu Project

The Heritage of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East

  The Melammu Project
  
   General description
   Search string
   Browse by topic
   Search keyword
   Submit entry
  
   About
   Open search
   Thematic search
   Digital Library
   Submit item
  
   Ancient texts
   Dictionaries
   Projects
   Varia
   Submit link
  FAQ
  Contact us
  About

  The Newsletter
  To Project Information >

  

Primordial stage of the universe (1)

 Printable view
Topics (move over topic to see place in topic list)

01 Religious and ideological doctrines and imagery
01 Religious and ideological doctrines and imagery
01 Religious and ideological doctrines and imagery



 		Keywords
Berossus
composite beings
primordial men
Period
3rd century BCE
Hellenistic Empires 		Channel
Hellenistic philosophers and scholars

Text
Berossus, Babyloniaca F1:
It (= Oannes) says that there was a time when everything was darkness and water and that in this water strange beings with peculiar forms came to life. For men were born with two wings and some with four wings and two faces; these had one body and two heads, and they were both masculine and feminine, and they had two sets of sexual organs, male and female. Other men were also born, some with the legs and horns of goats, and some with the feet of horses and the foreparts of men. These were hippo-centaurs in form.

Source (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
Berossus, Babyloniaca F1

Bibliography

Adler and Tuffin 2002, 39Adler, W. and P. Tuffin. The Chronography of George Synkellos. A Byzantine Chronicle of Universal History from the Creation translated with introduction and notes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Burstein 1978, 14Burstein, Stanley M. The Babyloniaca of Berossus. Sources from the Ancient Near East 1.5. Malibu: Undena Publications 1978.

Links (external links will open in a new browser window)
Cf. Primordial stage of the universe (2)

Amar Annus


URL for this entry: http://www.aakkl.helsinki.fi/melammu/database/gen_html/a0000112.php

Illustrations
No pictures

^
T
O
P