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 >

  

The Mesopotamian Gallû demon (1)

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

02 Religious and ideological symbols and iconographic motifs



 		Keywords
Gello
Period
7th century BCE 		Channel
Greek poets

Text
The Mesopotamian Gallû is probably borrowed into Greek as Gello, the horrifying figure, an object of terror for children. Gello is mentioned already in the work of Sappho. Gello was said to steal and eat little children. Traces of this figure have persisted to the present day, in the modern Greek beliefs about Гυλλώ. The testimony of Sappho would place the borrowing in the seventh century at the latest.

Bibliography

Burkert 1992, 82Burkert, Walter. The Orientalizing Revolution. Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Period. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press 1992.

Links (external links will open in a new browser window)
Sappho on Gello
Cf. The ghost Gello (1)
Cf. The ghost Gello (2)
Cf. The ghost Gello (3)

Amar Annus


URL for this entry: http://www.aakkl.helsinki.fi/melammu/database/gen_html/a0000604.php

Illustrations
No pictures

^
T
O
P